My Daily Advertiser Op Ed column for Tuesday 26 October 2021

Has Australia misunderstood its place in Asia again?

There are many explanations for the deteriorating Australia-China relationship. In this week’s column, instead of analysing the jingoistic posturing by Messrs Dutton & Co, I will focus what it is in our cultural makeup that has landed us in this sorry mess. In short, the answer is the ‘cultural cringe’.

In 1950, A.A. Phillips coined the term ‘cultural cringe’ to describe Australians’ tendency to compare their works of art and literature unfavourably with those of others, especially the British and the Americans. 

Nowadays, watching the recent decline in the Australia-China relationship the cultural cringe still seems all too relevant. “There is an unmistakable spectre of the cultural cringe,” wrote Tewo Loon Ti in Pearls and Irritations, referring to the attempts by conservative politicians to at least match the US and the UK in their antagonistic attitudes towards China. They play the ‘China adversary’ game for political gain among a population that has been effectively groomed by the media, the security agencies and the US military-industrial complex to have a negative view of the Chinese.

The negativity created by this cringe is the gradual erosion of unbiased thinking about Australia’s role in the geopolitics of the region. As Justin O’Connor wrote, a two-day conference on Australia and China became increasingly problematic when “Academics used to analysing rational choices came up against the Australian government’s more visceral choice, rejecting interest in favour of an unexamined sense of identity.”

An all-consuming sense of identity is the core of Australia’s problem with China. Right-wing Australian politicians are more than willing to trade the economic interest of Australia for an opportunity to prove that Australians are ideologically and demographically very much a part of the Anglo-American community of nations.

Hugh White, writing in P&I pointed out that we have thrown our lot in with the US because of this loss of identity. O’Connor elaborated by writing “At play is a deep-seated fear rooted in Australian history. We are the ‘lonely continent’, adrift in an Asia we don’t recognise as part of our identity and geography. Beneath this there’s the fear and anxiety of being left alone.”

There’s a ‘one step forward and two steps’ back in the cultural cringe syndrome. It is clearly reflected in Australia’s recent history. Prime ministers Gough Whitlam, Bob Hawke and Paul Keating took Australians a big step forward by leading our country into greater engagement with its Asian neighbours.

The first step back was taken when John Howard won government in 1996. He frowned on multiculturalism, viewing it as demeaning to the achievements of a British derived culture. The greatest step backwards occurred under the present conservative government, where trade with China was compromised by the constant railing against Chinese misdemeanours, which were mostly the products of myth making.

For example, in the past Australia had no interest in a remote part of the world called Xinjiang, we had accepted the UN resolution that Taiwan is part of China, and for Hong Kong we had only a passing interest in trade. Then we suddenly discovered human rights, and began championing the cause of the Uighurs, the Taiwanese, and the young rebels in Hong Kong. Such concerns are of course very real, but this is also a clear case of the pot calling the kettle black, given our appalling track record on human rights.

So, we quickly began participating in pacts against China, through the Quad, Five Eyes, and AUSMIN. Then came AUKUS, where we have written a blank cheque for the purchase of nuclear offensive attack submarines rather than defensive ones which. When they eventually arrive they will tie us into the US military/industrial complex. We have surrendered our sovereignty to the Americans.

Readers might quite rightly ask whether there is a solution to the problem. The advice of the man who coined the expression ‘cultural cringe’ is still relevant. Phillips thought that the solution was for Australians to be unconsciously “ourselves”.  He believed that the opposite of the Cringe is not the Strut, but “a relaxed erectness of carriage”. Unfortunately, that “strut” seems to be in the ascendant, as demonstrated by our current political leadership, a largely sycophantic media, the AUKUS defence pact and nuclear submarine deal, and most recently in Tony Abbott’s belligerence in Taiwan.

My Daily Advertiser Op Ed column for Tuesday 19 October 2021

Who’s afraid of a federal ICAC?

Gladys Berejiklian’s decision to resign as Premier of NSW has caused many to think that a federal anti-corruption body as powerful as NSW’s Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) would be appropriate.

Her abrupt departure may have forced the federal government’s hand to legislate a Commonwealth anti-corruption body after years of delay, but don’t expect it to have the same teeth as New South Wales’s watchdog, The New Daily pointed out.

“It’s certainly not a model that we ever consider at a federal level,” Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Tuesday. “A monster” was how assistant attorney-general Amanda Stoker described NSW’s ICAC. Deputy PM Barnaby Joyce slammed it as “a little bit Spanish Inquisition”.

In stark contrast, Australian Greens leader Adam Bandt tweeted “If the Liberals’ ICAC doesn’t have teeth, it won’t help clean up corruption in politics”. Even a Sydney Morning Herald editorial, not known for holding radical views, headlined “PM should use the ICAC model for federal agency”.

Anyway, more than 1,000 days since Morrison first promised a federal anti-corruption body (CIC), it may finally see the light of day, albeit in a form described as “weak” and “toothless” by critics.

So what will it look like? According to an exposure draft of the model, the CIC would have two streams:

A law enforcement integrity division, to investigate wrongdoing by agencies including the Australian Federal Police, Department of Home Affairs, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, and the Australian Taxation Office

A public sector integrity division, to investigate federal departments and agencies, Commonwealth companies, universities and research bodies, and politicians and their staff.

It has been criticised for falling short of the powers given to NSW’s ICAC. The CIC would only hold public hearings for the law enforcement side, not for the public sector. That is, politicians wouldn’t be subjected to public trials, as they are in NSW’s ICAC.

Further, the CIC can only investigate matters which it has a “reasonable suspicion” would meet the bar of criminal corruption, a far narrower scope than NSW’s ICAC.

Former NSW Supreme Court judge Anthony Whealy called those provisions “crazy” in 2018. Many are also critical of the fact the CIC would not have retrospective investigative powers. “It has to be able to look into the past,” he told ABC Radio.

Why the delay, given that Morrison proposed the CIC in December 2018? Morrison blamed the delay on the pandemic, saying he was “not going to have one public servant diverted” from COVID management.

“We are really keen to get this done, and to get it done in a way that makes sure we get all the advantages of having an integrity body and avoid the pitfalls of those bodies that I would suggest have become almost rogue in the way that they operate,” Senator Stoker told ABC’s Radio National.

Why doesn’t the government want NSW’s ICAC model? “You’ve got to have processes that assume people are innocent before thought to be guilty and that is a real problem,” Morrison said. “I’m sure there are millions of people who’ve seen what’s happened to Gladys Berejiklian. They’ll understand that’s a pretty good call not to follow that model.”

But ICAC has not made any findings against Ms Berejiklian, nor claimed she was “guilty”. Instead, ICAC simply announced it was “investigating” whether she had “engaged in conduct” which potentially fell foul of anti-corruption safeguards. ICAC didn’t force Ms Berejiklian to step down or resign. It also does substantial private investigations of its own, including confidential interviews, before deciding to hold public hearings.

Greens senator Larissa Waters slammed Mr Morrison’s claims. “The PM’s comments that the NSW ICAC assumes guilt before an investigation are patently wrong and are designed to justify his pathetically weak proposal for a toothless body that wouldn’t have applied to or stopped many of the scandals we’ve seen plaguing his government,” she said.

The ALP, Greens and Independents are all opposing the bill, and the Greens and Independent Helen Haines have announced they will move amendments to toughen the model, but of course the government can reject them. It might squeeze its model through the House of Representatives, but chances of Senate approval are extremely unlikely, unless the ALP decides to approve it. 

My Daily Advertiser Op Ed column for Tuesday 12 October 2021

Deleterious effects of religion now mixing with politics

Recent resignations from the NSW parliament have brought to light a serious problem in our political set-up. I’m referring to the deleterious effects of religion in politics, with the rise of Dominic Perrottet to the NSW premiership through a factional deal. The concern arises from the separation of church and state being an established principle of our political make-up.

Generally, religion and politics were not too closely entwined in 21st-century Australia. That is, until Scott Morrison became PM and Dominic Perrottet became Premier of NSW.

Mr Perrottet had a conservative Catholic upbringing and attended the Opus Dei-affiliated Redfield College at Dural. So not surprisingly, he is a staunch conservative Catholic, with views that represent the most extreme end of a rigidly male-dominated institutional church. He is a leading member of the right and has been involved in factional politics since a young man, in the Young Liberals and later as a staffer for David Clarke, then as leader of the conservative right.

On social issues, Perrottet has a track record of being very conservative. He voted against decriminalisation of abortion in NSW last year, and will almost certainly oppose the assisted dying bill that independent Alex Greenwich plans to bring before parliament in October, pointed out the Guardian Australia.

At the same time, we have in our federal Parliament a Pentecostal Prime Minister who genuinely believes his own election victory was a literal miracle. He lives alongside the oldest surviving culture in the world, our First Nations, that can trace their lived history back at least 60,000 years. Yet Morrison and his fellow Pentecostal Christians believe the world was created a mere 6,000 years ago. Go figure.

What’s more, the Pentecostals believe that the world as we know it will soon come to an end, with the “Elect” ascending to their eternal reward while the rest of us, including Christians of other denominations, will eternally suffer for their ignorance.

At the more fundamental end of all religions, including Christianity, “a dogmatism takes hold that blurs those vital margins between private and public”, noted Stephanie Dowrick in the Sydney Morning Herald. And that will always be significant when those individuals have the power to exercise choices that directly affect our collective wellbeing,

There are real differences also between the two men’s beliefs. As a Pentecostal Christian, Morrison supports a prosperity gospel that assures him accumulating wealth in this life is a sign of divine favour. Neglecting the poor, or those seeking refuge, homes, food security or recognition of all as full and deserving human beings, can be justified in this logic because of their lack of favour.

Morrison’s secrecy, avoidance of accountability, and extreme harshness to the vulnerable, should be matters of private conscience. They are not.

The kind of Catholicism with which Perrottet is associated is different. Thankfully there is no adherence to a prosperity gospel. Care for the suffering is active. However, in its righteousness around central questions of identity, sexuality, gender politics, minority rights and an unwavering conviction that this is the “one, true faith”, it is also far from mainstream 21st-century Christianity. And far from the more progressive Catholicism that flourishes in some parishes. Numerous laypeople are active in social and environmental justice.

The rights to full social inclusion for marginalised groups remain vulnerable to far-right Catholicism. Issues such as women’s rights to choose, respect for LGBTIQ+ communities, limitations on evangelical proselytising within schools and social services, welcoming of interfaith, multi-faith or no-faith perspectives, gender equality and safety are all threatened by an authoritarian perspective that believes a highly conservative, white, male-dominated hierarchy is “divinely ordained” both within the church. And outside it.

Perrottet has been outspoken on certain religious issues. He spoke out against a Victorian law requiring priests to disclose instances of child abuse. His management of iCare oversaw an underpayment of injured workers by up to $80 million, and the scheme had accrued up to $4 billion in debt. On the vital questions of COVID-19 management, he was vocal against a lockdown which many thought was far, far too late. On taking office one if his first acts was to dangerously speed up the opening of restrictions.

Hitting the nail on the head Mehreen Faruqi, Greens Senator for NSW tweeted “This man is a far-right ideologue who shouldn’t have been elected the NSW Premier.”

My Daily Advertiser Op Ed column for Tuesday 5 October 2021

Our carbon offsets basically ‘junk’.

About 20% of carbon credits created under the Coalition’s main climate change are essentially “junk”, recent research tells us. Projects that claimed to “avoid deforestation” did not represent genuine abatement, according to researchers who likened the Coalition policy to “cheap tricks and hot air”, Renew Economy reported.

The joint report, published by the Australian Conservation Foundation and The Australia Institute, has raised serious questions around the ‘avoided deforestation’ methodologies under the federal government’s Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF). This is a mechanism it introduced after scrapping Labor’s economy-wide carbon price, which, in contrast, was working.

The avoided deforestation methodology is founded on commitments from landholders not to exercise their right to clear land of vegetation.

Under the ERF, Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs) are awarded to landholders who make such commitments, on the basis that carbon will remain stored in forests rather than being released into the atmosphere as a result of land clearing.

But the new research suggests that much of the land subject to ‘avoided deforestation’ agreements would never have been cleared of vegetation, and the carbon offsets issued to such projects are largely fictional, the Guardian Australia pointed out.

Around 22 million of the 100 million ACCUs issued to date have been awarded to ‘avoided deforestation’ projects. So this research raises serious doubts around the integrity of one of the Morrison government’s core policies designed to achieve its emissions reduction targets.

Not only is it unlikely that land clearing would ever have occurred on land awarded carbon credits, the study also found that the rate of land clearing since the creation of the Emissions Reduction Fund has actually increased.

It suggests that the ERF has not delivered real reductions in land clearing and that it is implausible that many of the ACCUs issued for ‘avoided deforestation’ actually represent a substantive reduction in emissions.

The Morrison government is relying on the Emissions Reduction Fund to deliver a significant portion of the carbon abatement needed to reach its abysmally low 2030 emissions target. In 2019, it poured an additional $2 billion into the ERF, which it expects could deliver an additional estimated 100 million tonnes of emissions reductions or around one-third of the reductions needed to reach that 2030 target.

Naturally the Australia Institute and the Australian Conversation Foundation have called for the avoided deforestation methodology to be revoked. “Revoking the method will prevent the registration of new avoided deforestation projects. However, it will not stop existing projects from continuing to receive ACCUs over the remainder of their 15 year crediting period,” the report says.

The Australia Institute’s climate and energy program director, Richie Merzian, said “The lack of integrity relating to Australia’s carbon abatement methods calls into question the overall value of the ERF and its success as a mechanism to help Australia meets its climate targets.”

Lead environmental investigator at the Australian Conservation Foundation, Annica Schoo, said that the environmental group had raised the issue with the government’s Emissions Reduction Assurance Committee, but no action has been taken.

The analysis comes just weeks ahead of international climate talks to be held in Glasgow. The Morrison government is likely to talk up the Emissions Reduction Fund as a key contributor to Australia’s emissions reductions while refusing to commit Australia to stronger targets.

“Handing out cheques to people so they don’t do things they were never going to do is obviously problematic. It borders on fraud” noted Richard Dennis in The New Daily.

Beyond this sleight of hand, the biggest issue with Australia’s approach to emission reductions is that it’s just not working. Actual emissions from electricity, industry and transport are rising steadily.

Thinking outside the box, there is a solution that could keep even the climate change denialists in the Nationals party happy. A new report by the Grattan Institute shows that farmers could benefit from actions that reduce emissions and limit climate damage. In this scheme the Australian government would establish a fixed-price carbon trading desk for small farmers and fund practical advice and research for livestock producers if agriculture is going to thrive in a net zero future. If logic prevailed this would put an end to the Nationals wish to carve agriculture out of any net zero target.