Phillip Adams, National Living Treasure
presents:
"Howard Says Sorry, Mark II"
Ed. Note: Some of us are battling for the soul of this nation. Others, unaware that a society which fosters opportunity for each according to his or her capabilities is the bedrock of well-being, continue their assault on its people in the name of profit-generating, antisocial ideologies.
No one better exemplifies the good guys side of the battle than the indefatigable Phillip Adams, perhaps Australia's number one living treasure. Adams needs no introduction, so let us simply present his column from The Weekend Australian of March 24-25, 2001. What better example of Adams' commitment to the egalitarianism John Howard likes to talk about but whose meaning is so utterly beyond his comprehension. Here is Adam's apology for Howard, a nearly complete text the soon-to-be ex PM might take with him to the prison cell of his mind he is sure to inhabit for the rest of his ignominious days:
Regrets, I've had a few
by Phillip Adams
"I am sad and sorry that my political career is coming to such a sad and sorry end. And while in a melancholy and reflective frame of mind, I've decided to say sorry for various sins of commission and omission.
"First of all, I'm sorry for not saying sorry. That's the big sorry. The capital-S sorry. The sorry to the Aborigines.
"And I'm sorry for allowing my people to sully the reputation of Sir Ronald Wilson in the run-up to the publication of Bringing Them Home. I'm sorry for wreaking financial vengeance on the Human Rights Commission for daring to publish that profoundly important document. I'm sorry my department issued statements that denied the existence of a stolen generation. And I'm particularly sorry for my recent treatment of Lowitja O'Donoghue--my attempts to split hairs between "stolen" and "removed". But I was trying to steal a few right-wing votes from One Nation.
"I'm sorry about One nation, too. I'm sorry that my party, the Liberal party, preselected Pauline Hanson in Ipswich. To allow someone of such bigotry and ignorance to be anointed a Liberal Party candidate in a federal election was, of course, a sorry state of affairs. And I'm even sorrier that I gave her the diagonal nod, trying to manipulate the One Nation phenomenon to my political advantage.
"I'm sorry for the impact of this covert support for Hansonism both within Australia and beyond. I'm sorry our neighbours saw Australia reverting to the racism of White Australia.
"I'm sorry that I pulled the plug on Radio Australia at a time when Australia most needed a voice in Asia. And I'm sorry that the transmitters were sold, at a knock-down price, to Christian fundamentalists whose broadcasts will further damage our national reputation.
"Which reminds me. I'm also sorry about pauperising and purging the ABC. I'm sorry too, about my Government's ludicrous policy on digital broadcasting--how we bent over backwards to protect the oligopoly and to keep Kerry on side.
"But, of course, public broadcasting was only one of the issues. My Government was determined to attack anything that had 'public' as an adjective. Such as public health and public education. And I'm sorry that I've run a narrow, doctrinaire policy on public ownership--even when the public made it very clear that they were deeply unhappy about it. I'm particularly sorry about Telstra.
"I'm sorry for my vacillations on mandatory sentencing where, once again, I put political advantage ahead of justice and decency. And while insisting that the Northern Territory was within its rights to send children to prison for stealing pencils, I denied the territory the right to decide on voluntary euthanasia. I'm sorry that I used every trick in the book to outmanoeuvre Darwin and to squash that legislation.
"I'm sorry that I put Wilson Tuckey in charge of trees. It would be hard to imagine a more cynical appointment. Yet there was one. I'm sorry for giving Philip Ruddock the responsibility for immigration. I did it for window-dressing, in the knowledge that Ruddock brought progressive credentials to the portfolio. And acknowledging that he'd fall over himself demonstrating that he'd become a hardliner. And I'm sorry for the way we've treated the illegal immigrants, most of whom are as decent as they are desperate.
"And I'm sorry for leaving that sorry excuse for a minister, John Herron, in charge of that most difficult of portfolios, Aboriginal affairs, for so long. And for giving responsibility for reconciliation to, yes, Ruddock, who went on to treat Aborigines as disparagingly as he had the 'illegals'.
"I'm sorry that, again and again, my Government was more concerned with making a quid than pushing a human rights agenda. I'm sorry that we achieved almost pariah status in the eyes of European governments by refusing to agree to human rights clauses in trade agreements.
"And that's not the only time my Government has disgraced itself on the International stage. I'm sorry that we behaved so badly on environmental issues-- that our failure to take global warming seriously made us look thuggish and reckless.
"I'm sorry that I've been such an enthusiastic supporter of the US drugs war policies, of the prohibition-and-interdiction approach that has been so counterproductive.
"I'm sorry for being far too responsive to the rantings of shock jocks--of responding to their various moral panics. I'm sorry for my populist response to modest proposals such as heroin trials.
"I'm sorry for our diplomatic ineptitudes, particularly our misjudgment of the likely outcomes in East Timor. I'm sorry we made strategic decisions that contributed to the catastrophe.
"I'm sorry about my Government's involvement in the boots'n'all wharf wars. I'm sorry about the masked goons and the Rottweilers. But I'm not sorry that the full story never came out--concerning the conspiracy behind the training of hit squads in Dubai.
"I'm sorry that the GST was so clumsily introduced, that its unnecessary complexities made life even harder for small business and the farmer. And I'm sorry I allowed so many basic services to evaporate from country towns.
"I'm sorry for failing to provide leadership on the republican issue--for doing everything possible to derail an overdue debate.
"I'm sorry for campaigning against intellectual elites while celebrating elitism in sport. I'm sorry for running a line against political correctness, knowing it would give bigots a licence for racial vilification and worse. I'm sorry that I showed my disapproval of multiculturalism when it has been one of Australia's greatest successes. I'm sorry that I allowed the immigration debate to be reignited. And I'm sorry that I allowed the ideologically blinkered to kidnap public policy in so many areas, turning Australia into a colder, harsher, and less compassionate nation.
"I'm particularly sorry that I saw my job as serving the abstract idea of the economy, instead of making the economy work for all Australians--that my devotion to free-market forces has had, all too often, shattering and even tragic effects on the lives of millions.
"Finally, I'm sorry that I've been willing to dump so many of my firmly held views and positions--in the hope of salvaging my prime ministership."
Heil Ruddock: The hatred continues
Immigration Minister Heil Ruddock loves the idea of separating immigrants into neat little boxes such as "economic" (beneficial to a user pays society) and "humanitarian" (perhaps beloved of the gods but of no benefit to the bottom line). In truth, he is only interested in the former. As for the latter, he is claiming that "judicial activists" are being generous with refugee claims to the extent that his government will be forced to penalise offshore refugee immigrants by reducing their intake by some 3000 to offset upstart boat people, whose number is going up. Confusing? Yes, it sounds like he's inviting them to brave the waves. But in reality, he's just making a nasty little point. Representing the Howard Government's primary goal of pushing Hansonist racism, Ruddock intends to make Australians and immigrants resentful of the desperate getting places over "offshore refugees who go through the proper processes of applying for asylum." As if the boat people could have just popped into their local visa vendors in downtown Kabul or Baghdad.
Meanwhile, Pakistani 12 year old Asma Kayani arrived on our Aryan shores to see her father. He, of course, was the man who set himself alight on the steps of Parliament (no, this isn't Burma) in protest to government inaction on allowing his family to join him. The Howard Government rejected his application because Asma's 10-year-old sister has cerebral palsy and would cost taxpayers $750,000 in medical expenses. Hitler would have been proud.
Sadly, Asma's father was in no condition to respond to her. While conscious he is battling infection in Concord Hospital. With our hospitals at third world levels owing to successive government cut backs, successful surgery is now often followed by death due to infection.
Of course, Heil Ruddock has still made no decision on the Kayani family's application.
Finally, these comments from Liz Porter on her visit to the Maribyrnong Detention Centre (The Sunday Age, 22/4/01):
" ... personal publicity is not in the detainees' interests. The inmates I spoke to when I visited implored me not to mention details that might identify them for fear it might prejudice their cases. They have said the same to others. They know the Immigration Minister, Philip Ruddock, has discretionary power, so you can entirely understand their desire to make no waves.
"Some of the detainees have been inside for years as their cases wind their way to the refugee tribunal or to a court of appeal.
"It is no wonder that many fear they have been forgotten by everyone except the loyal band of activists who hold vigils outside the centre most Sundays (and spare a thought for detainees in Port Hedland and Woomera, centres that appear to have been located specifically to deny refugees the possibility of help from local community groups.)
"The inmates' histories and their present situation would make any free citizen weep and reflect that 'there but for the grace of God (and the appropriate immigration documents) go I'.
"Last year, Sweden had 17,000 asylum seekers compared with Australia's 12,000. But the combined capacity of that country's four detention centres is 120." There are "more than 2000 in Australia (with more planned.)"
OZ to be a penal colony for the poor
It is almost beyond belief the extent to which the Howard Government will go to victimise the terror-stricken and penalise the poor. We've seen how boat people are treated in the Nazi-like concentration camps of Heil Ruddock. Now it's the turn of poor families with their child care benefits, under a scheme that came into effect on July 1 last year.
Vanessa Walker (The Oz, 18/4/01) reports that some 40,000 low income families could owe up to $1000 per child come October because they have failed to correctly estimate their income under the new childcare arrangements. "The problem arises when parents in casual jobs fail to inform the Family Assistance Office of changes to their income, thereby attracting more childcare subsidy than they are entitled to." The scheme will hit families "with no constant income. To be charged correctly they would have to call the assistance office every time they received their pay."
The italics are mine because what kind of a penalising system would require people at the bottom end of the wages chain to act as if they were in business, especially if they are employed casually? Why in fact should anyone earning a wage be required to call the Family Assistance Office every pay day? That's what you have to do on the dole! Why can't these poor bastards be left alone? They have nothing! And with the GST they now have even less. The message is clear: this government regards the poor, whether they be wage earners, the homeless, or the ethnically impure (non-white) with the same regard as Aboriginals in the White Australia days ... as little more than fauna.
Just imagine the joy these people will feel when not only their Christmas is cancelled but just about everything else is too. Make no mistake, these families will not survive a $1000 penalty. We're talking about people who live from pay cheque to pay cheque. People for whom a five dollar bill found in a rarely worn pants pocket is a boon, a cause for celebration. People who are likely visiting charities for food parcels.
Such an event, in my opinion, requires somewhat more than a vote for the opposing parties. It requires taking to the streets.
Crafty Howard silences Hollingworth
Dear, dear, dear, what have we here? A white male, a consecrated, ordained, lifelong-vow-taking Archbishop of the Queen's own religion as our next Governor-General? Sly Johnny! He must have put the word in Holly's ear, to wit: no more words and the job's yours. For the Archbishop nearly trampled journalists in the rush to hold his "last press conference for five years" by announcing a role of self-censorship. No more talk of a formal apology to Aborigines or reconciliation or sticking up for the disadvantaged for him. He's simply going to reflect back to Australians who they are. Or something. Let's hope he doesn't get a sore neck from constantly looking left and right. Because, thanks to his installer, Aussies are polarised like never before.
Let's also hope that he refrains from putting down government schools in favour of private. For this is what he said on the subject: "If there is any single reason why parents make huge sacrifices in sending students to fee-paying schools, it is not only to ensure that their children are formed within a disciplined framework but that they also receive clear teaching about values and ethics." Gee, and here I thought that private school kids were among the country's most arrogant racists, and that values and ethics were the last thing they were going to be taught. I mean, isn't that what we see with stomach-churning regularity?
At least the new G-G isn't Tim Fisher. Wearing a top hat on his unremovable Akubra would look silly. (Hollingworth doesn't have that problem; he'll be forgetting his vows and duties for the next five years. Or will he?) And let us praise the Good Lloyd that it's not Pell Pot. (This was my first outraged thought when I retrieved The Australian from the lake in the lawn and all I could see was the headline: Archbishop the next G-G.) But then the Catholics wouldn't permit such a conflict of interest. Pell is beholden to the Pope.
Thus Peter Hollingworth is to take over from William Deane. A hard act to follow, indeed. It should have been Lowitja O'Donoghue, but that was always beyond the scope of scopeless John.
Perhaps I should be a little more enthusiastic, he's a nice bloke and all. But, ahem, there's that bit about church and state makes a feller uneasy.
As Gerard Henderson says, "The Most Reverend Peter Hollingworth deserves the best wishes of all Australians. It's just that the Prime Minister should not have made the offer. And the Archbishop should not have accepted it."
The final word (or image) goes to John Spooner, whose cartoon appears next to Henderson's comment on the Opinion page of The Age, (24/4/01). Titled, "The Restoration", it shows the truest rendering of John Howard yet, that of a smugly evil knave of a man looking off frame, perhaps at a carapaced portrait of the Queen, as he places the top hat of her hopeful pleasure on Hollingworth's head.
Ed Note. Evidently John Howard is an Anglican, which makes his appointment of Hollingworth far more understandable. That is, it's more in line with the PM's incomprehension of ethics. By that, we mean the concept of ethics, not its spelling or pronunciation. For if John Howard knows anything, it's how to spell and say "ethics" correctly. Anyway, we thought he was a Methodist and have stated so elsewhere. A shame really. The image of Methodist John and Janette standing behind the white picket fence he so dearly loves is pure Australian Gothic.
Yeah, well your dad's a double wanker!
John Howard has come to the rescue of recently maligned Robert Menzies in the same way a son would face a school mate who called his father a wanker or worse. In Menzies' case it's worse.
Michael Gordon (The Age, 21/4/01) reports that in a letter to Australia's then high commissioner in London, Stanley Bruce, Menzies hoped the Allies could still do deals with Hitler even though Hitler had just invaded Poland. "Nobody gives a damn about Poland," said Little Johnny's hero.
What makes the letter embarrassing in the extreme, is that Menzies is alone among appeasing world leaders to attempt appeasement after the invasion.
Paul Keating has jumped into the fray by accusing Menzies of being among a group of "craven cowards who wanted to lie down when the fight was really on," and that John Howard had "terrible trouble" looking history in the face. Menzies letter, says Keating, shows "unambiguously that days after Hitler had invaded Poland, Menzies was still open to the idea of doing a deal with the Nazis. He, along with Bruce, was one of an influential group braying at Churchill's heels, trying to wedge him into negotiation. This was one among a string of foreign policy miscalculations that would later culminate in the fiasco of Menzies' support for Britain over the Suez Crisis and Australia's entry into the Vietnam War."
Howard retaliated by saying, "I think most fair-minded Australians would recognize that on our side of politics the towering figure of history ... was Robert Menzies. I mean, he laid waste the Labor Party for almost a generation." In his attack on the other kid's father, Howard went on to add, "There are comments by John Curtin in the parliament encouraging the idea of negotiations after the war had broken out."
Well, now. In the first place, it wasn't Menzies who laid waste to the Labor party, it was B.J. Santamaria. Without the DLP split-off Labor would have taken at least half of Menzies' elections. In the second, Kim Beazley has this to say, "Curtin really abandoned the notion of appeasement and got into the business of rearmament of Australia about a year or two before the war broke out. I don't know to what Howard was referring, but there is some difference between opining in parliament, if he did say that, and actually instructing your spokesperson in London to pursue a particular course." In support of his argument, Beazley said the perceived diffidence of Menzies was the reason two conservative independents, Coles and Wilson, put Curtin in power.
But back to Keating. Ray Cassin points out in The Sunday Age (22/4/01), "As the leader of a government that secretly negotiated one of the most discreditable international agreements in Australian history, the security pact with the Suharto regime in Indonesia, Keating cannot afford to sound too smug about the reluctance of other people to stand up to dictators."
And then there is Gough Whitlam's deal with the Indons over East Timor.
The message? Don't let your daughter marry a politician.
Former Liberal PM Malcolm Fraser, hated by his party because he represents it's dwindling human face, calls it the "cult of denial". Right wing commentators who have all but taken over Sydney's Daily Telegraph and Melbourne's Herald Sun, are engaging in a concerted effort to twist the "incontrovertible fact" that governments had ordered the removal of half-caste Aboriginal children.
But they are not stopping there. Michael Duffy, the corpse-like columnist with the Daily Telegraph is waging a campaign against "middle-class, high-brow elitists" who watch the ABC, evidently staking his claim as the voice of non-middle-class taxpayers who are forced to fund their luxurious viewing.
Is Duffy saying that since most people are content to fry their brains with endless commercials on the chump channels, there is no reason why we all shouldn't? Perhaps this is his interpretation of democracy, but it sounds more like the Sovietisation of the masses. Reduce the national mentality to Popstars-watching and presto, you have a nation of will-free weak links happy as Larry to vote for conservative social programmers. Who just happen to get their jollies redirecting creative thinking into consumerism.
Duffy also wants the ABC to be privatised. So then we can be like New Zealand, who did so 10 years ago and have not had public broadcasting worth its name since. He also likes to measure the ABC against the BBC, but as Peter Wilmoth reports in The Age, (21/4/01), a comparison between the ABC and BBC1 and BBC2 for Monday night the 16th of April 2001, shows that we have the best by far.
But then we already know that we have the best public broadcaster in the world, indeed the only one. Britain's Channel Four and America's PBS are influenced by corporate sponsorships and dare not act without fear or favour.
The intellect-hating right, encouraged by the intellect-hating Howard Government, are going all out to polarise Australians because they know there are only a few months of government backing left. In this, they are behaving rhetorically exactly like Pol Pot, who simply had intellectuals shot.
Surprise! Paramilitary police rampant in OZ
Paramilitary Police thugs in Quebec City have got nothing on our own boys in blue right here in Victoria. We've seen the Special Operations Group in action for years. Chilling, medieval chants of "Move, move, move!" against protesters at Richmond Secondary School, mass strip-searches at a gay nightclub, pressure-point neck holds on peaceful demonstrators, and numerous fatal shootings where the operative was to aim at the heart not the legs, have held sway over the last decade and more. That most of these events occurred during the Kennett regime must be noted. But the paramilitary did not originate with Kennett. They originated during the late 1970s as counter-terrorist units. Did Australia need them? Or were they ordered by the CIA. We know now, that the CIA had a hand in The Dismissal.
As Dr Jude McCulloch states in her new book, Blue Army: Paramilitary Policing in Australia, a police force is duty-bound to protect life and to operate using only minimum force. The military, on the other hand, are trained to kill and may use maximum force to overcome an enemy. Paramilitary police straddle the two. Unlike the military, however, they are operationally independent from government. Police command, rather than an elected government, decides where and when this force will be used. But, like the military, a paramilitary force regards citizens as enemies.
It is clear that the Victorian SOG took over during the S11 protests last year. The protesters at some moment were no longer considered citizens but enemies and were dealt with accordingly.
It is hoped that in her book, Dr McCulloch names the governments responsible for the introduction of paramilitary policing and, more importantly, why.
Anzac Day: soap opera, defining moment, or neither?
I may be sticking my neck out here, but I have to agree with Helen Irving (The Oz, 27/4/01) and Stephen Alomes (The Age , 25/4/1) in their concerns over our damn near hysterical interpretation of Anzac Day. Alomes worries about our romanticising the slaughter at Gallipoli; you get the sense that we are encouraging our youth to get itchy for another war. Irving wonders why we have to make that slaughter--owing entirely to inept decisions on the part of British commanders who considered our soldiers no more than colonial fodder--as the defining moment for our nation, rather than the uniquely peaceful Federation of 14 years earlier.
Kim Beazley foolishly wants Anzac Day to replace Australia Day, but so does our new Archbishop-General. This from a man whose life is dedicated to peace on earth, goodwill towards men. What rubbish. Wars happen because we're a barbarian lot under the skin. But let's not glorify them, let's not wallow in soap opera sentimentality over them. The Anzac Day ceremonies are necessary as a once a year reminder of humanity's greatest glory-free failing. But let's leave it at that.
Where's Me Tablets!
by Gort Slypesunder
• Want to make someone puke? Play them one of John Howard's sound bites. Especially when he goes on about Kim Beazley's ticker. Notice with repugnance the little break in his voice. He sounds like an elderly adolescent. Sounds, in fact, like Michael Veitch as Skippy's sidekick Sonny in an old Fast Forward routine. Ticker? If John Howard had a heart, he might have some.
• Peter Costello's election-year decision to halt the sale of Woodside is just another ploy to keep voters onside. We all know that in any other year he would have sold it in a flash. The big worry is Labor's lame response. At first Beazley councelled Costello against panicking over the decision. Indeed, Costello took quite awhile to make up his mind. But when he finally did, Beazley accused him of having dithered the months away. Is Beazley being advised to be either absent for days at a time or to act foolish when he is present? You get the feeling that his advisors actually want him to lose face. Which makes sense if any one from the NSW right faction is advising him. If he blows it, they can install one of their own--the Liberal-in-Labor-clothes Mark Latham, for example. Let's face it, the greatest threat to Labor comes from within. The bloody NSW right faction should be booted out of the party.
• The death of Liberal MP Peter Nugent is all the more regrettable because he was one of the few human faces in the Coalition government. Another case of the good guys going down while the bad guys live on and on and on. This strange anomaly must be wired into human DNA. If so, what exactly did God have in mind when he strung it together? (Or should that be "stringed"? Strang? Christ, I don't know.)
Anyway, the Victorian seat of Aston is now up for grabs. Coincidentally, on the night of Nugent's death, I took my girlfriend to an Indian restaurant in Boronia, a hamlet in the heart of the seat. Much to her eye-rolling embarrassment I brazenly polled a few curry eaters at nearby tables. With one exception--a seven year old boy who regarded me blankly--they all expressed sadness at the very capable Nugent's death and relief at being released thereby from having to vote Liberal next time around. "We were lucky to have the only decent Liberal rep in Australia," said one. "It won't happen again."
It is fervently hoped that the PM will be forced into an early Federal election, some say in July, rather than opting for another disastrous by-election.
• Speaking of DNA, a certain Liberal slopehead from QLD, Peter Lindsay, wants a national register of every Australian's DNA to help fight escalating crime rates. Citing the totalitarian's mantra, "The only people that need to worry about this are criminals," Lindsay claims he has support from a handful of federal politicians and an unnamed cabinet minister. Law and order uber alles!
• John Howard announces antidote to bad behaviour: more sports! That's right, $163 million Aussie rupees will be shoved through the taxpayer-to-votes pipeline to get those kids who just won't say no to life-beyond-the-white-picket-fence to play more friggin' sport. Well, actually only $82 million will go to them. The rest beefs up the elites who, God knows, represent about the only pride left in this country. Knowledge nation did you say? No one can afford knowledge any more. Basketballs are cheap though. Call it the dribbling nation.
• The Cricket season is over. What a relief to know we won't have to reorganise lunch to accommodate it. What could be more infuriating than to turn on the ABC at noon only to hear that cricket commentator who has somehow managed to squeeze his vocal cords to sound like he was broadcasting in the 1930's tell us we'll have to wait until One PM for The World Today on Radio National.
• Irris Makler has been booted from her job as ABC correspondent in Moscow. Under Jonathan Shier's typically right wing chauvinistic rule, women who are deemed to "look like dogs" or have "grating" voices (Makler) are swiftly shown the door. Makler does have a strange voice, but it seemed to suit her post. Further goes the ABC towards homogenisation. Next issue, HH will be tackling the rape of the ABC's archives and library division. If Beazley doesn't sack Shier and his parasites almost the moment after he swears in, there will be hell to pay.
• And finally: Heard on Virginia Trioli talkback: Old lady calling to say, "I'm 78 years old but I'm not old enough to vote for John Howard."