Possible Turning Point?

Of all the state ALP governments, Victoria's is the most adept at spin. Given this, and given the huge majority the ALP has in the lower house (notwithstanding a few lost seats in 2006), I figured they'd be a show-in for the 2006 election.

It may not be so simple. This week, we've seen public servants complaining about poor working conditions, the public complaining about poor quality from the public service, and everybody blaming the government.

Today, intensive care paramedics have resigned in the face of years of poor pay, and dangerously unsafe working conditions:

INTENSIVE care paramedics have resigned en masse outside the Premier's office, warning any resulting deaths are on his head.

The state's mobile intensive care ambulance paramedics are in a deadlock with the State Government over pay and have invited John Brumby to join them for a shift to experience life on the streets.

After months of negotiations, the state's 300 MICA paramedics have taken the unprecedented step of leaving hundreds of their resignation letters and shoulder insignias outside the Premier's office in the city this morning.

The resignations will take effect from early September with MICA paramedics returning to normal ambulance duties - unable to perform intensive care services for heart attack or car crash victims on site.

MICA paramedics face a $6000 fine for talking to the media, but one officer said the Brumby government had treated MICA workers with contempt and that its false promises were putting lives at risk. (source)

Curiously, the union are nowhere to be seen in the media on this issue, and the Herald Sun has deferred to the shadow health minister.

This comes in the wake of almost daily storied in relation to the state's child protection crisis:

The Premier today said at-risk children were being forced to wait because the government could not attract and retain staff.

But he denies any child is left uncared for while waiting to be assigned to a permanent child protection worker.

A whistleblower claims 2000 Victorian children alerted to the Department of Human Services (DHS) do not have case workers. (source)

So, it would seem that Brumby, and the government more generally, have been caught out lying by this whistleblower. It has been rare, over the years, to see the Herald Sun directly attack premiers. They've attacked particular ministers, or departments, but have used the kid gloves approach with Kennett, Bracks, and now Brumby. This could mark an interesting turning point in the run up to the 2010 election. The unions need to pull their finger out, as the Brumby government has treated them with contempt in recent times. Secondly, the Greens need to work on some grass-roots campaigning. There are plenty of (mostly) inner-city areas where the Greens could have a serious chance, if they work hard, and there's plenty of disillusionment in Melbourne's suburbs, where the working masses are fed up with labor, but don't necessarily want to get fucked in the ear by the Tories.

Disgrace

The title here doesn't refer to the excellent book (and film) of the same name, but rather, some stupidity from yesterday's Herald Sun:

THE mother of Daniel Valerio has broken 16 years of silence to condemn the State Government for failing to stop systemic child abuse.

Cheryle Butcher was 26 when her youngest son Daniel, 2, was fatally bashed by her de facto husband, Paul Aiton, in one of the most notorious child abuse cases in Australian history.

The case led to the introduction in Victoria of laws requiring police and health and teaching professionals to report suspected child abuse...

Ms Butcher, who said she had had counselling for years, said she blamed herself for Daniel's death.

But she believes she was also failed by an incompetent and poorly resourced child protection authority - a system she said was still failing children today.

"Yes, it was happening in my own house. I am the one who has to live with that knowledge for the rest of my life," she said.

"Unless you are me in that situation, I can't explain it. I had no help, no support...

"Nothing is being done, and kids are still dying. Don't let Daniel die in vain. Get some support systems, make counselling available, build refuges for women. As long as the Government keeps screwing up, it will keep happening."

So let's be clear here. If you're a woman with cow dung for brains, and partnered to a psychopath who is systematically abusing your child, it's the governments responsibility to magically become aware of this and fix everything. Right.

I don't like beating people with the stick of 'personal responsibility' - the concept is bunkum to somebody nurtured on Nietzsche and psychoanalysis - but this mother was complicit in the murder of her son. Governments cannot raise children - only parents, families, and communities can. To expect otherwise is itself a disgrace.

The resources Ms Butcher mentions - counselling, refuges - certainly exist. Any woman in Victoria can be provided with emergency accommodation if it helps her and her kids flee a violent situation. Yes, the resources are limited, and not necessarily brilliant. Yes, there are also some basic things expected of the woman (i.e. don't get shitfaced and assault staff, don't bring your psychopathic ex-partner into the refuge, etc). But the resources are there.

Finally, by way of clarification, I should be clear that I think the Victorian State Government, under both Bracks and Brumby, absolutely pathetic on issues of child protection, health, mental health, disability services, housing, and a range of other things. A large number of politicians and senior public servants ought to be sacked, if not shot, for their criminal neglect of Victoria's most vulnerable. Systems need to be rebuilt without the cronyism and backside-covering that infect Victoria's public service to its core. It does not follow from this, however, that the government can or should miraculously solve everything when you are turning a blind eye to the abuse of children.

Collective Identity and the Left

It is true that as a black-hearted blogger allegedly of the 'hard left' I sometimes mock some of the more inane right-leaning bloggers in Australia. God knows there are more than a few embarrassments among them. One blogger with whom I will attempt to engage in this post, rather than mock, is Mark R. of Oz Conservative, in this post on collective identity. Mark took issue with a statement of Ted Ballieu's, leader of Victoria's Liberal Opposition, namely that 'our diversity is at the heart of our collective identity - different people, different views, different lifestyles.'

Mark highlights a 'radical element' in Ballieu's position:

Baillieu has no problem using the term "collective identity", but consider carefully what he means by this concept. It is not a "positive" identity, in the sense that it represents a set of positive characteristics shared by a community of people. Instead, it is a negative identity, in which people identify with the absence of shared characteristics.

In this, I agree, on the proviso that, at a philosophical level, at least, we acknowledge that 'identity' always presumes 'difference', in the Spinozan sense that 'Omnis determinatio est negatio' ('All determination is negation').

Mark appears to be arguing that in loosening, or even negativising the definition of that which constitutes 'our' collective identity, 'we' (i.e. Australian society) risk losing that identity altogether. This is important because, according to Mark:

We gain much as individuals from a strong collective identity in which we enjoy a sense of shared history, of a common culture, of closely understood manners and mores, of a widely shared calendar of festivals and celebrations, of a distinct tradition linking generations to each other, and of art and architecture expressing the character of our own community.

Mark correctly (in my view) places Ballieu's statement within the context of a 'liberal position', but condemns it , as we might expect of a conservative, as 'it represents the mindset of the rootless, modernist individual who has become disconnected from his own communal tradition.'

I happen to think the claims of Australia ever having had a 'common culture' to be incorrect. 'Diversity' existed even among Aboriginal peoples. The first settlers, Irish and English, would have had sharp differences in beliefs in many cases (not that there exists an homogeneous 'English' or 'Irish' in the first place), and the amount and degree of intra-societal differences would only have been greater during the many decades of immigration to Australia, by people from all continents. Diversity was always already there with respect to every aspect of identity, and claims of a 'common culture' seem to me a bad fiction, designed to smooth over historical and societal fact.

On the other hand, Mark has a genuine point when he criticises the 'negative identity' implied by Ballieu, and by many other liberals who are lazy when it comes to metaphysics. We appear to see in the Lib leader's statement a kind of ready-made, philistine version of the Derridean-Levinasian coming to grips with the other, with the outcome being defined by absence and lack. For a conservative, therefore, this approach to collective identity seems to lead to a society that, in terms of 'values', at least, is held together by nothing. Liberal individualism would possibly see society as being held together by (liberal) individuals.

Since I insist on the old 19th Century distinction between 'liberals' and 'radicals' (a distinction sometimes lost when political discourse is collapsed into the left-right spectrum), I think it appropriate to ask what this third perspective might have to say about collective identity. On what might this 'identity' be founded?

Let us put aside, for the time being, the arguments from psychoanalysis and social psychology linking 'personal' identity with the cultural sphere. The ego-ideal is, among other things, an insertion of the 'cultural' into the personal, an appropriation by the self of the other, and it derives chiefly from the strictures and injunctions of one's parents. Still, these parents are themselves embedded in a broader cultural context.

If his tags are any guide, Mark seems to hint that national or ethnic identity is the means to securing a stable collective identity. I happen to think this utterly mistaken. For starters, in the case of Australia, the prevailing 'identity' was made possible only on the basis of the most brutal displacement of the Aboriginal people.

The first white settlers in Australia were from Europe's then-power, Britain, and from Europe's oldest colony, Ireland. The two differed in religion and many other respects; as I said above, 'diversity' existed from the beginning. Sure, we can fabricate some kind of collective 'Anglo-Celtic' identity, as distinct from the next major group of European migrants (Greeks and Italians). Following that, we can construct a 'Western European' or 'Christian' identity as opposed to the Chinese and Vietnamese who still followed. We can even incorporate the Asians into our 'collective', and simply posit Muslims as the out-group. The point is, however, that all of these groupings are ultimately arbitrary, do not remove 'diversity', and require or imply a demonised out-group, excluded from the set, but defining the set's very identity. This is not 'social cohesion', this is, in psychoanalytic terms, collective psychosis.

On what then, can identity be founded? Clearly, ethnic and religious groupings are insufficient. I argue that a 'positive' from which a collective identity can arise is the category of worker, that is, one who does not control the means of production. Further to this, I mean a worker who is self-consciously a worker, and who is self-consciously politicised as a worker, that is, a worker who is a member of the proletariat. As Orwell mused (and as his rightist would-be heirs have apparently forgotten), 'If there is hope, it lies in the proles'.

This category, as the French philosopher Badiou says, 'consolidate[s] what is universal in identities', and is capable of uniting mean and women of different ethnic and religious backgrounds. As Badiou puts it in his paper, it is not about me, the individual, abandoning my pre-existing identity for the sake of some authoritarian cultural norm, but rather, of adapting and enlarging my identity, 'in a creative fashion', to the place in which I find myself. As one of the many for whom value accrues by its expropriation from my labour, my place is with the workers. As Badiou said elsewhere, '"militant" is a category without borders'.

Of course, this solution to the problem is no what the conservatives want to hear, and represents a challenge to the muddy arena of 'identity politics' into which liberal individualism often lapses. Sceptics will not doubt scoff at the suggestion that 'proletariat' remains a valid category. The Left is presumed by media pundits not to consist of the working classes, but of 'luvvies' and 'bleeding hearts', with hand-wringing affectations and pet causes, who munch on hilariously ethnic foodstuffs. In other words, popular political discourse in Australia has only conceived of a leftism that is 'left-liberal', not 'radical left', that dismisses the very possibility of a politicised working class.

Does such a class exist, rather than the effete, inner city class caricatured in our press? I answer that it does. Let us take, for example, Melbourne's outer Northern and North-Western suburbs:

Those familiar with Melbourne will recognise that is a 'diverse' area. There is a strong Aboriginal community in the area. There are many Christians, mostly Catholic and Orthodox, as well as several mosques. A Buddhist temple can be found in the suburb of Reservoir, owing to the significant number of Buddhist Asians in the area. Observers will note that this is a genuinely working class area - peak hour traffic is generally earlier here than elsewhere, owing to the types of occupations often done here.

Take the State Electorate of Thomastown for instance. This area encompasses a number of suburbs. The three most common occupations are as a sales worker in retail, and a machine operator/driver or labourer in manufacturing. Workers are unlikely to work in the city, given the heavy industrialisation of the area. Whilst here, as elsewhere, Australian-born people are a majority, there are plenty of others - Italians are next, with large numbers of Greeks, Macedonians, Lebanese, Vietnamese, and even Iraqis. In short, this is the very model of a poor, working-class neighbourhood, with a high proportion of immigrants.

So how does this area vote? At the last State election, the result was a massive 81% to the ALP, on a two-party preferred basis. If we look at this area Federally, we see the ALP with a 70% two-party preferred vote, which is enormous considering the relative wealth and cultural homogeneity in the north-east outskirts of this electorate. No doubt similar such areas can be found throughout the country.

Obviously, Australia's Labor party stands for labour in name only, but the message is clear - the much-despised Howard Haters are not chardonnay-swilling elites. They may well be latte drinkers, if only for the fact that they hail from a country that values coffee in the first place. They are poor, and 'diverse', and they do not vote Tory - it is little wonder that conservatives are scared of them, and are trying to keep them out of the country, or have them radically 'assimilate'. They have all the makings of a politicised working class.

It is these people who are being let down by the ALP, and who, as far as I can see, have failed to be integrated into the Greens. And it is precisely these people who offer a bright future for the Left in this country, and for this country itself, if only that opportunity can be seized.

Crikey on Class

Online mag Crikey has had a couple of interesting articles recently, both of which are worth bookmarking for future reference.

The first is by Jeff Sparrow, editor of the Overland journal, who argues that US forces are colluding with Shi'ite elites against the nationalist Iraqi resistance, composed largely of the underclass:

According to George Bush, "Iraqi security forces are waging a tough battle against militia fighters and criminals in Basra, many of whom have received arms and training and funding from Iran." But hang on a minute. In that "tough battle", isn’t the US providing air support for an organization called the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq? Wasn’t the SCIRI (more recently known as the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq) founded 25 years ago as an Iranian proxy? Didn’t, until May last year, the SCIRI/ICI explicitly take its spiritual direction from Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei?

I've seen this theme elsewhere of some of the left-leaning blogosphere, and I'd be interested to hear from anybody who knows more. Anybody who still believes that the Iraq War was an emancipatory project should be disabused of their illusions upon learning that private security firm Blackwater has had its contract in Iraq renewed, in spite of allegations of civilian massacres, and in spite of the wishes of the Iraqi people.

Closer to home, Crikey has published an article examining the disparities in wealth between Australians, and puts paid to the Howardian myth of unparalleled economic prosperity:

St. Vincent de Paul assisted over 2.1 million Australians in 2006. An estimated 100,000 Australians are currently homeless. The percentage of the population living in poverty increased in 10 years (1994 to 2004) from 7.6% to 9.9%. Australia ranks unfavourably against most OECD nations on poverty.

It's good to see such issues receive a bit of attention, when the rest of the media is focusing on Wayne Carey's foibles, and newsreaders coming out of the closet. Traditional leftist considerations of class, and the analysis of struggles between classes are still essential is a supposedly post-Marxist, postmodern world.

Victoria, the Surveillance State

Some of this information has been provided to me via a couple of sources, and is not widely known.

The State Government of Victoria funds, administers, and oversees a sizeable portion of the state’s ‘services’, from hospitals to housing. These welfare state services are spread across a number of Ministerial portfolios, as well as a number of ‘Departments’. As much as the libertarians may complain about it, when things go wrong in Australia, the locals tend to expect the relevant government to do something about it.

In addition to those services directly overseen by the State Government, we also have the so-called Non Government Agencies (NGAs), who are private firms to whom state services are outsourced and sub-contracted. This takes place by way of a competitive tendering process and much red tape, though I suspect some of the state’s more ardent capitalists might question precisely how ‘competitive’ the whole process is. In welfare-related industries, the NGAs in Victoria are auspiced almost entirely by one Christian church/religious group or another. The services themselves are secular, but the infrastructure and so forth are provided by the agency and funded by the Government. The same agencies will often have a fundraising component or some other means of diverting cash into less secular activities.

In short, this means that there are hundreds of thousands of Victorians who will come into these services, in one capacity or another. Not unreasonably, we might expect each particular industry to maintain a database for a range of purposes – to facilitate better ‘service delivery’, communicate, for legal reasons, etc. After all, in Victoria we have legislation governing the privacy of individual’s personal information, and the limits to which such information can be used.

What is less reasonable is that there should be a centralised point at which all this information converges. Such a point has been constructed in the form of a computer program, known variously as CRIS or CRISP (as well as a couple of other acronymic monikers). This program was commissioned by the Victorian Government some years ago, and built by a private programming firm. My information now tells me that the Government has since bought out the program, owns it outright, and intends to market and sell it to other states and countries.

My understanding is that, functionally speaking, the above computer program was a turd. The Government spent ever-increasing amounts of cash to salvage the project, running up a bill that is somewhere in the order of $53 million.

The software itself applies to a range of Government programs, such as housing, disability services, youth justice, child protection, and the various NGA appendages attached to these services.

Now, a NGA worker cannot read the file of a housing worker, who in turn cannot read the file of a youth justice worker, even though each uses the same program, and may be dealing with the same individual. We can safely conclude that this program has nothing to do with improving communication or information sharing.

Secondly, the program is functionally inferior to its predecessors – slower, more prone to bugs, and tends to significantly increase the administrative burden of workers. The implementation of this program therefore must have nothing to do with ‘efficiency’, unless it was designed by half-wits.

The only reasons that I can see for foisting this software onto thousands of workers, and, by extension, hundreds of thousands of members of the public (as the software does not merely take details for individuals, but also for their associates) are firstly, that this information is siphoned back to the central branch of these Government agencies. In effect, a massive database has been created, including information about hundreds of thousands of Victorians. Given the ‘welfare’ orientation of most of these agencies, one can readily appreciate that much of the information is sensitive in nature. What does the Government intend to do with all this information? – I have no idea.

The second reason is much more entrepreneurial. I’m told that the program will be marketed and sold to other states (and possibly countries) on the basis of its promised ‘efficiencies’.

In the meantime, tens of millions of Victorian dollars have been blown on a useless piece of software, whose only virtue is being able to keep masses of people under a kind of surveillance. As I wrote earlier, few know of this nasty piece of work, possibly because the Vic Government is among the country’s more secretive. Who knows, this may even unite libertarians and Foucauldians or, more likely, it will simply allow the screws of Governmental control to turn a little tighter.

So spread the word, comrades, and do anything you can to fight this little tyranny, though it be of a petty, and bureaucratic form.

In Lieu of a Proper Post...

I thought I would give a shout out to some of the newer or lower-profile blogs on the Australian blogosphere. Mine isn't particularly high-profile either, but any publicity is better than none.

Madd McColl has written an excellent piece on the conservative commentariat's obsession with maligned LaTrobe historian, Robert Manne. McColl asks why Manne draws such derision from 'the right'. I suspect the answer may have something to do with the fact that Manne is actually 'one of them'. Manne, of course, is no unwashed leftie, and the fact that he manages to be reasonably conservative and demonstrate a concern for human rights, logic, and opposition to being a pro-Howard shill, must get up the nose of Pearson, Bolt, and the rest of the culture warriors.

Speaking of Bolt, the latter has eulogised the great director Bergman today. As we would expect, he takes the opportunity to have a swipe at Australia's culture industry, asking why Australia has no Bergman of its own. Again, the answer may have something to do with clowns like Bolt denouncing almost every artistic or intellectual endeavour as the work of sneering 'elites'. Australia does have 'great' artists - Patrick White is the foremost example in my mind - but these people do not enter the annals of right-wing history, for the obvious reasons.

Ales has a provocative post challenging some common assumptions about violence against women. Such violence remains a major issue in Australia - any police officer you speak to will have numerous anecdotes about the 'domestics' to which they frequently respond. Such anecdotes do not account for the unknown number of unreported incidents, to which there is no response. I encourage everybody to have a look.

The Bureau of Counterpropaganda is back, and remains an excellent read. The thoroughly internationalist perspective it offers is a good antidote to the insularity that often pervades the Australian blogosphere.

I've added Hallwatch to my blog roll, something that will no doubt anger the subject of the said blog, Iain Hall. Iain has a history of dubious online behaviour (which, in fairness, appears to have improved somewhat of late), and Hallwatch functions as a kind of psychoanalytic 'return of the repressed', making public all the stuff the Iain disavows. Iain has often attempted to 'fisk', as he puts it, the present writer, though his critiques don't go beyond cliches, slogans, and patronising ad hominem attacks about my presumed age and political beliefs. All of this is something I take with good humour. Perhaps Iain is even correct in believing his right-wing mediocrity is a virtue; after all, it appears to be practiced in company. And this company is the primary reason for my adding Hallwatch to my blogroll. For as long as Iain gives support and links to those who agitate for genocide and fascism, it is essential that his online 'conscience' be given a voice on cyberspace.

Finally, just to show that I have a sense of humour, I feel obliged to share one of the most bizarre, wrong, yet oddly compelling blogs I have come across recently. Purportedly written by a young person who is a self-proclaimed 'Stalinist', this guy shares his attempts to bring 'revolution' to his school. I have no idea whether it is a piss-take, but at least one reader appears to have taken it seriously.

More substantial posts will appear soon, and I thank those who have the patience to keep returning to this site, in spite of my sporadic posting.

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.

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.

More on State Failures

It was only a short time following my previous post on this topic that I noticed another glaring instance of incompetence within the same ministerial portfolio, namely, Community Services.

This portfolio is often handed to up-and-coming ministers, but in this case is being 'managed' by one of the leaders of the Victorian parliament, Gavin Jennings. The Community Services portfolio is one which impinges upon the lives of thousands of Victorians, but doesn't seem to get the high profile of areas such as health, education, or policing.

I am aware of information that strongly suggests that the latest crisis in the Community Services sector has been 'managed' by senior bureaucrats, who have demanded that an already chronically under-resourced staff group simply work more, in order to take the spotlight off the minister.

Obviously, that powers-that-be are not taking these sorts of issues seriously. Hopefully Jennings will come to his senses and learn from the mistakes of his predecessor, Christine Campbell, who was demoted for an arguably less serious case of ministerial neglect.

UPDATE: Stateline in Victoria ran an article on this very issue. Jennings appeared particularly bumbling and incompetent. See the transcript here.

State Government Rhetoric

It hasn't received a great deal of media attention, but the State Government of Victoria is proudly extolling the virtues of its new legislation to deal with issues of child abuse and protection. This is an issue about which I might write some more at a later date. For now, I thought I would offer some cursory remarks.

Mark Latham, whilst currently derided in media circles as a 'nutter', made some interesting comments about this issue on ABC's Enough Rope a couple of years ago:

I reached the conclusion that a lot of our problems are not so much
material, they're not economic. Australia's a very prosperous nation. A lot of
the problems are in the relations between people, the community and family
breakdown, the isolation, loneliness, child sexual abuse, mental illnesses. A
lot of these are social problems, where it's not so much what government can do
for the people, it's what the community and what society needs to do for
itself.

Nonetheless, on the issue of child abuse, we know that State Governments around the country (and indeed, in most developed nations) do have a statutory responsibility to address child welfare concerns. As Latham said, a Government cannot necessarily address 'community and family breakdown', at least, not without a major overhaul of the 'community' itself.

As is well known, child abuse is a worsening problem across Australia, with services in crisis. Obviously, in the current political climate, there will be no attempts to provide for a more equitable 'community'. Indeed, there will not even be any attempts to patch up the relevant services, struggling beneath the burden of unmanageable workloads. So whilst child abuse worsens, politicians provide more rhetoric and glossy, but insubstantial legislation, without even the necessary financial backing to make it mean anything. To be continued.