Mal Brough is a Joke

And not just to me, either. According to Chris Graham in today's Crikey, Brough has turned 'developer'. Remember those Aboriginal land rights that Brough assured us needed to be abolished to somehow 'save the children'? The rationale for these had little to do with child protection. Rather, according to Brough -

The idea is to make a profit in joint-venture partnerships.
This from a man who, when in charge of Indigenous Affairs at a Federal level, underspent the budget by about one-fifth, that is, $600 million.

In spite of all of this, Graham is correct to point out that our toothless media refused to criticise Brough's 'intervention', despite the fact it rested on little more than tough-talking rhetoric, and a shrill appeal to 'think of the children'. As Graham points out:

It all makes for a great spectacle. But the problem is Aboriginal Australia doesn't need another showman, it needs solutions. Brough doesn't have any now, and he didn't have any in office.
I said much the same thing about the media at the time:

A long-standing, genuinely tragic, but opportunely 'urgent' situation has to entail that all disagreement to the Government's proposal must be shouted down. One of the most authoritarian and hastily-conceived interventions in Australian history is to be imposed upon our most vulnerable people, without a whimper.

Noel Pearson was the most prominent 'bipartisan' (snigger) supporter of the NT intervention. He too has revealed himself completely politically inept, if not equally useless as a 'community leader'. In the May edition of The Monthly, Pearson attributes Obama's popularity in the US to little more than 'white guilt', a familiar trope with which he tried to chastise the left in Australia. Not only is this offensively patronising, it ignores that fact that the majority of whites in Australia undoubtedly feel no such 'guilt'. Australia's arid centre is far from the urban sprawl of the coasts, and on the basis of all available evidence, few citizens in the latter region know of care of the plight of desert-dwelling Aboriginals. Some know, however, that it is not Aboriginals who are the main source of child protection concerns (though they are over-represented), or the much-vilified Muslims or Sudanese. Rather, most child abuse in Australia, at least as far as official statistics report, relates to dirt-poor children of Anglo-Australian origins.

And what did Aboriginals think of the intervention? If the 2007 Federal election is any guide, they didn't think much. Several remote areas recorded 2PP results in favour of the ALP that were well into the 90% range.

Hopefully we can finally put to rest the destructive myth that these clowns, architects of an intervention in which genuinely informed opinion was eschewed in favour of media sensationalism, ever had anything other than their own wheelbarrows at heart.

The Splinter in his Brother's Eye...

It didn't escape my attention that on the eve of this year's election, Noel Pearson launched a scathing attack on Kevin Rudd, branding him a 'heartless snake'. This attack was prompted by an apparent wavering by Rudd on the issue of holding a referendum that would mention Aborigines in the Constitutional preamble.

At one level, Pearson is absolutely correct in questioning the professed good intentions of Rudd and the ALP. Any sane person would have to question the will of both major parties on Aboriginal issues, given that none has any particular stomach for a protracted fight on behalf of the Aboriginal people (mid-2007 military stunts by Howard notwithstanding). I don't expect that Rudd would be any different.

In fact, surely apart from Pauline Hanson and a few relics in the Nationals Party, there would be nobody in Australian politics with more contempt for the Aboriginal people, than John Howard.

So they question remains: why this shrill and meaningless attack on the ALP on the night before an election? Could it be a mere coincidence that this attack occurred precisely when the Libs were mired in race-baiting issues of their own?

I have had previous occasion to question Pearson's judgement, and the legitimacy of his claims of 'bipartisanship'. Surely this latest attack, however, is no lapse in judgement. Pearson is courted by the News Ltd Press, and he in turn feeds this press, (almost universally well-disposed to the Liberal Party), with soundbites and 'bipartisan' pieces that praise the Tory's cack-handed 'interventions', and repeat right-wing think tank cliches about 'elites'.

In short, I think Pearson is talking a lot of shit, and it's about time he was called on it. He seems increasingly like just another culture warrior, cashing in on his PC credentials. Little wonder, then, that that other 'bipartisan' News Ltd hack, Paul Kelly, makes a point of editorialising his stuff.

The Politics of 'Legacy'

It seems that even Melbourne's Herald Sun may be beginning to turn against the Liberals. In today's opinion section, Bernard Salt has a go at Howard for his alleged bias toward Sydney (as opposed to Melbourne). Whilst not groundbreaking stuff, such complaints are somewhat symbolic, given that Howard's rival, Costello, holds a 'blue-ribbon' Liberal seat in Melbourne. Ian McPhedran also criticises the Government's handling of Doctor Haneef.

The Herald Sun is not the most conservative of the Murdoch tabloids, and, to be sure, a couple of anti-Government articles do not count for much in the bigger scheme of things. Nonetheless, the context of these articles paints a different picture, when we consider that the polls once again point to a significant Labor victory, and even the bookmakers are concurring.

Once again, the question of the Liberals' leadership emerges. We might speculate that the polls would be more favourable for the Government had the leadership changed some time ago, but any change now, by an incumbent Government just months from an election, would be tantamount to conceding defeat.

People will no doubt engage in a few 'psychologisms', and aver that Howard has merely clung onto power for the sake of his own 'legacy'. As influenced by psychoanalysis as I am, I think we ought to resist any analysis of current events that boils things down to matters of individual psychology, and instead, rigorously pursue a political interpretation. In any case, as I have said elsewhere, Howard's Liberal Party colleagues give a much better assessment of his 'character' than I ever could.

So what is the political 'legacy' of Howard, as opposed to the speculative psychodrama? This is an enormous question, so I will just touch on a few points.

Howard rose to power in 1996. Whilst Culture War revisionists like to paint his predecessor, Keating, as some kind of arch-leftist, this was not the case. Keating was one of the most conservative Federal Labor leaders that the country had seen, though was portrayed by the media as indulging a range of 'minority groups', such as Asians, Aboriginals, artists, and environmentalists. It is no coincidence that the period of his demise saw the rise of Pauline Hanson's ironically-titled 'One Nation' party, built on a platform of Asian immigration, and also saw a relatively 'moderate' Liberal party move increasingly toward the politics of dog-whistling, and race-baiting. These latter phenomena are part of Howard's legacy as much as anything else, and are now incorporated into the standard political vocabulary of both major parties.

Howard is no 'statesman', even in comparison to Australia's previous Prime Ministers, on both sides of politics. He has ushered in the era whereby oratory is little more than a jingoistic soundbite, though, in fairness, he has been assisted in his cause by a compliant media. To return to what Slavoj Žižek said about Bill Gates (in The Ticklish Subject), Howard attempts to be seen as neither a 'patriarchal Father-Master', nor a 'corporate Big Brother', but rather, as a kind of 'little brother', a clumsy, bespectacled, tinpot 'patriot', whose ideological agenda is belied by his supposed 'ordinariness', and apparent opportunism.

Much is made of Howard's 'economic credentials', though the recent biography of Howard seems to further undermine this piece of mythology, given Howard's poor record as Treasurer. The best that can be said of Howard's fiscal abilities is that he has 'managed' the economy well, particularly for those who were already wealthy from the beginning. At the same time, a significant underclass of the chronically poor has been firmly sedimented in both rural and metropolitan regions during the Howard years, and the Government has shown no indication that it intends to change this state of affairs (other than by punishing 'bad' parents). Housing prices are, of course, a disaster, particularly for young people hoping to buy their first home, and interest rates are high by the standards of the rest of the developed world. At least investors would appear to benefit.

Then there is the Orwellian state of perpetual war to which Howard has enlisted Australia, a country little more than a US colony in economic and military matters. Howard, supposedly 'in touch' with the battlers, completely ignored the many thousands of ordinary Australians, from churchgoers, to unionists, who protested the so-called 'War on Terror'. I don't recall quite the same numbers of Australians protesting for the war.

In matters of foreign policy, Australia tends to take America's lead. Domestically, Howard encourages all immigrants to 'assimilate' to his version of white, middle-class, conservative Australia, and appeared to have a sanguine view of both the Cronulla riots, and Alan Jones' role in agitating for them. For this reason, Australia has been seen as racism in Europe and Asia for the past few years. Our Government is quick to condemn regimes run by friendless tyrants, such as Mugabe, but falls silent on human rights abusers whose allies carry a bit of international clout.

Political discourse has been reduced to the lowest common denominator. Whilst dissent is tolerated by the regime, it is quickly isolated by the acquiescent media, and repackaged as 'hatred', or some other pathology. A sane person cannot, apparently, be critical of the Government. When, for instance, Howard cobbles together a hastily-conceived 'intervention' into Aboriginal communities, anybody who forwards an alternative proposal is quickly denounced as an endorser of child abuse. The laughable standard of 'debate' in the mainstream media is echoed in Parliament, where 'Mr Speaker' ensures that Opposition questions go routinely unanswered, and Liberal abuse passes for political comment.

Surprisingly, for a 'conservative' Government, Howard has overseen significant growth in the Federal public sector. Part of his legacy has been to ensure that this sector is also heavily-politicised, from the cowboys running DIMIA, to stacking the ABC board full of hard-right cultural warriors. Perhaps public sector growth is necessary, as it is inversely proportional to political responsibility. Public servants make for suitable, and relatively anonymous 'fall guys' when faced with scandals such as AWB, or children overboard, none of which our Government considers as part of its jurisdiction.

Howard has nominally moved toward some recognition of 'climate change', but then, even that exemplar of the 'loony left', Rupert Murdoch, has publicly acknowledged that this issue is important. At this point, the climate change denialists should be pleased that Howard's commitment to this issue remains strictly rhetorical.

The Culture Wars and History Wars have continued throughout Howard's reign, despite the fact that the 'conservatives' are given air-time for increasingly vacuous and intellectually bankrupt views. Moderate commentators and academics such as Robert Manne are denounced for being left-wing extremist 'elites' - apparently, social class is now conceived along educational lines. Part of these 'wars' has seen a refusal to acknowledge one iota of Aboriginal suffering, and, when travelling abroad, it is not difficult to find foreigners who no more about the plight of Aboriginals than does the average Australian. Howard despises 'symbolic' gestures, such as an apology would be. An elementary grasp of any trauma theory would inform us that symbols are intrinsic to the 'working through' of any trauma, though symbols do not, of course, reverse trauma. It is for this reason that Vietnam Vets, suffering from their war-time experiences, campaigned vigourously for a 'symbolic' recognition of their status as 'traumatised', eventually succeeding in having PTSD made into an 'official' medical/psychiatric diagnosis. For Australia's Aborigines, it is not even worth considering additional services or resources - even as regards mere 'symbolic gestures', for Howard, such people, (and their subjectivity) are beneath recognition. New 'conservatism' is 'big-government' and authoritarian, and, naturally, being conservative means never having to say you're sorry.

Howard's IR laws are probably not worth mentioning, given the ink that has already been spilt on them. Among other things, these laws are intended as a bit of union-busting, partly as a result of Howard's ideological leanings, and partly because the unions constitute Labor's support base. The 'user pays' mentality has crept into a range of other areas, such as VSU, Telstra, and the increasing privatisation of the health and education sectors. Australia's great tradition of socialised public services, many of which were world class, appears to be drawing to a close. Perhaps we can look forward to the privatisation of roads and the like.

Howard quietly managed to change electoral laws, so that voting is now more difficult for the young, the transient, and the imprisoned. This will not be of concern to Liberals, given that these demographics probably would not vote Tory in any case.

Civil liberties have been eroded under Howard. The anti-terror legislation sits dubiously in relation to presuppositions of 'innocence until guilt is proven'. The re-introduction of sedition laws are of particular concern, given that such laws have been used (historically) to criminalise peaceful and democratic dissent. It seems to be a case of 'One more sacrifice, Australians, and we shall "win" this war on terror'.

Howard has cultivated the myth of his 'battlers'. Fortunately, for Melbourne, at least, this remains only a myth, as most of the working class reside in safe Labor seats. I cannot speak for the rest of Australia at the present time, but it is obvious that, if a working class person votes Liberal, they are not only being bent over a barrel, they are providing Howard with the lubricant. The backlash against IR laws may yet shatter this myth, as it is not only the 'elites' who are nauseated by Howard's relentless propaganda, with happy, AWA'd workers invading our television screens. In this era of the decline of Marx, 'Workchoices' should at least serve to drive home a few naked truths about capitalism, namely, that workers are merely commodities, cogs in a machine, means to (somebody else's) ends.

The only principled and courageous policy direction that Howard has taken is his stance on gun control. This is the only instance of him being prepared to finally challenge the whims of a minority, for the benefit of society as a whole. To be sure, underworld figures still have guns, but, more importantly, guns are more difficult to obtain for lone psychopaths (such as Martin Bryant, or Julian Knight), and feature less prominently in 'domestics'.

Many of the issues above are beyond any simplistic left-right distinction. Many Australians, of all political stripes, are concerned with such topics. That such ideology, of limited appeal, should have been relentlessly pushed by Howard only serves as a testament to how unrepresentative our 'representatives' in the political class have been.

Clearly, Howard has left a 'legacy' for all to see. Most likely, his decision to remain as leader was not prompted by history's memory of his deeds, but rather, was a cold political decision, based on raw numbers in Caucus, as well as in polls. Howard has won several elections (albeit, very narrowly, in 1998 and 2001), and there is no reason to believe that he will be replaced prior to the next election.

Whatever happens at the election, Howard will be gone in the near future. As we have seen, the Australia that he leaves behind is diminished in virtually every respect, other than in its preponderance of imported plasma televisions.

Nausea, ad nauseum

I probably shouldn't bother with digging up NewsCorpse material: there are a number of blogs in my sidebar who do quite a good job of debunking the latest nonsense emanating from Murdoch's stable.

But who could resist today's offerings, where pro-Howard leftist bashing is in full swing:

Thinking man's chickenhawk, Greg Sheridan, opines about the 'defence of our realm', and takes a swipe at Rudd's plan for staged withdrawal of troops in Iraq, should Labor win Government at the election:

This all speaks well of Rudd's essential centrism and conservatism in
security policy, but it demolishes his argument about the increased terrorist
threat to Australia. Can you just imagine Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri
in their cave at al-Qa'ida central, just inside or just outside Afghanistan,
saying to each other: well, we did have those infidel kangaroos high on our
terror target list when they were in Iraq but now that they're only fighting us
in Afghanistan, where we are, and supporting our enemies throughout the Persian
Gulf, we'll give them a free pass and not send any more terrorists after them.

Sheridan doesn't really address the question of what the hell Australian troops are doing in the Middle East in the first place, fighting dubious (I'm being extremely charitable) wars on behalf of the US and Britain.

Next, we have Noel Pearson, about whom I had occasion to touch on recently. Pearson still wants bipartisan support for Howard's unilateral intervention into Central Australian communities. He concludes:

The principal psychological problem of indigenous leaders is they are
bitter about the Howard Government and its history over the past decade. Our
progressive non-indigenous supporters can afford to devote all of their energies
to willing the New Jerusalem - after all, even a conservative government looks
after them, notwithstanding their contempt - but our people cannot afford this
indulgence.

For a bipartisan guy, he seems to spend a lot of time kicking one side of politics, whilst issuing apologias for the other. I guess that, by now, the 'progressive non-indigenous supporters', and, basically, all Aboriginals who disagree with the Pearson-Howard authoritarian approach should have realised that their reasoned critiques and alternative proposals are tantamount to a mystical enterprise - 'willing the New Jerusalem'. And after all, who can seriously question Howard's exemplary tack record on helping Aboriginals, notwithstanding his contempt.

After Noel, we get Christopher, the more repulsive of the Pearsons, pontificating about how wonderfully the Church has dealt with modernity, 'unlike fundamentalist Islam'. It's possibly easier to deal with post-modernity when Western powers aren't bombing the shit out of you, but Pearson does not include this in his theological musings. One paragraph in particular caught my eye:

Both Benedict and his predecessor, John Paul II, have been formidable
philosophers. They shared the view that the trajectory of modernity, considered
as a project, was along the nihilist lines laid out by Nietzsche in Beyond Good
and Evil. In the communist bloc it culminated in the gulag. In the capitalist
world they see people commodified as units of production and consumers in a
largely amoral, global marketplace.

I don't care to speculate on the philosophical abilities of Popes past and present. Nonetheless, Pearson obviously hasn't actually read the Nietzsche book he cites, or he might have noted that Nietzsche explicitly rails against 'nihilism' (or at least, a particular version of it), and could be expected to have virulently opposed both communism and consumerism. The irony of the likes of Pearson eulogising the world, whose innocence has been lost at the market-place should not be lost on anyone, excluding loyal readers of The Australian. It is appropriate that he concludes his jeremiad with a parting shot at the 'moralising' of Robert Manne, again caught out suggesting that Aboriginals might have suffered injustice in Australia's past.

Economics editor, Alan Wood, kindly assures us that, contrary to all of the evidence that adult Australians would encounter on a daily basis, there actually isn't a housing crisis. Sure, housing is frightfully expensive, but, Wood tells us, that's why the Howard Government has cut back on income tax. Moreover, he avers, the real 'wealth distribution' answer to any housing 'crisis' that may exist is to get grandparents and parents to fund homes for their less wealthy offspring. A perfect solution, one feels, as long as one has wealthy parents.

Not content to leave it there, today's Pravda also features a column by ABC board member, and the Hungarian answer to Piers Akerman, Imre Salusinszky. But, small mercies, he is merely extolling the virtues of Dickens, rather than righteously crusading against the madness of the left.

It is ironic that possibly the most intelligent article among this gaggle comes from Melbourne's tabloid, the Herald Sun. It's more propaganda from Hitchens, of course, but he at least is one member of the Politburo who appears to be trying.

No wonder 'the West' is losing every struggle, what with that 'liberal' (or Liberal) media.

News in Brief: Stopped Clock Right

Erstwhile tosser and friend of imbecility, Michael Duffy from the Sydney Morning Herald, gave his $0.02 on the topic of Australia's 'crisis' in relation to Aboriginal child protection. This is a topic I discussed last week, stating my views here, and providing rebuttal to the claims of a moron here.

It seems that I am not the only one to have made a connection between the 'interventions' of Iraq and Central Australia. Duffy's article asks us to -

Consider this in conjunction with the regrettable absence of any new
foreign wars or upsets in this election year, and you can see why Coalition HQ
selected the Territory as this year's failed state requiring intervention. The
Government gets another khaki election without having to leave home.
If this
view is true, does it matter? I think it does, because while there is a national
emergency, this solution is woefully inadequate and might fail. I think
conservative and liberal theory tell us this. So it's curious that no one on the
intellectual right has stepped forward to say so, or even to reflect on the
obvious similarities between what's happening now and the invasion of
Iraq.

There's an 'intellectual' right now? (Cue accusations of latte-related 'elitism').

Duffy concludes:

The problem with much that has been said on this issue in the past week is that
the definition of the problem has been so entangled in Howard's solution that
the latter has dominated discussion. For 11 years this Government largely
ignored the horrific plight of so many Aboriginal Australians. (It says it's
acting now because of a recent report on child sex abuse. Many reports have said
the same things over the past decade.)
The Government's welcome realisation
that the situation constitutes a national emergency is therefore a dramatic
jump, one that could have led to serious national debate while the Government
worked on a wide-ranging solution. But the announcement of this crisis came in
the same breath as the proposed neo-military solution, leaving no space for such
discussion and focusing most attention on law and order.
I hope that in five
years these comments will appear misjudged, and that the Government will come up with a comprehensive plan and the billions of dollars needed to fund it. But at
the moment, it appears the right has learnt little from its conceptual and
military failures in Iraq.

Michael Duffy, former Government shill, has clearly joined the ranks of those 'willing failure', in Australia and abroad. Apparent appeaser of terrorism, and apologist for child abuse, may he repent by clapping his hands for Howard a little bit louder, that he may be able to 'will' success. Not that 'success' for the Government means 'success' for anybody else.

Maybe if one member of the right can discuss the issue non-hysterically, perhaps others can too. Nonetheless, I won't be holding my breath.

As expected

Not too long after putting out this post on the Howard/Pearson plan for Aboriginals, one of the biggest fans of the Liberal Party and the News Ltd media (a self-styled conservative crusader calling himself Iain Hall) has decided to 'fisk' me. I won't waste too much space on this, but I might do a little 'bolting' in return. He says:

I have made the claim, which he hotly denies, that he is one of those
leftists that is willing the governments efforts to fail.

Unless you are a mind-reader, such claims are meaningless, the more so since no 'leftists' have indicated that they want the plan to 'fail'. The above comment is a pretty good illustration of those poor souls who conflate legitimate criticism of the plan with a heartless endorsement of child abuse.

My critic says that he agrees with the first couple of paragraphs of the offending post, and only begins to take issue with my characterisation of Howard's/News Ltd's arguments:

You see this is where Hap starts to be hobbled by his own ideology for a
fair and honest commentator would not pin their colours to the mast in such a
blatant way by describing the prime minister as cynical and acting from
political self interest. yet by doing so Hap very neatly demonstrates exactly
what he is trying to disprove in his post.

I was careful not to impute motives to either Howard or Pearson, as I am not a mind-reader either. Clearly, however, supporters of this plan have openly accused its critics of 'blind hatred' of Howard. Given that this sort of thing has no basis in evidence, I think we can fairly dismiss it.

I saw Mal Brough on SBS news last night where he very neatly laid this
Furphy to rest , He made that the point that during his tenure as minister he
has consulted very widely with grass roots people in the communities and that
the action that has been instigated by the government is just the sort of thing
that many of the people have been calling for.

If Brough has 'consulted very widely', why are large numbers of community leaders saying that consultation has been lacking? My previous post linked to evidence of this lack - Hall does not think it necessary to provide any evidence for is statements here. Elsewhere, I made reference to the appalling conditions of child protection services around the country, to which Hall responded:

No one disputes that hitherto the responsibility for child safety has lay
with the stats and the territory government. So if any blame is to be laid at
the feet of government for inaction it is not the fedral government who have to
carry this sorry burden of shame it is the state pollies who should be the
subject of Haps disdain, but hang on are not all of the state governments held
by the Labor party?

Nobody is denying that state governments have been asleep at their post on some of these issues. This does not, however, refute the fact that the NT government asked for Federal assistance a year ago, and was ignored. Unlike the states, the territories may arguably have some claim to be of Federal interest, particularly if they explicitly request assistance.

My post was particularly concerned with how dissent to the plan is being portrayed as a heinous crime, despite good reasons for such dissent, and despite the fact that the dissent has little practical effect in any case. Hall replies:

Is this is a bad thing? There comes a point when action is required and
that time is now.

But this, as any reader can see, is merely a reiteration of the argument that I initially forwarded. Unthinking, uncritical action is needed, and therefore dissent must be shouted down.

Iain also takes issue with my raising the point of land rights, and their proposed removal:

Some one who did not know the details would think that every square inch of
land under native title was going to be resumed by the government. This is
clearly not the case at all. Some suspension of native title over limited areas
of various communities has been deemed necessary so that particular legal issues
will not impede the rebuilding efforts.

Iain doesn't bother to show how they are 'necessary', just that they are. I guess it's case closed, then. It's notable that such measures aren't necessary anywhere else in combating child abuse.

Hap is one of those who are going into battle with the sound of rattling
speculums in his polemic on this issue when the government has repeatedly said
that such medical checks will be done with care, respect, and sensitivity.

'Rattling speculums'? I guess if the government says the medical checks will be done carefully, we should be satisfied with this. No need for a non-government viewpoint here. Iain also avers that 'rabid leftists are saying that children will be taken away.' Again, he does not provide a source for this, and it's not a view that has been well-represented in the mainstream media.

I am sure that the recommendations of the “little children are sacred ”
will be part of the solution but the first, and by any measure the most dramatic
part, of what will be a long process will be the stabilization of the situation
and the re-establishment of law and order.

Actually, as Kieran of The Dead Roo clearly demonstrated, the Government's plan is a rather strange interpretation of the report's recommendations, with no suggestion that this interpretation will be modified at any time. But Iain doesn't stop there:

You see the problem for Hap is that Noel Pearson is right on the money
here. for as much as Hap claims to want to see some real improvement in the lot
of indigenous children the reality is that in his heart of hearts he wants
failure more so that the government that he hates will be forced from
office.

Actually, 'failure' will take several years to fully register with the public, and the present Government are unlikely to be in power for that long. In the meantime, a unique opportunity to take meaningful action, with all of the energy, emotion and resources that this implies, will have been lost, perhaps permanently.

Where was Hap on this issue twelve months ago? Dare I suggest NO where to
be seen?

Not having a blog at that time, Iain correctly asserts that I was not to be seen. Iain continues his rant for several paragraphs, but it seems to me that we can stop here. Nowhere does he provide any evidence for any of his claims about the proposal. Without a hint of irony, he dismisses criticism of Howard's plan as being motivated by a 'conspiracy theory', so that 'leftists' can maintain control of their 'fiefdoms'!

Perhaps the whole thing is a satire, because such responses clearly belong in comedy, not public debate. In any case, Iain illustrates my points nicely - the die-hard ideologues don't want 'debate', instead preferring to smear opponents with claims that they are complicit in child abuse. It is ironic that those calling loudest for 'bipartisanship', and who say these issues are 'beyond politics', are those who illustrate the opposite through their actions. It all reinforces the notion that this proposal is merely a point-scoring exercise for politicians and cultural warriors.

Friends, Australians, Countrymen...

Lend me your ears!

We have come to bury child abuse, not to praise it.

The evil that policies do lives after them

The good is oft' interred with...





As every Australian will be aware, the Federal Government, primarily Prime Minister John Howard, and Indigenous Affairs Minister, Mal Brough, with the endorsement of Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson, have declared a 'national emergency'. The emergency relates to Aboriginals who dwell in Australia's mythic heartland, the red outback of Central Australia. Veritable 'rivers of grog' have left communities awash in a sea of child sexual abuse, brutal family violence, and rampant sexual abuse. Vital services that might have stemmed the flow of this tide have been chronically under-resourced. Plan after plan, committee after think-tank, has been implemented, without success. The time for talk, or indeed, for thought, is over. Now is the time for action.



At least, this is the message that we have been given by our Government, and by Pearson, repeatedly over the past week. This message has been repeated by many of those who provide opinions in Australia's media. Indeed, the central contention at issue here is not disputed - people of all political stripes believe that there is a problem, that this problem is devastatingly serious, and that something must be done.



Where agreement ends, however, is in the detail. Sceptics point to Howard's history, and paint a picture of a cynical man, who seeks to generate good publicity during an election year, in the midst of disastrous polls. These sceptics are derided as pathological ‘haters’ of Howard, too blinded by ideological enmity to see the benefits of his plan.

Critics point to the lack of consultation with Aboriginal communities. In response, they are told, that consultation has been tried and failed. Such 'niceties' must give way to direct intervention where an emergency is concerned. The gravity of the current crisis is such that a state of exception is in order, whereby the usual processes of debate must be suspended.

Never mind the fact that, of course, this emergency relates to a state of affairs that was near-identical last year, and the year before. Federal and Territory governments were perfectly well aware of this, and did not declare any state of emergency. The NT Government actually approached its Federal counterparts for assistance last year, and were ignored.

Never mind that community consultation has empirical support to suggest its usefulness in the development of these sorts of interventions.

Never mind that land rights will be swept aside, to make way for leases for the communities concerned, only a fortnight after the Federal Government sought to purchase the relevant land.

Never mind that child protection services, ordinarily a State Government jurisdiction, are overburdened to the point of shambles in relatively wealthy, and well-resourced parts of the country (a topic to which I shall return in another post).

Never mind that no amount of 'Leftist' or Aboriginal dissent will influence Government policy one iota, and is therefore completely harmless to Howard's plan.

Never mind that intrusive medical checks, and subjugation to dispassionate authority can re-traumatise those children who have already been hurt. (Of this, the Government says it will be 'mindful').

Never mind the fact that communities are scared that this intervention will see the onset of another Stolen Generation. Prevailing wisdom indicates that perpetrators, not victims, ought to be removed, but the past experience of some communities will prove contrary to this wisdom.

Never mind that the report that sparked this 'emergency' has been ignored, in terms of the detail of its recommendations.

These facts are irrelevant, according to several articles in today's Australian. Both parties have supported the intervention of police and army, therefore the issue is bipartisan. Furthermore, according to Sheridan, Pearson himself is politically bipartisan, a sincere man seeking only to drive politicians to assist his people. The sceptics should 'ditch politics'; after all, Pearson says so, and Pearson is an honourable man.

The Editorial piece advises us that dissenters to the Howard/Pearson proposal are motivated solely by 'blind hatred' - dissent is, obviously, a pathology. After all, dissent is a will to failure, and 'Those who would rather see children continue to suffer than for the Howard plan to succeed should be ashamed of themselves.'

In the same paper, talk-back radio host and News Ltd. writer Neil Mitchell takes umbrage at rival broadsheet, The Age, for its questioning of the proposals. As he puts it:

Get angry with this. Get angry with the chattering classes like The Age who
turn it into a philosophical discussion. This is about kids. It's about
protecting kids and women. This is about people.

It must be self-evident that matters involving people are beyond both politics, and philosophy, and 'chatter'. That is, beyond anything that might subject the Government's plans to even the slightest scrutiny.

Pearson himself made an appearance on ABC's Lateline a couple of nights ago, explaining his support for the plan. His speech was widely lauded for its passion and integrity. He too indicated that dissent to the proposal was equivalent to 'willing failure':

I think that those who have objections to immediate intervention have to
ask themselves whether they're willing this whole exercise to fail, and geez, if
you're willing the whole exercise to fail, what kind of priorities do you have
in relation to the wellbeing of Indigenous children?

The good-willed dissenters apparently also are responsible for current problems in Iraq. Pearson says so, and Pearson is an honourable man:

You know, I hear people bleat uphill and down about self-determination and
in my view self-determination is about people taking responsibility for
themselves, for their own families and for their communities and, you know, it's
an absolutely shameful hour that has descended on us, absolutely shameful hour
where even an emergency intervention to protect the safety of our children is
hindered, is hindered by people who supposedly have good will for Aboriginal
people and in fact, those people are willing, they are willing the protection
and succour to Aboriginal children to fail in the same way and as vehemently as
they will failure in Iraq.

This latter comment is of particular significance, given that it has been noted by the usual pro-Howard shills, in order to further condemn idle discussion. Any hesitation in implementing Howard's proposal is interpreted as yet more evidence of moral depravity from those who dissent. These people are not normally concerned for the welfare of Aboriginals, but priorities change when there are political points to be scored.

Pearson's reference to Iraq is a telling one. Prior to war in 2003, we saw the emergence of emergency, a state of crisis to which the only response was to suspend critical faculties, and proceed to direct action, for the greater good. A state of exception was declared, thus legitimising the extraordinary occurrence of a 'pre-emptive' 'shock and awe' campaign. Yes, thousands protested in the streets, and on the Internet; but then, as now, it made little difference. To disagree with the war was to will a failure of treasonous proportions. In any case, it is fortunate for these unpatriotic dissenters that Bush declared the mission accomplished in 2003, thus rendering failure impossible. The bloodshed that is occurring on a massive scale is apparently a measure of success for war-supporters.

We have an analogous situation here. A long-standing, genuinely tragic, but opportunely 'urgent' situation has to entail that all disagreement to the Government's proposal must be shouted down. One of the most authoritarian and hastily-conceived interventions in Australian history is to be imposed upon our most vulnerable people, without a whimper.

Thus years of inaction, and criminal neglect by Federal, State and Territorial governments gives way to a suspension of all thought. Forget about 'land rights', Pearson tells us, and Pearson, after all, is an honourable man.

Yet just yesterday, the same Federal Government ended its funding for an Aboriginal Employment program in WA.

An author of the Little Children are Sacred report doubts that the Government has got it right.

In a circulating letter, an Aboriginal activist pleads for the Government to reconsider its implementation of the plan.

Aboriginal community leaders have penned an open letter, asking for urgent consultation before the Government's solution is imposed on them.

The ACT's Human Rights Commissioner has condemned the discriminatory singling-out of Aboriginal families for special treatment at the hands of interveners.

Of course, in a time of national emergency, silence is needed. The kind of silence that has been shown by the Labor party, and that Howard himself found 'puzzling'. A silence is needed that will stifle any alternative proposals, any consultation, any questioning. After all, as Neil Mitchell and Noel Pearson say, this is not a philosophical discussion. And Noel Pearson, at least, is an honourable man.

Perhaps they are all honourable men. We can see who is condemning whom, in fits of moral righteousness. The well-meaning dissenters, the thinkers, the other Aboriginal leaders, and those who prattle on about 'rights', are finally getting their come-uppance. Major flaws notwithstanding, to disagree with the plan is to endorse child abuse! Silence is all that is required, and the plan will continue, if need be, irrespective of it.

I make no claims about Noel Pearson's 'integrity', or sincerity. I do not doubt for an instant that he is no Howard stooge. Yes, he is an honourable man. Yes, he is right - urgent action is desperately needed. Nonetheless, if, in his enthusiasm for change, he has 'backed the wrong horse' as they say, and availed his honour to the promotion of a rightfully distrusted Government, he shall be a Brutus to his people.