DON'T stop the boats. Stop the hypocrisy.

Photo courtesy Herald Sun

The asylum seeker debate continues. It has gone, since the days of the Tampa, from election eve opportunism through cynical political manipulation to outright national tragedy. 

Perhaps it’s time to revisit the issue.

I'll quote from Paul Syvret's excellent piece - 

 It is not the trickle of barely seaworthy fishing vessels and their desperate human cargo that poses a threat to Australia. It is the rank dissembling, crocodile tears and dog whistle bigotry that presents far more danger to our social fabric.

Remember how getting tough was going to solve the problem?

Now that the differences between Labor and Coalition policy are almost indistinguishable, it’s clear that getting tough has made no difference at all.

Two facts are indisputable. The first is that no amount of “getting tough” is going to “stop the boats”. The second is that the costs (both human and financial) are not worth the benefit.

Banging these people up on Nauru and Manus has made no difference. The cost of running these gulags is astronomical.

As Burnside points out, the projected costs of Nauru and Manus ($15 billion) would cancel all HECS debt.

How do you feel about that, uni students and recent graduates?

Staying with the costs of it all, keeping refugees onshore costs between $150000 and $350000 per year per refugee. Releasing them into the community, even if they went on the dole, would cost between $10 and $20 thousand per year.

Are you happy about your tax dollar being used to slowly send people insane whilst it’s costing you so much?

Then there’s the issue of how our political leaders use the issue to garner support. It’s a simple three step process.

First, you demonise them. This is achieved by the use of language. Calling them “illegals” is one strategy, followed most recently by Tony Abbott.

SEEKING ASYLUM IS NOT ILLEGAL.

Sorry about the shouting, but sometimes I despair that this simple fact will, by some, never be acknowledged.

Then you construct a narrative. The one most favoured by the Coalition is the macho “we decide” story popularised by John Howard.

Labor use that one, but also demonise the people smugglers. They also use the compassionate “we will stop the drownings” meme. The logical weirdness of this one is clear. Protecting people from a danger already past is bizarre. By definition, they’re not in danger until they get on the boats. They’re still getting on the boats. No matter how tough you get, they will continue to get on the boats.

After all, if you’re a Hazara, and certain death in Afghanistan is weighed up against a risky boat journey with detention at the end is the choice, you’ll opt for the boat every time.

The last dodgy narrative is about queues. Excuse me whilst I shout –

THERE IS NO QUEUE.

As Burnside eloquently points out, if you were a Hazara in Kabul trying to find this fabled “queue”, you’d have a few problems.

The first one is that the location of the Australian embassy in Kabul is a secret for security reasons. Check the DFAT website…

Actually, I was wrong with my three steps narrative. There’s a fourth – “they’re not genuine refugees”.

A fact or two tends to mess with this story.  During the last twelve months, 90% of those arriving by boat were found to be genuine. Those arriving by plane and overstaying were found to be 20% genuine.

    

Funny that…

Paul Syvret sums it up pretty well. It has nothing to do with compassion, border security or “no advantage”.

It’s all about the lowest and grubbiest form of politics. It makes me ashamed to call myself Australian.

Okay, now that I’ve got that off my chest – what’s the solution?

Before you have a solution, you need a problem. I don’t believe we have one. Compared to many other countries the flow of refugees to our shores is infinitesimal.

As Burnside points out, all the arrivals so far this year would equal two weeks worth of our national population increase due to the birth rate.

If however, you believe this trickle of “boat people” is a problem, how about considering a real solution to this non-problem?

Short-term, detain them for only as long as basic security and health checks are done. I reckon this would be a month or two. If there aren’t enough resources to do this in a timely fashion, spend some of the billions saved by closing offshore processing centres on exactly this process.

Release these people into rural and regional communities with the proviso that they must carry a specific and unique form of ID - unique to asylum seekers, that is. Allow them to work, and send their kids to school. Specify that they must reside in designated asylum zones. This is where the ID comes in.

These specified zones would be situations in rural and regional Australia, where the courage, resilience and enterprise exhibited by refugees down through our history are valued. There would be no problems created by creaking urban infrastructure. The income earned by these people would stimulate regional economies and maybe help to arrest the decline of some bush communities.

I've seen first hand what the injection of the work ethic and enthusiasm exhibited by Vietnamese kids has done to schools in Charleville. Afghan kids would be no different.

Don’t tell me this designation of zones and carrying ID is an infringement of human rights, and locking them up in offshore gulags isn’t.

Afghans in particular make great rural workers. It’s been done, and it works. It works with Vietnamese also, as my own observed experience in Charleville has shown. There's talk about establishing an abattoir in the north to help solve real problems in the live meat export trade. One solution to two problems, perhaps?

Long-term, make collaboration with Indonesia and Malaysia an urgent priority. Move heaven and earth to come up with a cooperative agreement that makes their approach and our approach indistinguishable. The successful model provided by the Vietnamese boat people is worth looking at.

This may involve anointing a high profile ex-politician to do some shuttling between Oz and our Northern neighbours for a year or two. Maybe Phillip Ruddock would be the man? Or perhaps Alexander Downer?

It’s pretty simple stuff.

The novelty would be our national leaders putting humanity before politics.

Will we ever see it?

I can hope…..

Three Ring Circus

The Courier sums it up

The old enmities are emerging.

Newman is having trouble paying off all the favours he owes.

When you consider that the LNP is a bit like the Monkees in that it was a product of a marketing strategy rather than political conviction, none of this is surprising.

Queensland has always been good value when it comes to political spectacle.

You ain't seen nothin' yet......

Authentic Aboriginals

First Dog has a particularly pithy view of authenticity when it comes to aboriginality.

Very droll - and very clever...

Farewell Aunty Jack

Television has been around for 50 years in this country.

The Aunty Jack Show was probably the most memorable and original television seen during this time.

It was at the same time brilliant and bizarre. I watch very little TV, but will happily watch reruns of Aunty Jack till the cows come home.

Grahame Bond was brilliant, although perhaps a flawed genius.

The Church Bleeds

Leader front page. No mention or pic of George Pell

There was applause after the sermon at our local mass today.

That's pretty unusual.

It came after the priest quoted Plato in reference to the recently announced Royal Commission to investigate child abuse in churches and other institutions.

The quote -

"We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light."

The heartfelt applause I saw and heard this morning after this sermon is symptomatic of the deep distress that this issue has caused to Catholics all over the country. Sermons are not usually applauded.

The distress this abuse has visited on the victims and their families is of another dimension entirely. I should know.

What is not understood is that the trauma of such an event doesn't disappear with the passage of time. It is accommodated, but it never goes away, and in many cases changes the victim forever.

So perhaps, to use another quote (Luke 23:24) -

"Father forgive them, for they know not what they do".

Forgiveness is going to be very difficult for victims and their families, but perhaps the Royal Commission will shed light on why this has happened to so many defenceless kids.

As a practicing Catholic, for whom the church has been a steadying anchor for all of my life, I am bewildered by the contrast between the values I have seen put in practice by the church throughout my life, and the behaviour of a small minority of the clergy.

I attended a Catholic boarding school, and my children all attended Catholic schools. Because we moved around a bit, they also spent large chunks of their schooling in state schools, as I did. I am unaware of any abuse through this time in either system.

Perhaps because we attended parish schools, many with lay teachers, abuse was less likely. It does seem to have been a problem in institutions where members of the clergy (priests or brothers) were in positions of power and trust.

I'm sure there is a link between institutional culture and abuse. As a school principal I always worked hard to try to ensure that power cliques were no part of school culture. On one occasion, I was appointed to a school where such a clique was embedded in the culture. It took three years of hard graft to get rid of it.

Sexual abuse is about power - not sex. The best way to avoid it happening in an institution is to develop a culture where power hierarchies can't grow and thrive.

So what does this mean for the church?

It probably means the abolition of hierarchies.  It probably means opening the church up to married clergy and the ordination of women. It probably means a return to Catholic social justice values that were such a feature of Vatican II.

Given the current leadership (Pell locally and Benedict in the Vatican) I don't hold out much hope of reform. Vatican II back in the mid sixties set the course of the church in the direction of inclusion, liberation and encouraged dialogue and flexibility. Many liberation movements saw their origins in Vatican II. Notable amongst these was the rise of Solidarity in Poland, and many Social Justice movements in South America.

Out of it grew Liberation theology. This is an essentially Catholic political movement which interprets Christian beliefs in political terms, and seeks to put these values into action.  The political values are about liberation from unjust economic, political, or social conditions. It has been described by proponents as “an interpretation of Christian faith through the poor’s suffering, their struggle and hope, and a critique of society and the Catholic faith and Christianity through the eyes of the poor”.

Those critical of Liberation theology see it as Marxism dressed up as Christianity.

Like many other Catholics of my generation, I was brought up in this tradition. Much of my political viewpoint is based on Liberation theology because it matches neatly with my belief and value system. I work in my local parish in the social justice group. We work with migrants and refugees.

Pope Benedict (Joseph Ratzinger) a man of the Right, also known as the Vatican’s Rottweiler when he was a Cardinal is seeking to reverse many of the trends set during Vatican II. Recent evidence of this was the sacking of our local Bishop (Bill Morris).

It’s no coincidence that Toowoomba diocese has more social justice infrastructure than any other Australian diocese. Bill Morris also handled child abuse in St Saviour’s school in Toowoomba in an honest and open manner by making an immediate and very public apology and ensuring that there was no contest by the Diocese to any of the claims. In doing this, he ignored George Pell.

All of this is relevant in terms of the Royal Commission. Institutional abuse needs a culture (a medium for growth) in which to thrive. Any institution characterised by hierarchical power structures, rigidity and a mono gender makeup is at risk. Moves to open the church up to married clergy and women in the priesthood have been stoutly resisted by Ratzinger. This was one of the issues that got Morris booted, and all he did was write a letter about it to his diocesan laity.

Like many other practising Catholics, I see a connection between the power structures grimly held on to by the old guard in the church and child abuse. I welcome the enquiry, and would like to see some recommendations at the end of it that look at institutional structure. My church needs to be liberated from its medieval roots, and move back to the political centre-left where it fits best.

Perhaps the strong progressive values espoused by orders such as the Josephites will provide a template.

I hope so. My church is bleeding.

Tough Times

This is not my daughter - I would never post her picture - but this is how she looks right now

I usually confine my posts to a fairly narrow range of topics.

This blog is essentially a pastime, a way of engaging the world of ideas, and an indulgence in one of my favourite activities - writing. It doesn't encroach on what is closest to my heart - my family.

I trust regular and new readers will forgive me then, if I break the rules depart from my usual discourse and blog about my family, and the very tough stuff we're going through at the moment.

Long time readers will remember this post about my youngest daughter back in 2010.

Unfortunately the resilience she showed back then hasn't endured. She's always been a strong independent kid. She's pretty, was dux of her school, and is a talented musician. She is studying Psychology at U of Q and dreams of being a Counsellor or a Music Therapist.

She is also on a Long Tan scholarship.

My beautiful daughter has succumbed to the trauma of that event back in 2010, and is now in a Psychiatric ward. About a month ago when she realised she was showing depressive symptoms, she got herself referred to a Psych.

The diagnosis is PTSD.

Her studies, her relationships, her life, are on hold.

There's something ironic in the fact that a disorder common amongst Vietnam Veterans has claimed the daughter of a veteran.

The guy who attacked her was convicted and got two years. He's out now (parole) - back on the street. He was 29 at the time of the offence, and strongly built. She was 18 when it happened. Back then she weighed 50 kg. She's lost weight since as a consequence of her illness.

After reading the court transcript I became aware of how terrifying her ordeal must have been - as much as anything else because she was isolated from help and under his power for five long minutes. Yet she chose not to receive counselling after the event. She seemed to be angry, rather than frightened.

When determining how much nagging I should do to talk her into counselling, I thought back to my days in Vietnam and remembered that anger was often my strongest reaction to a situation when I knew someone was trying to kill me, and rationalised that she was probably reacting the same way.

So I didn't nag her.

Obviously I was wrong.

The medicos are still trying to establish the root of the problem, but to me it's pretty clear. This incident destroyed her sunny and innocent view of the world, and the deep and abiding fear that it generated has taken over.

All my wife and I can do know is wait. We can see her for a short time daily, but she can't have her phone, her books, and can't talk to her friends. She finds this last bit really tough, as she has always been a very socially connected kid.

I'm finding it pretty tough also. Posts may be sparse for a while.

But then, perhaps not. Blogging can be good therapy.

LNP Imploding

The birth of a monster

Well, it didn't take long.

The LNP government is Queensland seems to be acting a bit like a pressure cooker with a faulty valve. They've been in power for about seven months.

Shoving a bunch of metro whiteshoes, white collar spivs, dodgy developers and salt of the earth agrarian socialists into a hold-all with a cute new logo, and calling it a political party was always going to be problematic.

After the standing aside of Michael Caltabiano, the (sort-off) related inquiry into nepotism in his department, and Clive Palmer's very public tantys, you can only stand back (advisedly behind something solid and protective) to wait for the next explosion.

We may see it today.

Bruce Flegg has sacked two of his staff, and they're out for blood.

One of them, Graeme Hallett, is giving a press conference today - should be interesting.

Some are saying Flegg is being set up by his own party colleagues so Newman can take over his safe seat. The fact Napoleon has been very low on the radar for weeks now can only mean internal party polling shows what everyone else already knows. He is deeply unpopular, does not resonate with voters and has a snow flakes chance in hell of holding Ashgrove come the next election. There are a lot of public servants in Ashgrove who wouldn't vote for Newman even if you threatened them with a painful death.

Getting rid of Bruce Flegg and shifting Newman to his seat (Moggill) might ensure Newman gets back next time. There aren't too many public servants in Moggill.

If this is indeed the strategy, watching Newman when he tries to explain how he is now committed to the people of Moggill after telling everyone in Ashgrove how many ties he has to the area and how he cares about it so much, will be riveting.

Meanwhile, public servants continue to be sacked, our unemployment rate is steadily rising, seniors are being kicked out of nursing homes, and people with disabilities are seeing services they've enjoyed for over thirty years being withdrawn.

 Queensland - beautiful one day - well and truly stuffed the next.

Update -

Flegg is toughing it out.

Update 2 -

He's gone.....