Dave’s Archives

Senator Back is doing the rounds with a strong anti-boat-arrival theme. I fired back a letter in frustration, which I'll get to in a moment.

First, I'll mention something else I discovered. Back sent out two letters, about a month apart, each accompanied with a pamphlet on how Labor is failing to "stop the boats". The content in general is no great surprise (i.e. thoroughly depressing), except when it comes to comparing the numbers. Here are the graphs shown in the pamphlets:

1st pamphlet (arrived June 2010)

2nd pamphlet (arrived July 2010)

Now, of course, the first uses financial years while the second uses calendar years, but look closely. The numbers do not add up. Specifically:

• the first graph shows three arrivals in '03-'04, while the second shows only one in '03 and none in '04; and
• the first shows eight arrivals in '05-'06, while the second shows only one in '05 and three in '06.

The first pamphlet is (roughly) consistent with official figures. (The figures for Labor are roughly consistent with the pamphlets having been printed a few months apart; they look different, but I can't spot any definite inconsistencies).

Here's my more general response to Senator Back:

Dear Senator Back,

I read with great annoyance your second letter and pamphlet regarding boat arrivals and the mining tax.

Labor has capitulated on asylum seekers (and climate change). Your party might claim some credit for this, but now that the moral highground is there for the taking, why do you persist in this spurious and degrading line of argument?

I am not worried in the least about the number of boat arrivals, and your graphs and numbers mean nothing to me. Frankly, I find the whole issue bizarre and offensive. How does the Liberal Party propose to assist those people fleeing persecution who are clearly unable to come via the official channels? If you do “stop the boats”, surely you will only increase the suffering felt by such people, who are apparently not wanted anywhere. You don’t seem to offer an alternative, other than suggesting that Australia wash its hands of the problem.

I would vote for the absence of policy sooner than I would vote for yours.

It’s almost as though the two major parties are actively vying to be the more perverse and incompetent. Labor has done everything it can to break our trust, and yet the Liberal Party runs scared of offering anything better. I find it incredible that you’re not able to put together a policy framework to put Labor to shame, because Labor has handed you this opportunity on a silver platter.

On the mining tax, very few disinterested experts seem to agree with your point of view. As you know, the mining tax was proposed by Ken Henry in a comprehensive review of the tax system; the Labor Party merely adopted it. Moreover, I’m unsure of the relevance of the figure you quote – the proportion of revenue coming from Western Australia. I’m an Australian before I’m a West Australian, as I hope you are. WA is not a nation in its own right. Australia and all its people own the resources on which the mining tax is to be levied; that much of that mineral wealth happens to be found in WA is neither here nor there.

There are many genuine reasons for changing the government. It’s time that the Liberal Party stood up and took notice of them, because as it stands now you do not offer an alternative.

This is a counterargument to a previous post, in which I argued the case for switching from Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to Prime Minister Julia Gillard (or rather, why certain objections were unfounded).

Gillard's rise to power may have restored Labor's popularity for the time being (and certainly at a very opportune moment), but the party has done very little to actually deserve this electoral reward. I also spoke about Gillard and climate change in my last post, but here I'm going to bring Rudd back into the picture.

Gillard's position on climate change is essentially the one that Rudd had announced in April - that nothing would happen prior to 2013. This new policy decision is largely thought to have instigated Rudd's (and Labor's) precipitous fall in popularity in the first place. To rule out both an ETS and a carbon tax for another three years is an act of utter recklessness, as Rudd himself had passionately argued, and is inexplicable both pragmatically and idealistically. Further, it's an insult to our intelligence for Labor to change the unpopular leader but not the unpopular policy.

But it's more than that. The ETS delay was not truly Rudd's policy in the first place. It was the NSW Right faction that pushed Rudd to delay emissions trading, one of the groups that lent its support to Gillard's subsequent coup. Rudd was hamstrung by his own party and then scapegoated for the consequences of that very mistake. An anonymous Labor factional leader gave this assessment:

This crypto-fascist made no effort to build a base in the party. Now that his only faction, Newspoll, has deserted him he is gone.

This gives some strong hints as to the extent of Rudd's unpopularity within his own party, but it's hard to argue that this in itself justifies the demise of a sitting Prime Minister. Labor's internal party politics are certainly no substitute for the will of the people, and Rudd's poor showing in opinion polls is hardly unusual for a first-term PM, nor was it even necessarily of his own making. In his press conference on June 23 (on the eve of his dispatch) he gave a glimpse of his views, and foreshadowed Gillard's policy positions:

If I am returned as the leader of the party and the government and as Prime Minister, then I will be very clear about one thing. This party and government will not be lurching to the right on the question of asylum seekers, as some have counselled us to do. Also, on the question of climate change, we'll be moving to a timetable on emissions trading, which is of the government's decision, contrary to the views of some, in terms of when that best occurs.

Contrast the last sentence against Gillard's "citizens' assembly" idea. Rudd seems to be preemptively attacking Gillard's appeal to populism, and so this meme must have been floating around in the party for a while. (I don't even see what political advantage a "citizens' assembly" could really convey. It won't legitimise anything. It may involve "ordinary Australians", but most ordinary Australians will be quite distant from it. The Opposition, not being constrained by reason or evidence, can paint it and its outcomes however they like.)

Gillard's other major policy initiative that clearly distinguishes her from Rudd - offshore refugee processing (also alluded to in the above quote) - was very poorly handled. It was clearly designed to neutralise the Liberals' xenophobic ramblings over boat people, but it sounds awfully like giving in to them. The other problem is that the policy relies entirely on international co-operation that had scarcely even been sought. It's not clear that this co-operation will ever be forthcoming (except from Nauru, which would probably be too humiliating to consider, since it would nail John Howard's colours to Labor's mast), leaving this policy in limbo and playing right into the "failed-policy" mantra of the Liberals. Rudd, the diplomat, clearly wouldn't have made such a fool of himself.

From one point of view, Gillard is an important symbol. Hopefully she can inspire future generations of women to fight their way to the top. Her rise to power may also have helped legitimise non-belief. (By contrast, it seems almost inconceivable that a US politician could openly admit to being a non-believer. Look what happens when one shows signs of doubting the complete literal truth of the Bible.) Neither Rudd nor Abbott, through no fault of their own, can be such a symbol.

Like most senior politicians, I'm sure Gillard does ultimately have what it takes to run the country. Even Abbott does, I'll concede - it's not as though we're dealing with an Aussie version of Sarah Palin, after all. However, unlike Rudd, neither seem to have much vision - much sense of how the country could be made better. Gillard and Abbott play politics like chess, where the only objective is victory over the other; victory for its own sake.

Neither do they seem to have quite the expertise that Rudd possesses. Australia needs a delicate approach to foreign affairs; balancing our interests - and humanitarian interests - with the pragmatic realities of international relations. We probably owe much of our prosperity and security to good relations and carefully-negotiated agreements with other countries. I still trust Labor to handle this better than the Liberal party (mostly because a large part of the Coalition's support these days comes from that section of the community that doesn't understand why other countries even need to exist). However, Rudd was surely the better choice.

Whoever does win the election will have to work hard to prove retrospectively that they deserved it.

Kevin Rudd must secretly love Wilson Tuckey, in the way that one might value a psychopath who happens to inhabit the enemy bunker and can't actually fire a weapon. In other words, Tuckey plays right into Rudd's political message.

Perhaps feeling a little defensive over all the condemnation of his boat terrorist hypothesis, Tuckey latched onto a breadcrumb left by one Dr Victor Rajakulendran:

That is a probability, that is what I have been told, so out of 200 Tamil asylum seekers, there could be a Tiger. They are also fleeing the country like any other Tamils because their life is also in danger and I would say their life is in more danger than a common Tamil civilian. The common Tamil civilians are leaving the country because of fear of their lives - these people also will definitely flee the country so they could be in the boat.

There you go. Terrorists on boats - case closed. I won't make too much of Tuckey himself supposedly using this as evidence to support his position. It doesn't, of course, for reasons that I think are obvious given the above quote. Tuckey previously referred specifically to people coming to Australia with hostile intent, and I doubt that blowing things up in Australia is a terribly appealing strategy for someone fighting for a homeland in the north of Sri Lanka.

In this instance, all he had to say was: "Well, I think it authenticates it. It is quite interesting of course." As silly as this is, it sounds like a throw-away response to a journalist's question, which raises two points:

1. It's not clear what the question actually was (cue Douglas Adams); and
2. Tuckey may not have heard the actual quote before he responded, but merely an interpretation of it.

If I had more time to dig up useless factoids, I might be able to figure that out. However, I don't, and so I'm going with my own theory that someone was simply pushing Tuckey's buttons, which I imagine isn't a terribly hard thing to do.

Not to leave us too disappointed, however, Tuckey offers us this additional morsel of insight:

What is [the asylum seekers'] health status and what threat, unfortunately, might they represent to children and others within Australia.

To children, Wilson? Terrorism isn't enough for you, eh? Now you're sagely warning us that they might be terrorist paedophiles?

The existence of Wilson Tuckey is truly an unnecessary contribution to the heat death of the universe. Quite predictably, he suggests that terrorists are lurking among asylum seekers arriving by boat.

Sayeth the Great Purveyor of Entropy, himself a convicted criminal:

If you wanted to get into Australia and you have bad intentions what do you do?

Board a plane, perhaps? No no, our illustrious former minister of the Howard Government has a much more efficient and sophisticated proposition:

You insert yourself in a crowd of 100 for which there is great sympathy for the other 99 and you go on a system where nobody brings their papers, you have no identity you have no address.

That's right! No papers! I mean, how will we know who the terrorists are without the enormous, bright red "TERRORIST" stamp that magically appears in the passport of anyone intending to commit such an act in the future? And these evildoers could gain entry in a matter of months, while being subjected to nothing more than a thorough background check by the immigration authorities, a few headlines in major newspapers and a stint in the Christmas Island detention centre. Not like those terrible long-haul plane trips, where the meals are awful, the seating is cramped and the security is so tight that they x-ray your baggage.

This from a man who still inhabits the corridors of power.

One of Amnesty International's media releases reports on a survey of Australians' knowledge and opinions on asylum seekers. However, the point of the media release is clearly to highlight some of the facts themselves, not just the extent to which people are aware of them. This seems reasonable, given that:

The opinion poll also showed that a large majority of Australians have major misconceptions regarding the percentage of asylum seekers who arrive in Australia by boat. On average, Australians believe that about 60 per cent of asylum seekers come to Australia by boat. More than a third of Australians believe that over 80 per cent of asylum seekers arrive by boat. In fact, only 3.4 per cent of people who sought asylum in Australia in 2008 arrived by boat - the other 96.6 per cent arrived by plane.

This is a fairly important statistic. However, this article is utterly devoid of citations, and as a researcher this annoys the hell out of me. Amnesty is a kind of lobbying organisation. As such it has an interest in altering opinions, and so it shouldn't always expect people to take it at face value.

The other thing that troubles me is the discussion of processing costs (it costs more to process asylum seekers on Christmas Island than on the mainland). Why would Amnesty even care about asylum seeker processing costs? It's hardly an issue on which human rights hinge. I'd venture that it cares only because it's another means of altering opinions. It certainly wouldn't be reporting processing costs if they were less on Christmas Island.

(This reminded me of the nuclear power debate. Greenpeace has argued that the nuclear power is unwise because the economics don't stack up. This is actually quite dishonest, in my opinion, even if it's entirely accurate. It's hard to imagine that Greenpeace cares about the economics argument against nuclear power for its own sake. Coming from an authority on economics, such an argument may be taken seriously. The same argument coming from Greenpeace just looks like someone trying to push our buttons.)

In general I don't wish to denigrate Amnesty. The lobbying it does is directed at a genuinely worthy cause, unlike that conducted by a large number of other lobbyists. However, worthy causes are almost always served by open discussion, and this includes the ability to verify the facts and statistics for oneself.

There is of course much discussion of the statistics in the media. For instance, Crikey has a list of statistics on asylum seekers with numerous but not terribly good references. I eventually managed to (more-or-less) confirm that only 179 out of 4750 asylum seekers arrived by boat in 2008. This report gives the 179 figure on page 4, while a media release on the Immigation Minister's website mentions the 4750 figure. That comes out at roughly the same percentage (3.8%) as quoted by Amnesty.

The processing costs, I'm guessing, came from a 2007 report for Oxfam. The report states:

The latest figures given to a budget estimates hearing on 22 May 2006 suggest that it cost $1,830 per detainee per day to keep someone on Christmas Island compared to $238 per detainee per day at Villawood in Sydney.

So why am I interested in asylum seeker processing costs? I'm not; not directly, anyway. I consider it to be an argument that largely misses the point -  mechanisms intended to discourage unauthorised boat arrivals incur a human cost, not just a financial one. However, from the financial cost I note that not even selfish motives would justify a hardline position on unauthorised boat arrivals. What, then, are the hardliners actually arguing about? If both altruism and self-interest suggest the same course of action, what kind of corrupt mode of thinking can possibly raise an objection?

It's inexcusable that we should make asylum seekers the object of such irrational concern. By definition, these are people who possess the least political power of anyone in the world. However, as a direct result, their suffering also carries the least political risk; not that you'd know it from listening to some of the myopic reactionary logic floating around over the last few years.

It seems that ideology can thrive where beliefs are not merely simplistic or unsupported, but where they are demonstrably false.

Julie Bishop is making the case that Stern Hu - the Rio Tinto executive mysteriously detained in Shanghai - should be released after having been detained for 7 days without charge.

This is just a bit rich, considering her party's time in government saw:

1. the excessive detention for months and even years of completely innocent people - asylum seekers who are overwhelmingly genuine refugees; and
2. the implementation of preventative detention orders, whereby a person can be detained by the AFP for 14 days without charge. (One might argue that terrorism is a lot more serious than whatever it is Stern Hu may or may not be caught up in, but the legal principle of habeus corpus does not make such distinctions.)

She's basically right this time, of course - better to be inconsistent than consistently nasty - though I'm not sure of the wisdom of making an international incident out of it.

Paul Kelly's thoughts on this are interesting. For all its centuries of history and accumulated wisdom, this incident seems to suggest that the current Chinese regime is actually somewhat ignorant of the way the world works.

The Liberal Party has reminded me in no uncertain terms why I (at least) voted it out at the last election. John Howard was a competent leader, and his government can take the credit for several good deeds. However, these cannot make up for an (almost) complete lack of conscience regarding refugee policy. I can accept that the Liberal Party, by its nature, is given to supporting a free-market approach to things, including privatisation, individual workplace agreements, etc. In many cases I don't agree with this philosophy (particularly where it disadvantages the poor, and asks the private sector to maintain infrastructure and services that are not commercially viable), but I do respect it at some academic level as an alternate perspective. Refugee intake, on the other hand, is a humanitarian issue that must surely transcend squabbles over how much control the government should exercise over the economy. You don't screw around with humanitarian issues, unless you're John Howard and your (re-)election depends on the irrational fear of outsiders. It's not just wrong - it's obscene.

This is a deficiency that the Liberals' time in opposition has clearly not remedied. Evidentially the lull in hysteria since the "children overboard" and Tampa scandals was not the product of enlightenment, but merely a truce. Ideologically-aligned elements of the media are now helping Turnbull in making bizarre leaps of logic and claims of a government conspiracy. But this time, the facts - the ones that we actually know - seem to be making a greater impression. The government, as far as anyone can legitimately tell, is doing precisely what it should be doing, given the latest grisly incident. Meanwhile, those who do possess - simultaneously - a brain, a conscience and a sense of perspective are speaking out* in defence of some of the most vulnerable people we will ever hear about. The few Liberals who do so deserve a great deal of respect.

* Some articles you might peruse on the subject:

• David Marr - Trauma by the boatload
• Andrew Bartlett - Asylum seekers in boats - hysteria 2.0
• Andrew Bartlett - Whatever the answer is, it isn’t Temporary Protection Visas
• Possum Comitatus - Why Andrew Bolt should be Sodomised with a Calculator – Part 142
  

There's an online poll on the ABC's 4 Corners website regarding the election. The first question asks "In the last two weeks of the campaign what do you see as the SINGLE most important issue?" You are given a choice between "Economy/Interest rates", "Climate change", "Industrial relations", "Education" and "Health".

Important for whom? Us or the politicians?

But what's really missing from this picture? After the intervention in the Northern Territory to impose the Libs' ideals of capitalism and individualism by force on the Aboriginal people, after the ongoing mandatory detention of people whose only "crime" is trying to escape their wartorn homelands for a better life in Australia, after the "Pacific solution" in which these people suddenly became so unimaginably dangerous that they were not even allowed to set foot on Australian soil, after our continuing support for the catastrophic war in Iraq, after the two-faced bribery of Saddam Hussein to the tune of $300 million, after the detention and even deportation of Australian citizens for being unable to produce a passport, after the introduction of terrorism legislation that bulldozes some of our most basic legal rights, after witnessing the opacity and unaccountability of ASIO and the AFP in their roles under that legislation, after the introduction of "control orders" to bypass the legal system and impose sanctions on people for whom there is no evidence of guilt...

Can we not, just once, put aside the ridiculous charade of deciding who can manage the economy better and focus on the real world?