Crossposted from No Right Turn.
Australia has some of the worst racial disparities in the developed world. The average household income of indigenous Australians is only 60% of the average. The proportion with high-school or higher educations is only half that of the average (a fifth for university qualifications), while their unemployment rate is triple that of non-indigenous Australians. Their health statistics are equally appalling, with complication and disease rates at least double the average, with a consequent effect on life expectancy. The average indigenous Australian dies a decade earlier as a result of poverty, disease, poor access to health services and institutionalised racism.
The Australian Federal Government spends billions trying to correct these disparities, with apparently little effect. But that’s because most of the money never actually reaches its target, instead being diverted to buy votes in marginal seats:
THE Northern Territory Labor government has for the past five years diverted $2 billion earmarked for indigenous disadvantage and other key services to mainstream spending in marginal Darwin seats.
Detailed figures obtained by The Weekend Australian reveal that hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ dollars provided by the commonwealth and intended for indigenous health, homelessness, delivery of services and families have been used to service debt and bolster superannuation payments.
The figures come as the Territory government continues to defend its handling of the $672 million Strategic Indigenous Housing and Infrastructure Project, which has so far failed to result in one new house being built, despite $45m being spent in the first 15 months of the project.
This is not a new story; the National Indigenous Times highlighted it back in 2006, the Sydney Morning Herald in 2005. But still it goes on – and indigenous Australians suffer as a result.
It is time to end this organised racist theft, and for state governments to spend the money they are allocated for indigenous peoples for its proper purpose, rather than misappropriating it. But that would require Australians to accept that indigenous people matter, that they are human beings equally deserving of government attention. And looking across the Tasman, even after Rudd’s historic apology, that acceptance is still a long way away.
Crossposted from No Right Turn.
The ACT Legislative Assembly has just passed a civil union law, amending its existing civil partnerships legislation to permit public ceremonies. There’s some history here – in 2006 and 2007 civil union laws were repeatedly vetoed by the Howard Government on the basis that allowing public ceremonies (rather than filling out a form and making a declaration in a registry office) would “mimic marriage”. The message was clear: gay couples should stay in the legislative closet, and keep out of sight (and out of mind) of decent straight folk.
The new law gives the finger to that idea, reinstating public ceremonies and establishing a seperate system of civil partnership notaries. Oddly, however, the ceremonies are limited solely to same-sex couples – ensuring same- and opposite-sex couples use different laws apparently being a cornerstone of Australian bigot politics. Even this may not be enough to avoid a federal veto – the Australian Labour Party voted just three months ago to uphold Howard’s ban on gay marriage, and Kevin Rudd personally opposes equality. its unclear yet whether there will be a veto – but given the hostility of the ALP to gay rights, I would not be surprised.
Crossposted from No Right Turn.
In the run-up to the 2007 election, then-Australian Prime Minister John Howard decided to repeat his successful racial wedge tactics with Aborigines as the victims, declaring a “state of emergency” in Northern Australia, taking over townships, and suspending anti-discrimination laws so it could subject aborigines to authoritarian and paternalist controls on the basis of race. Now, James Anaya, the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights of indigenous people, has pointed out the obvious: that this was fundamentally discriminatory. And he didn’t mince his words in saying so:
“There is entrenched racism in Australia,” Anaya told reporters in the capital, Canberra, after visiting several Aboriginal townships in the past week. “These measures overtly discriminate against Aboriginal peoples, infringe their right of self determination and stigmatize already stigmatized communities.”
The Australian has more:
Compulsory income management and blanket bans on alcohol and pornography were “overtly discriminatory” and further stigmatised already stigmatised communities, he said.
“People who have a demonstrated capacity to manage their income are included.
“It’s inappropriate to their circumstances but is also, as expressed by them, demeaning.”
The indigenous rights expert was also scathing of federal Labor’s insistence that housing funds would only flow if indigenous communities signed over their land.
“It’s a mistake to assume that indigenous peoples … aren’t capable of taking care of their homes,” Prof Anaya said.
“Indigenous control can be appropriate to indigenous peoples’ development, to their aspirations, to indeed being in control of their lives like all others.”
As for compensation for indigenous people taken from their families by government agencies, the UN rapporteur was unequivocal: “There should be reparations,” he said.
That’s a pretty stunning condemnation of a government we all expect to behave better. It will be interesting to see how the Rudd government, which has moved a long way from Howard’s position, responds.
Crossposted from No Right Turn
Whenever I look at Australian politics, I’m constantly reminded that the Australian Labor Party is neither as progressive or liberal as its New Zealand equivalent. I’ve had another such reminder today, with Kevin Rudd categorically ruling out any move to introduce civil unions in Australia. His reason? American-style bigotry:
The Government’s response equated the proposal with same-sex marriage equality, saying the no gay unions policy “reflects the widely held view in the community that marriage is between a man and a woman”.
The furtherest they’ll go is to officially recognise gay de facto couples. And this in a country which has not yet outlawed discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation at a federal level.
Civil unions are not full equality – they are “seperate but equal”, which never is. At the same time, they are a marked improvement, and a step on the road to full equality. Rejecting even this half-measure is the sign of a party – and a country – which is still deeply bigoted, and does not yet accept the fundamental principle that everyone is born equal and should be treated as such. We expect that from the right; to see it from the left is deeply troubling.
In December 2006, military strongman Voreqe Bainimarama overthrew the elected government of Fiji in a military coup. The military claimed to be acting to protect the constitution from Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase, who it accused of creating instability. Today, the Court of Appeal called bullshit on that:
Fiji’s Court of Appeal has declared that the removal of Laisenia Qarase and his ministers from government in a military takeover in December 2006 was unlawful, and has ruled it lawful for the President to appoint a caretaker Prime Minister to issue a writs for general elections.
However, it has ruled against the argument by Qarase’s lawyers that he be reinstated and that he advise the President to dissolve Parliament and call fresh elections, given the length of time since Qarase’s removal.
A scan of the judgement is here [PDF].
The government has been granted leave to appeal, but they haven’t been granted a stay – meaning that the President will have to act before the case is finally resolved. It’s a solid victory for the constitution and the rule of law, and a poke in the eye for the military thugs. The decision was carried live on national TV, so everyone in the country knows their regime is illegal. The question now is what they will do about it: go back to their barracks, and let the people decide – or end any pretence of legality and conduct a second coup, this time against the courts.
A couple of years ago I wanted to trace the government’s decision-making process on how forestry and agriculture would be included in its then-planned (and now “suspended”) Emissions Trading Scheme. So I wrote to the Minister and asked. Within a couple of months (there was a screwup with the post) I had a thick binder containing every Cabinet paper and minute on the issue over the previous eighteen months – hundreds of pages in total. It cost me nothing.
This is not an unusual experience for me. What makes it possible is New Zealand’s freedom of information law: the Official Information Act 1982.
The OIA was passed around the same time as Australia’s Freedom of Information Act. But as the above story shows, it produces quite different results. Journalists, academics, lobby groups, opposition politicians and ordinary troublemakers like me are routinely given sensitive documents they would never be allowed to see in Australia. This allows us not only to build a better picture of what our government is doing – it also allows us to hold it to account. Continue reading ‘Comparing FOI regimes: NZ vs Australia’
WikiLeaks is a public-interest website which makes leaked material freely available on the internet. In the past it has revealed information on psychological torture at Guantanamo Bay, a Pentagon analysis showing it is losing the war in Afghanistan, and insider trading at J P Morgan. At the moment its hosting leaked memos from Barclays Bank detailing the extent of their tax evasion – memos which have been suppressed by the UK High Court (ah, the joy of a free market in legal jurisdiction). In short, it does good work, exposing corruption and malfeasance in both the public and private sector and allowing those responsible to be held to account.
You may be wondering why I’m not linking to any of that material. The reason is that WikiLeaks is now on Australia’s internet blacklist. Last year they posted a copy of Denmark’s blacklist, revealing some unusual censorship choices (one of the blocked sites was a Dutch transport company), and this apparently meets the ACMA’s definition of prohibited online content. Australian websites linking to it could be fined $11,000 a day. The last thing censors can tolerate, it seems, is free and open discussion about censorship.
The Australian government is planning to turn its blacklist into a mandatory internet filter, similar to those used in such great democracies as Burma, Iran, and of course China. This provides an excellent reason why Australians should not let that happen.
Cross-posted from No Right Turn
Three years ago, the Australian government passed draconian sedition laws as part its knee-jerk response to the “war on terror”. Now, Kevin Rudd is planning to repeal them:
The Howard government’s controversial ban on sedition will be scrapped and replaced with legislation that bolsters the protection of free speech under a series of changes to the nation’s terrorism laws.Yesterday the Attorney-General, Robert McClelland, flagged plans to increase oversight of the national security apparatus and promised to accept the bulk of the recommendations from the Clarke inquiry, a 2006 Australian Law Reform Commission report on sedition and a parliamentary committee report on intelligence and security.
(The ALRC review recommended replacing the law with a narrower one bearing more resemblance to criminal incitement, with stronger protections for academic, artistic, scientific, political or journalistic speech to make it clear that merely criticising the government, or reporting or studying such criticism, was not in and of itself seditious or treasonous. They also recommended removing the ludicrous claim of universal jurisdiction which allowed people who had never set foot in Australia, let alone bore it any allegiance, to be prosecuted for “disloyalty” against it).
But its not all good news. There’s this bit:
The new counter-terrorism laws – to be drafted in the first half of next year – will cover attacks that cause psychological as well as physical harm…
This current internationally accepted definition of terrorism (as seen in e.g. New Zealand’s Terrorism Suppression Act) includes acts which are carried out for the purpose of “induc[ing] terror in a civilian population” – but it still requires that they cause death, injury, or serious destruction. So, in order to be “terrorism”, it has to involve killing people or blowing stuff up. Allowing psychological as well as physical harm runs the risk of substantially lowering that threshold, allowing the misclassification of other offences as “terrorism”, with all that that entails. Given that anti-terror laws are already overused, that would be a Very Bad Thing.
Crossposted from No Right Turn
On Thursday, 66 countries supported a landmark declaration in the UN General Assembly calling for full equality regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity, the legalisation of homosexuality, and an end to “violence, harassment, discrimination, exclusion, stigmatisation and prejudice” against gay, lesbian, bi and transgender persons. The declaration was widely supported by European and South American countries (who are leading the struggle for human rights at the moment). Notably absent from the list of supporters? The United States. They were the only country in the civilised world who refused to sign.
Still, it could have been worse. At least they didn’t sign the competing declaration, backed by the Organisation of the Islamic Conference and the Vatican, which claimed that ending anti-gay bigotry could lead to “the social normalization, and possibly the legitimization, of many deplorable acts including pedophilia”. And people wonder why religion is associated in the public mind with bigotry…
The declaration isn’t any sort of official UN treaty. But now the issue has been broached (yes, really, it took them 60 years to start talking about it), and we can start pressing for real action. And hopefully soon we’ll see a UN Convention on gay rights, or an optional protocol to the ICCPR and ICESCR to bring gender identity and sexual orientation fully within the UN human rights system.
Elsewhere: [by Mark] More at The Global Sociology Blog.
Crossposted from No Right Turn
Oh dear. Drivers in Pakistan are refusing to transport supplies across the Northwest Frontier to NATO and US troops in Afghanistan. 75% of US and NATO supplies go that way. Which means they’re either going to have to drive their own damn trucks, find a new supply route in a hurry, or learn to fight a war without food, fuel, ammunition and toilet paper.
This is a major setback for the US, and unless they resolve it quickly, it’s all over for them. Modern armies – particularly the US army, with its dependence on helicopters – are hungry and thirsty beasts. Cut off their supplies, and they wither and die.
All good things eventually come to an end. And so has the fifth Labour government. They made a good run of it, but as a third term government hoping for a fourth, the odds were always against them. In the end, the mood for change was just too great. But looking at the final result – a likely National-ACT coalition – I’m wondering whether this was really the change people were looking for.
While Key has promised to govern for all New Zealanders, carefully moved his party to the centre, and promised to retain core Labour policies such as interest-free student loans and Working For Families, the coalition demands of ACT and the current financial crisis make those promises worthless. And the result, I suspect, is that they will be left by the wayside, dumped because Roger Rodney demanded it, or because we “just can’t afford it” (while shovelling vast wodges of cash at the rich). Even if Key – who seems to have no solid beliefs beyond his own ambition – was inclined to resist ACT’s demands, National’s hardliners, the 90’s retreads like Bill English, Lockwood Smith, Murray McCully and Maurice Williamson, won’t be. And with 64 MPs between them, there will be no effective check on their legislative program.
The good news is that I doubt the public will stand for that sort of betrayal. If National pulls that switcheroo and rules from the right having run from the centre, it will be a one-term government. But it could still do a significant amount of damage in that term – damage which would take another decade to repair.
As for Labour, while they’ve lost, they’ve also brought in a pile of new talent, and should be in a strong position for 2011. Until then, it’s probably going to be a nasty, bitter three years.
The polls have begun to tighten in the NZ election, with several showing the National Party’s expected majority evaporating under the pressure of the campaign and the international financial meltdown. Meanwhile, the parties are also deciding their coalition preferences. The Greens have announced explicitly that they will back a Labour government, and ACT has done the same for National. United Future hasn’t made an explicit arrangement that I can recall, but would clearly be happier with a National government, while National leader John Key has ruled out any sort of arrangement with New Zealand First (though he was clearly expecting them not to be a factor anyway). But neither coalition is sure of a majority, even without the complication of a potential overhang – which leaves the Maori Party as likely king- (or rangitira-) maker.
So which way will they jump? Continue reading ‘Which way will the Maori Party jump? (NZ election)’
The New Zealand election is still in a phoney campaign, with the parties only just beginning to launch their campaigns. Which gives me more time to fill in the background. Deborah has already done an excellent beginner’s guide to MMP, so I thought I’d follow up with what MMP naturally results in: coalitions. Continue reading ‘A beginner’s guide to coalitions (NZ election)’
Seven weeks out, and the New Zealand election campaign has yet to really get under way. While the date has been announced, Parliament is still sitting (under urgency, to get through a raft of Treaty settlement legislation and administrivia which really needs to be dealt with), and the campaign proper won’t begin until it rises (which is likely to happen late tomorrow night, or maybe Friday afternoon). In the meantime, and in the absence of policy announcements, campaign scandals and such, I’m left with nothing to talk about but the broad issues.
Deborah has already covered what Labour has done in government over the last nine years. If re-elected, Labour will likely continue to govern in the same vaguely left-wing, incrementalist style, slowly extending employment rights and the welfare state as money becomes available. So in this post, I thought I’d look at the alternative: what would National do if they form a government? Continue reading ‘The alternative (NZ election)’
As some of you may be aware, New Zealand is having a general election on November 8th. Over the next eight weeks, I’ll be blogging it on and off here, with the aim of informing people what the hell is going on this side of the ditch. Continue reading ‘An introduction to the New Zealand election’
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