Senator Andrew Bartlett
Saturday, April 30, 2005
 
Premier Pete

When I was down at the shops this morning getting my mail and buying papers, I ran into Queensland Premier Peter Beattie and his wife Heather. (I may have mentioned before that I live in the adjoining suburb –he lives up the top of the hill and I live at the bottom). They looked like they’d been out doing some morning exercise around the neighbouring hillsides, which I’ve occasionally seen pictures of them doing in the paper – a bit like John Howard.

Mr Beattie’s been copping a bit of a pounding in recent weeks over the Dr Death saga and also from his own people about giving Joh Bjelke-Petersen a state funeral – (I’ve said elsewhere that I don’t have a problem with him getting a State funeral and think it is a stupid thing to target).

I’ve met the Premier and his wife a few times here and there and had a brief chat about the possible Senate dynamics after July 1st when the Government gets control and the ‘character building’ nature of public criticism. Despite all the criticisms people may have about Peter Beattie, many of them valid, there’s almost no doubt that when he’s getting his State Funeral he’ll be (rightly) copping far less criticism that what Joh is getting now. Of course, it’s a bit late to try to build people’s character by criticising them after they’ve gone, so I’ll try to be helpful and get all my criticising in while he’s still Premier.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Saturday, April 30, 2005 Permalink
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Voting for Fun

There was a few days worth of mail in my postal box when I checked it this morning, including the latest copy of the National Journal which all members of the Australian Democrats get. It contains a ballot to elect our next National Executive, which happens annually. It gave me a strong flashback to when I first joined the party in 1989. There are often many reasons why people join organisations, but a key one for me was the chance to vote directly on policies and party positions, which all members are entitled to do (after 6 months membership).

It probably seems a bit naff, but I still recall that early period of my membership when I would look forward to getting those Journals with ballots in them so I could have my say on a whole heap of things. It must be said that this process of policy development has had its problems in practice, and the big thing that many people don’t seem to realise about participatory processes is that they require a lot more resources and thoroughness than other, narrower processes. However, I still believe the principle is a good one and should be encouraged by all (small ‘d’) democrats.

Anyway, I haven’t had a good vote in a while, so I’ll fill in my ballot paper now before it gets buried in the paperwork.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Saturday, April 30, 2005 Permalink
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The advertisements commercial television don’t want you to see

Occasionally in my younger days I used to fantasise about winning heaps on the lottery, so that instead of working at the slow, often frustrating grind of grassroots politics to try to change people's minds on important issues, I could just run heaps of television advertisements at peak viewing time.

However, judging by current events, even if I'd won millions I wouldn't have had much joy. The organisation representing the commercial television networks, ironically called "Free TV Australia", has refused to screen advertisements criticising the Howard Government over its approach to negotiating the sea boundaries covering the oil and gas fields offshore from East Timor.

You can see the adverts yourself by clicking here – (story and link pinched from the Crikey Daily). Supposedly, the TV stations are concerned these ads might be defamatory!

Free TV Australia has just put in a submission to an inquiry being held about Parliamentary Privilege, in which they state:

“Free TV recognises that the rules governing contempt of Parliament need to address the sometimes competing interests of ensuring that the conduct of committee proceedings is not compromised and the value of a free flow of information.”

“Free TV submits that it is extremely important that the rules governing contempt of Parliament only restrict the free flow of information in circumstances where there is a substantial risk that Committee proceedings will be seriously prejudiced.

Parliamentary privilege is an ancient, much misunderstood concept, which I won’t go into here. As the significance and respect placed on the Parliament has declined, respect for Parliamentary privilege has also declined. However, it is clear that the “free flow of information”, which the commercial television networks value so much that it should outweigh contempt of Parliament in all but the most serious circumstances, is also something that should apparently only flow when it is in their commercial interest.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Saturday, April 30, 2005 Permalink
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Friday, April 29, 2005
 
Multiculturalism
I attended the funeral of Al Grassby in Canberra today. I only dimly recall him from his time as a Government Minister, being just 9 years old when he lost his seat in the 1974 election. However, in recent years I shared a platform with him at a number of forums and conferences on issues relating to multiculturalism and immigration.

I don't think all of Al Grassby's policy ideas were workable, but I believe his tireless promotion of multiculturalism needs to be acknowledged. This is different from and more important than promoting a fairer immigration system or higher migration – it involves actively promoting the extra value that each person's culture and heritage brings to our country.

Other people from a range of political persuasions played a part in opening up Australia's migration system and getting rid of the White Australia Policy, but few so strongly and consistently promoted multiculturalism.

Since Grassby's death was announced last weekend, more than one person from a migrant family has said to me how he was the first person who made them and their nationality feel welcomed and positively valued for what they were, rather than just as people who were meant to just get on with 'fitting in' and 'making a go of it' in Australia. This aspect of multiculturalism has sometimes been misrepresented as encouraging migrants to stay in so-called 'ethnic ghettos' and not become part of Australia - a total misunderstanding and indeed the exact opposite of what multiculturalism is about.

The full potential and value of multiculturalism comes from the 'value-add' Australia gets by fully connecting with all the positives that comes with a person's cultural and social heritage. Of course, the heritage of many people contains negatives, particularly when they come from a country riven by war or ethnic and religious hatreds. This is where the value comes from connecting with that part of Australia's culture which clearly shows that people can live peacefully and work together in a society despite their political, ethnic or religious differences.

This is also why Australia will never reach its full potential as a society (or as an economy) until we resolve the biggest divide that does infect our country, which is the one between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians. Despite the very significant achievements and advances which multiculturalism continues to bring to Australia, which I believe our country should be very proud of, our failure to make much significant progress on reconciliation with indigenous Australians will always hold us back.

It is unfortunate that in the last decade or so, multiculturalism has become a partisan term which has become partly caught up in the so-called 'culture wars'. I believe this has led to an aversion amongst the major political parties to really strongly promote multiculturalism. Rather than tackle head-on the distorted and negative Hanson-style portrayal of multiculturalism, there has just been a gentle multiculturalism-life style promotion of it from some Government agencies and by other political parties.

I believe the inherent value of multiculturalism should be promoted strongly and consistently at every opportunity. It is a continual part of Australia, but it doesn't happen by accident and is far more than just having a bunch of people living in the same country who happen to have a lot of different ethnic backgrounds. It has to be promoted and encouraged strongly and consistently. Al Grassby did that, which is why he has left such a strong and positive legacy.

No doubt it is also why the funeral was so well-attended and Grassby received a round of applause as his coffin was carried out of the church. Other federal MPs there included Jenny Macklin and local ACT MPs Bob McMullan, Kate Lundy and Annette Ellis, along with local Liberal Senator Gary Humphries and Queenslander George Brandis. Queenslander Labor Senator Joe Ludwig was there too. He is the party's shadow Minister on multiculturalism and his article on the topic (and Grassby's key role) from the Age is worth reading.

The Grassbys live in Canberra, so there were many identities from the Canberra community as well, including the Chief Minister Jon Stanhope and other local MLAs and many local diplomats. I don't know many of the faces from the Whitlam era, so I'm not sure how many of them were there, although Gough himself gave an apology due to his health.

It was a full requiem mass with about 6 priests officiating. The eulogies were quite good, and I discovered that Grassby was born in New Farm in Brisbane, had lived in the UK during the war and had worked at the Examiner newspaper in Launceston. In an indication of the limited appreciation Australians had of these matters in the 1950s, when he moved to Griffith in NSW with its large community of Italian farmers, Grassby was sent to Italy to examine agricultural issues because he was fluent in Spanish! He was also one of the first to use bi-lingual communications and pioneered radio broadcasts in non-English languages.

It is a while since I had been to a full-length mass, although the script remains well entrenched in my memory. A few bits of the service stood out for me – a well crafted eulogy by Cameron Murphy, the singing of the hymn Panus Angelicus, which my parents used at their wedding over 50 years ago, and the Bible reading done by Dianna Rahman from the Canberra Islamic community. This was a piece from Corinthians 1 which is normally used at weddings, but actually works quite well for politics too:

If I have all the eloquence of men or of angels, but speak without love I am simply a gong booming or a cymbal clashing. If I have the gift of prophecy, understanding of all the mysteries there are ….. but without love, then I am nothing at all. … Love takes no pleasure in other peoples sins but delights in the truth; it is always ready to excuse, to trust, to hope and to endure whatever comes.


PS: Given the theme of this post, I thought I would recommend a new blog I have discovered called "Beyond the Anglosphere" which seeks to explore and draw attention to areas of life that are not lived in English. I’ve found it quite interesting. Despite all the talk of multiculturalism from people like me, it is still very easy to forget that there is so much going on around us in our own country in other languages and other spheres. It’s a new blog, starting appropriately enough with a post on Al Grassby's death, and has already had a number of short but thought provoking posts.

Mike Steketee has also done a good solid piece in The Australian on the undeniable positives of multiculturalism and the domination of the angloshpere in the portrayal of Australian life.


posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Friday, April 29, 2005 Permalink
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Thursday, April 28, 2005
 
Housing - A Human Right?
I spent all day in Melbourne being part of the panel for the first half of a two day ' Housing Rights Tribunal', organised by the Victorian Council of Social Services. Eleven people – a couple from housing organisations but most of them individuals – told of their experiences today with insecure or inadequate housing. At the end of tomorrow, those who were part of the Tribunal will produce a range of recommendations aimed at helping address the problem of homelessness and unaffordable, insecure or inaccessible housing.

I have written before of my frustration at the lack of interest from the major parties in tackling some of the issues that are generating higher housing costs. If you can't get affordable and accessible housing right, then you are starting from a long way behind in addressing other social issues.

I am a strong believer in the value of hearing personal stories to get an idea of the real impact of government policies and laws and the forum was certainly immensely valuable in that respect. The stories some people told showed just how easily people can fall through the cracks and get stuck in a spiral of living on the street, short-term accommodation, hostels, 'couch surfing' and boarding houses – with a lot of expense and very little security and stability. It is also demonstrated how key it is to have a stable home, because once that goes it becomes very hard to address other issues. Putting effort into keeping people in a stable home saves an enormous amount of time, energy and money trying to fix things up down the track.

It would have been very difficult for many of those people to come up and speak about their personal experiences and difficulties in front of so many people. Among the personal stories was a man who had hurt his back at work and lost his job. This led to his marriage breaking down and him losing his home. Because he was on such a low income he found himself continually shifting from place to place trying to find a secure home. Another woman had got stuck with a State Govt loan at a ridiculously high interest rate which left her owing more 19 years later than she had at the start.

We also heard from an asylum seeker living in the community. This is one of the least noticed groups in this controversial area. Whilst it is better than being in detention, there are thousands of asylum seekers who are in the community on a Bridging Visas which do not permit them to work or earn any income or have access to Medicare – sometimes for years. Not surprisingly, this group of people have major difficulty keeping a stable housing environment. The one positive I could see from the recent visa the Govt announced for people who cannot be deported is that they have work rights while they are in the community – recognition of how unfair it is to leave people in the community with no ability to support themselves. I hope they extend this basic right to the many asylum seekers currently without it.

Towards the very end of the forum, I had the awful experience of trying not to fall asleep while sitting up at the table in front of everybody – catching the midnight flight from Perth to Melbourne and then sitting in a room all day was catching up with me. This was certainly no reflection on the interesting participants, and I managed to stay awake long enough to make the trip to the airport, where I’m posting this. I imagine I'll sleep on the plane home this time. Tomorrow, it will be back to the airport again, with an early morning flight to Canberra for the funeral of Al Grassby.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Thursday, April 28, 2005 Permalink
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Perth, prisons and perseverance
Mostly in politics, I prefer to rely on substantial evidence to verify the positions I take. However, sometimes you have to accept that some things cannot be measured and you just have to go with what you feel. One of the things I feel very strongly at the moment is that there is a momentum for positive change in the way the federal Government deals with refugee and asylum seeker issues, even though the substantive evidence might seem fairly thin and somewhat contradictory.

I believe this opportunity for change is only there because of the multitude of community groups and many thousands of people who are still working so hard at a community level to achieve a fairer go for asylum seekers and refugees. I have built a history and experience of action and involvement in refugee issues that is not matched by many other people in the Parliament. Because I do believe there is a real chance for significant positive change, and because there are still many thousands of people whose suffering can and must be addressed, I can't just toss away the knowledge I have built up and focus on other things. I can and will continue to play a role in encouraging them to keep going in the face of what can be the very disheartening reality of witnessing extreme and pointless suffering being inflicted by a Government who are still unwilling to fully acknowledge it, let alone act to end it.

So despite my intent to focus more on Queensland and the many issues there, I spent Wednesday in Perth, catching up with as many people as I could about refugee issues – from the individual case to the whole policy area.

The day started with a 7am drive out to Acacia prison, where a Vietnamese man, Tol Tran, is in jail for people smuggling for his role in helping refugees and asylum seekers (some still imprisoned on Christmas Island nearly 2 years later) to escape from Vietnam. This man was helping his family escape and received no payment for his actions. However, in an example of why mandatory sentencing is such a bad thing on principle, the judge had no discretion but to give him a 3 year jail term, despite the fact that his actions were of the Oscar Schindler variety, rather than the modern day exploitative people smuggler. I remember the relevant piece of legislation going through the Senate, and I even recall a Labor Senator expressing concern about the problem of mandatory sentencing, but they passed it anyway, and at least two people are paying the price (there is a second man in the same circumstance being kept in a different WA prison, but he is an Australian citizen).

From that jail, I went to the Perth detention centre, which thousands of people drive past every day, most probably without realising it is there. It is a tiny building in the grounds of the domestic airport. It was set up to house people for a few days whilst they are awaiting a deportation flight, but it also often houses asylum seekers for long periods (occasionally for years). I met with some people who have also been on Christmas Island, but are currently in Perth – a young couple with the wife about to have her first child, plus a 74 year old woman here for medical treatment who in effect is the ‘matriarch’ of the extended family grouping locked up on the Island. I mentioned her towards the end of this speech. She is very frail and was very sad – she looked far less healthy than when I saw her in November.

There were also two other men there, previously found to be refugees, but now threatened with deportation due to having received prison sentences for offences, despite the fact this would separate them from their children who would remain in Australia. They have both been in the detention centre for over two years after completing their prison sentences.

After the morning of prison and detention centres, I had other meetings throughout the day with community legal and migration workers who work with a range of different people and situations as well as with a man who was released after 5 years in detention but only on a Bridging Visa which does not allow him to work, while he continues to wait for an outcome to his claim.

I also met with some men whose wives and children were drowned in the sinking of the SIEV X in October 2001. They still only have temporary visas and have had their claim for ‘renewal’ of their refugee visa rejected. The trial of a man alleged to have been involved in the SIEV X vessel is starting in Brisbane next month, which is bringing back memories for them, but they were considering whether it may help them to go and witness the trial.

From there it was back to the airport for an overnight flight to Melbourne, where today I participate in an interesting project exploring the importance of housing as a basic human right. The lack of political priority given to something as fundamental as housing has always frustrated me, but there are many highly effective community groups working on the issue at ground level. The project is a Housing Rights Tribunal which aims to provide a mechanism for exploring the real world situations of people whose rights to basic, secure affordable housing is being compromised, what the effects are of that and what should be done about it. Apart from being a little tired, I’m looking forward to it and hopefully will write some more on it afterwards.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Thursday, April 28, 2005 Permalink
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Joh Bjelke II– the creative legacy
The article by Liz Willis* in the Sydney Morning Herald which I mentioned at the end of my previous post on Joh Bjelke-Petersen has prompted me to write a bit more on one specific aspect of the Bjelke-Petersen years – what Liz called “a remarkable oppositional culture manifested in music, theatre and art; media, comedy and satire.”

I''m writing this piece on a flight to Perth, having spoken earlier in the day at a forum at the University of Queensland against the federal Government's VSU plans. The bitter-sweet nostalgia I've found myself immersed in over the last couple of days was enhanced by returning to this campus where I spent the majority of my waking hours (and a few of my sleeping hours as well) from 1982 to 1988 – inadvertently ending my time there at the same time as the Joh era was ending.

The main reason I spent such a huge chunk of time on the campus wasn't because I was a conscientious student, it was because I was heavily involved in the community radio station, 4ZZZ, which at the time had its studios in the basement of the Student Union building. (By coincidence, its studios are now just down the road from my office in Fortitude Valley.) 4ZZZ was Brisbane's first FM radio station and a key part of its genesis was a view amongst some politically active and very determined people that there was a need for an alternative media to give voice to views which were not being heard in the highly conservative mainstream media.

4ZZZ's first official broadcast was on December 8th, 1975 – ironically just after the dismissal of the Whitlam government, an event which added enormously to the politically heady atmosphere. In the first couple of years of its existence, 4ZZZ's politics was not matched by its music, which was fairly mainstream – as a glance at the songs in its first Hot 100 list of listeners' favourite tunes would show. The number 1 song was the Beach Boys and there were a host of other tunes which may not have got a run on other radio stations of the day, but were none the less far from alternative. The next Hot 100 a few years later had the Sex Pistols' "Anarchy in the UK" in top spot, which showed how much things had changed on the musical front at ZZZ. The Hot 100 concept was shamelessly stolen by ABC youth radio broadcaster JJJ a few year's later with great success, although ZZZ still runs its own Hot 100 to this day, with a very heavy presence of local Brisbane bands amongst the list each year.

Indeed, the key musical role that ZZZ played (and still plays) in Brisbane was not so much in its shift in musical styles from slick US adult oriented rock to grungy UK punk rock and then to pretty much everything else that wasn't mainstream (sometimes to the extent of dropping bands from the playlist if they 'sold out' by having a hit record) – it was their insistence on playing local Brisbane bands. In the same way that the political aim was to give a voice to stronger and more forceful criticisms of the Bjelke-Petersen government that could not be heard anywhere else on Brisbane's airwaves, a key part of ZZZ's musical mission was to give airtime to Brisbane bands who had no other chance of getting their songs played on the radio in their own town. Perhaps inevitably these two roles merged. Plenty of the music was crap, as were some of the political views, but the key part was that they were able to be aired – and in a town where the regular police presence at the gigs of local bands sometimes outnumbered the crowd, it was a great comfort, indeed in some ways a protection, to know that you had a radio station that was there telling the world what was happening to you.

As part of its 25th anniversary in 2000, 4ZZZ released a 2CD compilation set called " Behind the Banana Curtain" with recordings by a range of Brisbane bands covering the period of the radio station's existence (so far). The first disc covers from the 70s through to the end of the 80s, which by coincidence encapsulated the local music of Joh's era. (The second disc starts off with a fab song and then goes downhill from there, ending up with a bunch of unknowns like Powderfinger and Regurgitator.)

The song "Pig City", from 1984 - mentioned in a comment on my previous post –was like an anti-anthem of the time. The recording is scratchy (it is actually one of the few songs released that was recorded in the old 4ZZZ studios), the singing is atonal and the musicianship less then perfect – and the whole thing is fantastic (lyrics can be found here along with more reflections about the Brisbane of the time). I saw the singer and songwriter of that tune at the VSU rally.

Some other songs on that first disc from Behind the Banana Curtain are just as descriptive of the situation at the time. "Task Force" tells of the continual battle between the police and the bands of the time. "SEQEB Scabs" is riven with fury at Joh's treatment of the striking electricity workers of the time – and some of the current comment in Brisbane shows that fury has not abated. "Brisbane Blacks" tells a story of the aboriginal people in my city. "Cyclone Hits Expo" was about Expo 88, held in Brisbane that year amid fears of the impact on the surrounding community, including higher housing costs. (As an aside,in hindsight Expo was good for Brisbane, particularly in opening up the Brisbane River to the general public. It did help push up rents and housing prices in the local community but it's almost certain that would have happened anyway.) Of course, plenty of other bands recorded songs that reflected the political/social reality of the time, including some that I was in. (Inexplicably none of my bands were featured on the ZZZ CD, an outrage which I am still seeking an explanation for – I think people are just intimidated by genius.)

A book was released last year called Pig City, which seeks to tell of the Brisbane music scene in the Bjelke-Petersen years. I mentioned in a post I did a week before the election about attending the launch of this book. I have to be honest and say the book has a bit of the feel of a writer besotted with the perceived romance of the era and who really wished they'd been there. I think Liz Willis' article shows the difference between something written by someone who lived it, as opposed to someone who was told about it. However, the book is worth reading for some descriptions of the period. A few interviews with the author about the book and his view of the times based on what others told him can be found here, here and here.

The two Brisbane bands from the Joh era that were looked to and revered in the local scene more than any others were The Saints and the Go-Betweens, yet ironically both bands escaped/left Brisbane very early in their careers. The Saints formed in1973, recorded a fabulously thrashy single called "(I'm) Stranded", and left for England not long after. Stranded might be the icon song, not least for the film clip and album cover, shot in then-derelict mansions on Petrie Terrace (and just to show that not everything from the era ended up being demolished, these are now well restored heritage buildings), but the song that most obviously reflects the Brisbane experience of the time was from their final album (of what I think of as the 'real' Saints anyway) - "Brisbane (Security City)". The lyrics can be found here, but one excerpt probably says it all:
"Thirteen hot nights in a row/The cops drive past and they move slow/I start to feel I'm being used/In some scheme that's been hidden from public view"

The Go-Betweens left for Melbourne around the time of their first album and then went on to the UK, where during the rest of the 80s they regularly released albums to huge critical acclaim and almost zero sales – perfectly suited to the ZZZ mindset. Their songs (and even an album title or two) often evoked the atmosphere of Brisbane, without being overtly political.

The Saints basically became whatever band singer Chris Bailey had backing him at the time (which doesn't mean they didn't do some good stuff now and then), while the Go-Betweens eventually broke up in 1990 - although to be complete, some years later the two singers started recording and playing again under the Go-Betweens name. However, I can never think of them as the same band, despite having a couple of their subsequent albums – and even though I think both might be back living in Brisbane again, which wasn't the case when the 'real' Go-Betweens were together. In another case of paths converging years later in unexpected ways, the band’s drummer, Lindy Morrison, has stood as a candidate for the Democrats in recent elections.

I find the past is echoing all around me at the moment, even through the inflight movie which is "The Life & Death of Peter Sellers", a depressing movie but featuring a wonderful performance by Geoffrey Rush, another person from the Brisbane of Joh's era who had to leave town in order to grow.

As mentioned in the previous post, UK band The Stranglers were sufficiently 'impressed' by Brisbane to write a song about Joh, as did the Adelaide group Redgum, which started out life as a political/protest band. (In more ironies, the lead singer of that band, John Schumann, became chief media officer for Meg Lees when she was Leader of the Democrats. He seems to have his own legacy issues, as he appears to be driven to jump into print whenever he sees an opportunity to criticise me or Natasha Stott Despoja for voting against the GST which he helped shepherd into existence at a rapid pace when the chance unexpectedly presented itself.)

Music and politics is not always inseparable, and some of the dreariest songs I know are ones that try to be overtly political protest music. It is a measure of the extent of Joh Bjelke-Petersen's impact on his state that, while most of the songs might not be seen as overtly political, you could not be involved in the music or theatre of the time without being connected with the politics.

I was reminded the other day about a function to celebrate 4ZZZ's 10th birthday in 1985 at the now-demolished Rialto Theatre in West End (on this occasion, it was one of Brisbane's fabulous thunderstorms that in effect finished off that building, rather than the developers), where someone ironically thanked Joh "for bringing us all together". I'm not sure I'd go so far as thanking him, but while it was not by design, it is true to say that without him much of this wouldn't have been possible.

*I should mention that I know Liz Willis from the days at 4ZZZ in the mid 1980s when she was working as a journalist there. Our paths re-converged when she came to work for Senator Aden Ridgeway partway through his term (and I guess will disconnect again when her job finishes along with Aden’s term in the Senate on 30th June). She also took this photograph, which is the oldest of all the various photographs on my main website.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Thursday, April 28, 2005 Permalink
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Saturday, April 23, 2005
 
Joh Bjelke-Petersen

For Queenslanders, Joh Bjelke-Petersen is about as polarising a political figure as you can get. Blogs have filled up with comment following his death (a long list of links to internet posts and discussions is at the end of this piece).

Joh Bjelke-Petersen was Premier of Queensland throughout my childhood and stayed Premier until finally forced out by his own party in late 1987 when I was 23. For a while, he felt a bit like the Queen or the Pope – it seemed like he’d always been there and like he always would be. Having lived my whole life in Brisbane, Bjelke-Petersen is linked to so many things from my younger days - personal, political, social and musical – that it really is quite difficult to know which things to focus on. I am sure the pros and cons of his time in office will be hotly debated over the next few days and for many years to come.

It is appropriate to express commiserations to his wife Flo and her family. Every comment I ever heard from Democrat Senators who served with Lady Flo in the Senate was that she was a decent person, as well as diligent in her role. However, consideration for a widow’s grieving should not allow a whitewashing in assessing the legacy of a man who led Queensland for nearly 20 years and whose profound impact on our political culture, community and environment can still be felt today in many different ways. Ironically, even though he had an extraordinarily garbled speaking style, he was basically a straight-talker who said what he thought, so I think it is appropriate that I do the same.

I don’t believe there can be any doubt what his biggest legacy is – he was the long-term leader of a Government which engaged in rampant nepotism and used a corrupt and sometimes brutal police force for their own political ends.

The modern media mantra is that a Government’s economic credentials is what matters first and foremost, but in the end, freedom and democracy are far more fundamental, and his crimes of omission and commission in that area will always be far more important to history than how many cranes there were on Brisbane’s skyline.

I’m sure many will portray him as a wily operator focused on economic development who none the less was so innocent that he was unaware of the corruption flourishing all around him. I simply do not believe this. He may not have directly enriched himself financially through corrupt behaviour. However, like many parties and people who are in power too long, power became an end in itself, and the dodgy donations, rampant abuse of police powers for political purposes and the improper behaviour of some of his Ministers and party officials were ignored, tolerated or sometimes encouraged – as both spoils of office and part of the way of maintaining it.

This piece by Quentin Dempster sets out some examples of a culture of major corruption which are too easily forgotten over time. I should also mention, given the criticisms I make here of the police, that Dempster’s piece also tells of honest police at the time who suffered as a consequence.

Nor was this just an aberration towards the end of a long career. It was as early as 1976 that Terry Lewis (later to be sentenced to 14 years jail for corruption) was appointed as Commissioner of Police after the forced resignation of the previous Commissioner Ray Whitrod. Former Courier-Mail columnist Peter Charlton said “for this alone Bjelke-Petersen deserves to be condemned forever.” There is no way that any Premier could have been so blind as to honestly believe that this process was above board. Evidence in Lewis’s trial showed that he was corruptly receiving payments well before being appointed Commissioner. The willingness on the part of the Premier (and his cabinet) to turn a blind eye to a corrupt Police Commissioner was rewarded with a Police Commissioner who would let his Force be used for the political purposes of the Government.

The worst aspect of the police corruption was not the kickbacks for illegal brothels and casinos that eventually dominated the media coverage – it was the gross abuse of police powers to intimidate, harass and bash political opponents. The fierce suppression of political dissent generated a real and legitimate fear amongst a whole sub-section of the community, with the most powerless such as aboriginals bearing the biggest brunt. When police can get away with physically assaulting people at will with almost total immunity, you are literally in a police state – maybe not as serious in scale as the South African regime of the time, but a police state none the less.

The police brutality involved in breaking up demonstrations against the touring South African rugby team helped simultaneously create a perceived problem of ‘uncontrolled’ demonstrations and portray a ‘solution’ of the sort of ‘tough on law and order’ image still beloved of many State Premiers today. The crackdown on street marches was also very controversial. However, in my experience it was the intimidation and harassment in so many individual people’s daily lives that was the worst aspect of the police force of the time. Political activists were continually having their houses raided and searched (with the constant fear that drugs might be planted), cars followed and were often stopped and questioned or searched for no particular reason. Racist behaviour by law enforcement agencies has a long history in Australia, but the mistreatment of aboriginal people in this era was extreme – all creating a suspicion and resentment which will burn deep amongst many aboriginal people for years to come, making it much harder for modern day police to do their job effectively.

I recall the massive police presence that congregated outside the Dead Kennedys concert I went to at the now-demolished Festival Hall in 1983. The crowd of a few thousand came out of the Hall into what appeared to be just as many police, who seemed to just immediately set upon people. Amazingly, even the band’s drummer, DH Peligro, was arrested – no surprises that he just happened to be black. The same happened when The Clash played at the now-demolished Cloudland, where the police presence at the end of the show must have been in the hundreds. The police violence to fans and the band at The Stranglers show at the now-demolished Queens Hotel was so striking, even to a British punk band, that they penned a song.

The midnight demolition of the Cloudland ballroom is another potent symbol of Bjelke-Petersen's legacy – history, heritage and memories crushed overnight for a dodgy development that did not even have approval (and never got it). Just think what an icon Cloudland would be today if it had managed to survive! Every night that I look out from the back of my house, I look to the blue cross atop the Catholic church of Brisbane’s Polish community on Bowen Hills and without fail I think of Cloudland, which was just near the church. In the day time I can see the townhouse development that was eventually built on the hilltop site. Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s support for rampant “development” led to the destruction of an enormous amount of Brisbane’s built heritage, but the loss of Cloudland is the one that cut deepest into many hearts.

The other form of corruption that was far more insidious than the brothels and casinos was the culture of brown paper bag donations from developers. The white shoe brigade may not have personally enriched Joh, but they undoubtedly corruptly enriched some of his colleagues and his political party. It also fostered an uncritical pro-development attitude which still exists amongst many local Councils and many parts of the State Government. This continues to wreak havoc on much of Queensland’s environment, particularly our coastal areas. See my recent post on Mission Beach for just one example. Rezoning decisions from the Bjelke-Petersen era for the benefit of developers continues to wreak damage. The situation in the Daintree provides a good example. Blocks in the middle of rainforest were rezoned residential in the 1980s and sold off by a developer. Ever since this forest has been at risk of being cleared.

The insistence on bulldozing a road through the Daintree rainforest was another example of total disregard for environmental damage – although in a good example of a big negative creating a bigger positive, the controversy was instrumental in the establishment of the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area, and also played a part in one of the main local protesters, Mike Berwick, becoming Mayor of the local Douglas Shire (and one of the best local government Councillors I’ve ever met too).

Apart from the corruption, nepotism, police brutality and environmental destruction, Queensland also suffered from decades of under funding in child protection, welfare and education; something that the state has still not fully recovered from. The Bjelke-Petersen Governments proved that the political boast of being a ‘low tax state’ can have a big down side which the community has to pay in under funded social services.

One of the assumptions many people have of his long time in power was that it was only able to occur because the gerrymander kept Labor out of office. However, my understanding is that over all that time Labor never got 50 per cent of the two party preferred vote and never really came close after 1972 - something that this table of election results seems to verify. The big losers from the gerrymander (more accurately called a malapportionment) were the Liberals, which in conjunction with the absence of three cornered contests inherent in the Coalition agreement, kept them as the junior Coalition partner until in the end Joh over-ran them in popular support too and governed in his own right (initially with help of a couple of Liberal defectors - both of whom later ended up being jailed). It is incredible to think of it now, but at the absolute height of his success the ‘country-based’ National Party was able to govern Queensland in its own right, and held seats throughout suburban Brisbane such as Merthyr (based around New Farm and Hamilton), Mansfield and Aspley.

Even more extraordinary is the “Joh for PM” campaign that was seriously pursued by so many people in 1987. Mike Steketee has written a good, hyperbole-free account of this bizarre episode. I can recall the green sticker which came in the newspaper which had Joh for PM on it in white writing – in fact it’s a fair bet that it’s still stuck on the old fridge under my parent’s old house.

However, when his end as Premier came, it came fairly rapidly. It is one more example of how quickly politics can turn, even for the most successful veteran. He started the year reigning supreme in Queensland and seriously pursuing an audacious tilt at the Prime Ministership, yet finished the year forced out of office by his own party.

I remember the day he resigned as Premier. I was visiting Sydney, and had gone to see a band playing in Kings Cross when I bumped into someone I knew through Radio 4ZZZ in Brisbane. We marvelled at the fact that the end had finally come. I didn’t drink in those days, or I would have definitely had a champagne to celebrate, but I also had a feeling that day that it was the end of an era and the passing of a clearly definable period in my life.

There are so many memories that had lain dormant in my head which started to bubble forth as soon as I heard the news tonight, and reading a few other blogs is starting to trigger more. I’m sure that for many Queenslanders, love him or hate him (there don’t seem to be many in between), that feeling of the passing of an era is there once again.



OTHER BLOGS ON THIS TOPIC (warning – if you felt my comments were too blunt, some of the following contain views which are more than callous):
- This short post from Brett Debritz seems to have been among the first to note his passing (and also that of the former Whitlam Government Immigration Minister Al Grassby);
- A Scratch Area is a fan,
- The Wampy Portal also acknowledges the passing of both Al and Joe (sic) and that they both made a big impact;
- Buggery.org is not a fan;
- Soul Sphincter mentions the Stranglers ‘tribute’ and also the treatment a Greenpeace boat got when it came to Brisbane in 1987 – an incident I had forgotten about;
- Aussie News & Views is a big fan;
- Bitchin' Monaro is scathing;
- Drjon had a short post a few days ago in anticipation, but the discussion that follows is quite interesting;
- Wilson's blogmanac has a less than positive opinion;
- A 36 year old Queenslander who also grew up knowing only Joh as Premier tells what they learned.
- Rodney Croome, the effective and intelligent gay rights activist, links the deaths of Bjelke-Petersen and Al Grassby and recalls the times. He also had a post earlier this week which tells the story of Joh’s favourite aunt, Marie, a lesbian and conservationist from Tasmania – an aspect of his life I had been unaware of
- A blogger from New Zealand, the land of Joh’s birth, tells of their time living in Queensland.
- Beyond the angloshpere says Al Grassby was more important than Joh, but lists three other “possibly more important” people from that era;
- Funhouse recalls the attempts to stop condom vending machines going up at the University of Queensland (how could I have forgotten that one), attacks on sex education in schools and assorted other events;
- Virulent Memes also makes some Grassby comparisons;
- Tim Blair sought memories of this “wonderful old fellow” from his readers a few days ago and draws out more comments in noting his death;
- The Currency Lad does a post which, while being unashamedly infused with his ideological perspective, is still reasonably thoughtful. He manages not to mention the ‘c’ word though (corruption).
- The View from Benambra (which is in East Gippsland in Victoria incidentally) says that Joh’s biggest legacy is that you can get away with almost anything as long as you can portray the economy as going OK. (This is the exact opposite of what I said his biggest legacy is, but some of the electronic media coverage in Brisbane at the moment suggests this blog is right and I am very wrong)- Shelley Horton shares a childhood memory from Kingaroy;
- The Road to Surfdom just puts up a poll on whether Joh deserves a state funeral. (I voted yes –a decision to have a state funeral is a silly thing to focus your criticisms around);
- Andrew Buckwell is another Brisbane-based blogger who is less than enamoured;
- some brief Views from Towradgi (which is a beachside locale in northern Wollongong, by the way);
- Anne from Katoomba indicates you probably had to live through it to really understand why people get so worked up about Joh;
- The Pigs Are Flying provides some detailed memories;
- The Age of Unreason has a brief post which basically says ‘love him or loathe him, he was great’;
- and finally, mc gregg writes an insightful piece which identifies the ‘Pre- or Post- Joh’ difference amongst those who experienced living in Brisbane

There’s a few more which are too offensive to link to – you can find them for yourself if you’re that keen. I've got other things I best got on with.

In addition to all the blog posts listed above, there is great article by Liz Willis in today’s Sydney Morning Herald which details “a magnificent byproduct” of the Bjelke-Petersen reign: “a remarkable oppositional culture manifested in music, theatre and art; media, comedy and satire.”


posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Saturday, April 23, 2005 Permalink
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Friday, April 22, 2005
 
Anzac Day - remembering the troops
I've just read an email which reminded me that Monday is a holiday and we’re heading into a long weekend.

The 90th anniversary of the Anzac landing is a time to remember and recognise the more than one hundred thousand Australian troops who have died in overseas wars, the ones who came back in bad shape, and their families whose suffering sometimes was just as great. I wrote a piece on Remembrance Day outlining my thoughts on this, so I won't repeat them here.

Hundreds of Aussie troops are currently on peace enforcement missions around the world including the Solomon Islands, in the Middle East, North East Asia, and delivering aid in Indonesia. There are also several hundred in Iraq, 100 on the UN Peace Keeping Force in Timor Leste and 15 soon to go to the Sudan. You might not support the political decision to make some of these deployments, but troops go where they are told to go and should be supported. If you want to send a message to the troops, click here.

I've got a few events tomorrow, Sunday is free (!) and Anzac day is on Monday. I'm speaking at a forum on VSU at Qld Uni on Tuesday, followed by a trip to Perth to meet with a range of refugee groups on Wednesday and what looks like an interesting forum on housing rights in Melbourne on Thursday.

Enjoy your long weekend and remember those that can't.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Friday, April 22, 2005 Permalink
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Cassowary facing Extinction at Mission Beach
A week ago I indicated I would write more detail about my visit to Mission Beach and the main issue I explored during the few hours I was there.

Like many areas on the Queensland coast, Mission Beach has beautiful beachfront, lots of sunshine, green mountains just a little way inland and tropical islands visible offshore. Also like many parts of Queensland's coast, housing and resort developments are posing a significant threat to the environment (not to mention driving up housing costs for the existing residents). So what makes Mission Beach special?

The Mission Beach area is surrounded by rainforest that is part of the Wet Tropics world heritage area and adjoins the world heritage area of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. It is not alone in Northern Queensland in having these merits either.

However, the forest and vegetation is one of the few remaining viable areas of cassowary habitat. Cassowaries can sometimes be seen wandering around the inhabited areas. The cassowary is an iconic species (with a cool colour scheme). It is also seriously endangered. To grab some quotes from this site:
The overall density is one adult per approximately two km2 of forested land at Mission Beach. The outlook for the Cassowary is pretty grim: approximately only 40 adults, 28 sub adults, and 31 chicks are roaming the forests of Mission Beach. There are only 17 breeding females. If the Cassowary is already endangered, how much time is left before extinction?
It is estimated that approximately only 900 cassowaries remain in the Wet Tropics - fewer than the panda in China and the tiger in India.

This is about more than just protecting one area because its bit of wildlife is more charismatic than everywhere else's. The area is also very important for its incredible biodiversity (which the cassowary plays a crucial role in maintaining). It has the highest diversity (per unit area) of different habitat types in the Wet Tropics, which itself has the highest degree of biodiversity in the country.

The local conservation group - the Community for Cassowary and Coastal Conservation (C4 for short) - maintains a cassowary obituary which details 17 deaths since the beginning of 2003, mostly from being hit by car and trucks, but also dog attacks. More mortalities have probably occurred that have not been recorded. I just received an email saying that in the week since my visit, two more cassowaries have been hit by cars. Both are still alive at the moment, but whether they will recover is not yet certain. The total cassowary population for the area is calculated to currently be just 42. The population is teetering towards extinction, and without strong action the birds will be gone within a decade and the biodiversity of the world heritage area irreparably and severely damaged.

C4 has done a wonderful job in establishing an environment centre in Mission Beach and keeping it staffed with enough volunteers to have it open each day for visitors. It provides a lot of information on the local ecosystems and the threats being posed to them. Brenda Harvey, a local of 45 years standing, showed me around the locality, along with Niall MacMillan, a relatively recent arrival.

There are a large number of housing estates dotted around Mission Beach, most of them with mainly vacant blocks. There are literally hundreds of For Sale signs. Despite this, many more applications have been made to the two local Councils for further developments. This means further clearing of cassowary habitat, and equally damagingly, more traffic and dogs and cats which are responsible for a steady trickle of cassowary fatalities.

Niall took us to his place. His wife Amanda provided us with a beautiful vegan lunch to go with gorgeous views of the coast, the ocean and the offshore islands. As Amanda acknowledged, it would be understandable for some people to feel that these concerns are just from people who've moved into the place in the last few years and now want to keep everybody else out.

Certainly, there was no suggestion at any stage of our conversations that there should be no further housing in the area. However, it is very hard not to agree with their frustration and extreme concern at so many developments continually occurring when there is already such a huge number of unsold and empty blocks of land and no apparent overarching assessment of the overall impact of continually slicing away at remaining forests, further filling in wetlands and encouraging greater amounts of traffic on the 80 km/hour roads leading into the area.

Federal environment laws that passed in 1999 (after major improvements were made by the Democrats) provide much better opportunity to protect world heritage values than was previously the case, but the difficulty here is that each individual development proposal is being assessed separately. While this does mean some reductions in the vegetation which is cleared, which is obviously a good thing, the cumulative impact is not being considered (two examples are here and here). State environmental and planning laws also have this problem. The Environmental Defenders Office of North Qld is appealing against the lack of conditions imposed by the local Council on one of the approved developments, but even if this is successful it is likely only to mean leaving a bit more vegetation as a wildlife corridor – again better than nothing but not good enough.

In addition, whilst it won't have much impact on the cassowary (other than through encouraging greater population), there is also a sizeable marina proposed for Boat Bay off Clump Point, at the north end of Mission Beach. I find it hard to believe the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority would permit something like this to be built, but laws are made to be bent, circumvented and ignored, as well as broken, so one can never be sure.

Many people have noted the custom that has developed of having "Big" things dotted on highways around Australia. The Big Pineapple near Nambour on the Sunshine Coast has been around for decades, as has the Big Banana at Coffs harbour in NSW. Northern Queensland certainly has a few examples, including a Big Crab in Cardwell, a Big Gumboot in Tully and a Big Captain Cook in Cairns (as an aside, I was told just yesterday that Captain Cook was actually only a Lieutenant when he "discovered" Australia in 1770 and didn’t become a Captain until later – if this is true I demand a retraction and full apology from Mrs McBride my Grade 1 teacher for injecting this erroneous "fact" in my head in 1970)

Mission Beach has a Big Cassowary standing in all its concrete majesty out the front of the local shopping village. It would be a sad irony indeed if this ends up being the only cassowary left in the area in a few years time.


(click here to help save some rainforest http://www.therainforestsite.com/)

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Friday, April 22, 2005 Permalink
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A Good Consequence of Baxter Visit

There's been positives from the Committee visit to Baxter I wrote about earlier this week. Thursday's Age carried a piece by Michael Gordon which quoted the Committee's Chair, Liberal MP Don Randall, saying "the consensus of committee members who inspected the Baxter detention centre on Tuesday was that they wanted to visit Nauru." (Michael Gordon is the journalist who has just returned from Nauru and written some important pieces, mentioned here)

Whilst the Committee hasn't had a formal meeting about this yet, there was a quick discussion in the plane on the way back from Baxter about the value of going to Nauru which I assume is the basis of Don Randall's comments. I've been to Nauru twice, but I would be keen to go again to talk once more with the detainees left there. I believe there is great benefit in politicians seeing and meeting people face to face, particularly in instances like this where the circumstances people are enduring are such a direct result of decisions made by the Government and the Parliament.

Don Randall was also quoted as saying "what really stunned me was how many young men there are (in detention). I just think: what a waste of life." I'd have to admit I didn't know terribly much about Don Randall, as he is in the other House of Parliament to me and from a state on the other side of the country to me. I had a vague assumption he was on the right of the Liberal Party and mainly knew of him for one comment he made some years ago which caused a lot of media controversy (This often happens with politicians, especially backbenchers, who can work away for years on heaps of local issues, but in the media's mind are 'defined' by one incident). Having now looked at his website, I see that he has made some hardline comments about mandatory detention in the past. This makes his comments this week all the more welcome.

I must admit I sometimes find it a little galling when I see media items suggesting that the possibility of the Government 'softening' their position on refugee issues is totally due to pressure from Government MPs, given how many years I’ve been bashing away at this issue. However, it is a political fact that comments such as Don Randall's latest are more important at the moment than the same thing coming from me (although I’ll still keep saying them too). I should also say that most Government MPs would only be one tenth as interested in the issue or likely to make comment on it were it not for the continuing, genuine and growing actions by so many people at community level, getting in their ears and telling them that something must be done. This is not meant to be critical; it is a simple fact of political (and everyday) life that you will be more likely to act on something if you think other people care about it. So if you do care about the people who have been locked in detention for so long, please keep showing it and telling others about the urgent need for action – it is making an impact.

Don Randall also made a comment to the ABC that the Government should do something to address the problem of long-term detention once they get control of the Senate in July. On one level I find this comment absurd, as clearly if the Government was going to do anything positive in this area it could undoubtedly get it through the Senate now, as the Democrats would support it (as would almost everyone else I expect). However, the comment also reflects a probably genuine lack of awareness by Liberal members of the House of Reps, who have no doubt had Ministers (falsely) telling them for years that the Senate stops them doing anything.

Speaking of which, I spent Thursday in Melbourne having meetings to plan for the new Senate environment. Things are getter closer to being sorted out, and after the meetings today I’ve got a better idea of what the best approach to take should be. Whilst on principle I think it is unhealthy for any party to have sole control of the Senate, there will none the less be some positives to the new set-up, which I may write more about another time.

On the way home, my loathing of flying was reinforced by a two hour delay in departing, including boarding and going through the pre-flight announcements twice before being asked twice to ‘de-plane’, being directed to a different Gate, recalled and then getting on to a different plane all together. Having said all that, I actually really appreciate knowing that the pilot won’t take off if there’s a light flickering on the control panel that shouldn’t be. Whilst I hate sitting on planes and hate being late, especially when I’m heading home, I’d hate it twenty times more if I thought they were skimping on airline safety. To compensate a bit for the delay, the crew announced there’d be free alcohol for everyone on board, which seemed to make people happy. For me, the most annoying thing was hearing them use the word “de-plane”, and even that annoyance is probably just a way of keeping the spirit of my father alive, so maybe that’s OK too.


posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Friday, April 22, 2005 Permalink
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Thursday, April 21, 2005
 
Death to the Death Penalty

The story of the 9 Australians arrested for heroin smuggling in Indonesia has brought the reality of the death penalty to the fore. The accused should be assumed to be innocent until their trials are finished, but it has to be said the evidence presented in the media to date doesn't look good.

I am very strongly opposed to the death penalty in any circumstances and I get very frustrated at the unwillingness of our political leaders to do more to highlight its inherent barbarity. It is true that the drug trade also has its barbaric aspects and consequences, and this should also be affirmed, but one wrong should not be used to obscure another.

Australia's police officers and other officials should participate wherever possible in assisting law enforcement activities in other countries, but we should seek to make our involvement conditional on it not leading to people being subjected to the death penalty. I realise there are practical problems with fully implementing this, but that is no reason not to try to implement the general principle.

I guess I should be thankful that we do not (at the moment) have politicians in Australia willing to score political points at the cost of other people's lives by promoting the death penalty. However, even though the last state-sponsored execution in Australia was back in 1967, many of our political leaders, while not supporting a return of capital punishment, clearly have few qualms about it being carried out elsewhere and are not interested at all in trying to promote the wider abolition of the death penalty.

It is easy to turn a blind eye to the possible consequence of a death sentence when objectionable crimes like heroin smuggling, murder and terrorism are involved. But it is precisely with these unpopular cases that political leaders should take a firm position. Principles are easy to defend when they are popular, but if you don't defend them when it is unpopular, they will inevitably be watered down.

I copped a lot of flack when I spoke out against the death sentence given to the Bali bombers in 2003, but it is precisely at these sorts of times that the principle of abolishing capital punishment needs to be reaffirmed. The gutless squibbing of the issue by John Howard and Simon Crean at that time is mirrored by the responses of Mr Howard and Mr Beazley to the potential of the death sentence being applied in the current situation as a direct result of the actions of Australian police. Indeed, as a party to the second optional protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Australian government has an obligation to work with other countries towards the international abolition of the death penalty, something they refused to acknowledge when challenged on this in the Senate. Of course it is true to say that the sovereignty of other countries should be respected and their laws should be determined by their own Governments, but that should not be used as an excuse to be blind to the consequences or to avoid making valid criticisms.

This reluctance to strongly support the abolition of capital punishment and speak out against its inherent barbarity also puts Australian lives at risk. Schapelle Corby has endured the spectre of execution in Bali for many weeks, other Australians currently face the death sentence in other south-east Asian countries, and it is clearly on the cards for some of the 9 people recently arrested in Indonesia.

Our Government cannot credibly ask for Australian citizens to be spared the death penalty in overseas countries if we indicate we have no concerns with such a sentence being carried out on others. Our Government obviously has a higher responsibility to protect the interests of Australians but that should not be mistaken for taking a view that other lives are of lesser value.

According to Amnesty International, the country that deliberately kills the most people through its 'justice' system is China, the very country John Howard has just visited in his efforts to explore further trade opportunities. I'm all for building trade opportunities, but not at the cost of turning a blind eye to major human rights abuses. This is particularly so with China. Apart from its record with executions, its oppression in Tibet, its persecution of Falun Gong, there is a fair amount of evidence that the 'competitive' economic position of this Communist regime is at least partly built on the grotesque exploitation of millions of its own people.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Thursday, April 21, 2005 Permalink
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Tuesday, April 19, 2005
 
Migration Committee visit to Baxter

The Migration Committee inspected the Baxter detention centre near Port Augusta today, along with the Residential Housing Project which is in the town. We flew out of Adelaide around 7.45 am in a small charter plane to Port Augusta, arriving about an hour later. This Committee has been in existence for a long time, but because its membership tends to change significantly after each election, its character changes a lot too. Joint Committees have a different style and feel to many Senate Committees, due in part to Government members having an effective majority on all of them. The new Chair of the Committee is Don Randall, a Liberal MP from Perth. The full membership is listed here.

6 of the 10 Committee members participated in the flight and visit – by coincidence 4 of them were from WA. Apart from the Chair and myself, the others present were Andrew Southcott (Boothby, SA), Michael Keenan (Stirling, WA) and Alan Eggleston (Senator for WA) from the Libs and Labor's Carmen Lawrence (Fremantle WA), well known as a former Premier of WA and also National President of the ALP. This was at least my fourth visit to Baxter, but I think it was the first for most of the rest of the Committee members.

As of the day of our visit, Baxter has 239 detainees, including 4 children. 52 of these are from Iran, 29 from Afghanistan, 17 from Sri Lanka and 12 from Iraq. There are also 29 detainees in the Housing Project, 18 of them children. These days there are a lot of overstayers, compliance and criminal deportees at Baxter, and only 104 of the detainees in the two facilities are asylum seeker cases. Compliance cases (people who have overstayed their visa or had it cancelled for various reasons) are a very different group of people, although surprisingly some also end up being detained for very long periods of time, so some of the same issues are there regarding the human impact and the lack of due process involved in determining how long people lose their freedom for.

The Committee was able to inspect the compounds where people reside, along with the educational, medical and recreational facilities and the visitors centre. While we were looking around the education area, we saw Ardeshir Gholipour. I wrote here about meeting with him during a previous visit. I was surprised to see him as I had heard he had been granted a visa, but apparently he is still waiting for the final health and security clearances (I can never figure out why these haven’t all been done, given how long people have been sitting in detention before getting their visa). More detail on the background of his story is on the SafeCom website.

We also had a look at the Management Unit, which are the isolation cells. These is where Cornelia Rau was kept for periods during her time in Baxter. They are very stark, tiny and featureless rooms, with a camera monitoring all the time. The camera doesn't fully cover the shower and toilet, but there is a mirror in the corner of the ceiling placed so that these areas can be fully seen through a window in the cell door. There is a small grassed area and some tables in a TV room for people to go to in the periods when they are allowed out of the cell. There was no one in the cells when we were there and we were told that they only had one person in there for one night two weeks ago and limited use prior to that. It seems that it is being used far less often in recent times.

From the figures given to us today 1 person (Peter Qasim) in Baxter has been in immigration detention in Australia since 1998, 7 since 1999, 43 since 2000, 46 since 2001, 8 since 2002, 17 since 2003 and the rest more recently.

Whilst it is always useful to see the facilities and meet with DIMIA officials and the guards, I found the most valuable part was being able to meet with a group of the detainees. The Committee had a 90 minute session with about 20 of the detainees – all of them long-term detainees from very diverse backgrounds. There were an Hazara Afghani, other Afghani, Arab Iranian, Kurdish Iranian, Vietnamese, Sihalese and Tamil Sri Lankans, Pakistani, Sudanese and a guy from the Congo.

Peter Qasim, the man who has been detained the longest, was there but didn't speak. The man was deported all the way to Africa before eventually having to be brought back because no country would take him was also there. There was another man whose wife and children had received a visa some time ago and who are now living in Adelaide, while he continues to be refused a visa. Many said they felt they had been locked up so long for political purposes, so the Government could use them to send a message to others.

The Committee had a quick look over the Residential Housing Project in Port Augusta where women and their children are able to stay, although husbands must stay in Baxter. There is no doubt the facilities are more pleasant, but the lack of freedom and certainty about the future still places a heavy burden. The plane took off again just after 3pm to return to Adelaide.

I can't speak for others on the Committee, but I believe it is fair to say that there is a growing recognition across the political spectrum that long-term detention is a significant problem. Continual, unrelenting pressure from the community to alleviate this situation is very important. It is undoubtedly having an impact, even if progress seems slow and erratic. Making politicians personally aware of your concerns on this matter does make a difference, as does exposing them to the human faces and stories behind the issue.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Tuesday, April 19, 2005 Permalink
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More on Electoral Laws and Blogs
A few weeks ago concern was expressed on many blogs about the possibility of the federal Government changing the law to regulate websites, including blogs, containing electoral comment. I did a posting on it here, and also made comment in debates about the matter on some other sites.

A story in the Blog Herald mentions developments in this area in Canada which directly affect bloggers:
"people in the Canadian Province of British Columbia who blog on an upcoming referendum are being required to register with Elections BC, a Government body which runs elections in the province. Terminal City reports any party supporting one side or the other have to register under referendum regulations and that potentially after April 19, anyone posting their views on a blog on the outcome of the provincial election being held at the same time may have to register with Elections BC under the Election Act as well."

Whilst blogs weren't specifically mentioned by the Australian Government when they flagged a new requirement to have authorisations on political websites, they would very likely be affected. This Canadian example will be worth following to see how (and if) it works in practice.

There are valid points on various sides of this debate but I urge anyone who is interested to send their views to the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Electoral Matters, which is conducting its regular inquiry into the conduct of elections.

The Committee's first public hearings will be next week in regional towns in the fine state of Queensland. On the 27th they are in Dalby in the morning and Longreach in the afternoon, followed the next day by a visit to Ingham.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Tuesday, April 19, 2005 Permalink
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Monday, April 18, 2005
 
New CDF (number 1)
I was pleased to see that the Government will be appointing Air Marshal Angus Houston as Chief of the Defence Force. I have witnessed him in a number of Senate Committee hearings over the years, as well as in a few other contexts.

He came to wider public notice with his statements on what he told Government Ministers about the false children overboard allegations. He was obviously aware of the political ramifications, but it was clear he was taking a purely apolitical approach and simply telling it as he saw it.

Air Marshal Houston's biggest challenge – apart from having to head a Defence Force on behalf of a Government that has shown it is willing to dishonestly use our troops for their own political gains – will be to avoid repeats of past problems with big spending blowouts and major delays in military equipment. The new Joint Strike Fighter planes already look like they will be vastly more expensive than originally suggested and will almost certainly be delivered late as well.

Apart from being a straight-talker, I believe he is very conscious of the importance of supporting military personnel. Despite my opposition to the Government's decision to invade Iraq, I attended a couple of ceremonies at the time in support of our troops, including a Church service at Duntroon. I was Leader of the Democrats then and in some ways I felt being so strongly and publicly opposed to the war meant it was particularly important for me to attend these types of functions (the ones I got invited to at least). I remember Air-Marshall Houston made a point of thanking me for attending and saying how important it was for the troops to know they had broad support, regardless of the different views people had about the Government's actions.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Monday, April 18, 2005 Permalink
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New CDF (number 2) & hoping for some miracles
The election of the new Pope is also getting a lot of news coverage at the moment. I'm not sure if it's my general interest in politics and elections, or my upbringing as a Catholic, but I've been following this closely. The Pope will not just be Chief Defender of the Faith, but also head of Vatican City. The process must be one of the most unusual ones in the world for electing a Head of State, and it certainly takes the notion of a secret ballot to extremes, as anyone who leaks the voting figures risks eternal damnation. Of course Vatican City is not a normal nation, but it clearly plays a political role in world affairs well beyond the purely religious. The election process may be idiosyncratic, but the outcome will have important ramifications for the future.

To quote Nick Cave, I don’t believe in an interventionist God (and, much as I love the symbolism, I think the notion of the Holy Spirit is even sillier). However, I hope whatever is working on the brains of the Cardinals works in a good way over the next few days. For some reason I've developed a keenness for the Brazilian Cardinal Claudio Hummes to get the job. I doubt very much that this is due to my receiving some sort of divine message (ref Nick Cave quote above), but I might place a small bet anyway.

I'm in Adelaide today meeting with a range of people who are active in various ways in supporting refugees, prior to heading to Baxter detention centre tomorrow with the Joint Migration Committee. Some people are fond of making the political point that Jesus was a refugee, although it's not my favourite analogy. However, I'd settle for a few minor miracles for all the desperate souls who continue to endure such torment in Baxter, Nauru, Christmas Island, other detention centres and in the Australian community. I received a phone call late on Friday informing me that two African women I had advocated for were likely to be getting visas. This is the sort of phone call you can get never get too many of. . I hope it is a good omen for some of the people I'll be seeing in Baxter.

There is another welcome sign in another article about the Nauru refugees in today's Age, following on from the important stories from Saturday's edition which I mentioned here.. It is an indication of a new round of pressure building on the Australian government – although to keep it in perspective, the UNHCR has been pushing Australia to resolve this situation since at least 2003 (with partial success).

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Monday, April 18, 2005 Permalink
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Sunday, April 17, 2005
 
Funding for Autism and Brisbane's Road Tunnels

After spending most of last week on the road, I was keen to have a bit of time at home, especially as I am travelling again on Monday, heading to Adelaide for a range of meetings before going to the Baxter detention centre again on Tuesday.

On Friday night I went with some friends to a trivia night raising funds for an early intervention education unit for autistic children in Brisbane called AEIOU (Autism Early Intervention Outcomes Unit). As with many syndromes, disorders and disabilities that relate to the mind, autism suffers from misunderstanding and different views about how it should be best treated. Governments take advantage of this lack of certainty and societal reticence about brain-related disorders to grossly underfund the whole area. Whilst I acknowledge there are some different opinions, I believe there is clear evidence that early intervention with behavioural therapy for children is the best approach for most autistic kids.

Unfortunately the Qld government cut funding for the only early intervention centre, leaving the parents of autistic kids with very limited options, especially if they were not well off. The situation is not much better in other states (I think WA may be an exception). AEIOU seeks to fill that gap, as well as increase understanding about this misunderstood and somewhat mysterious condition. More information is on their website. We didn’t win the trivia night, but there were about 40 tables with 10 people on each, and plenty of raffles so I’m sure lots of funds were raised. If you are interested in helping raising funds for autism, details of another fundraising activity are at www.biggestbirthday.com.au.

On Saturday I could only endure brief snippets on TV of the Lions’ comprehensive and very unexpected loss to Hawthorn. I also went along to another community rally against the series of tunnels being planned for Brisbane. The rally was at Kangaroo Point on the southside of the river where the first tunnel will be put in. One exhaust stack will be virtually right next door to the Gabba. It will be about as tall as the light towers at the Gabba and will spew out unfiltered exhaust fumes from all the cars in the southern half of the nearly 5 km long tunnel. If the Lions are playing badly now, imagine how they’ll go playing half their games in concentrated car exhaust fumes!

Seriously though, there's growing evidence about the impact of air pollutants on human health, with children once again amongst those at greatest risk. We already do plenty of polluting with our cars, but spending billions of dollars to encouraging more and concentrating these exhaust fumes out of a small number of spots doesn't seem very wise to me.

Sunday consisted of a visit to my mum and a meeting of a Queensland Democrat administrative committee. I did my monthly attempt at exercise by walking home from my office, which takes about 30 minutes of fairly leisurely paced strolling.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Sunday, April 17, 2005 Permalink
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