Senator Andrew Bartlett
Monday, November 14, 2005
 
The time has come ...
I mentioned a few months ago that I'd be moving this blog to a new site. I decided to try WordPress, a program which gives a better idea of what readers are commenting on. I'm hoping this will encourage more comments and provide a smoother discussion flow. The new blog also has the added advantage of being hosted at my own website.

Having realised that most people have no idea what I’m talking about when I say 'blog', I've decided on a new title as well, which should give more of a clue to the average reader as to what the site actually is. In the next week or so the postings in the blogger archive from this site will also move across to the new site, with the added advantage of having the postings categorised. This old site will stay up for a while to give everyone a chance to change their bookmarks.

There are bound to be a few glitches as I get used to the new format so please bear with me.

For those of you who have kindly linked to my blog or bookmarked it, the new address is http://www.andrewbartlett.com/blog.

Thanks to those who have seen fit to link to this site and I hope you are happy to do the same with the new site. I will include a link to my own blogroll on the new site in the near future, so I should even be able to reciprocate for some of you.

I should also acknowledge the value that’s been provided by the very user-friendly blogger/blogspot service, as well as Haloscan’s comment service, which gave a simple way to directly communicate my views and activities.

So now, without further ado … ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls …. please, follow me!.



posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Monday, November 14, 2005 Permalink
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Friday, November 11, 2005
 
Remembrance Day
The topics of November 11th are the same as they were last year (and many years prior to that) – the sacrifices of our war veterans, and the dismissal of the Whitlam government. In my own mind, I always add the execution of Ned Kelly and the personal anniversary of my first speech to the Senate in 1997.

To save repetition, I’ll just link to my posts from this time last year – my views are basically the same on all these matters. (for some reason the sites all show zero comments, but each of the posts have some comments from the time)

Remembrance Day :– this has some extra resonance for me following my visit to Gallipoli last month.

The Whitlam Dismissal :- Over at Larvatus Prodeo, they are having a ‘Dismissal Fest’, with heaps of posts from different writers giving their views and reflections (or what Daily Flute, who has a post of his own, calls “Larvatus Prodeo’s bleeding hearts club band”). Mike Steketee from The Australian wrote a good piece a couple of days ago pointing out the fact that a Labor victory at the next election would still very likely leave the Liberals in control of the Senate, recreating the Parliamentary dynamic of 1975 for the first time.

Killing of Ned Kelly :– it is unfortunate that, 125 years later, many countries still carry out executions, as we’ve been debating very recently.

My First Speech :– I recently got tagged for a meme asking me to list my regrets. After having thought about it, I decided I would just be asking for a rubbishing by the mainstream media if I was to honestly answer that one. However, even though I still really like this speech, I do regret starting with such a naff line. There’s also the far bigger regret about not doing more to stop the GST, which I touched on in this post. There’s plenty more of course, but I’ll stop the list there.

Ambit Gambit also has a Nov 11 post today covering the remembrance day and Whitlam issues, which has a couple of worthwhile comments. Some others are on Sam's Study, Bella, Institutional Economics and piss n vinegar.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Friday, November 11, 2005 Permalink
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Thursday, November 10, 2005
 
Light some candles in the darkness
The Senate rises again today. Over the following two weeks, Senate Committees will be required to conduct full inquiries into the workplace relations laws, the terror laws and the welfare laws – not to mention legislation enabling a nuclear waste repository to be set up in the Northern Territory. Then the Senate sits again and the government guillotines through every one of those Bills. My guess is that there will be some small improvements made to the welfare laws and the workplace laws before they are forced through.

In the meantime, plenty of other issues go on. I leave the Senate a little bit early today to fly to Brisbane to speak at this year’s ACOSS congress, which has the theme of re-imagining Australian society – visions and solutions. I will be speaking on the possible impact of the new workplace laws on the community sector.

This evening, I will be attending a "Candles of Hope" gathering for Van Tuong Nguyen, from 6pm-6:40pm in Brisbane’s King George Square. People will be gathering there for a few short speeches, and then marching up to the Tower Park, the site of the last hanging in Qld.

I understand there will be candlelit gatherings in various other locations around Australia this Thursday, as the Singaporean Government executes prisoners on Friday mornings. Unless the campaign to convince the government to grant clemency is successful, Van Tuong Nguyen will be executed on one of these Friday mornings in the next few weeks.

I saw in Crikey the other day some statistics that show the Singapore government to be the biggest per-capita executioner in the world (which is easier to ‘achieve’ if you have a smaller population of course). The stats are:
USA: 300 million people/60 executions per year = 20 per 100 million;
Vietnam: 80 million people/60 executions per year = 75 per 100 million people;
Iran: 70 million people/160 executions per year = 230 per 100 million people;
China: 1.3 billion people - 3,500 executions per year = 270 per 100 million;
Saudi Arabia: 25 million people/80 executions per year = 320 per 100 million;
Singapore: 4 million people/30 executions per year = 750 per 100 million people.

Writing in Crikey, Stephen Mayne, suggested boycotting the Singapore Government's huge commercial interests in Australia. According to him, this includes companies like Optus, hotels (the ANA in Sydney and the Park Hyatt in Melbourne), apartments (Australand), flights (Singapore Airlines), shopping (the Queen Victoria Building in Sydney).Among his other comments, he also said “If state governments really wanted to flex their muscles, they simply need to declare that the execution of Van Tuong Nguyen would see Australand banned from winning any more state government contracts. After all, the Singapore Government is currently building the Commonwealth Games village for the Bracks Government. But don't hold your breath for the commercial media to get behind such a campaign given the huge advertising budget of Optus and the fact that it's not an attractive white female such as Schapelle Corby facing the gallows in Singapore.”

I must admit I did give some thought myself as to whether I should advocate economic boycotts – a thought which occurred to me as I was flying back from Ireland a couple of weeks ago on Singapore Airlines (I don’t know if that airline is owned by the Singapore government or not). The main thing that made me conclude against advocating a full-blown economic boycott was that such a campaign would inevitably be focused on saving the life of an Australian. This is totally understandable, but as I’ve argued before we should be strongly opposing the death penalty for everyone, not just when it involves Australians. Whilst it is right to focus at the moment on saving Van Tuong Nguyen’s life, what we really need to do is have a strong continuing campaign in Australia pushing against the use of the death penalty everywhere, including even more significant trading partners such China and the USA.

Update: This post on Ambit Gambit draws attention to continuing pressure in neighbouring nation, Papua New Guinea, to start carrying out state sanctioned executions.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Thursday, November 10, 2005 Permalink
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Tuesday, November 08, 2005
 
A Day in the Life of the House of “Review”
The Senate started today with a motion by the Government requiring the Senate to sit through until 11pm tonight and for the Tuesdays on the two other sitting weeks left for the year so that the government “can have the time that we need for government business.”

For a government that says it is keen to ensure time for debating government business, it is worth looking at the number of days it is planning to have the Senate sit next year. In the 4 months up until May 9th when the Budget is brought down, out of a total of around 84 work days, it is proposed that the Senate sit for a total of 11 days.

Some relatively uncontroversial higher education legislation was passed. We also had Question Time, which is full of questions but fairly light on in regards to answers. I asked a question of the Environment Minister about the Japanese whaling fleet that had just left on its mission to carry out wholesale slaughter in the Southern Ocean and whether he would use the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea to try to stop it. He gave quite a good description of how “the whales will in many circumstances take up to 15 to 20 minutes to die in what we can only imagine will be an agonising, excruciating, painful death associated with drowning in their own blood.” However, his answer to my question was, in essence, “no”.

I also managed to get an hour debate on what is technically known as a ‘Matter of Public Importance” on the need for the Federal Government to establish a national Royal Commission into the sexual assault of children in Australia. This matter is the subject of a motion at this week’s Australian Local Government Association conference, and I was hoping to help build some wider recognition about the continuing seriousness of this issue. This debate drew some good contributions from Senators from all parties, although there was still more than a hint of the blame-shifting in suggesting that child protection is the day to day responsibility of the states.

The Labor Party also moved to allow the Senate Committee examining the Workplace Relations changes an extra six days to do their job. Even though the Senate does not resume until November 28th, the government had previously forced through a requirement that the Committee finish its report on the legislation by November 22nd. An extra six days could not have delayed debate or a vote on the Bill at all, but would have allowed more time for reading of submissions into the legislation and holding of public hearings. Not only did the government oppose this, rather than outline any justification for it, they simply gagged debate and voted down the brief extension. This sort of contemptuous approach of not even bothering to justify an action and just gagging debate has been standard practice in the House of Representatives for decades, but for the Senate, which has always tried to maintain a recognition of its role as a house of review and a check on the actions of government, it was as grotesque as someone shitting on the carpet.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Tuesday, November 08, 2005 Permalink
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Monday, November 07, 2005
 
Save me from the Daylight
When you live in Queensland, if there’s one thing worse than the annual onset of daylight saving elsewhere in the nation, it’s the annual debate about whether Queensland should have daylight saving.

The general assumption is that people in the south east corner of Queensland like daylight saving, and people in the north or west of the state don’t. However, even though I’ve lived in Brisbane all my life, last time Queensland had a referendum on the topic I voted against. I’m the sort of person that dislikes hot weather and doesn’t particularly like being out in direct sunlight, so the idea of having the heat and accompanying cancer-inducing solar rays last longer into the day has never been one that appeals to me.

For diametrically opposed views from two Brisbane based bloggers, have a look at John Quiggin arguing in favour, and Mark Bahnisch arguing against.

However, I have to say that being one hour behind the southern states can get a bit irritating if you travel interstate a lot. I’ve had a couple of reminders already flying to Canberra for Senate sittings. In recent times, I’ve been trying to travel down first thing on the mornings, rather than the night before, so I can get an extra night at home. Unfortunately, as well as disliking heat and sunlight, I also hate getting out of bed early. When daylight saving starts down south, it means the first flight out from Brisbane leaves an hour earlier – in this case 5.15am.

I guess I should be grateful I live reasonably close to the airport, so I only need to leave home at 4.15am, but it’s still not the best way to start the day – especially when the end destination involves sitting in the Senate and having one’s intelligence insulted by Government Ministers blithely insisting that black equals white, deception equals honesty, obfuscation equals transparency and removing freedoms equals protecting freedoms. For some reason, now that the Government controls the Senate, their Ministers don’t seem to see any need to even pretend to make credible arguments. At least in the past there was some sort of token effort, but now – presumably because it doesn’t matter - they just spout the propaganda line in a very blasé way. This is bad enough at the best of times, but when it follows on from getting out of bed before 4.00am, it’s enough to put anyone in a bad mood.

UPDATE: In a perfect example of how daylight saving dissonance delivers bizarre stories in Queensland, the state Premier Peter Beattie and a Liberal Party MP have complained that daylight saving is to blame for Dan England, Queensland’s competitor on Australian Idol, being voted off the show.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Monday, November 07, 2005 Permalink
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Saturday, November 05, 2005
 
Politically and morally corrupt government
At the risk of further opening myself up to charges of sedition, I should mention the new workplace relations laws which were finally made public last Wednesday, November 2nd. There is a Senate Committee Inquiry into the proposed law, but the full process of allowing public submissions, public hearings and consideration of the law is required to be finished by 22nd November (yes that’s less than three weeks).

If you have any views about the new law, it is a good idea to send a submission in to the Senate Inquiry - if only to show that you wish to have your views heard by the Parliament. Unfortunately, submissions close on on 9th November, so you better be quick. The absurdly short amount of time for the Committee to examine legislation that makes the biggest changes to workplace law in 100 years is a scandal – a corrupt process which befits a government which has already seen fit to steal millions dollars of taxpayers’ money (over 50 million at last count) to pay for advertising propaganda aimed at covering up the real content and impact of this law.

However, if this were not bad enough, one key aspect of the inquiry which seems to have occured without any comment is the severe curtailing of the Inquiry’s ability to examine a whole range of pivotal issues. In the process of forcing the Senate to accept this truncated inquiry, the Government also added the following requirement:

“The inquiry not consider those elements of the bill …… which relate to secret ballots, suspension/termination of a bargaining period; pattern bargaining; cooling off periods; remedies for unprotected industrial action; removal of section 166A of the Workplace Relations Act 1996 (the WR Act); strike pay; reform of unfair dismissal arrangements; right of entry; award simplification; freedom of association; amendments to section 299 of the WR Act; and civil penalties for officers of organisations regarding breaches.”

So not only is there less than three weeks for the Committee to do its full inquiry, but central compentents of the law are supposedly not to be considered by the inquiry, on the spurious grounds that these matters have been looked at before by previous inquiries. (which is true, but they were not looked at in the context of other changes also being made which would (a) completely alter and overturn the whole nature of the law and (b) bring vastly increased numbers of people under its reach).

The intellectually bankruptcy of this notion is so comprehensive it would be hilarious, were the process not so morally and politically corrupt, and the personal consequences for millions of people not so damaging.


posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Saturday, November 05, 2005 Permalink
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Friday, November 04, 2005
 
Displaying my seditious intent - Urging disaffection against the Commonwealth Government
Having recalled the Senate yesterday, at one day’s notice, to pass an ‘urgent’ amendment to the Criminal Code, the Government also finally tabled the formal version of their terror legislation.

The government also finally recognised that a Senate Committee Inquiry of less than five days duration into major legislation impacting on the freedom of every Australian was grossly inadequate, and agreed to my amendment that provided an extra three weeks time for examination. This was a welcome change from when I first moved this amendment two weeks earlier, when I was accused by a government Senator of putting “the public interest at risk for the sake of an extension of the Senate going through its committee procedure”.

Details of the Senate Inquiry can be found here. Submissions are due in by the end of next week. This is still far too short a time frame, but at least some degree of public examination and analysis will now be possible. I’ll wait for that process to occur before commenting in detail on the legislation, but there is one component which I’ll draw attention to, because I want to comment on it while it’s still lawful to do so.

Even though the government is now saying that some time down the track they might review the definition of sedition or the need for such an offence, that hasn’t stopped them from taking this opportunity to add a new definition of “seditious intention” to the Crimes Act – as detailed here:

seditious intention means an intention to effect any of the following purposes:
(a) to bring the Sovereign into hatred or contempt;
(b) to urge disaffection against the following:
(i) the Constitution;
(ii) the Government of the Commonwealth;
(iii) either House of the Parliament;
(c) to urge another person to attempt to procure a change, otherwise than by lawful means, to any matter established by law of the Commonwealth;
(d) to promote feelings of ill-will or hostility between different groups so as to threaten the peace, order and good government of the Commonwealth.
I think these new laws seriously weaken the foundation of democracy, unreasonably curtail freedom of speech and play into the hands of terrorists. Any government that proposes laws such as these should be condemned as being more concerned about their own power then they are about the safety and freedom of the community. I therefore strongly “urge disaffection against the Government of the Commonwealth”.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Friday, November 04, 2005 Permalink
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Wednesday, November 02, 2005
 
Democratic terrorism
Last night I attended a Ramadan Iftar dinner, held in the Great Hall of Parliament House in Canberra. The dinner was hosted by the Australian Intercultural Society as part of bringing people together to mark the Islamic holy month of Ramadan via participating in a traditional "Iftar" breaking of the fast dinner. This was one of a number of similar events aimed at building understanding and links within the Australian community.

It made a sad and unfortunate contrast to wake up the next morning to newspaper coverage of ASIO's newly released annual report. Very conveniently for the government, ASIO has for the first time "publicly warned of the existence of a home-grown terror threat - Australian-born Islamic extremists." Normally when ASIO is asked for details of security matters – even by Senate Committees – they refuse to answer on security grounds. Yet here's the front page of the national Murdoch daily saying "ASIO is believed to hold genuine security concerns about an estimated 700-800 Muslims in Australia who have expressed support for politically motivated violence."

I don't dispute that this may be true. I've received emails and seen public statements over the years by extremist white supremacists, 'fathers-rights' activists, gay-haters and anti-Muslim bigots all of which could be seen as 'expressing support for politically motivated violence'.

This report confirms that the planned anti-terrorism laws are targeted fairly and squarely at Muslims, even though there has yet to be any explanation as to why the existing laws are inadequate. Inciting or planing violence is already an offence under the existing Criminal Code.

I know of some people who are currently hell bent on causing serious damage to Australia's democracy and undermining the fabric of our Constitution. Unfortunately they are very well placed to succeed, as they already have control of the Parliament. Not all attacks on democracy involve violence, but they can still cause enormous damage and can be very hard to repair. Once freedoms are taken away, they are very hard to regain.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Wednesday, November 02, 2005 Permalink
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Tuesday, November 01, 2005
 
Death Penalty
Good to see the major parties voting together in the House of Representatives yesterday calling on the Singapore government not to execute Australian man Van Nguyen.

I wrote a piece - Death to the Death Penalty - earlier this year. Read that if you want to know my views, but in short, opposing the death penalty for Australians whilst being equivocal about it being carried out on others weakens the strength of any call on a foreign government to exercise clemency. I also raised this in the Senate a couple of weeks ago.

As Neil Mitchell wrote in this article, "opposing capital punishment is not optional. You either support it or not."

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Tuesday, November 01, 2005 Permalink
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