All posts by oecomuse

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About oecomuse

On unceded Darug lands. I write about law, economics, politics, and ethics ( I also lecture and do research on these subjects for a living). Single mother, singer and strummer and happy camper, non-theist. Also furious feminist who thinks the people running the planet are doing a terrible job.

On citizenship and election to high office

Logic law and politics

In the USA, being born in the USA is a constitutional requirement for standing for the Presidency. Anyone born outside the USA is not eligible to stand. There was once some talk of changing this so that Arnold Schwartzenegger aka the former governator of California, would become eligible to run for president. A sex scandal broke, he disappeared from public life, and so did the debate.

This is a constitutional matter. A legal fact. The political and cultural requirements are different, numerous and complex. For instance, there is no requirement in the constitution that a presidential candidate also be a Christian. But the current political reality is that candidates are compelled to state their adherence to the Christian religion, and end their speeches with ‘God Bless America’. This is so despite the fact that the framers of the American Constitution were determined secularists. Freedom of religion and freedom from religion is the secular liberal tradition. The private letters of US Constitution framer Thomas Jefferson clearly show his secular outlook and contain the phrase ‘separation of church and state’ to explain the First Amendment, which opens with this line:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof

Atheists are usually required to demonstrate our knowledge of your religion in order to refute it. In this tradition, Jefferson supported his argument by quoting the gospel of Mark (12:17):

“Then Jesus said to them, “Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.” And they were amazed at him.”

Because Barak Hussein Obama is a black Democrat with a funny sounding Muslim-ish name, a group of right wing conspiracists made up a story: that Obama was not born in the USA. This is simply a lie. It gained traction in all the usual ways: via the lie-spreading machine that is Fox “news”, funded by millionaire Donald Trump, who donates generously to the Republican Party and increases his already obscene wealth under the demonstrably terrible “economic policy” measures favoured by the extreme right wing. The whole shrieking mess can be translated into a simple invalid argument: Obama is black, therefore he is not eligible for the presidency.

The situation in Australia is different. Not for the first time, we have a foreign-born Prime Minister. This is neither a legal nor political problem. The constitution does not even mention the prime minister, let alone direct that the person holding that office be born in Australia.

The Australian constitution does, however, require all elected members of the Commonwealth Parliament to only hold Australian citizenship. That is, if you want to take up an elected position in the highest governing authority in our democracy, it is unconstitutional to do so if you also hold allegiance to a foreign power in the form of citizenship of another nation. You must be neither a non-citizen nor a dual citizen. You must be an Australian citizen and an Australian citizen only. This is in section 44, which sets out the conditions and requirements of election to the Commonwealth Parliament.

Section 44 of the Australian Constitution lists the grounds for disqualification on who may become a candidate for election to the Parliament of Australia. It states in particular:
44. Any person who –
(i.) Is under any acknowledgement of allegiance, obedience, or adherence to a foreign power, or is a subject or a citizen or entitled to the rights or privileges of a subject or citizen of a foreign power: or
(ii.) Is attainted of treason, or has been convicted and is under sentence, or subject to be sentenced, for any offence punishable under the law of the Commonwealth or of a State by imprisonment for one year or longer: or
(iii.) Is an undischarged bankrupt or insolvent: or
(iv.) Holds any office of profit under the Crown, or any pension payable during the pleasure of the Crown out of any of the revenues of the Commonwealth: or
(v.) Has any direct or indirect pecuniary interest in any agreement with the Public Service of the Commonwealth otherwise than as a member and in common with the other members of an incorporated company consisting of more than twenty-five persons:
shall be incapable of being chosen or of sitting as a senator or a member of the House of Representatives.

Here’s the thinking behind the provision on foreign powers. While the states run day to day internal matters such as health, education and policing, the Commonwealth must deal with external affairs on behalf of all Australians. So if a member of the Commonwealth Parliament holds dual citizenship, they immediately risk a conflict of interest where the Australian government is negotiating with, or going to war against, a foreign power. This is an unacceptable level of risk, because national security.

So to stand for public office as a dual citizen is in breach of our founding legal document, the law that authorises all other Australian laws. Again, this is not necessarily a problem. If the constitutional breach is seen as inadvertent, a mere oversight, we extend the principle of charity. This is the same rule that gives the batsman the benefit of the doubt. People make mistakes all the time. Where there are humans, there is human error. In the first instance, we give them the benefit of the doubt. They said it was an oversight, and it probably was. It’s a small problem with a simple solution.

Renounce the other citizenship, become an Australian-only citizen, if necessary hold a bye-election. If you win the bye-election after renouncing the non-Australian citizenship, the citizenship of a foreign power, both the legal and political problems are resolved. That’s it.

It is a different case altogether to stand for public office not once, but twice or more, while not being eligible to stand. The principle of charity no longer applies. You can no longer enjoy the benefit of the doubt. You’ve got form. It is certainly a substantially different matter if the person who did this is the Prime Minister, a person who holds qualifications from an elite university, a highly paid member of parliament who knows or ought to know that what they are doing is in breach of the constitution. Someone in this position is attributed with constructive knowledge, that is, if you say you didn’t know, the law says you ought to have known, in this case on the basis of the responsibilities and remuneration of your office, and the foundational principles of the Westminster system, such as ministerial accountability.

There is no crazy conspiracy ‘birther’ movement in Australia. There is a group of people on social (and now some traditional) media asking whether the Prime Minister has stood for public office while ineligible to stand, and if so, how many times. Comparisons with the birthers should be dismissed out of hand as weak analogy. That is, there are too few similarities, and those similarities are very broad (both arguments are founded in political oppositionism and use the constitution to make their case). There are too many highly relevant differences, and the differences are very specific. These are long-standing logical principles for identifying a weak analogy. It is an illogical comparison. The birthers seek to discredit the president and their campaign is racist as well as political. In Australia, we are asking whether the Prime Minister’s tendency to lie goes all the way to his election to public office itself.

The question is easily answered. The Prime Minister’s Office tells us he has renounced his British citizenship. It refuses to say when. The fudging and blocking and delaying from both conservative governments, in Australia and Britain, suggests the date will be politically harmful to the Prime Minister. My guess is that the date he renounced British citizenship is relatively recent, and will show that he wilfully, not inadvertently, stood for public office more than once, while being ineligible to do so.

Not all Muslims

And in good news

Last week my job was to teach introductory logic to first year law students. It is pretty good stuff, and I enjoy it. A basic starting point is to recognise a valid argument based on the vintage test “if the premises are true, then the conclusion is necessarily true”. We run through this a few times and I start with an old classic: “All humans have hair. I am human, therefore I have hair.” Next step is to test the premises for truth, for which the opening gambit is “a statement is true if it corresponds to the facts in the world”. From there we wander about human history for a while, peering at various sites and traditions for locating facts in the world. We look at rhetorical facts, such as “a volcano erupts because there is a fire breathing dragon inside”; and scientific facts, for example, a volcano erupts because there is molten rock beneath the earth’s crust. Self-evident truths are defined by agreement: “all men are born equal”; while notorious facts are accepted as true, in the face of contravening evidence, eg “the most fundamental right of all is the right to human security”. That one is from our former Attorney General, Phillip Ruddock, who evidently has not read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, not even the first article.

Having canvassed these techniques for identifying a logical argument, I warn the students that in a court room we will see some of these argument structures, but the content will be anything from mundane to downright confronting. Courts are tedious places, repetitive and dull and preoccupied with process. Yet they are also places of high drama, where we hear excruciating detail of the very worst of man’s inhumanity to man, and women, and children. Yes, it is mostly men. Men outnumber women prisoners by a ratio of 10:1 in New South Wales.

So I offer up some more controversial examples. “All homosexuals are paedophiles” I say. “I am homosexual, therefore I am a paedophile.” We work out that the conclusion would be true if the premises were true, so the problem with this argument is the absence of truth in the premises. The structure is valid, but the argument is still not logical, because it lacks an essential component: truth. OK, I say, now let’s try this one. “All Muslims are terrorists. I am a Muslim, therefore I am a terrorist.”

This example was inspired by the Australian Prime Minister, who was on the radio that morning. As I drove to work I listened to him trying to explain to a patient journalist, in his awkward repetitive way, that there is a pressing need for Australia to once again ramp up the threat of terrorism. His bumbling claim, from what I could make out, was that trashing the centuries-old legal principles around the onus of proof is a cool idea because terrorists.

But one of my students heard me say “bla bla bla all Muslims are terrorists bla bla bla” and raised his hand. “Yes, Mohammed?” And the student says “Please do not use my religion in such examples, because it offends me.” I start to explain to the student that we confront difficult ideas in this class, as in legal practice itself, and that learning logic is a key skill for refuting dangerous ideas. As I am doing this, three other students, whose first names are Ali, Hussein and Ahmed, turn around to Mohammed and start telling him that the teacher is not offending their religion, she is pointing out the lies that are told about Muslims. Mohammed is not happy with this intervention, and says that he is not talking to them but to the teacher, he has a request of the teacher and wants to hear her reply. He may have gestured as he said this – I didn’t see – but I heard what happened next, which was that Ahmed said to Mohammed “don’t you point at me”.

I walked up to Ahmed and asked him not to take over my role as teacher, returned to the front of the class, and reiterated not just the line about difficult and confronting issues in courtrooms but also the fact that this is a logic class, where we learn how to recognise truthful claims. For good measure, I spelt out the role of religion in truth and fact seeking. Our university has a lot of religious students. Most are Christian or Muslim, although other faiths are represented. For this bit of the logic course – and it is a part of the curriculum, on theoretical hypotheses (evolution) and rescue fallacies (intelligent design) – I use the form of the building to make the point. This building is a university, I say. There are other buildings for religion, but here we deal in knowledge. Not faith. Not belief. Facts based on evidence are what we do here, that’s the purpose of education here. We live in a pluralist society. If you want to go to church, or the mosque, or temple up the road, that’s fine. You can go to all three if you want. That’s the beauty of liberal democracy. But here, in this building, we do not base our learning on faith. We seek truth based in scientific fact, presented and understood by using logical arguments. Ironically, I brook no argument on this point. This is how it is. Take it on faith, from me, because I am the law lecturer. Hilarious, I know. Ali then put up his hand and said he is there to learn logic and law and is not offended at all by my example, as it is part of the education we are all here to get. I thanked him, and we moved on.

After the class I checked with Mohammed to see if he has my email address. He has missed two classes because he was overseas, he tells me. OK, so catch up, seek assistance, contact me if necessary. He looks a little bewildered. I also catch Ahmed on the way out of the building. “I agree that it was a problem with understanding” I say, “but next time don’t usurp my role as teacher.” Ahmed said he thought it was an English language problem – he had wanted to explain the point in Arabic but knew that was not an option – and added “sorry miss.” Sorry not sorry I said to myself, but not in a nasty way. I have taught Ahmed before, and he is a sorry miss sorry not sorry kind of guy. As in, he’d do the same thing again in a heartbeat and I don’t dislike him for that.

The following week I received welcome news. Mohammed approached me during the break (I run three-hour seminars, with a fifteen-minute break). He apologised for the previous upset and told me he bumped into Ali in criminal law class, that Ali had explained again the point I was making about Muslims and rhetorical truth, and now he understands clearly. As we walked down the stairs to get a coffee, Mohammed told me he had just returned from his home country of Egypt, that he has been in Australia five years, and he is now a proud Australian and loves his new country and wants to be good citizen. We had a passing conversation about the Muslim Brotherhood in Sisi’s Egypt, the Rafah checkpoint and Gaza, and compared the moral disasters that are ISIS fighters and drone warfare – before returning to class.

There are so many things I love about this story. The first is that it was Ali who was most determined to articulate – to everyone – that it is part of our education to face difficult and confronting ideas, and learn to refute such nonsense. Also, in a highly diverse student population, it is Ali who has the darkest skin in this particular class. I was impressed by his courage but I was deeply impressed to hear that he and Mohammed had talked through the issue. It occurred to me that Ali, with his longer-Australian-experience and heritage, was probably better equipped than I am to explain the point to more-recently-arrived Mohammed. Talk about a win-win. In my mind’s eye, I picture Ali and Mohammed walking across campus from criminal law class to logic, discussing the weird cultural ways of Australia, and how to cope with same. I hope that happens.

The “envelope” metaphor:

Ongoing embarrassment

I heard Alistair MacGibbon, Centre for Internet Safety (ANU) on ABC 702 Drive using the envelope metaphor on Tuesday afternoon (August 5). He specifically said that metadata includes information on the ‘front and the back’ of the envelope. Abbott only retained the ‘front of the envelope’ part which is why his mangled bullshit about ‘where the traffic comes from’ made absolutely no sense at all.

By the time he appeared on TV that night, someone had spelt it out for him (again) and he cleared up any misunderstanding with this explanation: “It’s not the content of the letter, it’s what’s on the envelope … it’s not what you’re doing on the internet, it’s the sites you’re visiting. It’s not the content, it’s just where you’ve been, so to speak.”

Maybe Abbott genuinely can’t see the difference between leaving a digital footprint and shredding or burning an envelope. Or maybe he just pretends to be this thick. Perhaps he never independently assesses any policy idea. I think he hears what he wants to see and sees what he wants to hear.

I think I got that right.

The TV quote above is from this site: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/06/australias_metadata_debate_is_an_utter_shambles/
The author unambiguously states that the ‘envelope metaphor’ is “a dangerous falsehood”.

I tend to agree

What Israel Says…

Everlasting awfulness

Responses used by Israeli officialdom each time the state is exposed as having acted in violation of international law, or inhumanely, or immorally, or with extremely poor judgement.

1. Israel does not comment on security matters.
2. Israel denies it violated international law.
3. Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East.
4. Hamas are terrorists.
5. The IDF is the most moral army in the world.
6. Israel has acted decisively to discipline the IDF member/Israeli citizen.
7. Arabs in Israel have more rights than in any Arab country.
8. Israel is under existential threat.
9. Israel has a right to defend itself.
10. Israel has a right to exist.
11. Israel is surrounded by enemies.
12. Israel wants peace.
13. Israel has no (viable) partner in peace.
14. Iran wants nuclear weapons.
15. There are other, worse human rights violations around the world.

These responses have been successful in maintaining the position of Israel as the Jewish state, and its influence in the world. This is so regardless of the passionately debated and ultimately repetitive reasons put forward by Israel for its military campaigns. None of the major world players, from the Middle East Quartet to the United Nations Security Council, has ever halted or prevented Israeli military action. The ‘Middle East Quartet’, by the way, is basically everyone: its membership is the USA, Russia and the EU and the UN itself.

Dispossession: Here, and in Palestine

Uncategorized

This essay begins with a personal reflection on peace studies and activism in Australia. I then introduce two native title cases, in Queensland, Australia and Beersheba, Israel, contextualised from colonial conditions to post-colonial developments. The substantive section presents formal legal processes as opportunities for ‘negative’ peace, by overturning entrenched injustice, while recognising that cultural and structural violence remain. Subsequent social developments are presented as an ongoing process towards reconciliation, a strategy for ‘positive’ peace with justice, and an alternative to military aggression and violent resistance. The conclusion identifies two critical components for sustainable peace: overturning long-held and unjust legal precedent, and the value of international reputation to nation states.

On 27 May 2000, an estimated two hundred thousand people walked across the Sydney Harbour Bridge. The event was Corroboree 2000, dated to the anniversary of the most popular referendum in Australian history, which removed formal discrimination against ‘the Aboriginal race’ from the constitution (1967). On Valentines Day 2003, many thousands gathered at Town Hall to protest an illegal invasion. There was no Gough Whitlam for us, and Australia followed the USA into Iraq.

In May 2008 Ali Abunimah, author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian impasse (2006), visited Sydney. His book tour coincided with the 60th commemoration of al-Nakba, (the Catastrophe), the foundation of Israel. Six months later Israel attacked Gaza by air, land and sea. I knew little about Israel or Palestine, and was appalled by my ignorance, at protesting Australian involvement in the Iraq invasion, never noticing the vast apparatus supporting western attacks in the Middle East, despite the nightly news remit. I became aware of a violent occupation, Indigenous marginalisation, and complex colonial histories.

Once again we gathered at Sydney Town Hall, this time a mere 5000 people, receiving scant media attention. Aboriginal and Iraqi lives, having finally mustered mainstream support, mattered more, it seemed, than Gazans (see Lynch and McGoldrick 2005). As West Wing character Toby Ziegler – the ‘melancholic Jew’ – put it, ‘Palestinians are the Jews of the Arab world’ (2004). One event was for positive peace, a landmark day in the reconciliation process, between Australia’s First Peoples and the inherited privilege of colonial power. The other two were calls to negative peace, to stop military attacks on Iraq and Gaza (Galtung 1996).

In his guest lecture for this unit, Charles Webel presented empirical evidence that legal and policing responses have greater long-term effect than military intervention (see Johnstone 2005). I found this evidence compelling. The Australian response to the Bali bombings (12 October 2002) was to send doctors and investigators. We saw the accused in court, and maintained diplomatic relations with Indonesia, our Muslim-majority neighbour. The USA response to the 11 September 2001 attacks was to send its military might, with international support, to retaliate against Kabul. The legal and policing strategies had demonstrably better outcomes for peace. As a peace student and activist (Rees and Blanchard 1999), I am interested in the strata of interested groups that are essential to sustainable peace-building (Lederach 1999), within a global human rights framework (Abbott et al 2006).

Dispossession in Australia and Israel

The breakthrough Australian native title case Mabo v State of Queensland (No. 2) (1992) (Mabo) overturned 224 years of legal fiction (terra nullius, below) after Aboriginal dispossession began with the 1770 landing of James Cook (Mabo per Deane and Gaudron JJ at IP3; Bird Rose 2001). The el-Okbi (also al-Uqbi) test case is on foot 62 years after the creation of Israel. In raw chronological terms, Israeli courts could recognise native title in the next 140 years and still be ‘ahead’ of us. Australia is no post-colonial utopia, but does have conditions that can produce a coherent body of native title jurisprudence with little social unrest. Both cases exist amid on-going direct and indirect (structural, cultural) violence (Galtung 1996).

Wars are fought over territory, both land and psychological territory – the ‘battle for hearts and minds’ (Esposito and Mogahed 2007). The UN Partition Plan (29 Nov 1947) was in existence when the state of Israel was declared. But the Arab and Jewish sides held entrenched, values-based positions. Force prevailed over UN covenant, and the conflict has continued ever since, supporting the thesis that military build-up exacerbates and prolongs conflict (Burton 1990; Lynch 2010).

In Australia, there has been debate over the existence or extent of frontier wars (Reynolds 1982 and 2001; Windschuttle 2002). Massacres are evidenced by later analyses (Elder 2003) and oral histories. For example, the Darug people hold an annual ceremony to honour the warrior Yarramundi and the battle of Richmond Hill (1795). In 1994 I was deeply moved to hear eye-witness testimony from a Warlpiri elder at the Coniston massacre site (NT 1922). The Myall Creek massacre (NSW 1838) is commemorated annually by descendants of murderers and survivors.

These occasions provide a reconciliatory space (Lederach 2001) for shared reflections on past direct violence and contemporary cultural violence (Galtung 1996). Novelist Kim Scott (2010) has observed that periods of peaceful co-existence in Noongar country can largely be attributed to the adaptive and hospitable traditions of the locals. A visual example is Cathy Freeman’s twin identities, holding two flags, aloft and entwined, neither uppermost (Sydney Olympics, 25 September 2000), a courageous act given she was threatened with disqualification after the same display at the Commonwealth Games (1998).

The second image shows three flags configured for the Parliamentary Apology to the Stolen Generations (13 February 2008).

The word ‘reconciliation’ implicitly references an earlier policy, contained in Letters Patent signed by King George III and carried by Captain (Governor) Phillip aboard his flagship Sirius, into Warrane (Sydney Cove) on 26 January 1788. The royal orders were to ‘open an intercourse with the natives, and to conciliate their affections’ (HRNSW 1892), an order executed by, among other things, abducting the young Bennelong (Smith 2010).

This language is echoed in by British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour (Balfour Declaration 2 November 1917): ‘nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine…’ This document, and the UN Partition Plan, is furnished as evidence in the el-Okbi case.

The loudest echo of terra nullius, or ‘land of no-one’, is mythology, not doctrine: a land without people for a people without land. This sentiment cannot be legally overturned, because it is not law, an apt opening for trans-disciplinary analysis. Journalist-historian Tom Segev draws the obvious implications from the el-Okbi case, asking ‘Who owns this country?’ (2010).

Two cases

Eddie Koiki Mabo’s posthumous achievement was a strong judicial outcome, one that may not have come about under a different High Court (see Pierce 2006). It was decided by the superior court of record, that is, after abolition of Privy Council appeals (1986, see Gleeson 2007). Only one in seven judges dissented.

Nuri el-Okbi is a Bedouin man from the Negev (Naqab) in southern Israel. His claim is currently before Justice Sarah Dovrat of the Be’er Sheva (Beersheba) District Court. As a non-Hebrew speaker, my account relies on English-language media rather than court documents. I acknowledge that the two sources are inherently different. For the overall purpose of this essay (below), I note that old and new media are the major source of global news in wealthy, influential countries and create public perception feedback loops (Lynch and McGoldrick 2005) as well as potentially shaping individual reactions (McGoldrick 2008).

The complex circumstances surrounding Mr. el-Okbi and Mr. Mabo’s claims stretch back to their ancient living cultures through contested English imperial policy. Courts are not designed to hear from internal, stateless, yet coherent nations, peoples with neither territorial title nor sovereignty. Tribal identities (e.g. Warlpiri, Dhunghutti) and regional groupings (Koori, Anangu) are now better known, in Australia, although I cannot say whether this has been influenced by native title claims. Similarly, the state-lessness of Palestinians affects their legal standing. ‘Palestine’ does not appear in any modern atlas, yet governments all over the world know where Palestine is, and that its location is a problem.

I do not automatically conflate Bedouin and Palestinian identities, but I do contend that the el-Okbi case has implications in the Palestinian occupied territories of East Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank. As well as Segev’s extrapolation, this contention rests on the ‘transcend’ peace-building approach (Galtung 2000). It also refers with ‘pragmatic optimism’, and Gandhian inspiration (Barasch and Webel 2002), to Eddie Mabo’s persistent, non-violent action for significant change. Additionally, complexity theory (Opotow 2000) and its uptake of fractal analysis (Mandelbrot 1982, see also Urry 2002; Hodge 2007) are invoked. Fractals re-iterate across scales, like a leaf, branch, and tree. It is an especially useful point of entry here because Palestinian dispossession is on-going and repeated, as through house demolitions (Halper 2008). The el-Okbi experience re-iterates from family to tribe, forced relocation, and demolition of Bedouin villages.

The process model shows Mabo stemmed from earlier developments, such as the Northern Territory Land Rights Act 1976 (Cth) and Milirrpum v Nabalco (1971). This important case recognised the coherence and continuing practice of Aboriginal law, but encountered the problem of inalienability, as elders testified that they belong to the land rather than the other way around. It was also subject to Privy Council precedent (Re Southern Rhodesia [1919] AC 233). In Mabo, Justice Brennan said (at 16):

In discharging its duty to declare the common law of Australia, this Court is
not free to adopt rules that accord with contemporary notions of justice and
human rights if their adoption would fracture the skeleton of principle which gives the body of our law its shape and internal consistency… Although this Court is free to depart from English precedent which was earlier followed as stating the common law of this country, it cannot do so where the departure would fracture what I have called the skeleton of principle.

Further steps toward reconciliation occurred because Mabo was decided in an atmosphere of political good will. Reconciliation was official policy under the Hawke-Keating governments (1983-1996). Prime Minister Keating led the negotiations that codified Mabo into the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth). He lent political and cultural support by recognising past wrongs:

We simply cannot sweep injustice aside. Even if our own conscience allowed us to, I am sure, that in due course, the world and the people of our region would not. There should be no mistake about this – our success in resolving these issues will have a significant bearing on our standing in the world.

Together, the words of Justice Brennan and Paul Keating offer possible strategies for Israel. Could similar conditions support recognition of Bedouin title? This would not in itself guarantee justice or peace, even in a narrow, local sense. The Howard Coalition government (1996-2007) replaced reconciliation with ‘practical reconciliation’. Deputy Prime Minister Tim Fischer famously promised ‘bucket-loads of extinguishment’ after Wik Peoples v Queensland (1996) found that native title was not necessarily extinguished by pastoral leases. This rural conservative leader seemed to be saying that the land had not been taken comprehensively enough the first time, that despite a High Court judgement embedded in common law principle, the Australian government should re-dispossess Aboriginal people, a familiar pattern. Indigenous peoples, expecting the certainty and permanence promised by legal process, instead find political will (and the trump card of legislation over the common law) deliver no such thing.

Internal inconsistencies and human rights violations are affecting Israel’s international standing (Chomsky 2010) where the Ministry for Public Diplomacy and the Diaspora expends considerable resources on Hasbara, the official defence of Israeli aggression, like extra-judicial killings. These mixed and layered messages add validity to the use of media sources here. Media influence is exercised through framing (Hall 2003), through frequency and prominence, like the saturation coverage of 9/11, and when high-profile columnists and editorials weigh in on one side or another. Defenders of Israel frequently claim to be disadvantaged by such pieces (Regev 2010; Dershowitz 2010).

Public opinion influences government policy, but Palestinian statehood claims tend to be ‘outsourced’ to multi-level diplomacy (Diamond and McDonald 1996) such as proximity talks brokered by the USA. Like other nations, US domestic politics constrain progress – the old adage that ‘all politics is local’ (O’Neill 1994).

Recent coverage of the el-Oqbi claim (Cook 01 September 2010; Segev 08 September 2010) report that he says his family was ‘tricked’ into moving from their lands in 1951 to temporarily allow for military exercises. An Australian parallel might be seen at the nuclear test site Maralinga, where the military purpose was real, but the people were not notified before exposure to lethal radiation (Jamieson and Rankin 2008).

As a result of the case, (Cook 2010), ‘the authorities have sped up plans’ for the Jewish National Fund (JNF) to plant a ‘peace forest’ over Mr. el-Oqbi’s land. This claim is highly credible, in light of the internecine conflict over pine and olive groves, or ‘planted flags’ (Braverman 2009). It echoes the ‘bucketloads of extinguishment’ desire to strengthen the colonial claim through evidence, in the dominant tradition, of ownership (such as cultivation, see Vattel 1758). Such ‘ownership acts’ contrast with nomadic ties to land, such as seasonal travel patterns and sustainable land use.

The problem of nomadic lifestyles and recognition of property title was overcome in Australia by Mabo because the Meriam Islanders had cultivated plots stretching back generations. The contained island environment meant their traditional ties were more recognisable, while its status as Crown land meant recognition affected the rest of Australia. Similarly, in Israel, el-Oqbi has particularly strong support for his claim to 205 acres (820 dunams) among ‘outstanding [Bedouin] claims to over 80,000 hectares of ancestral property’ (Cook 2010). He holds documentation proving cultivation, yields and tithes paid to British and Ottoman authorities.

Unsurprisingly, the situation is clouded by conflicting colonial orders. One 1921 ordinance exempted Bedouin from registering their land, while another contained a clause allowing ‘a two-month extension for Bedouin to register their lands’ (Dead ‏(Mewat‏) Lands Ordinance 1921). Colonial indecision around governance of the Bedouin probably stemmed from conflicting promises to ‘Arabist’ and Zionist interests during World War One, including the Balfour Declaration (Schneer 2010). Empires that lay claim to more land and people than they can govern tend to founder, resulting in patchwork power-wielding that in retrospect seems doomed to cause on-going unfulfilled human needs (Burton 1990). Nevertheless, the instruments carry legal weight in accordance with their historical legitimacy.

For the defence, Professor Ruth Kark argues that the land passed to Israel on its creation and is held in trust for world Jewry. The Bedouin are the ‘trespassers’ or ‘invaders’. Kark claims that these founding tenets of Israel as the Jewish state are supported by UN resolutions, which in turn referenced Balfour, neither of which actually went to plan.

The available proof that the JNF bought land from the Bedouin indicates prior ownership and transfer of title. Purchase is a more legitimate argument than the wider assertion that no Bedouin could accrue title because of nomadic lifestyle factors. But the potential precedent is a legal and cultural concern for Israel. If its claim is founded on purchase, then land taken by armed force (or where ownership is not verifiable by transaction) might default to Bedouin ownership rather than be held in trust for world Jewry. Segev (2010) makes the obvious connection beyond the Negev: ‘…[they] are arguing over the justness of Zionism’.

One of the hardest pieces of evidence is a signed 1948 treaty ‘between 16 Bedouin tribes, including the Okbi, and the new Israeli army, pledging loyalty in return for a guarantee that they could continue living on their lands’ (Cook 2010). This army-loyalty nexus is heart-sinking, on many levels. As a distant observer who advocates co-existence and reconciliation, I want to link the el-Okbi case to Segev’s words on the justness of Zionism and a deeply militarised Israeli society.

The Question of Israel

Australia and Israel have a relatively large tracts of desert land at their heart, sparsely populated with first peoples who remain closely connected to traditional culture. In each case the Indigenous have been bribed or forced into government settlements, like Papunya (Central Australia) and Hura (the Negev). These ‘remote communities’ or ‘townships’ have little to offer other than sedentary, marginalized lives of unemployment, poverty and despair. Basic human needs are denied at every level. Utilities are utterly inadequate. Australian housing policy is less brutal than unannounced Israeli bulldozers, but Aboriginal housing is repeatedly promised and either not delivered or so unsatisfactory that demolition soon follows.

Despite the ancient living cultures of Aboriginal Australians and the Bedouin, the modern states of Australia and Israel are Euro-centrically viewed as ‘young’ countries (Daley 2009). I strongly disagree with this characterisation. Israel is not some spoilt teenage son defying big General USA. It is a highly militarized nuclear state with ancient ties to, and place-based feuds in, the territory it controls in the Middle East. Australia and Israel are wealthy, advanced nations with coherent bodies of law and a shared foundational legal ethic, incorruptible judiciaries, and robust electoral process. Neither is a dictatorship, nor lacking the intellectual and cultural capital to understand international obligations.

I pause here to try and think laterally about law and peace. In Australia, the state has fought Aboriginal rights every step, from Queensland against Mabo, to the federal Coalition government against stolen generations claimants, to Labor ‘ruling out’ attaching compensation for harm caused to the Apology.

There are multiple distinguishing circumstances hampering a comparison of possible strategies for peace with justice around dispossession in Australia and Israel. I suggest, however, that any alternative approach in the region is worth examining:

There is no more important, yet no more intractable, international question than how to secure peaceful co-existence between Jew and Arab in a ‘holy land’ divided between the focused power of the state of Israel and the ramshackle ‘authority’ of Palestine (Robertson 2006: 171).

What would happen if, say, an IDF commando, under investigation over extra-judicial killings, stood up and said ‘Guilty, on the grounds that following orders is no excuse’? As Robertson would attest, this principle was formulated at Nuremburg, the birthplace of modern human rights and our understanding of crimes against humanity, genocides committed not by one state against another but by a sovereign leader against his citizens.

I tried to imagine that Queensland had not fought Mabo, or the Commonwealth against Kruger, Cubillo, or Gunner, and instead turned the financial and legal resources to a just-peace process based on principles of transformative justice. Imagine an Israel that assessed Mr. el-Okbi’s evidence, advanced the view that its courts constitute fair and just process, and decided to put the resources into a settlement recognising all the parties involved – Bedouin, the JNF, the state of Israel, Jewish Israelis residing in the Negev. Could peace, law, culture and the communities they describe and define, and intersect across, co-exist like this?

A key difference is the Westminster tradition of separation of church and state, constitutionally enshrined in Australia as in the USA, our most powerful ally and the chief military sponsor of Israel (Sharp 2009). Yet Israel simultaneously claims to be a democracy and to be home to 7 million people, the Jewish Diaspora, who are neither residents nor nationals. The question of identity is fundamental to the question of Israel. The complexity of Jewishness, encompassing religion, culture and ethnicity, defies comparison, yet informs every analysis. Jewish identity is conflated with the state apparatus, from constitutional proclamation as the Jewish homeland, to the problematic discrimination perpetuated by the Law of Return (1950) and Citizenship Law (1952).

Israel has possibly the most intense social contract between any state and its nationals, in the form of two to three compulsory years (for women and men respectively) in the armed forces for Jewish Israelis (but not Arab-Palestinian-Bedouin Israelis). Israel defines itself as in a permanent state of self-defence: the IDF mission is to ‘…To protect the inhabitants of Israel and to combat all forms of terrorism which threaten the daily life [my emphasis].’ Self defence of course is a legal defence to murder.

Shahak (1994) forensically demonstrates the links between orthodox Judaism and Israeli violence. One example he gives is rabbinical advice to IDF members who question the morality of directives to treat all Arabs as an existential threat. On Shahak’s reading, rabbinical law extends to distinguishing murder of a fellow Jew from murder of a non-Jew.

The Israeli Ministry for Public Diplomacy and the Diaspora expends considerable resources on Hasbara, the official public relations policy of defending Israeli aggression, like extra-judicial killings. But internal inconsistencies and human rights violations are affecting Israel’s international standing (Chomsky 2010). Public opinion and political will – more so than international standing – influence the extent to which governments implement policies that could deliver peace with justice. Palestinian claims to statehood and territory are always met by ineffective multi-level diplomacy (Diamond and McDonald 1996) such as proximity talks brokered by the USA, which is constrained by the old adage ‘all politics is local’ (O’Neill 1994).

Israel is unlikely to ever uncouple itself from its Jewish identity, and there is no evidence that it will cede an independent state to Palestinians from the territory it now occupies, or commit to any retreat from wielding military power, even in the medium term. Overtly recognising special, or exceptional circumstances for Israel in an open, sensitive and honest way seems the only way to accommodate the manifest history and trauma of persecution that at least two Jewish writers have characterised as collective mental illness: Jewish ‘paranoia’ and ‘Israeli insanity’ (Arbarbanel 2009; Finkelstein 2010).

Chomsky points to international complicity in Israel’s ‘moral degeneration and probable ultimate destruction’, citing politicide, ‘murder of a nation – at our hands’ (2010: 18). We remain incapable of facing collective guilt regarding a mythological ‘chosen people’ with collective action. Jewish exceptionalism, with its combined overtones of chosen-ness and anti-semitism, is simultaneously (and typically) both a sui generis and typical problem, that binds and traps supporters and detractors. Yet a failed Jewish state would destabilize the entire Christian west with the weight of history and religion, weaponry and shame.

As mentioned, Australia took 224 years to admit that terra nullius was a legal fiction designed to legitimize the dispossession of traditional owners. Attending an Australian massacre commemoration with living witnesses instills the same horror as watching the 2008-09 Gaza massacre (Why weren’t we told? Who is to blame?). To match our desultory record, Israel could host a 2164 commemoration of the last recorded Gaza massacre in 2092.

Killed by Israel in Gaza

The Daily Outrage

Today I read through a list of names, ages and circumstances. It was the Palestinians killed by Israel in its latest attack on Gaza. What we call ‘casualties’ are named here as ‘martyrs’.

http://palestinefrommyeyes.wordpress.com/2014/07/09/gazaunderattack-stop-the-palestinian-bloodshed-names-and-ages-of-palestinians-who-fell-victim-to-israel-s-ongoing-attack-on-gaza-palestine/

The link came via social media. I judge social media links by the credibility of the source, and the content of the material. This link came via a trusted source; and its detail looked a lot like truth. I read on.

Although stomach turning, it felt like it would be a betrayal of the children of Gaza not to read through to the end. With every name and age recorded, I thought of my own children at that age, or of an aunty or other relative of the same generation as those killed. The post is heralded with the statement ‘Because they are people, not numbers’. This crucial fact is actively obscured by the monstering of Palestinians in Israel and much of the West.

Three years ago, I reached the appalling conclusion that Israel does not want peace. The obstructionist recalcitrance of the state in the face of any and every potential solution is rehearsed and successful. Since 1947 Israel has yielded nothing but the Sinai (over 40 years ago) and withdrawal from Gaza in 2005: and still points to these as evidence that Israel does indeed seek a resolution. Yet Gaza remains an ‘open-air prison’ and much of the Sinai remains a lawless no-go zone. Egypt is second only to Israel in its receipt of US ‘military aid’ – money and equipment for which to kill and torture people – Egypt gets US$2 billion per year to Israel’s $3 billion plus. This largely explains the geo-political status of the Sinai; its terrain explains the rest. The Sinai is not evidence of an Israel yearning for peace and resolution.

Meanwhile, the hideous and illegal separation wall marches over Palestinian villages and farmland and the Israeli military continue to bulldoze Palestinian homes in both east Jerusalem and the West Bank. Both areas are internationally recognised as the location for a reinstated Palestine. There is no indication that Israel will ever conform to international law; and ample counter-evidence. Galetz (Army Radio) refers to the West Bank as Judea and Samaria, staking a chosen-people Old Testament-based claim to the land, which in any case is occupied by Israeli extremists who commandeer scarce resources, like water, backed by the force of Israeli troops.

It is impossible to run through all the arguments and evidence I found of Israeli expansionism and exceptionalism and the ‘Holocaust Holocaust Holocaust’ refrain captured so tellingly by Howard Jacobson in his award-winning novel The Finkler Question . Instead I am reproducing here two of the most appalling extracts I unearthed after a Palestinian-Australian friend told me that Israel fines a soldier 100 shekels (AUS$25) for killing a Palestinian child. I remember dropping my head and taking a deep breath before I could re-establish eye contact. He said ‘and they call us the barbarians’. It was such a small detail, yet so shockingly amoral, as to hit harder than the footage of bombs and planes. I was reminded of that conversation, over five years ago now, as I read through the lists and lists of dead in Gaza today. The work of Guardian reporter Chris Urquart and the tireless Electronic Intifada verify his account. Links below.

After Moshe returned to his paratroop unit, he said there were several incidents when children and teenagers were killed after bullets aimed at their legs hit their chests. The attitude was, he said, “so kids got killed. For a soldier it means nothing. An officer can get a 100 or 200 shekel [£12.50-£25] fine for such a thing.”

– Urquhart, C. (2005) Israeli Soldiers Tell of Indiscriminate Killings by Army and a Culture of Impunity: Whistleblowers’ testimony shows desire for revenge on Palestinians. The Guardian, 06 September, 2005: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/sep/06/israel

“So usually an officer gets fined 100 shekels for killing a child…”

– Kole (2004) Interview: What the IDF is doing in Nablus. Live from Palestine, 7 September 2004, Nablus, occupied Palestine: http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article3078.shtml

Meet Jesse. She writes what she really thinks too

The Daily Outrage

The posts below are from my friend Jesse’s facebook page. Jesse and I met when our sons became mates at the local public high school for bright young things. Our lives are wildly different, our views astonishingly similar. Her daily rants comprise some of the most coherent criticism of this federal government anywhere – many provisoed with claims of incoherence. So I invited Jesse to share my little corner of the web and put some of those colourful comparisons on the record.
Editorial errors are mine, all thoughts her own etc etc …Oh, and I assumed the misspelling of *asterics* below was a self-deprecating joke, coz posting to the world is scarey stuff.

June 25, 7.26am
My cup of incoherent rage runneth over. And I have an all-day school related thingy, so I have to be pleasant to people, of all things, all squeezed into a mini bus and carted around. And everywhere we go, they will serve instant coffee, or brown and water, as it is known here, and I will smile and nod pleasantly. And every time they mention funding I will, literally, bite my tongue, and then I will come home and I will rant and flail my arms wildly.

June 27, 5.35am
Slashing dementia support and the severe behaviour supplement. Oh, ffs. Enough is enough. Even if you’re demented enough to think the aged, disabled and vulnerable are unworthy, do you really think slashing funding will reduce dementia numbers? This is just gonna reduce the standard of living for those people. In fact for a money saving budget ,it seems to be just take money from people like me and give it people who already have more, cos otherwise you’ll be rewarding me for having a disabled person to care for.

June 27, 7.01am
Once again, oh, FFS! And who will be the social and cultural contributors of the future? The pigs at the trough? And how about, NO, I will not view the aged as a burden. A long life is a gift, not a profit making opportunity.

June 27, 7.51am
Kinda waiting for someone to try and tell me that most old people are really just “economic geriatrics”, you know they either chose to get old, did it themselves by living too long, or are just faking it for the benefits. Everyone knows it’s irresponsible to live a long time if you can’t afford to. I’m sure it’ll be some drivel like that, and I’m looking forward to a good laugh

June 27, 8.21am
The kind of circular logic I find myself dealing with
Me: The vulnerable in Australia could benefit immensely from more resources.
Them: There’s millions of people in the third world who’d love to be in your shoes, you know?
Me: You’re right, let’s help them.
Them: But they’re different and they only want a hand out, and they should fix their own problems instead of looking to us. What about Australia’s poor and vulnerable, huh?
Me: Ok, lets prioritise that then.
Them: There’s millions of people in the third world who’d love to be in your shoes, you know?

June 29, 10.09am
Go to shop for bacon, saw the headline “disabling rorters” and felt humiliated, and then angry. Got home, saw the banana tree lost a branch. Must have missed the power line by a hairs breath

June 30 5.42am
Ok, so you want to make welfare less attractive so people will get off it and work? I get that. So limiting what people on welfare can spend their money on will get them a job? Here’s how this will actually work. Anyone who can get a job will, and those with disabilities and mental health issues will still have disabilities and mental health issues. They’ll just have them with less autonomy. See, long term, this doesn’t affect the people who are “rorters”. It just condemns the most needy in our society to the punishment meant for a mostly imaginary bludger. Slow round of applause, ffs

June 30, 7.10pm
Read all 176 pages of the welfare review recommendations. I think whoever sees “perverse incentives” everywhere is kind of perverse, and overly suspicious

1 July, 2.11pm (by PM)
So, I have attempted to write something. It’s been years since I wrote anything other than status updates and the occasional angry letter, so it might be all rambly and disjointed, I don’t know. And I don’t know how to get it from my iPad to anything so I’m just gonna cut and paste and out it after this nice row of asterics.

***************************************************

Winter is here. The Abbott government slash and burn, sure to create a winter of discontent. Its newest weapon is a welfare review containing sweeping recommendations to overhaul a welfare system that has managed to be the best targeted welfare system in the world, while spending less than other comparable nations. The poor feel the cold, and the days are short. Twelve months ago, an Australian who had fallen upon hard times – who life had sucker-punched with illness, disability, family breakdown, unemployment, the travails of age, or what-have-you – could feel confident of the safety net that would catch them before their body hit the ground. A safety net that would support them until they got back on their feet, in a society which accepted that some wouldn’t rise up in glory, and that the safety net would be a lifetime measure for those that needed it.

That confidence is gone, and in its place is trepidation and outright fear.

Left vs right has become a demented and wicked game: of leaner vs lifter, bludgers vs taxpayers, the righteous vs the rorter. It is played on a multi sided board by people who continue to be well-paid even when they play badly. Some never lose the game. I am one of the pawns on this ideological chessboard, being swept out of the game by a bishop from the other side. The game could be won or lost without me, and there are richer prizes to be taken than a lowly pawn, but ALL the pawns are about to be taken, and if you are poor (sick, studying, unemployed, old) then I’m sorry to tell you, but you too are a pawn.

As a young person, I never dreamed of a life on welfare. Who does? I thought I’d do everything. Travel the world as journalist, design fabulous things, buy a house and car, have a family. I thought I’d get to choose. I took off from the start line at a great pace. I worked, I studied, I paid my taxes. Then life came swinging with that sucker punch. My second born son has severe autism with an accompanying intellectual deficit. He has never gained speech or significant self-care skills. I was out of the race. I needed that safety net, and unless we figure out how to rewire brains and fix brain damage, I’m going to need it for life, and for my son’s life.

To Abbott and co, I’m your classic “leaner”. I am that person living off honest, hardworking taxpayers. Maybe you saw me, lighting a cigarette outside Centrelink, with what looked like a strong, able bodied young man who needs a good hair cut. Maybe you made some assumptions about us. In fact I’m pretty sure you did. If not me, then someone like me. Maybe it was a young woman, talking on her iPhone while running fingers topped with false talons through multi-coloured hair, with a couple of kids making *too much* noise. You decided she was one of those women with children to multiple fathers, spending your hard-earned income tax on the latest thing, while the kids run wild.

An alternative explanation never even occurs. Like her mum recently had a stroke and will be requiring care, and so she’s there to find out what support is available, while talking on the phone she bought with money she earned as a nail technician, and her kids are overtired because Centrelink is taking much longer than she imagined. Our right to assume the worst trumps all. These faulty assumptions are leading to a rationale of believing the poor are poor because they make bad decisions. They are re not poor because they drink or smoke. Those things may contribute to – or relieve – their situation. But these are definitely not the root cause of the myriad problems that contribute to an individual being in a state of poverty.

The causes are as individual as the people. There is no one size fits all solution to poverty, and if you think there is, you have never been poor and you are part of the problem. Check your privilege, please. The Abbott government budget and proposed welfare reforms have taken the safety net and replaced it with uncertainty.
I don’t know for sure whether my situation will be better after these reforms, or worse, but if it is worse, I question how it is ‘reform’. If those challenged by disability and those who care for them have a lower standard of living, have less autonomy, fewer choices and even less freedom than before, how is that reform in anything but a Dickensian subplot? And what part of “no changes to pensions” – an on-the-record, rolled-gold, pre-election promise – is covered in sweeping welfare reforms? I would venture that reassessing thousands of people dependent on the Disability Support Pension is a change to pensions, particularly for those who will be forced off the DSP and on to Newstart, to look for a job that likely isn’t there, and if it was, that person would not end up as the one employed anyway.

And if that person is under thirty? I never thought I’d pity the young, but now I do. A young person on DSP who is reassessed as capable of ‘participation’ and moved onto Newstart could find themselves with nothing, for six months, and face unnecessarily punitive measures, like income management and work-for-the-dole once they finally qualify for an allowance. Has the impact on the labour market even been assessed? What business would not choose free labour over paying wages? I can not convey the emotion the young must be feeling, the bridge to their future blown away just as they’re about to step onto it, their choices suddenly narrowed and for many, disappeared. Where is the generation that never worked to justify this madness? Shouldn’t we be presented with evidence of a problem before taking steps to rectify said problem?

The figures show Australians’ dependence on welfare has been steadily falling. The mainstream media says dragons are spending all the tax payer money. Which is weird, because there are no dragons, and for PAYE earners it became government money as soon as it was earned. Only the very rich see most of it. Everyone else sees numbers scribbled somewhere – on a payslip, at the end of a docket – but letting you think it is still your money after it’s gone is a clever trick. One that’s designed to reassure you, as you voluntarily condemn part of your society as unworthy, into thinking you are doing the right thing. It’s not the right thing. How can judging people without facts ever be right? How can condemning those different to you ever be right? How can forcing the young to starve be right? How can working the elderly to death be right? How can there be “market incompatible people” instead of a people incompatible market? How can a person on Newstart with a partial or episodic disability have a perverse incentive to get a disability pension? How can getting appropriate support be a “perverse incentive”? Surely a job agency would have an equally perverse incentive to NOT find employment for all clients?

I see a perverse incentive for the demonisation of the vulnerable. By the media who make money from headlines of human misery; and by a government that gains power by wooing the hatred and selfishness lurking in empty hearts. I could present the Opposition as an unemployed government. Should they lose all benefits for six months? Obviously not, an opposition is part of the parliamentary system, and essential to democracy. A young person who loses a job, much like an opposition loses the job of governing, is part of our society, and as such that persons well-being is essential for our democracy too. I’d like to knock the board over and see the game start again. Fellow pawns, tell them, game over.

Repeal s18C. Get offended. Often

Ongoing embarrassment

Treasurer Joe Hockey is offended by wind farms. And criticisms of his unspeakably cruel and greedy budget. Immigration Minister Scott Morrison is offended by a case being brought on behalf of 50 drowned asylum seekers. And people praying in his office. The default response of government ministers to truth is that they are offended.

This is true. Truth does offend members of the Australian federal government. It causes them to hesitate, for nanoseconds. The artefact of memory, the residual sense of the moment when they could still say they entered politics to do good – to serve the people, to create positive change – is finally severed, floats free, never to return. Any conviction that the ideology to which they subscribe has the capacity to serve anything or anyone other than themselves and their corporate sponsors is cut adrift for the final time. It is replaced by increasingly shrinking, urgently repeated phrases prefaced by statements of belief. “No, Sarah, what I was saying was, I believe that…” in various formats and guises. The emptiness of these claims exposes the fact that they have no belief at all (as do the shameful claims to hold Christian “beliefs”, from Morrison of all people). Instead, we hear a desperate desire to believe one’s own bullshit, a desire so desperate that none know what they believe anymore; but only what they are supposed to believe. Today. Or for this station’s audience. Or when the sun comes out in June.

Asserting that some personal-party-political “belief” is any kind of grounds for policy making is not new; but its unwelcome presence on the political stage is particularly noxious in the age of climate change. Just quite when the self-interest of denialists became permitted to dominate public debate over scientific evidence can be traced to the fatal decision of Kevin Rudd to back away from an emissions trading scheme in 2009.

The backstory is long and dull. The Greens voted down the first bill in the Senate, the Prime Minister negotiated with then-Opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull rather than call a double dissolution election. Both lost their positions – Rudd to Julia Gillard, Turnbull to Tony Abbott. Not on the sidelines but front and centre to the whole debacle were the feral employees of the Murdoch Press, columnists and editors and headline writers who have lost all sense of media standards, if they had any.

As with the concerted campaign to switch from “global warming” to “climate change”, the language war on scientific fact was won by denialists. The climate change narrative was skilfully reframed by people whose only skill is to obfuscate facts and reframe narratives for political ends. Now the debate was about whether one “believes” in climate change or “doesn’t believe” in climate change. The anti-climate action position was sustained by nothing but lies and political expedience – and claims of personal “belief”.

This is base. It is debased. It is a foul gamble with the future of the earth and intergenerational equity. It benefits no-one but the fossil fuel and other compromised corporate kings of today who can clearly sell out their own grandchildren for profit. It is also what we have, what we must live with, and in the case of the carbon tax repeal bill, what is going through the Commonwealth House of Representatives tonight.

In addition to the terminal threats posed by these monsters of capital, therefore, is this debasement of language – and thus principle, for changes in language are never meaningless, regardless of whether Abbott assaults our ears with his “terminological clarification” (Oh FFS). The precautionary principle, ditched. The principle of intergenerational equity, jettisoned. The “new policy” (and I use the word loosely) is defended in media interviews on the basis of “belief” and, even more ridiculously, what is “offensive”. Suggest to Joe Hockey that wind farming is a sustainable renewable alternative to coal. Wind farms, he asserts, offend him. Point out to Scott Morrison that Reza Berati, the Iranian asylum seeker who died during an armed attack by local guards whose employment is funded by the Australian taxpayer, was murdered on his watch. The mere suggestion is offensive to Scott. Not the murder, mind. That Scott is any way accountable.

Our Foreign Minister likes to lecture others on when to be offended. Apparently she missed the memo about getting offended by the whiff of truth in interviewer questions, and instead has told everyone else to stop getting offended by Abbott’s unreconstructed sexism. She is wheeled out to be a woman defending a misogynist, a trick used by both parties: oh look, she’s a woman, and she’s defending him, so his sleaze and creep must be a figure of our collective imagination. Nothing at all to do with the fact that he’s her boss, and she’s in cabinet and wants to stay there. Nor the fact that she’s a woman and is therefore the chosen spokesperson for the defence. Nope, she sincerely “believes” there is nothing offensive in the winking, the references to a candidate’s sex appeal, or the daughter’s looks, or the rest of the chauvinistic shit for which he is constantly, incomprehensively forgiven. Constantly, because he keeps doing it; incomprehensively, because he keeps doing it.

Peculiarly enough, the defence of Abbott is always that he has three daughters. This is not in itself evidence of non-sexism. The fact the he relentlessly paraded the daughters before the cameras throughout the campaign and referred to their looks in his leering bumbling way is not refuting evidence at all – it is the opposite. For me, the special corner in his hell should be reserved for the way he treated our first female prime minister, Julia Gillard. Among an embarrassment of choices, the nadir is his snide mockery of the anti-rapist campaign “no means no” by saying Are you suggesting to me that when it comes to Julia, no doesn’t mean no? Many fellow bloggers have listed myriad quotes and links – just google Tony Abbott sexist quotes – I can not rake over these nasty expressions of Abbott’s personality again. What niggles at me the question of whether the electorate perceives each as a vote-winner, or as forgivable ‘gaffes’, or simply overlooks the obvious character defects signalled by such ugly language.

But I headed this entry with reference to the planned repeal of “offence” from section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (Cth). There was a reason for that, and it is this: anything that goes for blackfellas seems to incite collective white panic. It is a common misconception among elites that social justice policies will cost them dearly. Since nothing is more dear than the hip pocket, elites campaign relentlessly against equalising policy like the NDIS, universal healthcare, increased investment in education among lower socio-economic groups and so on.

This may showcase their complete economic ignorance. Do privileged people know that most estimates put returns on social investment at between $17 and $34 per dollar spent on early childhood interventions such as baby health nurses and other family supports? That’s upwards of $17 returned on every dollar spent. The savings are in reduced costs of healthcare, welfare, public housing, and the big one: the criminal justice system. The profits are in employment, increased productivity and increased tax receipts.

Or it may showcase their naked greed: the privileged definitely understand the transfer of power that comes with such equalising policy as investing in education and adequate housing in impoverished neighbourhoods (neighbourhoods which have been actively impoversished, by guess who). Returns on investment may include the privileged hearing criticism of their narrow world view, or for once competing with a less loaded dice, or actually competing. This is unappetising to a group who have invested centuries in convincing themselves and others that their assets are the product of hard work, and represent “just” rewards (as opposed to the indolent poor, who receive “just” desserts). As George Monbiot points out, “if wealth was the inevitable result of hard work, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire”.

But the point. In 2008, Kevin Rudd apologised to the Stolen Generations. The Aboriginal Stolen generations. Those Aboriginal children who were forcibly removed from their families, many if not most on grounds of being Aboriginal. It was a crime second only to the original dispossession and massacre. And then, what? All of a sudden it seemed like everyone was getting an apology. Not that the subsequent recipients did not deserve a heartfelt apology. They did. As do many more who are systematically oppressed and impoverished by the state. But it was like anything those blackfellas get, we must have too.

The taking of offence has followed the same trajectory. A group of Aboriginal people proved in a court of law that a white columnist had behaved extremely offensively. The offence was proved, the offender was found in breach of the Racial Discrimination Act. The offendees were entitled to the offence they took, AT LAW. All of a sudden every elite in the land was offended; or lecturing on who was entitled to be offended, and by what. And that everyone has a right to be offensive (this last claim, from the highest law officer in the country, is so absurdly false as to be embarrassing: there are no legislative gurantees of free speech in Australia, offensive or otherwise). The gist of it is this: if those blackfellas can be offended, we can too. The same thing happens with “entitlement”. While the Tories merrily feather their nest with their extremely expensive entitlements (like taxpayers funding their travel to hob-nobby weddings), the rest of us are lectured over ‘income support’ pittances, less for a week than MP per diem allowances for a day away from home.

When petulant elites hijack the victim role while asserting their right to victimise (a la Bolt and Brandis), someone has probably had a basic human right recognised by power. Members of a less powerful group have probably been recognised – by power – as having had their basic rights denied – by power. The Bolts of this world do not like such recognition. They push back, and push back hard. When the next key sentiment emerges from this nasty government, the pattern is sure to repeat.

On learning music and teaching law

oecomuse

I come from a maternal line of teachers. My mother teaches music, and her sister teaches drama. Their mother ran her own little school back in the day, with their aunty. Another sister ran yoga and dog-training classes. If there was one thing I swore never to do, not even a little bit, not even piano lessons on the side for pocket money, it was teaching. Even now, five years after I took my first class, it’s an open secret. How’s the teaching going? Mum will ask. Shhh. Don’t tell anyone. I LOVE it.

Teaching is one of the few professions that has been relatively open to women who want to establish and maintain an independent working life. Staff rooms are not free of office politics – no work environment is free of office politics – work environments have humans within. But it is nowhere near as threatening to enter a school and earn a living as it is to confront the rampantly sexist horrors that await women in construction, mining, engineering, and (still) medicine, science and law. Not to mention the corporate cowboys in finance, insurance and IT.

That social structures and the men who perpetuate their flawed values have actively limited our life choices is still apparent today. Minimalisation of the worth and value of working with children (and the elderly, the sick, people with disabilities and other women) is one of those breathtakingly ignorant features of the western tradition. It is much over-looked that while we hold forth as the pinnacle of human achievement, we have in fact only succeeded at producing a generation of the fattest, saddest, most sugar-addicted beings in the history of humankind. If that sounds far-fetched, consider the fastest-rising diagnoses in the wealthiest countries: obesity, depression and diabetes. It is our strange privilege – to deploy the trappings of “civilisation” to disconnect from life’s fundamentals. This disconnection shields and buffers and cotton-wools the middle classes from the howling suffering of humanity. It is so all-pervasive that many of us only notice it when we breed a new human of our own. Suddenly the utter disregard for women and children is front and centre, every waking hour (which is most hours, for some new parents). How to push a pram AND a supermarket trolley? Why do tradies only turn up when you have to be somewhere else? What do you THINK I did all day? HAS A BABY DIED OF HUNGER OR DISEASE HERE? DO YOU KNOW WHY NOT?

Anyway. The latest pedagogy repositions teaching. It is now located and defined as teaching, learning and engagement (not necessarily in that order). Makes sense: students must be engaged to learn, and teachers must engage students before teaching and learning can take place. Turns out that teaching is a lot like parenting, and simultaneously teaching and parenting – among a group larger than an adult or two, to make the obvious point – is a tried and true pedagogy. Been around a while. For the sum of human existence and beyond. Back up in the trees, down in the swamp, parents showing children, elders leading. Not new, nothing innovative, just a return to the deepest of deep-rooted practices: listening, learning, laughing, living.

No, I am not advocating a trip down Aquarius lane. In a roundabout and easily distracted by the realities of most of the world’s pain while sitting in the comfort of my suburban home way, I am trying to get to this. My mother teaches music. I am belatedly, eternally grateful that this is her chosen profession. I teach law. We are both mother-teachers. This delivers dividends, in commonalities that far outweigh the surface differences in our chosen fields.

It dawned on me slowly, as I took on two and then three and four classes. Then unit co-ordinator of this course, or running summer school for that. Each additional responsibility brought that which most teachers loathe – the designing of assessments, the accountability measures to the institution, the endless administration. I developed pedagogy around remembering names; and more on compulsory attendance. I developed a pathological hatred of medical certificates; and a gentle, almost fond, tone for explaining to eighteen year old law students that they are adults, and smart ones, who have worked hard to get where they are … and are therefore expected to work on successful life/study strategies. I am not your mother, the sub text screams, as I smile and nod reassurely (subtext: Ingrid is right. You are smart. It is up to you).

What was slowly dawning was an understanding that I had spent a lifetime in the company of a woman who holds a sophisticated universal theory on the place of music in human history. And that I was spending much of my intellectual energy working on exactly that, in the field of law. Neither of these are new enterprises, but as with much teaching and learning agenda, we humans are doomed to re-learn or repeat, like history itself says it will doom us to do. Music resonates through the body and the heart, and through the ages. Law resonates through the head and the heart, and the body politic. If the heart thing strikes you as incongruent, spend a day in a court room. If any social structure showcases everything that is wrong with our civilisation so-called, it is the cold pomposity of this environment. The power of men to judge others while holding back any emotion as the most despicable, most heart breaking and traumatising events are recounted and relived in the public domain – it is a terrible thing. It is barely an improvement on public hangings – the single redeeming feature is that Australian courts at least do not, directly, have the power to take a human life.

While I am nothing if not a complete ignoramus on all things Foucaultian, I think the resonance from head to heart to social body is the music that pumps in our blood, and law that regulates its beat. The great reunification of parenting and teaching, of music and law, of a life’s calling that is a living wage, may never have fallen into place if my mother had not been that special kind of teacher who not only loves what she does but is gripped by a passion to share it with all. Her teaching style is inclusive and generous but not altruistically – for it is her greatest life satisfaction too, this privilege to enhance a fellow human’s love and knowledge of music. Same thing, I hear her in my mind’s ear, as I type that AND between love and knowledge. Same thing, for more knowledge of music is more love of music, and it is here that the law and music education paths diverge.

My own love of studying law has as mixed a provenance as anyone’s interest in anything. My dad is an Anglophile, I am an Anglophobe. His old-school liberalism prompts me to shriek in frustration. They’re letting you down, dad! How can you stay loyal to an idea (here, liberalism) when its adherents are people who bastardise and corrupt everything you actually do and they say they do while doing the opposite? Push back! Tell em to get back to first principles, or go back to school! He won’t, of course.

My Anglophobia is, as far as I will argue, grounded in fact. The English are dangerous. Like the church they took with them across the globe, everything the English touch turns to gold for the English and death by English hands for all but the most dedicated of collaborators. Why anyone would join collaborator ranks for the dubious outcome of never being more than a curiosity, and never attaining full membership no matter what, has always left me cold and unconvinced. I always thought Al-Fayed senior, the Arab who bought Harrods, was the ultimate exemplar of how that particular dynamic plays out. He’s so rich he takes over the iconic jewel in the English retail crown, just purchases this piece of prestige. His son squires the fallen princess about town. Al-Fayed paid the same price as families across empire have always paid. It is an old, old story; the first born son, the sacrificial lamb. Everything old is new again, nothing is new under the sun (hello vanity, hello Ecclesiastes, and hello to my maternal grandma, who loved that chapter and verse).

But back to my dad: Our shared yearning is for a social order which actually reflects the noble pursuits and principles that “the” law (our legal tradiiton) claims to uphold. There is nothing wrong with subscribing to the principle that all are equal before the law and no-one is above it. There is everything wrong with complacent declarations that this is indeed the case, that it is a factual claim that can be validly made about England and the common law countries the English so violently corralled under their jurisdiction.

I have written elsewhere of my immeasuarable discomfort with the notion of a common law – or, as the English and their accolytes call it, the common law. It has an inherent problem that is overlooked in the same way the great claims for “civilisation” made by the west overlook its barbaric disconnection from life, mother earth, humanity, and all that sustains us. Similarly, the “common” law is elitist. It is inaccessible to most. It is overlaid with multiple interpretations and rules, manifest across continents in different permutations, continents which to this day suffer the searing, tearing chasms wrought by the English and their maps and pencils, Englishmen drawing lines with their unspeakable disregard for others’ traditions around land, law and property. And all the while here is the common law proclaiming its central consistency and practical evolutionary capacity, while both being and appearing to be inconstant and inconsistent, rigid and inflexible, and perpetuating injustice, to all but the privileged few. The common law, on even cursory inspection, is not common to all.

Nothing and no-one and can be all things to all people. Simultaneously, all humanity are one, a common species is what unites us. It does not matter whether a fellow human has so profound a disability that they can not speak our language, or skin so black they disappear, to white eyes, up to the whites of black eyes at night. We recognise people, as individual humans, even as we dismiss or overlook or talk down to or ignore them. It is in those acts of dismissal and ignorance that we confirm our recognition.

All humans gather into groups and say to one another ‘what are the rules?’ Across all of time and space, from one end of history to the other and across the planet, every human society, every culture, or clan or tribe or language group, has nominated law makers and law enforcers, identified law breakers, and thus law itself. It is this that law shares (has in common!) with music. Law brings order, and it does, in the formal sense. But so does music, for what is a birth, death or marriage, any ritual designed to give thanks for our continuing survival, without music? Is there a society or culture or clan or tribe or language group known to human kind that has not organised itself around rules and rituals, leaders who lead, in law and in song? I can not imagine such a peoples, or if I could, I can not imagine them surviving for long.

In response to Tim Blech of the Terror

Everlasting awfulness

At 05.16 hours this morning Tuesday 16 June 2014 that old fashioned charmer Tim Blair confirmed his hysterical fear of intelligent articulate women: http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/crown_our_crazy_queen/

While the gracious Dee Madigan suggested that no lefty femmo would be so crass as to post a response, I had no such qualms. Except perhap a small qualm about responding to Blair’s list of formidably fabulous women by naming the chief whitemansplainers (neologic credit: Celeste Liddle) who should be wanted for crimes against humanity, and the English language.

Here is my mirror call.

They blather, they jabber, they drone. They crow of their “democratic” victory (that’s the Abbott government, to you and me) from the towers of triumphalism, these chicken hawking megaphone kings. They are Australia’s dominant elite; oppressive, mendacious members of the white man ruling class NOT ALL WHITE MEN (why, a decent white man raised me – to think for myself). Their sexist, racist, homophobic (/self-hating) poor-hating chorus rises in ridiculousness to a panicked stampede following the rise and rise of today’s smart articulate women.

Only one of them can reign as our solitary shepherd of the petrified men-sheep. Only one can run screaming down the same road with all the others, clambering over each other to complain, whine and whinge that the women are out of the kitchen, and the First Peoples are asserting the universal rights that are inherent to us all. Who is the most threatened by intelligent voices everywhere? I can’t list the choices of frightened white man commentariat or I’d be sick in my mouth and besides, you know them already.