Senator Andrew Bartlett
Wednesday, August 31, 2005
 
John Brogden

I was going to refrain from commenting on the John Brogden situation, but I was called by a couple of journalists for comment, so I may as well put up some thoughts here too.

You tend to be on a hiding to nothing making comments when these sort of situations blow up. Either you join in the feeding frenzy by endorsing the criticisms, or you risk being seen as condoning the behaviour if you suggest any mitigating factors or that things might be being taken out of proportion. There is always a risk of getting sucked into the firestorm, so no comment is often a judicious approach. However, with John Brogden reportedly engaging in an act of self-harm, there is now a lot of comment on a range of aspects of the situation (including heaps of comments throughout the blogosphere - a range of links are at the end of this post)

That said, I do have a personal interest in the broader issue of the way the media chooses to report incidents such as this one which makes it a bit hard for me to be totally objective, so I’d be interested in any comments readers might have on this incident or the wider issues it raises about the nature of media reporting and political debate.

This incident again shows that we are still very unsure about where the line is between public and private situations, and what circumstances justify off-the-record becoming on-the record. I believe the trouble isn’t so much getting the judgement wrong about whether something should be reported – I don’t think there will ever be a cut and dried answer about where the line is - it’s that people seem incapable of keeping things in perspective once something does get into the public arena.

The effect is a bit like a dam wall bursting – journalists may want to say things at various times but decide not to, then in circumstances where it is assessed as OK to report one incident, it immediately becomes a free for all. The initial issue which may have been appropriate to report and to criticise or condemn gets quickly subsumed by a full-blown assault on the person’s character. Often the chance is taken for every other piece of unsourced gossip that anyone feels like throwing in to be given an airing. Allegations and suggestions that would not be justifiable to report at other times are seen as OK to publicise for as long as the feeding frenzy lasts.

Another analogy is of a lot of people dipping their toe in the water, wondering if it’s OK to swim, but once one person decides to dive in, everyone else will.

This isn’t just taking potshots at the media or journalists. People in political parties are often just as complicit. In many cases where politicians find themselves under personal attack in the media, it is other politicians or political operatives who have pedalled the allegations to journalists, presenting things in the most damaging form possible. Even worse these people are often from the same party as the person they are trying to stich up, including (reportedly) in the Brogden case.

Even where the original source of the allegations may have come from another party or from an outside situation, there is usually at least one source in the person’s own party happy to pour more fuel on the fire once it’s started burning.

There are any number of problems that happen as a consequence of this whole dynamic. The first and most immediate is obviously when individual people suffer major damage. Sometimes this is tragically obvious, such as John Brogden’s act of self-harm, or Nick Sherry’s similar circumstance many years ago. Other times the immediate harm might not be so apparent, or it may be ‘collateral damage’ to relationships or to family members – such as the person’s children copping with the fall out at school.

A wider consequence is that many people will be further discouraged from getting involved in politics. Many people say to me there is no way they would get involved in politics because they don’t want to have their private life at risk of being splashed all over the newspapers. For most politicians that never happens in an overly intrusive way, but everyone knows that ill-judgement can combine with bad timing or bad luck and then things can get very unpleasant.

Another effect which is often not explored is what this does to the ‘natural selection’ process of politicians. Whilst you obviously don’t want a bunch of jellybacks and delicate petals in leadership positions, you also don’t want a bunch of empathy-free sociopaths with skin ten feet thick running the country either. Peter Coleman, a former MP and journalist says the ‘first rule’ is “Never relax with a journalist. Or better still: Never relax, ever, with anybody.” It is not hard to imagine what sort of human being is created who never ever relaxes. Nor is it unreasonable to suggest that they may not be the ideal type of person to have dominating our political processes.

Whilst it’s certainly true that people can recover from a ‘firestorm’ incident - unless it is a serious criminal offence, rather than a personal indiscretion - it is also true that the (allegations of the) incident will not be forgotten. It will be brought up forever more – especially whenever another sufficiently frenzied situation erupts. You just have to accept that that will always be part of the way the media will present you, even when the public would otherwise have long forgotten or cared (assuming they actually cared much about the ‘controversy’ in the first place which occasionally I am somewhat sceptical about).

None of this is to say that John Brogden’s original comment was anything other than appalling, opening him up to public criticism. Most other politicians who have found themselves subjected to severe personal criticism have had to take some blame for leaving themselves open to attack through their own actions

Which brings up the ‘politicians are human beings too’ argument. Nobody wants a bunch of cardboard cut outs or a parade of saints as their politicians, but unless we get a more balanced perspective on each other’s common human failings, that’s what we’ll get. I think most people can imagine a comment they’ve made at some time or other which would mortify them if it was taken out of the private context they said it in and blown up on the front page of a newspaper.

Of course politicians choose to be public figures and they know it opens them up to the likelihood of public criticism and general opprobrium. You do have to be responsible for your public actions and it is not unreasonable to expect a higher standard of behaviour from people who seek to be community leaders. But there is a difference between being subjected to appropriate criticism and having your personal character and private behaviour subjected to a tabloid style media flamethrower.

One of the journalists I was interviewed by today asked me what I thought could be done to try to reduce the ferociousness of the attacks that occur on political and public figures from time to time. I have to say that, realistically, I can’t see any way it will change without the way politics itself is done changing significantly. The practice of many in politics to get on top through personal attacks and denigration of their opponents (inside as well as outside their party) means there is never any shortage of scuttlebutt and gossip being fed to journalists, most of which is not reported. Additionally the media’s propensity for reporting on politics as sport or entertainment rather than policy will always tend toward emphasising controversy.

Until politicians change the way they operate, there’s not much chance of the media changing the way they report politics. Maybe one small thing politicians could do is to speak up for each other a bit more when their opponents are under attack, rather than either go for the jugular themselves or keep their head down out of the line of fire.

I suppose it’s expected that one might publicly defend colleagues from your own party (although that certainly doesn’t happen in every case), but I have sometimes tried to give some defence to politicians from other parties when I think attacks might be unfairly personal. I did speak out in defence of Liberal MP Trish Draper when she was under attack last year for allegedly misusing parliamentary entitlements to take a boyfriend with her to Paris. I didn’t defend (or condemn) her overseas travel, as I wasn’t in a position to assess the nature of her relationship. What I did say was that legitimate questions about use of entitlement should not be used as an excuse for doing a tabloid style ‘expose’ of a person’s private life. I also criticised the decision to publicise details about the private life of Labor MP Cheryl Kernot – although I understood the ‘public interest’ justifications that were given, I don’t really think they were strong enough in that instance.

I remember in my own circumstance when I was copping a lot of criticism over allegations about my behaviour, some people who had seen the alleged ‘incident’ contacted me to commiserate at how distorted and exaggerated the public portrayal of it was. However, I appreciate that it was impractical to expect them to say so publicly, given the politics of the situation.

I guess in the end, people will say it’s just the way the game is played and probably always has been. Maybe so but unless we change the way it is played – and even better if we could realise that politics is not a game at all, but something which affects the lives of millions of people directly and sometimes dramatically – then we’ll just keep having the same old debate over and again each time another ‘Brogden’ incident occurs.


PS: Not surprisingly, there have been mentions of this incident on many blogs.

Tara's Mum writes from her perspective as someone who knows Brogden through her previous work on the Manly Daily, a local paper which covers his electorate. Andrew Landeryou has some interesting reflections, while Dani is fairly forgiving, and MachineGunKeyboard is rather less so. Larvatus Prodeo has a very short posting, but a long and intermittently interesting comment thread. Many other commentaries make their varying feelings clear enough with short statements, such as WSA Caucus, The Naked Flame, Crystal Storm, The Pen, Is the media to blame?, The CEBK, Just a Few Things, Plu Runs.

I also thought this comment from the email The Daily Briefing sends to their subscribers was worth noting – mainly because the person who I presume wrote it is a journalist:

“Journalists and media outlets talking about ethics are like pedophile priests talking about the precious innocence of children - their comments are most likely to be entirely self-serving; and anyway they are so corrupted that they no longer truly know what they are talking about. (There are honourable exceptions though.)”
Finally, a piece on Global MoveOn is reasonably sympathetic towards Brogden, while managing to link his treatment to the “dogmatic beliefs of market-based economics” (while I can see where they are coming from, I think they draw a bit of a long bow).

In amongst all of the pieces in the mainstream media, I thought this piece by the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald gives a reasonably measured look at some of the issues raised by this saga.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Wednesday, August 31, 2005 Permalink
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Sunday, August 28, 2005
 
Press Gallery Journalists Face Jail
There is a court case currently happening which may see senior political journalists from the Herald Sun, Michael Harvey and Gerard McManus, jailed for contempt of court.

Not surprisingly, most journalists consider the right to refuse to reveal a source as a fundamental component of a free press and freedom of speech. I have to say that my experience has made me less convinced about this. I agree there is a valid principle involved, but I am not so sure it should be incontrovertible.

I have no doubt that writers sometimes use anonymous 'sources' to make up or embellish things that fits the story they want (or have been told) to write. Less seriously, anonymous sources can be a shield for lazy reporting that gives unwarranted prominence to things which are little more than gossip, without taking the trouble to verify its accuracy.

However, that concern is more to do with whether a story is justified or facts are properly checked, rather than whether a source should be publicly revealed. The story in question before the Court does not fit into this category, as there is no dispute that the documents that the journalists quoted from were genuine, nor that the facts revealed were of genuine public interest and concern.

The journalists' report quoted leaked documents which showed that the Howard Government planned to ignore almost all of the recommendations for improvements contained in a major review of veteran pensions and entitlements. The Government was consequently shamed into adopting many more of the recommendations, and it is fair to say that the report played a key role in making this happen.

The court case which has led to these journalists facing the threat of jail does not involve a matter of major public safety or national security. It is a legal witch hunt initiated by the federal government (and paid for by the taxpayer) to try to punish the whistleblower who is alleged to have leaked the documents.

In my view, whether or not a journalist should be required to reveal a source really boils down to how serious the matter is, and the competing public interest obligations. Where there are genuine matters of public safety or covering up of serious criminal behaviour involved, I think there is a case for journalists to be required to provide details, in the same way as I believe a priest or a doctor should be obliged to provide answers to questions from a Court in some circumstances.

None of that remotely applies in this case. The Government's pursuit of this matter is about entrenching their culture of intimidation in the public service and further increasing the effectiveness of their Thought Police approach to controlling information. That journalists (or anyone else) should be threatened with jail just because they won't cooperate with a whistleblower witch hunt is outrageous.

Some people may see it as ironic that I would defend Harvey and McManus in regard to receiving leaked information, as they were key writers of the front page story in the Herald Sun in December 2003 which contained leaked allegations about an argument I had with Liberal Senator Jeannie Ferris. That story was damaging to the Democrats and very hurtful for my family, (as the person who composed and planted the allegations knew it would be), but I can't really blame the journalists for that. Although the story contained some exaggerations, they basically just reported the allegations they were given, which were framed specifically so it would cause damage when leaked (although the Herald Sun’s huge headline – "Mauled by a Wild MP" - was totally over the top, but you can’t blame journos for that).

Indeed, because I chose to handle the issue by just giving an unqualified apology for causing offence, rather than put my side of the story or raise counter-allegations, I didn't really deal with the journalists about the story at all. It wasn't until many months later, when Harvey and McManus approached me suggesting a meeting to “clear the air”, that it registered with me who it was that had written that story. I actually wasn’t sure what they were referring to until we met and they started talking about their coverage of the incident. Whilst the consequential media coverage over the following weeks and months gave me a major, first hand lesson in why politicians usually don't provide unqualified apologies, I don't blame Harvey or McManus for writing that initial story – it was my own foolishness, which others decided to make use of, which enabled that to happen.

Nor should these two people be threatened with jail as a consequence of the Government's desire to intimidate public servants. I'm not sure if it would be possible to frame a law that could adequately balance the competing principles of protecting sources versus authority of the Courts, but basic common sense makes it obvious that this specific situation is unjust, unreasonable and unfair.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Sunday, August 28, 2005 Permalink
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Saturday, August 27, 2005
 
The Legacy of the Tampa – 4 Years On
My weekend has been focussed on refugee and immigration issues. There have been many events around the country to mark the 4th anniversary since the Australian Government refused to allow the containership MV Tampa to enter Australia to drop off over 400 refugees that had been rescued at sea. I spoke at a rally outside Sydney Town Hall on Friday evening and another in Brisbane today. Tomorrow I am speaking at a meeting at the Gold Coast.

The legacy of the Government’s extreme reaction to the Tampa incident still lives on in two major ways. Firstly, the direct suffering still continues for many of the refugees on that vessel and the other boats which followed it in 2001. I met two people this afternoon at the Brisbane rally who were on the Tampa . After being locked up for 2 years on Nauru, they were both allowed into Australia in 2003, receiving Temporary Protection Visas of five years duration. One of them has a son who was one year old when he fled the Taliban in 2000. As the law currently stands, he is not able to leave Australia or apply for his son and wife to join him here until he accesses a permanent visa, which can only happen when his temporary visa runs out in 2008. This will mean he will have spent 8 years without seeing his family, and his son will be nine years old. Quite how this helps Australia, let alone this refugee’s family, is beyond me.

The massively expensive Pacific ‘Solution’ that was spawned by the Tampa incident also still lingers, with 32 people still detained on Nauru, although news has just come through that a few more should be arriving here next week, with up to four others following them soon after – which should bring the number to 25, down from the 54 when I last visited there in May. I am hoping the camp there will be empty by the end of this year, but no one knows for sure.

The second legacy is a far wider one, but is equally counter-productive to our national interest and able to cause just as much personal suffering. The Tampa incident was used to manufacture the political grounds to pressure the Labor Party into allowing the guillotining of a package of seven Bills amending the Migration Act through the Senate which dramatically amended the entire Migration Act, giving immense power to bureaucrats, further restricting judicial and independent oversight and in many cases enabling Commonwealth officers and Government Ministers to act completely outside any legal constraints.

This perversion of the rule of law, removal of due process and destruction of checks and balances which reached its peak in the aftermath of the Tampa is at the heart of the current shambles within the Immigration Department. Whenever any person in a position of power and authority knows they are able to act and make decisions with impunity, bad decisions inevitably follow.

This whole culture of being above the law and disregard for human suffering and dignity is at the heart of all the well known human tragedies and travesties of justice which the Department of Immigration have caused. But for every well publicised case – such as the deportation of long-standing Australian citizen Vivian Solon (and the subsequent cover-up), the wrongful detention of Australian resident Cornelia Rau, the proven assaults and major failures of duty of care of detainees, the callous disregard of the medical advice which may have contributed to the recent death of visiting Syrian grandmother, Aziza Agha – there are many more that have not been publicised. Very few of these involve asylum seekers or refugees – but the extreme over-reaction to asylum seekers, who pose no threat at all to the ‘security of our borders, has poisoned the entire administration of our migration system.

Until the Migration Act is reformed and the Government adopts a policy based on reality rather than myth-making and lies, the operation and administration of our migration system will remain severely dysfunctional. You cannot change the culture of the Department whilst the law and policy remains the same. An essential part of repairing the culture is to restore the checks and balances which were removed from the law by the Liberal and Labor parties in the irrational frenzy following Tampa in 2001. Until that is done, further tragedies and injustices are inevitable.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Saturday, August 27, 2005 Permalink
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Friday, August 26, 2005
 
Iraq - breaking down or breaking up?
A Brisbane based blogger, Arthur Chrenkoff, has been making a valiant effort for a long time to try to highlight every piece of good news about Iraq. Whilst the inevitable one-sidedness of such an enterprise has led to him being criticised for ignoring all the bad news by those like me who opposed the invasion and subsequent actions of some of the occupying forces, I must admit I have found his site useful to dip into from time to time for information (when I’m in a mood to be able to tolerate the relentlessly partisan neoconservative commentary that accompanies it).

However, regardless of how many bits of isolated good news are pasted together, the underlying trend in Iraq is exceedingly bad. When even the relentlessly pro-war, pro-Howard Australian newspaper acknowledges that “the fissures over the unfolding failures in Iraq have permeated the Bush administration, the US military and the Republican establishment …… and that “George W. Bush has no credible story to offer the American public about Iraq”, then things are clearly not going well.

The Editor-at-Large of The Australian, Paul Kelly wrote yesterday that
“The very best outcome the US will procure in Iraq now is a moderate Islamic state. The worst is either a civil war or the entrenchment in parts of the country of extremist Islamist political power that becomes a focus of anti-Western terrorism and regional de-stabilisation. The legacy that haunts the Bush and Howard governments is that Iraq may become a disastrous debacle in the larger war against terrorism."

Yet another Republican congressman in the USA has spoken of his worries of civil war in Iraq. This time it is House Intelligence Chairman, Pete Hoekstra from Michigan, who has just returned from a trip to Iraq and surrounding countries and said “he worries about the possibility of a civil war erupting in Iraq because of disputes surrounding the drafting of a constitution.” This follows recent comments by Republican Senator and Vietnam veteran, Chuck Hagel and builds on the concerns expressed for a long time behind the scenes by many from the conservative side of US politics, including the CIA, State Department and National Security Council.

I quoted an article at the end of this posting which suggested that “Iraq may now be going the way of Yugoslavia”, and “just as in the former Yugoslavia, the separate countries – Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia – have a better chance of creating coherent and democratic systems than the old coercive Yugoslavia, the same may apply to Iraq.”

Maybe accepting that it is not tenable to try to hold the country together might be the best way to avoid civil war, ensure the Kurds have some of the independence they deserve, and generate a viable exit strategy from the mess that the USA and Australian governments are now in - although I must say don't know how we could get to there from where we are now.

Patriotic posturing, propaganda, preaching and pontificating won’t be able to indefinitely cover up the mess which the Australian Government helped to create. The assertions and images of the past few years are coming back to bite us all.

This picture by The Daily Flute says it better than any words of mine can.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Friday, August 26, 2005 Permalink
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Wednesday, August 24, 2005
 
Power, Corruption and Lies (with your $$$$$)
A Senate Committee Inquiry heard evidence last week about whether the current controls over Government use of taxpayers’ money for advertising are adequate. As I wrote last month, if there is one thing more offensive than some of the half-truths and misleading weasel words that the Government is using to try to sell their workplace policies, it’s that they are effectively stealing the public’s money to do it.

Tim Colebatch quite rightly labels it a form of corruption. Given that, I wish a few of the corporate media outlets would take a moral stand and refuse to run the advertisements – by taking payment for them, they are in effect in receipt of stolen property.

The Democratic Audit project at the ANU has just released this paper by Sally Young which outlines the different ways Governments get unfair political advantages from misusing taxpayers’ money for advertising. It includes an assessment of a potential effect of this corruption which has not got so much attention – “the role that such advertising plays as a major source of revenue and an ‘information subsidy’ for the media organisations who receive it.”


“Through advertising, the state ‘effectively gives subsidies to media organizations by reducing the effort required to discover and produce information for their audiences’. Since the Howard government took office in 1996, $929 million has been spent on federal government advertising. In the same period, state and territory governments have spent $2.148 billion on advertising. (At the state level, the NSW and Victorian governments in particular, are big spenders.) Government advertising therefore constitutes a significant proportion of commercial media outlet profits and this is particularly true for television stations.”

While job advertisements and tender application ads may be mundane in content, they still form part of the ‘rivers of gold’ of classified advertising which is a major source of income for newspapers. It is also important to note that government advertising can be used not only as a form of patronage—or a reward for favourable coverage—but also as
a punishment.
I recall Joh Bjelke-Petersen withdrawing government advertising from the Courier-Mail in the 1980s because of critical coverage (something that would be harder to do now because there is no alternative daily paper in Brisbane). Most Governments these days would be less blatant about such blackmail, but it would be naïve to the think that these sorts of threats aren’t made behind the scenes.

All of this just gives an extra reason why there needs to be an independent mechanism for determining use of public money for advertising expenditure – something I hope the Senate Committee Inquiry is able to recommend. Whilst it is the Coalition engaging in the corruption at federal level now, it is reasonable to suggest that Labor would be doing the same thing if they were in power. Whichever party is in power, the commercial media have a vested interest in this spending continuing. If they are genuinely committed to a fairer, more honest and open democracy, they would be working together to promote reforms and refusing to accept funds for such blatantly unjustified uses as promoting the Government’s workplace policies.

UPDATE (1/9): This Editorial in The Australian describes the Government’s use of taxpayer’s money to fund advertisements on their workplace relations policy as a “rort”. I wonder if that means they will refuse to run any of the adverts? It would certainly send a powerful message if they did.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Wednesday, August 24, 2005 Permalink
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Tuesday, August 23, 2005
 
From Seniors Week to Butterflies to Kurds in Iran and Civil War in Iraq
I stayed on in Canberra for the weekend for a meeting of the Democrats’ National Executive, which I’m a member of. It was good to finally get back home and get out and about amongst people around Brisbane.

In amongst catching up with mail and assorted paperwork in my office, I had a diverse range of activities covering a Seniors Week forum, butterflies and the human rights of Kurds.

First up was a political forum out at Cleveland, which is in Redlands Shire on the edge of Moreton Bay. It was organised by the University of the Third Age as part of Seniors Week. It was attended by about 150 people, mostly retirees but with some High School students as well, and provided a good chance to give a quick run down on the nature of politics. There were some good and quite challenging questions as well.

After that, I met with a person from the Butterfly and other Invertebrates Club. These folks are based in South-East Queensland and whilst butterflies mightn’t sound like the most pressing issue, they are an important part of maintaining biodiversity. Their publications give a lot of info on native plants which act as hosts for various types of butterflies. Encouraging people to use host plants in their gardens is one way to move away from exotics and invasive plants which can be damaging to the wider environment.

I also spoke at a rally in support of the Kurdish people in Iran and Iraq. The specific focus of the rally was to protest the recent killing of a young Kurdish man by Iranian authorities, and the wider killings of Kurds which is reported to have followed. I wrote a long piece a while ago about self-determination and the need to remember the Kurds’ specific situation in Iraq. I believe it is important that the relative peace and autonomy which the Kurds in parts of northern Iraq currently enjoy is not put at risk from outside political pressures or the wider unrest currently happening in Iraq,

This latest report in The Independent about the newly finalised draft Iraq constitution says it “was threatening to drag the country into civil war.” Whilst the USA wants the new Constitution in place to help with its exit strategy from Iraq, there is a strong chance that, even if it is ratified by the Iraqi Parliament, it will fail the conditions required at the subsequent referendum. It is hard to be sure what the consequences of that might be, but they wouldn’t be good. There is no doubt there’s widespread support amongst Kurds for an independent state (something which horrify Turkey), and there is already a big struggle over control of oil revenue from the Kurdish city of Kirkuk. If Iraq does descend further into total civil war, the Kurds will rightly want to break away from the mess all together.

UPDATE: This interesting piece in the Jerusalem Post suggests Iraq is just not sustainable as a single state anymore.
"Iraq may now be going the way of Yugoslavia, yet the US government does not wish to recognize this obvious fact. What is failing in Iraq is not only the attempt to build democracy, but the very attempt to keep the country together.
There is no way of putting Humpty-Dumpty together again. The Kurds and the Shi'ites will go their separate ways, and both entities have the paramilitary capability to do so. There is no Iraqi army capable of maintaining the unity of the country. And, just as in the former Yugoslavia, the separate countries – Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia – have a better chance of creating coherent and democratic systems than the old coercive Yugoslavia, the same may apply to Iraq.
I don’t know if this is true or not, but if it is, the sooner it’s recognised, the better for everyone. (story found via The Reader)

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Tuesday, August 23, 2005 Permalink
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Sunday, August 21, 2005
 
Blog Birthday Highlights
I've noted other blogs often mark their blog's birthday by listing significant posts over the previous year. In keeping with that tradition, and in case any political science people can see anything significant in it, here's a few posts from my first year of blogging that stand out for me for various reasons.

As I'm a big fan of the comment facility, I like posts that produce comments. The one which I think has drawn the most comments was this post in February on climate change. For some reason Haloscan doesn't display the number of comments any more, but this one got 26 (although some of those are responses from me). This is a fairly small number compared to some sites that regularly crack the 100 mark, but (apart from one occasion) my site has tended not to have internal conversations starting up in the comment section. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Although one of the reasons I am soon shifting this blog to Wordpress is to encourage more comments, I am more interested in getting comments on a wider number of posts over a longer period, rather than getting heaps of comments on a small number of topics. I have also been lucky that I haven’t attracted much by way of spammers, trolls or flame wars (so far).

The day which received by far the most visits to the site was the time that www.crikey.com.au kindly linked to this post hoeing into the PM for his misunderstanding/misleading comments about immigration laws.

The other period which drew higher visitor numbers was around Budget time, when I did a few posts giving some of my views and descriptions of happenings around that event. I'm sure it was no coincidence that it was also around this time that The Domain from Online Opinion kindly started including me in their page sampling Australian political blogs.

I didn't increase the capacity of my Stat Counter until a few months ago, so I can't say definitively which post has been downloaded most often, but the most popular page in recent times has been this one on the ID Card (by a reasonably clear margin).

Another relatively popular page was the entry on the death of Joh Bjelke-Petersen (and the sequel). I don't do as many purely personal lifestyle ones as I used to, as they seem to receive fewer visits and perhaps are unnecessarily indulgent – it is a political blog after all - but I quite like this one about a neighbourhood park and this one about playing cricket.

A final item of interest is some of the search terms people have used that have brought them to this blog. The most frequently used has been "Chen Yonglin", followed by "mulesing" and "Cornelia Rau". More fun are some of the stranger search terms that somehow led people to my site – unexpected ones such as "Panus Angelicus lyrics" and "2005 contact email address of Indonesia Geothermal Association"; ones with unfortunate connotations such as "no danger of intelligence in Australia", "background purple" and "399 swear words"; the rather worrying pair of "senator who lost his seat due to a discovered diary" and "senator live suicide"; and the truly inexplicable " I want to make an appointment for circumcision in Victoria Australia".

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Sunday, August 21, 2005 Permalink
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Saturday, August 20, 2005
 
Footy & Free Speech
I see the AFL is once again cracking down hard on coaches criticising the game's umpires on the grounds that it stops people from volunteering to be umpires, and reduces the quality of the talent pool available for this difficult job.

I quite like Andrew Demetriou and have previously noted his views with approval. I also agree umpires have a difficult job and should generally be supported. But I have to say, given the importance of the principle of freedom of speech, I find it amazing that it is actually legal for the AFL (or the NRL for that matter) to fine people thousands of dollars just for saying an umpire had a lousy game or made some bad decisions.

I wonder how well it would go down if we tried the same principle with politicians? After all, it's often said we need people from a wider cross-section of the community in our Parliaments, and there is no doubt that many people are put off going into politics because you can cop so much criticism and unwarranted scrutiny of your private life. Come to think of it, having balance of power in the Senate was a bit like being an umpire – both sides abusing half your decisions and the public just remembering the one decision they thought was a shocker while forgetting the 100 you got right.

Maybe if Andrew Demetriou filled the looming vacancy in the High Court, the Court's previous decision to recognise an implied right to freedom of speech might be overturned. Then the Electoral Commission could hand out fines every time a journalist criticised a Senator. It's tough work being an umpire in the Senate after all, and we don't want to put good people off volunteering for the job.

(PS Just in case it's not clear, the suggestion in the above paragraph about penalising criticism of politicians is a joke.)

ADDITION - 24/8: The furore over alleged remarks by an umpire after the St Kilda-Fremantle game could be seen to make the case against my position, but I think you do more harm by stifling reasonable criticism (as opposed to slander) than by letting it flow. Mind you, I haven’t found too many people that agree with me (apart from AFL coaches probably), but this piece by Peter Lalor in The Australian pretty much reflects my views.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Saturday, August 20, 2005 Permalink
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Friday, August 19, 2005
 
Musings for Barnaby - dancing with wolves can get you eaten

It shouldn't really be any great surprise that the National Party is willing to support the sale of Telstra, despite the widespread opposition of people living in rural areas (and the rest of the country too). After all, every National Party Senator has voted to sell part or all of Telstra a total of 5 separate times since 1996. The only question mark was whether new Senators Barnaby Joyce and Fiona Nash might have been different from all the other National Party Senators. There's some extra money this time to sweeten the pill, but it looks like the vote will be the same once again (although Matt Price suggests it's not a sure thing yet, as does this piece in the Sydney Morning Herald).

As a reminder:

  1. on the 11th December, 1996, all National Party Senators voted in favour of selling one third of Telstra, enabling the Telstra (Dilution of Public Ownership) Bill 1996 to pass the Senate by 34-32 with the support of Brian Harradine and Labor renegade Mal Colston.
  2. on the 11th July 1998, (on a Saturday night at 8.19pm), all National Party Senators voted in favour of selling the next 16% of Telstra. However the final vote on the Telstra (Transition to Full Private Ownership) Bill 1998 was tied at 33-33, thus negating the Bill, when Mal Colston voted against.
  3. on the 21st June 1999, all National Party Senators again voted in favour of selling the next 16% of Telstra, enabling the Telstra (Transition to Full Private Ownership) Bill 1998 to pass the Senate by 37-35 with the support of Brian Harradine and Mal Coslton.
  4. on the 30th October 2003, all National Party Senators voted in favour of selling all of Telstra, although the Telstra (Transition to Full Private Ownership) Bill 2003 was defeated by 34-26.
  5. on the 30th March 2004, all National Party Senators again voted in favour of selling all of Telstra, although the Telstra (Transition to Full Private Ownership) Bill 2003 [No. 2] was defeated by 35-30, thus creating a trigger for a double dissolution election to be called.

I noticed a quote from Barnaby Joyce in this piece by Matt Price which gives some sign that he's aware of the nature of those he's dealing with.

"I don't know what the people think but I think we've screwed something out of them (the Libs) we were never going to get," he admitted in idle pre-interview chatter. "(But) we've got to see the paperwork, the Libs are great at doing stuff and when it's time to see the paperwork it's completely different."

Senator Joyce seems to have learnt Step 1 in how the Howard Government makes 'agreements'. I hate to disillusion him, but there's many more steps to go. I can tell him from bitter experience that when it comes to breaching agreements, there's a lot more left in the Government's armoury.

Step 2 is, even if you get the paperwork to really reflect your agreement, they just try to ignore the bits they don't like. Step 3 is where they start cutting money out of existing expenditure until it equals the amount of extra money they promised they would spend. Step 4 is to spend that 'new' money on something completely different from what was promised (see Step 2). Step 5 is to refuse to administer the laws and regulatory protections that were put in place as part of enabling the original agreement. Step 6 is to tie you up trying to address Steps 2-5 while they gradually change and remove the legislative and regulatory protections that were put in place as part of enabling the initial agreement. Step 7 is where all the relevant Ministers have changed to other portfolios and the new Ministers say they are not bound by old arrangements. If you haven't given up by this time, then Step 8 is to insist that the use of the word "will" can actually be interpreted as "will not" in certain circumstances, or that the paperwork reflects views that have now been superseded by the intervening election. Eventually, if they get tired of being hassled about it, they'll just say there never was any paperwork and you must be getting it confused with something else.

I've seen independent Peter Andren and Barnaby himself say that Telstra could be the National Party's GST - which I presume means a big chunk of their constituency could see this as betraying them on a core issue. I don’t know if that will be the case, but given that Barnaby himself has said it, (indeed he used the GST analogy to me when I met him for the first time out at Birdsville) I'm a bit surprised he looks likely to give in so quickly and cheaply. I guess Barnaby has gained more than the other National Senators Boswell, MacDonald and McGauran sitting around him who have just rolled over and put their hands up 5 times in a row without getting anything in return apart from a few nice words.

I support efforts to try to negotiate constructive compromises if it is possible to get an overall result which will clearly move things forward, but if what is under discussion involves compromising a fundamental principle, then it's best to just forget it. Unless you can get a major fundamental advance on a key issue, you're just getting bought off with what in the long-term will turn out to be beads and trinkets.

Barnaby had his own analogy for this when he said that the problem with selling Telstra was that it was akin to a man with a shotgun who keeps threatening to kill your dog.

"Then one day the bloke turns up with a shotgun and kills your dog. And then you know you've got a big problem, a dead dog and a bloke with a shotgun. That'll be Telstra for us. The day we sell it off, the problem will be huge."

I must say I'm not sure I fully understand what this is meant to mean, but I know it's not good.

Of course, negotiating with Government can involve the prospect of agreeing to something which may intrinsically not be very good, but still better than what would occur if things stayed unchanged. This was basically the situation the Democrats were in when I was negotiating with the Government about improvements to their Medicare package in 2003-04. I can't see how this applies to the situation with Telstra, as Barnaby is in the position of stopping it being sold altogether.

I've been close to or directly involved in negotiations with Government a number of times over the years, and I can assure Barnaby that if the Government is under strong political pressure to resolve an issue, then you have a lot more time that you think to make a decision. The media attention and frenzy that can develop around negotiations does create an atmosphere where you feel you have to decide quickly, but it's just one of those illusions that can befall you when you're in the cocoon of Parliament House. If you set your bottom line in your own mind first (which should at a minimum match your honest assessment of what would constitute a definite advance on the status quo/no deal option) and the other side won't come up to it, then it's not really that hard to walk away. If it's that important to them, they'll come back to you.

A few days of the media calling you dithering is nothing compared to a few years of your supporters calling you stupid or a sell-out (not to mention the opportunity cost and the permanent consequences for those people negatively affected by what you agree to). Of course, the problem for Barnaby is that, for all his talk about representing the Qld Nationals and not the Coalition, he is in the end part of the Government. That means his ability to really just say No is a lot less than he suggests. This is why having an independent Senate, not controlled by any party, is so much better. If the Government knows you really are capable of saying No, you're in a much better position to negotiate and make a balanced impartial judgement about what is best for the public (as long as they also know you are capable of saying Yes as well).


posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Friday, August 19, 2005 Permalink
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Emailing politicians - expressing views or just spam?
I've noticed some debate on a couple of blogs about the wisdom or otherwise of the approach on the new GetUp! Website which (in part) seeks to use email campaigns to politicians. This is the new equivalent of the old style form letter, where people got photocopies of a letter and wrote their name and address on it and sent it in.

Liberal MP Andrew Robb called these emails "spam". Leaving aside the fact that the Liberals used spam emails themselves to campaign during the last election, in technical terms, he is wrong. Spam is automatic computer generated emails. These are emails sent consciously by a person who agrees with its content and types in their address and presses a button to prove it (as opposed to the old approach of writing their name on a piece of paper, putting it in an envelope and posting it).

However, even making allowances for Robb's desire to discredit an attempt at progressive campaigning, it is worth considering what the response of most politicians might be to a wave of electronic form letters. I know many MPs genuinely think of email 'campaigns' as basically equivalent to spam. I think this is silly but I guess it says something about the different way many people perceive communication by email compared to letters and phone calls. That said, I've known MPs who thought that any time they got a heap of phone calls or letters from people complaining about their actions or views, it was the result of an organised campaign by their political opponents. I guess I shouldn’t give examples, but when people who do something hugely unpopular can then just dismiss all the complaints they receive as being part of an orchestrated campaign by their opponents, it makes you wonder how to get them to acknowledge any critical feedback.

ACOSS is doing something reasonably similar on their site with their Action Network. This enables people to send a form letter via email expressing concern about the proposed welfare changes. It is preset so it goes to your local Member, and can also be sent to your Senators as well (although you have to tick a box to add this option). So far, I've received about 320 of them. I think this is fine and reasonable – people are sending me their views and I get a chance to tell them what I think about it. In some ways it's much easier than individual emails, as I can send the same response to everyone, which requires a lot less thought and time than individually tailoring a response. However, I know others think differently.

I must say I support any attempts to increase public involvement in issues that affect them and to improve information flows between politicians and the public. It will be interesting to see how GetUp goes. It is obviously based on models from the USA and our system does have significant differences, but it's worth trying out.

A long time ago I wrote a few basic thoughts on how you might improve your chances of getting your emails to politicians noticed. Emails that attempt to be individually tailored can still have their problems. I recently got an email about industrial relations which started by saying "as someone who votes for your party, I am appalled at your position". Unfortunately, the person had sent it to 8 different Senators from 4 different parties, which did make me wonder about the accuracy of his assertion.

When you get an email addressed to a whole range of Senators, you tend to wonder about the worth of replying, especially if you don't know which state they are from. However, I got this response today from someone:
"You are the only politician across all the parties both federal and state that has shown the decency to reply to my letter. I had written to five politicians and had all but written off any chance of reply. You may not realise how overjoyed I was to receive your reply."
Now it's quite possible that this guy was just pissing in my pocket and sent the same thing to everyone else who replied, but even if he was, he took the time to piss in my pocket, which is almost as good as a genuine response. It is a good encouragement to do better with responding to emails, as I do have a bad habit of allowing a pool of old emails to gather at the bottom of my Inbox.


PS Speaking of emails, just as I was about to post this, I received one responding to the news story about the word "mate" being banned from use by Parliamentary staff. Thought I'd share it with you all.
You f**kers are so OUTTA control it's ridiculous!! And you're so OUTTA touch with Australians it's TREASONOUS. Bring on the trials dirtbags!! You mutts will face justice for your theft, fraud, offences against human rights and downright stupidity. It IS an offence to be a politician and so DUMB.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Friday, August 19, 2005 Permalink
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Thursday, August 18, 2005
 
Last of the First Speeches
The final three First Speeches of the new crop of Senators occurred today.

First up was the NSW National Senator Fiona Nash. She is a farmer from Young, but has also been a Ministerial staffer for 5 years, which explains why she appears so comfortable in the Parliamentary environment. There was a heavy focus on rural and regional Australia and the divide between city and country, which is understandable, but still seemed somewhat fresher in her approach and ideas than the stereotypical National Party Senator. She called for intellectual as well as economic prosperity and noted the importance of adequate childcare and a better work and family balance. She also noted the terrible state of indigenous health and the lack of services and support for mental health and carers. She gave a big push for ethanol and made a reasonable fist of trying to justify the sale of Telstra. It was a solid speech without having any dramatic standouts.

There was no overt interest at all from the press gallery, with only the ever faithful AAP watching on. There was a decent crowd of observers from the House of Reps included Warren Truss, Mark Vaile, John Cobb, Deanne Kelly, Paul Neville, Kay Hull and John Forrest.

Second was South Australian Labor Senator Dana Wortley. She was third on the Labor Senate ticket and probably wasn't expecting to win a seat, but benefited from the collapse of the Democrat vote in that state, taking the Democrat seat held by Meg Lees. Dana has a background in education and the media, and has been an officer with the journos union (MEAA). Perhaps not surprisingly, she spoke about the importance of the media and of a stronger ABC and the lack of new Australian drama being broadcast. She also gave some emphasis to women, to indigenous disadvantage and to climate change, as well as a burst against the planned changes to industrial relations laws. I only saw one Labor MP from the House of Reps observing and only 2 journos in the gallery.

Last was Tasmanian Liberal Senator Stephen Parry. He's from Burnie in the north-west and is best known as being a former funeral director, but he also worked for a decade as a policeman, and he drew on these experiences in the early part of his speech. He replaced long standing Independent, Brian Harradine, briefly acknowledging his contribution. This was one of the extra Senate seats the Libs picked up at the last election. The longest serving Senator is now another Tasmanian, Liberal John Watson, who is the only one here who has experience of a Government controlled Senate. Senator Parry spoke in support of greater funding for medical research (making some appropriate jokes about funeral directors along the way). Peter Costello came to watch, as did 3 other newer House of Reps people. The media observation dropped back to one again.

All 14 newly sworn in Senators have now given their First Speeches in the last fortnight. However, we'll probably have another one in two weeks time when the Senate resumes, as the woman replacing Sue Mackay, the Tasmanian Labor Senator who resigned in July, will be sworn in then.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Thursday, August 18, 2005 Permalink
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Senate President delivers pro-Kyoto message to the Queen
The Senate adjourned early on Wednesday for one of the more arcane Parliamentary rituals - the presentation of the address-in-reply by the Senate to the Governor-General's speech to the opening of the Parliament after the last election.

This is one of those quaint traditions from the first days of the Parliament which still survive. When the Parliament sits for the first time after each election, the Governor-General (or occasionally the Queen) makes the opening speech to all members of Parliament, gathered together in the Senate. After that, the Senate President reports the speech to the Senate and a motion is moved in reply. The motion has a standard wording which sounds like the sort of language that may have been used in 1901. A Government Senator moves the following:

—That the following address-in-reply be agreed to:
To His Excellency the Governor-General
MAY IT PLEASE YOUR EXCELLENCY—

We, the Senate of the Commonwealth of Australia in Parliament assembled, desire to express our loyalty to our Most Gracious Sovereign and to thank Your Excellency for the speech which you have been pleased to address to Parliament.

This motion is then able to be spoken to, which is a means for Senators to make a speech about literally any topic at all (my speech is here.) This is often used to fill up time in the early periods before the newly elected Government gets all its legislation together for consideration by the Senate. Eventually, when everyone who wants to has spoken, which is often many months later, the Senate motion is agreed to.

At a convenient time after that, the Senate President, accompanied by the presiding officers and whichever Senators wish to attend, all go round to the Governor-General's residence to present the Address-in-reply for him to convey to the Queen. I used to think this meant the President presented a volume containing all the speeches made to the motion, but what actually happens is that the President just reads out the wording of the Address-in-reply motion to the Governor-General, who then says thank you, that he will convey the message to the Queen, and a few supportive comments about the importance of the work that Senators do. After that, he and his wife walk around to chat with the Senators while people get offered nibblies and drinks.

The Senate can amend the Address-in-reply motion, which was done on this occasion, as it has been 6 other times over the years. The amendment was one moved by me, and it read:

That the following words be added to the
address-in-reply:
"but the Senate is of the opinion that the Government's failure to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, to take strong action to reduce Australia's greenhouse emissions and to urge the United States of America to do likewise, is putting at risk international efforts on climate change".

I'd originally also included "that Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second is to be commended for her reported public support for implementation of the Kyoto Protocol" in my amendment but that was later ruled out of order. Whilst it would have been nice to have this in there, it is best that the Queen not be drawn into partisan political issues.

Getting such an amendment agreed to has no practical effect of course, but as with any formal expression of opinion, it does send a message. It also added a nice twist to the occasion, with the President solemnly reading out the "May it please Your Excellency" stuff, and then having to follow by also reading out the amendment about climate change at the end.

Having said that it has no practical effect, I should note that the previous Address-in-reply in 2002 also had a Democrat amendment attached, which added:
"but the Senate is of the opinion that:
(a) the Government must move towards a more humane and workable approach to asylum seekers; and
(b) Woomera detention centre should be closed".

Lo and behold, 3 years later there has been a more humane approach and Woomera has been closed! Perhaps the Queen acts on these "Replies" after all? If by 2008 when the next Address-in-reply is presented the Kyoto Protocol has been ratified by Australia, maybe this ritual will have been shown to have some extra oomph after all.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Thursday, August 18, 2005 Permalink
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Wednesday, August 17, 2005
 
First Birthday for this Blog
I posted my first blog entry a year ago today. It started out by saying "I'm currently trying to think of ways to break through some of the limitations of our political process." I then went on to talk about mandatory detention and basic principles of the rule of law in a democracy, topics I touched on many more times.

Starting the blog was an experiment in trying a few different ways to address the limitations of our political process. I didn't make any announcement that I was starting the blog or try to use it to generate media interest. I wanted to let it develop on its own merits (or lack of them) and see whether it could be a valuable medium for communication in its own right, rather than just a gimmick.

A year ago, I was Leader of the Australian Democrats and that party held the balance of power in the Senate. Since then, I have stepped back to focusing on being a Queensland Democrat Senator, and the Coalition has been re-elected, gaining a majority in the Senate in their own right.

I think it is easy to overstate the value and impact of blogs, whether on politics, the media, or wider areas of information. As this item says, "the cause of blogging is not helped by unwarranted and blind enthusiasm". However, I also believe web diaries and other online mechanisms have the potential to significantly improve understanding of issues and provide wider access to useful information and opinions – something that is particularly important given the lack of diversity offered through the mainstream media. Blogs can also play an important role in countering some of the lies and misleading assertions regularly fed into the mainstream media. I find growing benefit in perusing other blogs and email bulletins for information that I don't find in the traditional channels.

In the year since I started this blog, I have posted 289 entries which have received an estimated 1400 comments, all but one of which was left on the site for anyone to view. I have found it useful as a way to test some ideas, get feedback and get a bit more value and use out of some of the things I do. I have experimented a bit with layout over that time. In response to reader feedback (i.e. complaints), I changed the original colour scheme.

As to whether it is a valuable medium to encourage politicians to use which could serve to improve political processes or understanding in a significant way, I think the jury is still out. The positive potential is definitely there in theory but whether it can be achieved in reality is an open question. Despite its potential niche role, the audience reach of most blogs is small, which means it will be hard to convince politicians at the federal level to take it up in a comprehensive way sort of way.

Whilst a reasonable amount of what I put on this blog reuses stuff I do for other purposes, a lot of it isn't and it obviously takes up a bit of time. That said, I usually enjoy doing it – and find some of the comments of particular interest. However, as with anyone, I will eventually have to assess whether it's a sufficiently beneficial use of my time. I've noticed many blogs come and go in the year since I started, but I plan to still be operating a blog of some sort for at least another year.

As part of continuing to try ways to improve the value and benefits for me and for readers, and to make the blog a closer part of my main website, I'll soon be switching from blogspot to Wordpress. Details of the shift will be posted here and I hope you follow me across to the new site.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Wednesday, August 17, 2005 Permalink
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Tuesday, August 16, 2005
 
How might the Government try to reduce the Senate's effectiveness?

I've done a piece for Margot Kingston's Webdiary on ways the federal Government might de-fang the Senate. Click on this link if you want to read it. Most of the comments there seem to be people fighting amongst themselves, but I'd be interested in any comments anyone has – post them on Margot's site, here or as always you can email me direct if you prefer.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Tuesday, August 16, 2005 Permalink
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Gramsci, truckers and Kipling - today's first speeches
Here are a few of my immediate impressions having just sat through the First Speeches given in the Senate today. First Speeches are a unique experience for a Senator. They are always attended and listened to by a majority of Senators, and by convention no one interjects. I can vouch from experience that this is about the only time this happens. Either no one turns up in the Senate chamber to listen to you, or they do but ignore what you say or they yell out at you while you’re still speaking.

Queensland Liberal Russell Trood is a university lecturer from Brisbane, whose great grandfather attended the 1891 Constitutional Convention. In effect, he was the person who won the seat which had been held by the Democrats in Queensland, thus delivering control of the Senate to the Coalition. The only press gallery people who came to watch this speech were Matt Price plus the usual representative from Australian Associated Press (AAP). A few Libs from the House of Reps - Chris Pyne, plus Qld Libs Ross Vasta, Andrew Laming and Steven Ciobo – also popped in to watch. He gave a fairly thoughtful speech. Unlike his Victorian colleague Michael Ronaldson last week, who ran the 'governments are elected to govern' mantra, Senator Trood spoke of the importance of the Senate operating as a House of review and holding the government of the day to account. He even quoted left-wing theorist Antonio Gramsci! Not surprisingly, he focused on international affairs and security but gave a reasonably balanced appraisal, noting the dangers of giving "Governments power permanently or without continuing parliamentary oversight" and gave a fairly downbeat assessment of the present situation in Iraq.

WA Labor Senator Glenn Sterle was an official in the Transport Workers Union. It was fitting that he spoke on the day that many truck drivers rallied out the front of Parliament House to protest yet another piece of ideological extremism from the Government. These guys are independent contractors, yet the Government plans to pass amendments to the Trade Practices Act to ban trade unions from bargaining on behalf of small business owners. Apparently collective bargaining done by industry representative bodies such as the Motor Traders Association on behalf of petrol station owners or the Farmers Federation negotiating on behalf of rural producers is OK, but not trade unions working on behalf of individual contractors. Senator Sterle spoke about his life as a truckie and the value and importance of unions, along with the damage caused to families by the industrial relations changes made by the Court Liberal Government in WA back in the 1990s. Labor's shadow treasurer, Wayne Swan, sat at the back of the Senate to watch the speech.

The Senator of the moment, Barnaby Joyce came next. None of the House of Reps Liberals there for Russell Trood's speech had stuck around, but half of the Nationals caucus seemed to be there, including Mark Vaile, John Anderson, John Cobb, Warren Truss and Kay Hull. The media's viewing gallery also had a reasonable collection of people. I counted 19, with Matt Price and AAP being joined by Margo Kingston, Crikey's Hugo Kelly, Sophie Morris from the Financial Review, Andrew Fraser from the Canberra Times (not this Andrew Fraser), Phil Coorey from The Advertiser, Sam Maiden from The Australian, the ABC's Catherine McGrath and the Herald Sun's Gerald McManus.

Barnaby singled out 4 key issues that he said the Qld National Party's took to the last election: overcentralisation of the retail market; mandated usage of ethanol in fuels; zonal taxation and core family values. He spoke of the need to give people more reason to live outside the capital cities and the inevitable problems of greater traffic and water problems in those cities if we don't. He cited the problem of continuing our dependency on oil imports (as a lead in to the need to mandate ethanol). I don't think anyone will get new ideas about what he is likely to do on some of the current issues of controversy, His only solid comment on Telstra was that "it is an issue in motion" and he also had a big dig at the Government's position on VSU, but didn't say how he would vote on it.

He mentioned God a few times and also said "abortion is the slavery debate of our time." He was also the only new Senator (so far) who has acknowledged the work of the Senator whose seat he won, noting the efforts of the departed One Nation Senator, Len Harris and finished with a long quote from Rudyard Kipling's well known poem, "If". The text of Senator Joyce's speech is available here.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Tuesday, August 16, 2005 Permalink
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Unarmed truth
After getting back from Canberra last weekend, I went to a dinner to mark the retirement of Tony Kelly, one of my lecturers from when I studied Social Work at the University of Queensland. His focus is community development, which is something I always felt was linked to but separate from most aspects of the more formal professional aspects of Social Work. There were a number of people there I knew and it is (almost) always good to catch up with people you haven't seen for a while and see what's been happening with them. As one would expect at such an event, there were lots of speeches about what a fabulous chap Tony Kelly is. He has always been a strong advocate and teacher of non-violence as a method rather than just a philosophy and he closed with a quote by Martin Luther King Jr about the power of "unarmed truth". I had heard the words before, but he emphasised that in the context of the quote, 'unarmed' is just as important as 'truth', which shed a new light on it for me.

I pinched his quote to use the next day at a Free China rally. This was one of a growing number of actions promoting freedom and democracy in China. It includes, but is not limited to, Falun Gong practitioners. This group has been severely persecuted by the Chinese government – something which we received evidence about in the current Senate Committee Inquiry examining the way the Australian government handled the defection of Chinese Consular official, Chen Yonglin. The Senate Committee should be producing an initial report this Thursday, which I think will be worth reading. Continuing to point to the simple truth of widespread persecution is important, not as a way of trying to score political points, but to make more people aware of the reality of what is happening and the obligation on all of us not to turn a blind eye to brutal oppression.

I also spoke at another rally on Saturday to support and promote marriage equality. It is twelve months since the Liberal and Labor parties combined in the Senate to guillotine debate on and pass legislation banning legal recognition of same sex relationships, even where a couple had been legally married under the laws of another country. Same sex marriage is now legal in countries such as Spain and Canada, but those married couples are now not able to migrate here as spouses. I have noted in previous posts that few things seem to elicit the vitriolic hate mail more than promoting equal rights for all people regardless of their sexuality. Some of the stuff I got when I spoke against the Government's anti-marriage law last year was hair-curling in its ugliness. As shown in this recent post, this sort of extremist hatred can have deadly consequences.

I then flew up to Rockhampton that night to attend a multicultural fair held at the Central Queensland University Campus. This is a large annual event and I got to make a brief speech to open the day. It was fitting that it also doubled with a citizenship ceremony. It was a chance not just to note the feelgood aspects of multiculturalism, but to emphasise the important principles that underpin it, and how important it is as a key mechanism to counter and prevent extremism. I've also done postings on this before and it is a priority I hope to raise in the Senate at some stage this week. While it was a bit chilly in Rockhampton, on the very edge of the tropics, it is way colder in Canberra so it was nice to fly north instead of south, even if only briefly.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Tuesday, August 16, 2005 Permalink
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James Joyce's son gives his first speech
Australia's highest profile Senator – and my fellow Queenslander – Barnaby Joyce makes his First Speech to the Senate this afternoon, around about 5.40pm. After the blanket media coverage he's received, including many personal profiles, I'm not sure what new and unexpected things he can say, but no doubt there will be a lot of people listening. I'll certainly be there.

There will also be two other First Speeches coming today. Russell Trood, the Queensland Liberal who together with Senator Joyce delivered control of the Senate to the Coalition, but has a rather lower profile, will also be speaking, followed by Glenn Sterle, a Labor Senator from WA who took the place of former Hawke Minister Peter Cook.

Senator Trood has been a lecturer and associate professor at Griffith University in Brisbane for most of the last 17 years, so he has a fair bit of experience in what univeristies are like in the modern era. I'd be interested in what he thinks of the government's current obsession with preventing universities from charging services fees for students, although his specialty is international affairs, so I suspect the policy aspects of his speech will be mainly about that.

The speechfest starts from 5pm and will be broadcast on the Parliamentary News Network. If you can't get the broadcast, you can see the Senate proceedings on the web – go to http://www.aph.gov.au/live/webcast3.asp (assuming your modem connection is good enough). There's six more First Speeches to come tomorrow and Thursday, including the other new National Party Senator, Fiona Nash, who has a lower profile than Barnaby but seems to also be capable of independent thought.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Tuesday, August 16, 2005 Permalink
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Thursday, August 11, 2005
 
First Senate sitting week ends
After all the anticipation and build-up to the first sittings of the new Senate, most of the media focus has been on what's been happening amongst the government members, rather than proceedings in the Senate chamber.

It was fittingly symbolic that the first two pieces of legislation the Government chose to use its numbers to pass were Bills that gave huge tax cuts to the highest income earners – the Budget income tax cuts, and the abolition of the high income earners superannuation surcharge.

My motion to disallow the Regulations that have removed thousands of Australia's islands from our migration zone has still not been voted on. I got to start the debate late on Wednesday and got a bit further today, but due to other things intervening, it still won't come to a vote until Tuesday. (A bit of trivia - it is easier for the Senate to stop a Government Bill, which only needs a tied vote of 38-38 to negative the Government's motion to pass it, than it is to stop a new Government Regulation, which needs a clear majority of 39 votes, as the motion to disallow it would also be negatived with a tied vote). Either way, I don't hold out much hope of any Coalition members crossing the floor to vote with me on this one – no matter how appalling the principle and precedent is.

No significant signs of press gallery interest in the three First Speeches today – I'm sure they're all waiting for Barnaby Joyce's next week. Barnaby seems to have instantly become one of those people recognisable with just his first name – it makes me sometimes wish my parents had given me a distinctive name like Thelonious (not very often though). Still, the inherent risk in being built up so high is the greater likelihood of failing the elevated expectations and being torn down again. After all the theatre, eventually a crunch time has to come.

It seems likely the crunch time on the VSU legislation will not be next week. Next week's draft program has this Bill listed, but at the very bottom, which means it will not be reached unless the Government changes the order. One of the aspects of the new Senate which we will need to adjust to is that there will now be no way of stopping the Government from jumping a Bill up to the top of the list without warning – and in worst case scenario then using their numbers to guillotine debate.

In interesting news outside the Senate, it was pleasing to see the Queensland Government announce it was banning duck and quail hunting. I got a motion passed by the Senate in 1998 calling on all states to do this and there's still a few such as Victoria and Tasmania to go. However, this move is a tribute to the hard work of many activists in Queensland, as well as the Qld Environment Minister Desley Boyle and the Labor Member for Indooroopilly, Ronan Lee, who has worked within his party pushing this issue.

I noticed the Daily Telegraph once again had a shot at this blog (and blogging in general). This was by the same journo who labelled the parliamentary delegation to Indonesia I went on as a "jaunt" and a "waste of money" before we'd even left the country.

Finally, Brendan Nelson reportedly made a statement that is simultaneously laughable and highly worrying. Our national Education Minister apparently believes it is fine for students to be taught the theory of “intelligent design” in schools, although only if it is balanced by the instruction of established science. Perhaps he also is happy for the flat earth theory to be taught, as long as it is 'balanced' by the established scientific view that the earth is round.

I was told the other day that in response to the Kansas School Board's decision to teach Intelligent Design alongside Evolution in their classrooms, one man pointed out that Intelligent Design needn't necessarily have been drawn up by the God of Abraham. He argued in a letter to the school board that Intelligent Design by his deity - the Flying Spaghetti Monster - should also be taught in Kansas schools. His argument is hard to refute. There is certainly no evidence that can conclusively disprove his belief that evolutionary processes were put in place by His Noodly Appendage, so as long as it is balanced by alternative views, I guess it's OK with Brendan Nelson. Flying Spaghetti Monsterism has since made it into the Wikipedia.

(some good discussion on this topic over at Larvatus Prodeo)

PS I almost forgot – National Party Senate Whip, Julian McGauran, caused some consternation today when he gave a one fingered gesture to those of us gathered on the other side of the Senate chamber after the Government won a vote on a matter. I'd have to say I've seen things like this before in the chamber from others and certainly heard things I felt to be far worse, but this caused offence to some people. However, for some reason the Senate President chose to rule that the gesture was "unseemly", but "not obscene". Without getting too technical, if a Senator is ruled by the President to be guilty of disorderly conduct, he is required under Standing Orders to "attend in his place" and make an apology. Because it was only deemed "unseemly" this wasn't required. After various expressions of outrage over more than 30 minutes, Senator McGauran did make an apology of sorts, but I'd have to say it was a pretty lame one. Different people get offended by different things, but I think if someone has been offended by an action, it is appropriate to clearly apologise for causing offence.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Thursday, August 11, 2005 Permalink
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