A Letter to Heston

I received an email from Heston Russell the other day. He is the founder of the now defunct Australian Values Party.

He is asking for an apology from the ABC for alleged misreporting.

This is what I wrote in reply - 

Dear Heston 

I note you’re asking for an apology from the ABC for misreporting.

Fair enough, but I’ve just about given up on getting an apology for the treatment of tens of thousands of young Australians from 1965 to 1972.

I’m referring of course, to the heinous National Service Act 1964, introduced by a Coalition government. This piece of legislation conscripted one in twelve twenty year olds to be enlisted in the ARA, and sent about sixteen thousand of us to Vietnam, to participate in a futile and tragic conflict which killed millions of Vietnamese, fifty seven thousand Americans, and five hundred Australians, two hundred of them conscripts. I saw two of them die in April 1970. Misreporting is a pretty venial sin compared to that.

Where does your Australian Values Party stand on support for ex-service personnel?

If you’re serious about justice and fairness, as an ex-serviceman, you should be advocating for national servicemen, about thirty thousand who survive. Those, like me, who saw active service, have been compensated, after years of struggle, but those who served in Australia, PNG and Malaysia, have not. The DVA white card which they have now been grudingly granted offers very limited support.

Here is a piece I wrote about my experience, which is far from unique. I am one of the lucky ones. Three members of my rifle section had succumbed to trauma by the time of the Welcome Home march in October 1987. It was too late for them -  https://independentaustralia.net/australia/australia-display/reflections-on-the-fall,4404

So until you’re ready to publicly advocate for an apology for national servicemen, you won’t get any support from me. Every email you send simply reinforces my opinion that you put political  affiliation before support for veterans. Prove me wrong.

Bob Whittaker

5 Platoon, B Coy, 7RAR, 1970

Birds of a Feather

George Santos (Courtesy Wikipedia)

Troy Thompson (Courtesy Townsville Bulletin)

 

Today, gentle reader, I'm comparing two individuals who have entered positions of public office on the basis of confected fantasies. To put it in words of one syllable, they lied their way into office.

Despite the fact their behaviour is separated in time and distance, it is similar. The similarities border on the uncanny. It is almost is if it was scripted by the same writer, and to introduce a cliche, in their cases, truth is often stranger than fiction.

The first is a local.

Troy Thompson (nee Birnbrauer*) contested the mayoralty of Townsville, and won, defeating the incumbent Jenny Hill, in the 2024 local government elections.

He had previously attempted to contest the state electorate of Thuringowa as a One Nation candidate, but was disendorsed because he did not disclose his directorship of a supply chain management company that became insolvent in 2017.

Being disendorsed by One Nation should have rung alarm bells for the electors of the city of Townsville, but it didn't. What did create problems for him was his CV which he promoted heavily whilst campaigning, both in local and social media.

That CV claimed he had military service, comprising five years as a reservist in Australia, with 109 Signal Squadron before serving with 152 Signal Squadron attached to the SAS at Karrakatta W.A.

The truth was a little different. He had in fact enlisted in 1991 as a Catering Corps reservist. I assume he had hoped that Townsville voters wouldn't discern the difference between a commando and a cook.

As Townsville is a garrison city with a large military population, who understood pretty well the role and function of army units, this military reference was probably a mistake. In addition, he claimed academic qualifications including bachelor degrees in science and commence from Griffith and Curtin universities, displayed on his LinkedIn profile. He had neither.

He was sprung when he gave a speech on Anzac Day wearing a heap of medals. They weren't his, and he wore them correctly on the right, but the lack of personal medals from his advertised service  (which he should have been able to display on the left) created conjecture. The local media got on to it, and he was  referred to the Office of the Independent Assessor.

He has been stood down on full pay for twelve months, and the payment of his salary is something that Townsville residents are not all that happy about. It seems that being creative with your CV can, for a while at least, deliver optimal financial results.

The second aspiring politician was an American.

George Santos is a former US congressman and convicted felon who served in a New York congressional district before he was expelled.

He won the seat (on his second attempt) after having fabricated a CV which did not disclose his criminal record, contained a completely fictional account of his business activities, income, and personal employment history.

This fact was lost on the voters, and he defeated his Democrat rival, Robert Zimmerman in the midterms. After his victory, numerous reports emerged that his his biography appeared fabricated. Eventually he admitted lying about his education and employment history, 

Eventually, he was expelled from congress, but not before he had participated in a number of crucial votes, including the vote removing house speaker Kevin McCarthy.

After his expulsion he pleaded guilty to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. He is scheduled for sentencing on February 7, 2025.

What these two have in common is their complete disregard for the truth in the quest for political power. The demise of the profession of journalism in favour of opionistas who sell discord and fiction for profit has seeped across the Pacific, and this trend is turbocharged by social media.

I doubt that it will end well.

*He took the name of the woman he married in 1996.

Rewriting history

Apart from being priceless viewing, gentle reader, this grab illustrates pretty clearly the consequences of a ham fisted attempt to rewrite history.

The bill is unlikely to pass a second reading, as ACT's coalition partners have indicated they will not support it.

So it's going nowhere, but this is a great spectacle.

Enjoy!

Sound and Fury?

 

Pic courtesy Public Delivery

No doubt, gentle reader, you are fed up to the back teeth with the soap opera that is the US presidential election. It will continue, as an issue, to be milked by all media, both social and corporate, for weeks and months to come.

Maybe it would help to push the sensational reporting, the endless conjecture, and the triumphalism and despair aside for a bit, and look at a few (very) simple facts.

Turnout is always a good statistic to check. It looks like coming in at about 65%, which is a few percentage points lower than in 2020. I could attempt to analyse the reason for the small decline, but that would be conjecture, best avoided. The fact remains, however, that despite claims to the contrary, this election was unremarkable in terms of voter engagement.

Let's look at the popular vote. Best projection (they're still counting here and there) is Trump 50.5%, Harris 48.0%.

Applying some basic (if unconventional) analysis to that, could be informative. 

If you add votes for Harris to the quantum of non-voters, you get 48% + 35% (100% - 65%) = 83%. Put simply, 83% of eligible voters did not support the winner, or if all the 35% did, they didn't believe that the situation was serious enough to warrant a trip to a booth, a dropbox, or the hassle of completing a mail-in ballot.

It makes media references to a "landslide" or "unprecedented realignment" look pretty silly.

So after taking that metaphorical cold shower, the pundits should probably look at their forecasts of an historical shift in trans-Pacific politics, for two reasons. One is that Trump is notorious for over promising. You need only to look at his first term to understand that simple reality. There is no new unbroken border wall, for example, and what there is, was paid for by American, rather than Mexican taxpayers.

Promises about vaccines (Operation Warp Speed) were not kept, and Obamacare was not repealed. His promise to end gun-free zones was also not kept, and is an example of an issue unaffected by the pandemic, which has been used as an excuse for some of his broken commitments.

So the rhetoric he used to get into power is not a clear indicator of what he will do with that power. It reminds me a little of the cliche about a dog chasing cars and what it would do if it actually caught one. Trump's failed business ventures are text book examples of unfulfilled promises.

Finally, I learned a useful lesson about Americans when I served beside them in Vietnam fifty plus years ago. Whilst I shouldn't generalise, and there are some very smart Americans,  the quip we often made after encounters with Yanks in country was "You can tell them anything; sell them anything".

That seems to me to remain largely true.

An Anniversary

Today is the 60th anniversary of the cabinet decision to introduce selective national service, based on a ballot of birthdates, to rapidly increase the size of the ADF in peacetime.

At no time in our national history had Australians been conscripted to fight on foreign soil in peacetime. By 1972, 15381 Nashos were sent to Vietnam, where 200 were killed, 1200 wounded, and thousands traumatised.

A further 40000 (30000 have survived) who weren't deployed to Vietnam had their futures negatively and irrevocably altered by two years in the military at a critical time in their lives, and initially received no rehabilitation benefits. 

For a time, the Australian people supported the policy and returned to power a Coalition government which skilfully used anti-communist hysteria based on the Domino theory.

The voters woke up, far to late for many, in 1972, after this most political of conflicts, which had nothing to do with national security.

It's time for a bipartisan Crown apology to surviving Nashos, based on the division created by this policy, and the damage done to a generation. Those surviving voters who supported the decision at the time owe us an apology, as do those who blamed us for the war and turned on us on our return.

As Paul Ham wrote in "Vietnam, the Australian War" - "A unique aspect of the Vietnam war is the collective cruelty of a nation that ordered, with the threat of a two-year jail term, a 20 year old to go to war, and then damned him for going."

The Politics of Fear

 

Image courtesy AAP - Russell Freeman

It's pretty obvious, gentle reader, that the best way to get many voters on side is to scare the living daylights out of them.

In the recent Queensland election, both major parties used fear as a potent strategy and spent a great deal of money on spreading it.

Reasoned debate and presentation of facts were abysmally absent from the campaign. It worked for the LNP, and less so for Labor, although the emergence of abortion as an issue late in the campaign may helped them avoid a 2012 style wipeout.

Pic courtesy ABC

The irony remains that youth crime statistics have collapsed in Queensland despite both parties claiming that we are in the grip of a youth crime crisis. The only crisis visible is the hysteria spread by both legacy and social media about crime.

A couple of tragic high profile incidents have been cynically exploited as clickbait through online media, and social media has amplified the phenomenon.

The abortion issue also fed into a scare campaign, but there is uncertainty about how the current legislation will be treated if, as Robbie Katter promises, he is successful in getting a vote to amend the current law to the floor of parliament.

As usual, what happens across the Pacific always has ramifications in Australia, and the rise of abortion as an issue here after the reversal of Roe Vs Wade in the US is further evidence of the tendency for American issues to seep to the West.

I long for the day when we have members of our state parliament driven by the issues in their constituencies rather than the party line as promoted by public relations "experts".

The Toilet Wall

 

Pic courtesy Fairfax media.

As we watch the soap opera that is contemporary US politics and the rapid trend on the local scene towards the same phenomenon, it's timely to reflect on the role of social media.

Two politicians, both members of the Coalition parties, have bought time on my Facebook platform, and as a consequence I get posts from them daily on my feed.

Reading and analysing these posts is a fascinating exercise. Fact checking them is a pastime.

To provide an example, the member for my federal electorate of Groom has been posting statements such as "Crime rates have soared under Labor" and " the Liberal Party has a very proud record of driving Australia's economic and social progress"

The first statement about the crime rate is simply wrong, or to use the current jargon, an example of misinformation, as this report from Policing Insight of a graph of crime youth statistics from the ABS website illustrates.

The trend is down, not up, and it doesn't take much of an intellect to note this. 

Either Hamilton is telling porkies, or he can't read a graph. This is just one example. He's addicted to misinformation, usually expressed as three or four word slogans. He also believes that his audience is too thick to know that crime is a state issue and that he has no jurisdiction. He obviously has a low opinion of his constituents.

The second example is not so cut and dried, but is best characterised as an opinion based on historical mythology. Historical mythology can hang around like barnacles, as I discovered recently when researching a thesis on national service.

In connection with this opinion about the Menzies legacy, I beg to differ. As a national serviceman conscripted to fight in a civil war on foreign soil in peacetime I would not call selective conscription for political advantage (which is what it was) part of a "very proud record".

It's amazing how some features of Coalition policy under Menzies and his successors are airbrushed out of history.

It does illustrate why Hamilton and his colleagues in the Coalition are opposing the proposed misinformation legislation. Misinformation is their bread and butter.

 They're not the only ones who post lies on social media, of course, but my taxes pay his salary, and I'd appreciate him not telling lies on the taxpayers payroll. All politicians do it, and unfortunately social media has become a sewer. Leunig's cartoon above is apposite.

That is starkly obvious when you examine his statement about crime, but not so when you look at Coalition history. The first example is a simple denial of fact and an example of using a lie to advance a political position.

The second example is an expression of opinion. The proposed legislation is no threat to the holding and expression of an honest opinion. It is, however a threat to the deliberate posting of lies on social media.