My Daily Advertiser Op Ed column for Wednesday 1 November 2023

Unconditional approval of Israeli policy on Palestine unacceptable

I’ve spent the past few weeks mulling over how to approach Israel’s response to the attack by Hamas. Eventually I decided to declare a ‘conflict of interest’, by noting that before COVID I made eight trips to Palestine, working in a refugee camp. I’m also a past and founding Convenor of the Greens for Palestine.

I should also note that Israel’s response is a fast moving one, meaning that any commentary runs the risk of being outdated by the time it is published. Accordingly, I’ll confine my remarks to underlying issues and broad implications for the future.

I’ll begin with commentary on Australia’s position. As Ben Saul noted on the ABC (and later reprinted in Pearls and Irritations) former prime minister Gough Whitlam wrote in 1985 that while Australian governments always claimed to take a balanced approach to Israeli-Arab disputes, “in practice they were favouring Israel”.

Their bias towards Israel grew even stronger after Whitlam. Former foreign minister Alexander Downer even boasted that Australia is more pro-Israel than 99 per cent of the world. Under the Abbott Government, Australian policy sunk to new lows in unabashedly favouring extreme, illegal, and destructive Israeli government positions.

In 2014, the Attorney-General, George Brandis, refused to call East Jerusalem ‘occupied’. Foreign minister Julie Bishop doubted the illegality of Israel’s settlements in the Palestinian West Bank. There is universal legal consensus that the settlements are indeed illegal.

PM Albanese and FM Wong quickly jumped in to unreservedly champion Israel after the recent attack by Hamas, and it took almost two weeks for the two ministers to provide a more nuanced response. Thankfully the Greens could recognise Israel’s continued use of collective punishment when they saw it.

Of the five General Assembly resolutions on Palestine adopted in 2013, Australia joined a handful of countries in voting against three, and abstaining from two.

Australian policy is also biased because it routinely condemns Palestinian violence, but rarely condemns Israeli violence and illegality as stridently.

While condemning violence against Israeli civilians, Australia should equally condemn Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian territory, its annexation of East Jerusalem, its destructive blockade and collective punishment of Gaza, and its forcible repression of Palestinian self-determination.

Australia should condemn Israel’s refusal to readmit Palestinian refugees, and to provide remedies for their ethnic cleansing which accompanied the foundation of Israel in 1948.

Australia should condemn the periodic Israeli military operations which cause excessive civilian casualties, illegally destroy property, and sometimes even deliberately target civilians. This is not merely collateral damage, it is collective punishment, and it is illegal in international law.

We should also condemn the frequent impunity for Israeli soldiers who violate the law. An example is the death of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, shot by an Israeli soldier.

Australia should condemn attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinian civilians. This is also terrorism but is never noted as such by Australian media or governments.

A balanced Australian policy would insist that peace negotiations must respect Palestinian rights under international law, including the full return of Palestinian land. We must stop saying that the Palestinians should have accepted the peace deal offered at Camp David in 2000, when that deal did not fairly guarantee basic Palestinian legal rights.

The root cause of the Israel-Palestine conflict is the near-60-year occupation of Palestinian territory by Israel and the illegal colonisation of Palestinian land. Violence to liberate Palestine is inevitable unless Israel withdraws and complies with international law.

There are new policy initiatives that Australia could take to pressure Israel. Our government should prohibit all economic dealings with the Israeli government, settlements, and companies in relation to the occupied territories  (boycotts, divestments and targeted sanctions – BDS).

Australia should urge the UN Security Council to refer alleged war crimes by Hamas and Israel to the International Criminal Court for investigation.

Australia should attempt to sue Israel in the International Court of Justice for violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law.

Finally, Australia should offer to contribute personnel to a future UN peacekeeping force to guarantee the security of borders between Israel and the Palestinian state.

Australia should stop being an extreme, pro-Israel outcast, and join the rest of the world in being a responsible, pro-international law adult. Being a fawning friend encourages Israeli lawlessness and pushes peace further away.

My Daily Advertiser Op Ed column for this week

Sneaky NSW government cuts environmental jobs

For many of us the Voice campaign recently took all our attention and so  I did not wake up to a backwards environmental step carried out by the NSW government as part of its recent state budget until this week.

It is not good news, for it has quietly cut dozens of environmental jobs, including those of Indigenous officers, and delayed a plan to reward farmers to protect nature,  moves described by critics as “hypocritical” and a “significant backward step”

The cuts were revealed in a “change management plan”, obtained by the Guardian Australia, and affect about 28 existing staff and 38 roles in total. They follow last month’s budget, the first by the Minns Labor government since its election in March.

All community engagement staff in the biodiversity, conservation and science directorate not funded by specific programs will go, including at least seven Indigenous officers.

The 10-year, $206.2m nature positive farming program, intended by the former Perrottet government to commence on 1 July this year, will also be deferred four years, or until after the 2027 election. The program was intended to support farmers to introduce more sustainable practices including reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

“While the overall outcome for is very strong, we have had to contribute some savings as part of a whole-of-government approach to restoring the budget,” Atticus Fleming, acting coordinator of the group, said in an email to staff. “As a result, despite taking every possible step to minimise the impact on staff, funding for a small number of roles will cease.”

The environment minister, Penny Sharpe, said the government “had to make tough decisions” after inheriting record debt and $7bn of unfunded programs.

Within the Environment and Heritage Group, 85 staff were due to lose their jobs this past June because the previous government had defunded them. These jobs were retained and funded, Sharpe said, adding that she had secured another 58 frontline staff for national parks and created 31 new biodiversity and conservation positions.

“No one wants to lose good, dedicated people and the department are consulting with those employees to seek to redeploy them into suitable existing funded roles” elsewhere in the group, she said.

However, Sue Higginson, the NSW Greens environment spokesperson, said the government had delivered “an austerity budget, and once again the environment suffers”.

The loss of Indigenous staff also contradicted the government’s commitment to Indigenous truth-telling and treaty, and was “a significant backward step”, Higginson said.

“The lack of transparency is really concerning,” she added. “They promised they would be a more open, more accountable and more honest government.

The opposition environment spokesperson, James Griffin, and the Nationals leader, Dugald Saunders, said the decision to postpone the farming program was “an absolute disgrace”.

The government had also boasted Sydney’s hosting next year of the first global nature positive summit but now would have “nothing to say” at the event, they said.

Economist Ken Henry told the Guardian Australia last month that governments were risking “at least 50% of GDP” unless they made the environment a top priority.

His review of the state’s biodiversity conservation law made 58 recommendations, including prioritising the environment above competing land uses such as forestry, mining and agriculture, and giving the department more resources. The need to boost Indigenous involvement was also important.

“The involvement of Aboriginal people in program design and on-ground implementation is not well developed,” Henry’s report said. “There is a need to recognise the intrinsic relationship between biodiversity and Aboriginal culture, and embed Aboriginal participation at all levels – advisory, decision-making, implementation and delivery.”

One government staffer said the funding cuts amounted to “a huge setback for those ambitions of Ken Henry”.

The “callous deletion” of the engagement staff “totally jeopardised the progress being made” in building connections with Indigenous communities.

The impression left was, “You walk in our communities, you say you want to work with us, you steal our knowledge and then you leave before the program’s implemented”, the staffer said. Well put.

My Daily Advertiser Op Ed column for this week

We have much to learn from the danger posed by Donald Trump

Handing out ‘Yes’ how to vote cards for the Voice campaign I was struck by how many voters have bought hook, line, and sinker the untruths broadcast on social media. I’ll cite one example: a woman refused a Yes card, telling me she had to vote No because, “You know, Albanese is a paedophile”.

My mind naturally boggled at this ridiculous falsehood, but it also got me thinking about the power of social media to amplify such absurdities. Largely I steer clear of this phenomena, apart from an occasional detour into Facebook, but I have it on good authority that it, Instagram, X (aka Twitter) and especially Tik Tok to have been awash with pernicious claims to encourage people to swallow any anti No claim, however absurd – in fact, the more absurd it is the more likely it seems to be believed.

As The New Daily noted “Facebook groups, Rumble videos and Telegram channels are made up of a few loosely aligned groups, including Australia One, My Place Facebook network, the Freedom Party and other fringe groups.

This train of thought brought me to Trumpism, for many of the tactics of the No campaign seem to have been borrowed from his Make America Great Again (MAGA) world. I’m particularly concerned about what it might mean for our democracy, especially if Trump is to win the next presidential election.

The ramifications of a Trump victory will be far reaching, and have serious implications for Australia, which will be the theme of this week’s column.

Many have pointed out that a Trump election victory would lead to a dictatorial takeover of not only the instruments of state, but also of the entire culture. Writing in The Saturday Paper Mike Scrafton pointed out how this would happen by citing the similarities with the Nazi takeover of Germany’s Weimar Republic. That occurred because Hitler & Co were elected but then used the power that gave them to set up the murderous Nazi regime.

This shows how a determined, organised group can subvert and transform a political system from the top. By the end of 1934, and starting with the civil service, the Nazis had taken control of every major organ of the German state. The Nazis understood the need to maintain the “illusion of a democracy” and to establish a facade of legality as they established their authoritarian regime. This process is known as the gleichschaltung.

The extreme right-wing American reactionaries also aim to eviscerate the so-called deep state and “to roll back nothing less than 100 years of what they see as liberal encroachment on Washington.” The deep state is what the far right call the mainstream government.

Worryingly, they are building the capacity to accomplish their objective. At his first major 2024 campaign rally Donald Trump declared “Either the deep state destroys America or we destroy the deep state”. Trump had previously posted a “10-point plan to dismantle the deep state”.

Trump would “clean out all of the corrupt actors in our national security and intelligence apparatus, and there are plenty of them”. Of the Justice Department and the FBI, Trump said “the thugs and criminals who are corrupting our justice system will be defeated, discredited and totally disgraced”. In apocalyptic tones at a rally in Waco he thundered “2024 is the final battle, it’s going to be the big one. You put me back in the White House, their reign will be over and America will be a free nation once again”.

Now this is where we come in. Australian politicians and policies are too firmly linked to the fading power of the USA, which is always teetering between collapse and authoritarianism. “Australia’s interests and position in the world are currently welded to the domestic developments of this unstable polity” wrote Scrafton. Holding our breath and hoping Trump loses is not a national strategy. Furthermore, Australia’s security is hostage to the Faustian AUKUS bargain with America.

Even if Trump fails to get re-elected these resources will be available to any successful Republican candidate. The danger of an American gleichschaltung will persist.

It might sound like a progressive’s conspiracy fantasy, but in interwar Weimar, the democracy fell very quickly. It could happen again in America, and we will feel the consequences. Some of these might be beneficial, as it could see the end of the AUKUS nuclear submarine deal, but others would not be so good.

My Daily Advertiser Op Edc column for today 12 October 2023

No campaign lies straight out of the Trump playbook

As early voting is well underway and 14 October almost upon us it is time to call out what are quite clearly lies being told by the No campaign. It is using tactics akin to the untruths claimed to be ‘alternative facts’, taken straight from the Trump campaign in the USA. Michael Pascoe, writing in The New Daily, has accurately described this as “Trumpian Schtick”.

 

For example, “As the campaign for the Voice to Parliament enters its final weeks, the ‘No’ case has begun making absurd claims such as ‘white people … will be paying to live here’ wrote Martin McKenzie-Murray in The Saturday Paper.

 

I’ll begin with the false claim that The Australian Electoral Commission will improperly advantage the “Yes” campaign by accepting ticks on ballot papers, but discarding those marked with a cross.

Last month, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton made a rather silly, perhaps cynical, intervention in the debate when he argued on Radio 2GB that: “If a tick counts for ‘Yes’, then a cross should count for ‘No’.

However, the AEC received legal advice way back in 1988, reinforced this year, that ticks can be read unambiguously as agreement with the proposition, while crosses retain an ambiguity.

Quite clearly Dutton & Co are fibbing, having been told quite clearly what the truth is.

The second lie is that the Uluru Statement from the Heart is not one page but secretly 26 pages. 

In August, Sky News’s Peta Credlin declared her scoop: using freedom of information laws, she had “forced” from the government the full Uluru Statement from the Heart, which was not, as its authors claimed, a pithy one-pager. Rather, she said, it was a vastly longer and more ambitious statement that had been “hidden” from the public.

This was false. What was “hidden” were explanatory notes and the minutes of meetings, which in truth had been published online years ago.

The third lie is that the Voice would weigh in on everything from interest rates to defence spending. And, the Voice would mean every government decision could be taken to the High Court.

In truth what is proposed is that “the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice may make representations to the Parliament and the Executive Government of the Commonwealth on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples”. Nothing about issues such as defence or interest rates.

The next lie is the claim that the referendum will actually contain two questions.

Another furphy, as this is patently false.

The liars also claim that the Voice will simply fatten bureaucrats.

This is also false, because the Voice, if successful, would be comprised of First Australians. The stated purpose of the Voice is not to add to layers of bureaucracy, but to better advise the system that already exists and has failed to close the gap.

Another false claim is that the Voice will “get rid of the parliament that’s there now and will end up taking over”.

This also demonstratively false. These words come from the mouth of Kerry White, a board member of Warren Mundine’s “No” campaign group Recognise a Better Way.

The claim that “Aboriginal people will be running this country, and all the white people here will be paying to live here” is also ridiculously false.

Again, there is no evidence for this. There is no suggestion the Voice would clear the way for reparations or whatever is meant by white people “paying to live here”. The Uluru Statement from the Heart does not mention reparations and Albanese has said he does not support their payment.

One of the earliest untruths muddy the waters is the claim that there is insufficient detail about the Voice. However, it has been made clear that

the functions of the Voice – the detail – would be legislated by parliament once a referendum had enshrined support for its existence.

At the National Press Club last week, Warren Mundine called the Uluru statement from the heart a “symbolic declaration of war”. But the yes campaign was “not trying to take over anything; we are literally just asking for a voice.

The final furphy I’ll examine today is that the Voice is divisive. The truth is the opposite, in that it is inclusive. We have over 200 ‘white fella’ advisory committees to the federal government. All give advice, and that’s all the Uluru Statement from the Heart is respectfully asking: that the First Nations peoples also have an advisory committee. Nothing more, nothing less.

My Daily Advertiser Op Ed column for thirsday 5 Octoberv 2023

Unpacking the untruths of the No campaign

I have been careful in commenting about the Voice to avoid negative commentary. To do so would run the risk of amplifying the negativity of the No campaign, which would be counterproductive.

But as early voting has already started my patience with the disinformation, misinformation, untruths, and, to be honest, downright lies of the No campaign has worn thin, so today I’ll examine what the deceivers of the No campaign have been up to. In doing so I’ll be careful not avoid the anger that is so evident from many from the No campaign.

The two individuals most noted for their obfuscation, disinformation, misinformation and downright lies are Deputy Opposition leader Peter Dutton and Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price. First cab off the rank goes to Dutton, aka ‘Dr No’. Top of his list is the fatuousness of “If you don’t know, vote no”. If he was a remotely responsible leader of the Liberal Party he would have shown the way for those who did not know to find out. Similarly, his recent op-ed in Murdoch’s Herald Sun was riddled with misleading statements and scaremongering, as Crikey reported He continues to claim we do not have the detail about the Voice, which is quite wrong, as we do. He also wrongly claimed that the High Court could give the Voice to Parliament undue power. Again, he’s wrong, as it can’t. He says the constitution has been a source of stability for 122 years, when in fact, Australians have voted to change it eight times. Dutton called the Voice “the most consequential change to our system in history”. In 1967 we literally voted to give the Commonwealth the power to make special laws for Indigenous people, and to count Indigenous people as people in the census, which was a rather more significant change than an advisory body, you might fairly think.

Now to Unpacking five key claims from Jacinta Nampijinpa Price’s recent and deservedly infamous National Press Club address on the Voice.

There were five key claims made in Price’s speech, as reported by Josh Butler in the Guardian Australia. Firstly, on the Voice’s power.

Price took issue with the fact that the proposed constitutional amendment says the voice “may make representations” to parliament and executive government about matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. She claimed it meant the voice would “be more like a lobby group” that would act “only in the interests of its clients, not the interests of the government, the parliament or even the nation”.

However the legal advice of federal solicitor general Stephen Donaghue, released months ago in April, said the voice’s representations would have to be on matters with a “sufficient connection” to Indigenous people, and not an “insubstantial, tenuous or distant” connection.

The advice said the voice would not impose any obligations upon the executive to follow the voice’s representations, or consult with the voice before making decisions, and that the voice would also have no power of veto over parliament decisions.

Senior government sources also strongly refuted Nampijinpa Price’s claim about the distinction between advice and representations.

 Now to the Voice’s composition. Price claimed the government “don’t know” what the voice would do or how its membership would be constituted.” But the government has repeatedly pointed that Parliament would be the body that sets rules around the voice’s membership and how it would operate.

On the issue of colonisation, the senator’s speech criticised Indigenous bodies which she claimed sought to “demonise colonial settlement in its entirety and nurture a national self-loathing about the foundations of modern Australian achievement”.

Guardian Australia asked Price to clarify whether she thought any Indigenous people were suffering negative impacts of colonisation, Price responded: “No.”

“A positive impact, absolutely. I mean, now we have running water, readily available food,” she said.

“No, there is no ongoing negative impacts of colonisation.”

In a 2022 report, the federal government’s Australian Institute of Health and Welfare wrote that “colonisation has had a devastating impact on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and culture”, and that such factors have a “fundamental impact on the disadvantage and poor physical and mental health of Indigenous peoples worldwide, through social systems that maintain disparities”.

The AIHW report noted colonisation included violence, disease, occupation of Indigenous land and restriction of Aboriginal people to reserves.

That’s all the space for this column allows. But next week I’ll follow up with a distilled list of the major lies coming from the No campaign.