Wednesday 24 December 2014

influencing the future

In my previous blog entry "Malcolm Fraser: end the alliance" I suggested that the future needs greater engagement and collaboration of people younger than myself (aged 71) for the political health of the nation.

An eminent person who has had a major role in encouraging public debate and sensible policy development wrote privately, with exclamation marks: "But is our generation... not able to influence how we proceed."

I warmly endorse the idea that we should seek to influence how the nation proceeds... and I note that 'our generation' includes an Argentinian pope who seems influential. Gone are the days when policemen looked young and prime ministers looked young, now the pope is a contemporary. The pope has the advantage of being still in office.

I do not see MF's arguments about Australian strategic policy having much influence. There is a lack of connect. There are problems in that parts of the electorate do not forgive him for past events, but those people are not very much younger people. There is a problem, more importantly, in my view, that younger generations do not react well to lecturing from the ancient. We need to avoid the first disease mentioned by the pope in his team pep-talk on 22 December. The public, not least many of those who thought Abbott would bring deliverance, is being shocked away from the shockers who pronounce they've got the answers. So we have to offer something other than gold-plated opinion.

Noely of Yathink shoved me into resuming this kind of writing–starting this blog–a couple of months ago. Specifically she was concerned, in her rage against the betrayers of the present, that people like me, knowing the history and depth of issues, must not remain silent.

I think the answer is in there, in the ability, if willing, of our generation to speak not only of current opinion but with introspection and self-critically about the past. I note however Harold Nicholson's alleged observation that he had never, in the archives of any foreign ministry on the planet, read a record of conversation in which the person taking the record had not won. It's not easy to be frank about the past.

I suspect that having had my career mucked by illness I have had a longer space in which to become independent minded and feel a freedom and a need to speak publicly than some of my generation, with notable wonderful exceptions. Imagine if many more of those who used to argue policy within the walls of government or political apparatus were to bring minds into the open and demonstrate policy argument. Not to demand control of debate–we do not need a gerontocracy–but to show how to throw light on complex issues.
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What is the prospective political process that we seek to influence.

This week the print edition of Guardian Weekly led its front page with editorial beginning: "In 2014, people power took on the state in a battle for minds and the streets." Despite March in March, people 'in the streets' in Australia are those on the internet. There is a readiness for ideas but haste to conclusions, anxiety for answers and results. Somehow the 24 hour news cycle and the 24 second social media cycle have to mature. And in a wider view, looking at what has happened in Libya, Egypt, Syria and Ukraine, I have to say, um but... Taking to the streets is only the beginning of a process. If political stability as used to be a mantra of Australian policy towards Asia, depends, as we seldom realised, not on people staying in power but sensible regime change, we should also understand that taking to the streets–or indeed being a parliamentary opposition–is only really effective if there are good policy-making processes present or achievable.

Leonore Taylor's concluding comment in her roundup of 2014 in The Guardian is important:
... the electorate can barely remember a political leader who tried to level with them to conduct a bigger public conversation, an actual discussion of detailed policies and their consequences. The question for 2015 is, will either of the present major party leaders dare to try? 
Perhaps 'our generation' can contribute in some ways here if we bring our skills and habits of private policy out into the open. Openness has to start and influence is surely only going to be achieved via openness.

We are however, habituated in a distinctly British kind of process, in which the man on horseback commanded and told people what to do. That is still the main model of those who grab for power in our parliaments, also the historical expectation of serfly voters. That's not the future: the country has more diversity culturally and the young are declining to register to vote, see this and this. The anger of the young against older generations relates to power as well as money. For our generation to influence, why and to what should anyone listen? That's a serous question, not a rhetorical conclusion. And for the Asian, or Arab, or African, or other Australians of different background, do we show them anything to trust? Must they assimilate in coming into the tent or do they have new ways to offer?

Basil Liddell-Hart, great British military strategist at the end of his life came to the view that it's not what you say you you want or say you are doing it's what you do that has lasting effect
: that the savagery of the Spanish Civil War could be related to the savagery of the Peninsular War with Napoleon from which the word guerrilla arose; and that the terrorist violence arising in the Middle East in the end of the 1960s could be connected to the violence of Lawrence of Arabia. My view, as expressed in writing to the then Australia Foreign Minister in 2003 (no reply) was that:
...it is in the nature of modern war that it tends, more than anything else - certainly it does not tend to ‘victory’ - to import into the righteous invading countries the problems you seek to eliminate by invading... Your assertion of effectiveness of violence in international policy drifts down to validate the use of violence by non-states in international affairs, and increasingly by individuals in national and sub-national affairs, and indeed, I suggest, in domestic life. We are dealing not just with a narrow national security issue but a large ethical dimension. [Shortly after going to war in Iraq the government had ironically launched an expensive media campaign against domestic violence, that is, against the presumption by anyone of the right to bash up others because they think they are right and have a right.]
Whether my generation can help get us into a better ethical dimension remains to be seen.

Thursday 18 December 2014

Malcolm Fraser: end the alliance

In the January-February 2015 edition of the American journal The National Interest, former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser sets out his arguments for ending the Australia-United States alliance. The introduction of the argument is below. It is a vision statement deserving attention, but at the present time it seems unlikely to draw much political support in Australia. More the pity. It is a sensible case.

My own argument has tended to be that within the alliance we can be a better ally by having a more independent-minded voice and arguing sense to the United States. This is an concern I have expressed for a long time, and which I believe is very feasible. But even that kind of mature adjustment within the alliance seems elusive in a situation where the present Australian government is lame-brained and capable at best of marching up and down whinging its own importance and shaking its fists ridiculously at too many other governments, while the alternative government seems dedicated to simpering sniffling anxiety to hide behind this Prime Minister whose capacity and judgement they should vigorously question.

The question with Malcolm Fraser's vision statement is how on earth do we get to consider it?

At the core is the seeming inability of younger generations (I am 71, it really isn't my job) to collaborate to find new Australian national political identity. There is a modicum of support for The Greens, who offer the only existing institutional base around which new perspectives might coalesce, but The Greens have a somewhat self-isolating purist approach which limits their prospects.

A great deal of the problem of the future, of the Australia of younger generations, must rest with Fraser's successor as conservative prime minister, John Howard, who so thoroughly endorsed and encouraged perspectives of self interest and led the way now being followed vigorously by Howard's successor on the conservative side, Abbott, in destruction of the infrastructure of community.

I think it's here, back in here, inside national affairs, that the change process must begin and have wider effect. And it seems to me that change has to come relatively from the conservative side of politics. Certainly Labor on the notional left has more progressive policies which benefit community, but they are shy of articulating strategy, stuck in the madness of hoping to slip into government on the basis of Abbott's hopelessness, perhaps also hamstrung because the union movement at the party's core serves not only those on modest incomes, but also those whose incomes have become massive. Things may change as more and more jobs are shed in the construction and manufacturing industries in the next several years. There will not however then arise a mass of working class passion, but a rage among displaced affluent middle class. There is a timidity in the electorate at large, a timidity born of obsession with consumption, high mortgages and working and private lifestyles that gives people a very narrow focus on self-interest and notions of economic management. (Along with a simplicity of American(Hollywood)-oriented cultural values.) Even young people seem unthinkingly to say "the Liberals are better at economic management" when there is so much evidence that they are making a muck of it.

What is needed is a coalition of younger people, if they exist, of the kind of persuasion of the old 'wet' side of the Liberal Party, the party of Baume and Chaney and McPhee and the like, to come out of hiding and start spanking the madness of the domestic policies of the present government. So long as the arguments of Fraser and Burnside and the like speak mainly to international and refugee issues, the battle is not even engaged; rather, they are placed on the outer. The main battle is over economics and the place of community. Whether we serve the economy or the economy serves community.

The next debate must also embrace other cultures in Australia, which must be encouraged to enter the mainstream. Another book there...I note that Moslem men who bring their families to my seaside town on summer holidays articulate passionate and reasoned hostility towards the United States and the Australian alliance in private conversation. These arguments need to get to them too, so they see that there are sensible thinkers in the Anglo community.

....So I don't think that the laudable arguments below will not get traction until the debate front goes domestic too.
This is the opening of Malcolm Fraser's essay in the January-February 2015 edition of The National Interest:
IT IS time for Australia to end its strategic dependence on the United States. The relationship with America, which has long been regarded as beneficial, has now become dangerous to Australia’s future. We have effectively ceded to America the ability to decide when Australia goes to war. Even if America were the most perfect and benign power, this posture would still be incompatible with the integrity of Australia as a sovereign nation. It entails not simply deference but submission to Washington, an intolerable state of affairs for a country whose power and prosperity are increasing and whose national interests dictate that it enjoy amicable, not hostile, relations with its neighbors, including China.
As painful as a reassessment of relations may be for intellectual and policy elites, there are four principal reasons why one is long overdue. First, despite much blather about a supposed unanimity of national purpose, the truth is that the United States and Australia have substantially different values systems. The idea of American exceptionalism is contrary to Australia’s sense of egalitarianism. Second, we have seen the United States act in an arbitrary, imprudent and capricious fashion. It has made a number of ill-advised and ill-informed decisions concerning Eastern Europe, Russia and the Middle East. Third, at the moment, because of U.S. military installations in Australia, if America goes to war in the Pacific, it will take us to war as well—without an independent decision by Australia. Finally, under current circumstances, in any major contest in the Pacific, our relationship with America would make us a strategic target for America’s enemies. It is not in Australia’s interest to be in that position.

meanwhile in Syria... and Sydney



This is a valuable account of life among jihadis by Theo Padnos, American would-be journalist and student of Arabic and Islam, for 20 months a prisoner of the Al Nusra front, fighting ISIS on the ground. The realities of a 'normal' brutality, of expectation of martyrdom among young men who will preach or bully and then ask about meeting single European women.

While there is evidently no oeganisational link between this world and the tragic figure who took hostages in a Sydney cafe this week (variously described straightforwardly here, by New Matilda's Chris Graham here and incisively critically by Russell Brand here), his mind would seem cut from the same cloth as the jihadis described by Padnos.

We do well to step away from our conventional perspectives if we are to understand what this whole jihadi business is. Noting that too much of our perspectives in the west are from the remoteness of satellites, drones, fighter aircraft and wishful thinking and amateur ideological assertions of political leaders seeking to simplify and prance... or just fall into line. I commend Russell Brand for his lively interpretation of the way the issues are perverted and made more difficult by much government and media action and interpretation.


(Also see Russell Brand in this video on poverty and the virtue of spending money currently used for bombing the Middle East on building better societies)

Clint Watts, writing in Eurasia Review, offers interpretation of Padnos's story, in particular that given the fluidity of loyalty among jihadis, the bombing of one or the training of one to fight another has only destructive effects, especially in the absence of any plan of dealing with the Assad regime in Damascus. We stand, by current western policies, to inherit only wider and more dangerous jihadism, more savvy in attacking the west, better armed and skilled.

Again in Eurasia Review, this article by Nicola Nasser, an Arab journalist on the Palestine West Bank, describes or asserts Israeli support and sanctuary for Al Nusra and collaboration in attacks on the Syrian government. Israel's interest being in weakening and diverting the strength of its Syrian enemy away from Israel. I am reminded that several years ago in Sydney a Lebanese Moslem man asserted to me that Israel now pursued a policy of encouraging war between Moslems. There is more news of Israeli air strikes accessible with this search,... and about Israel and al Nusra here. See Haaretz for an Israeli perspective.

Friday 12 December 2014

The complex issues associated with Ukraine's nuclear energy industry and export of urainium from Australia to Ukraine

The Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has said he wants to supply uranium to the Ukraine for its power industry. He said this in the same moment as expressing a desire to visit Ukraine to see established a memorial to the passengers of the downed Malaysian Airlines flight in eastern Ukraine. My initial reaction was towards the continuing absurdity of this prime minister in his obsession with issues he somehow thinks make him a hero, but which in reality make him look unsuitable for office to many Australians. Many people, I am sure, share my visceral reaction towards the notion of exporting uranium to the Ukraine. It seems desirable, however, to do some serious analysis.

This perhaps notionally simple question brings together a complex of difficult issues.

Here are key background factors:

Ukraine was for a very long time a republic within the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics [USSR] which disintegrated in 1991. At that time there were some four and a half thousand Soviet missiles aimed at the United States located in the Ukraine. Almost two thousand of these were transferred to the USSR in 1991-2, and the remainder became the subject initially of trilateral agreement between the US, Russia and Ukraine in January 1994 and then the Budapest Memorandum of December 1994 between those three plus the adherance of other nuclear weapon states notably United Kingdom. This declaration gave assurances of the territorial integrity of Ukraine, in a context of the remaining nuclear weapons on Ukraine's territory being transferred to Russia and being dismantled, and Ukraine acceding to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as a non-nuclear weapon state (NNWS). It is a political statement, not a treaty. In addition to the Memorandum there was annexed to it a declaration: Annex II - see the text here. I encourage you to read that. Russia argues that the continuing recruitment of former Soviet allies into NATO and placement of new defence systems in such countries was contrary to the spirit of the declaration. Please also read former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser's appeal for sanity on this subject

The NPT recognised as nuclear weapon states those states which at the time the treaty was signed already possessed nuclear weapons: the USA, USSR, UK, France and the People's Republic of China. These countries undertook not to transfer control or capacity to develop nuclear weapons technology to NNWS. A new nuclear safeguards regime was established under the treaty to prevent diversion of nuclear materials to non-peaceful purposes. There was then, in the text of the NPT a great emphasis on the right of NNWS to have access to peaceful uses of nuclear energy. To enable which NNWS had to enter into safeguards arrangements of a new kind as set out in the IAEA's InfCirc 153.

PARENTHESIS: When I returned to the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs from an overseas posting  in January 1970 I found a great deal of agitation among my colleagues about whether Australia, having signed the NPT, would ratify. The treaty was to come into force (see Article IX in text at link above) when forty countries had ratified it. Signature is a step governments take when they put their name on a new treaty. Ratification of treaties takes place under constitutional processes of different countries. This is a debated issue in Australia (see this paper) but in 1970 all it required was the will of the executive government to do the job, no consultation with the parliament. There were substantial lobbies in Australia for both nuclear power and nuclear weapons. The decision to ratify was taken at the last moment in March 1970. Someone else can research how the US brought pressure on Australia then, or what security guarantees Australia sought. 
Had we not signed before ratification we could have acceded later, but that would have a smell of recalcitrance and leave the farm gate open for the raging advocates of Australian possession of nuclear weapons. A space had been cleared in the commonwealth owned Jervis Bay Territory for a Canadian designed CANDU reactor, which was easier to operate as it did not require enrichment of uranium (a difficult and expensive process of increasing the proportion of the isotope U235 over the predominant U238), reaction being developed by using heavy water rather than light water, meaning a need to separate the rare deuterium, H20 with an extra neutron on, easier than the separation of the heavy and toxic uranium isotopes. The nuclear advocates within and around the government would also have known that this reactor could provide a sneaky route to acquisition of weapons usable plutonium, something that only entered political consciousness in the USA in the mid-1970s and especially with the arrival of the Carter Administration and the appointment of Joe Nye as Deputy Undersecretary of State for Nuclear Non-Proliferation. When urgent steps were taken to stop Pakistan, Iran and South Korea getting CANDU reactors and plutonium separation facilities.
Few people using the car park at the end of the Jervis Bay Road
know that it was the site cleared for a nuclear power station
END PARENTHETICAL BIT... (another book)

Ukraine (in parallel with Kazakhstan, also former soviet republic) was only the second country to abandon nuclear weapons, after South Africa.

Australia's uranium export policies have, since the 1970s, with their slow evolution, maintained focus on nuclear safeguards rather than nuclear safety. This reflecting our obligations under the NPT. (Another book needed to discuss safety, but my general position is that while the technology is not bad, the problem is the absence of any evidence that any human society can be durable enough to handle operation and waste management issues for as long as needed.)

In terms of the NPT and the general drift of Australian uranium export policy, Ukraine gets a tick.

But the situation is much more complicated than that and it would, to use technical terms, be bone-headed crazy to approve uranium export on just that basis.

As another legacy from the USSR, Ukraine produces half its power needs from nuclear power stations. Ukraine consumes twice as much energy as Germany per capita. The other half of Ukraine's energy needs come from oil and gas supplied by Russia. Pipelines for supply of Russian oil and gas to western Europe run through Ukraine.

Chernobyl, the nuclear power plant whose accident in 1986 was the worst ever nuclear power station disaster, is in Ukraine. Other nuclear power stations in Ukraine are of similar age and similar design quality and maintainability as Chernobyl #4.

The political history of Ukraine since the collapse of the USSR has been to say the least complex. In the course of this, Russia has a number of times exerted pressure on Ukraine through oil supply and cut-off, usually in circumstances where Ukraine is not paying its bills.

The current agreement on continued oil and gas supplies from Russia to Ukraine also tangles with agreement to continue Russian supplies to western Europe. This is the soft underbelly to all the talk of sanctions against Russia. There may be a point when substitution may be possible away from Russian supply of western Europe, indeed, the United States has recently become an oil exporter and would enjoy that. As noted in an earlier blog entry however, the driving down of the international oil price recently by Saudi Arabia and the United States not only weakens Russia and its efforts in Ukraine and Syria, it also has grave consequences for the United States and world economy: world price now around $70 a barrel, break even for junk bond financed shale oil producers in the US around $90.

Supplying uranium to Ukraine would solve no issues, the idea is adequately described in The Australian's headline "Uranium talks thumb nose at Vladimir Putin" ... perhaps a linguistic step upwards from shirtfronting, but a very very bad approach to international relations. Yes, it's elementally of the same cloth as Abbott's conflict-promoting approach the national politics, but it's very dangerous and frivolous internationally.

It would seem likely that any sale of uranium to Ukraine would mean delivery to a United States entity most likely Westinghouse, who have been selling fuel rods to Ukraine. So the income stream from any sale of Australian uranium to Ukraine would mainly be to the enricher and fuel rod fabricators in the United States. Note this in reading any advocacy for this sale.

—————————

So, to cut this short (it really needs a book or two, submit any questions in comment section) how should we score Ukraine as a customer for uranium?

  1. NPT and nuclear safeguards compliance — 10/10
  2. Nuclear industry safety history — 1/10
  3. Current state of nuclear plant — 1/10
  4. Stability of regime, assurance of viable state control, war risks — 1/10
  5. Contribution to general arms control and conflict resolution — 0/10
  6. Solution of an energy problem — 2/10
  7. Prospect of being paid — 4/10
  8. Australian national interest — 0/10











Thursday 11 December 2014

Whedon on Romney, so relevant to the present Australian Government

I had forgotten about this wonderful commercial by Buffy (and more) creator Jos Whedon for Zomney for President. It does seem apposite for our present moment in which our Prime Minister is reinventing himself, offering coal and uranium to the Ukraine, planning to visit and place a memorial in the war zone of eastern Ukraine — and surely then should make a memorial visit to Chernobyl, though he might have a lurking suspicion that his security czar Morrison might move on from banning visits from any country known to have experienced Ebola to banning any person known to have become brighter or perhaps luminescent as a result of visiting Chernobyl.

Anyway, apply this locally:


Thursday 4 December 2014

the world is complex: US, Russia, Ukraine, oil, global economy

Salon has published an article asserting that the crisis in Ukraine and the civil war are substantially the fault of the United States. Skip through the argy bargy slanging off and consider the merits of the arguments, including in the articles to which links are provided. Such as this:


One of the side issues in this has to be the shooting down of the Malaysian Airlines flight flying above the civil war zone. On a path which the Ukraine government left open. You can limit the discussion to who fired the shot, who owned and supplied the weapon, who controlled the use of the weapon... but if you take the steps further and think about the wider issues of the origins and provocation of cicil war, the puff-chested macho displays towards the Russians become things of dress-up belligerency, the boy with the trumpet following the flag, the antithesis of problem solving.

The general stridency of anti-Russian policy may undo us all...

Four weeks ago, The Guardian argued that the United States and Saudi Arabia were driving the price of oil down as a strategic weapon against Russia.

A month later the situation is much more dangerous for the world economy, as oil prices fall further... More in this here. If indeed there was such an American effort to use oil as a weapon against Russia, it would seem very likely that the weapon will shoot the Americans in the foot, given the risky loan basis of much new oil venturing in the USA, unsustainable at present prices. A dual shock possible: a shock failure of the US to maintain its recent self-sufficiency in oil production and a new shock to the international economy more serious than the last one. Or a triple shock if and as and when oil prices go north again in economically difficult times... Consider also what other damaged countries may do. Russia will depend more on its energy exports to China.

Hello, China. How many countries can you save this month? They expect it of you, you know, but only if you stay meek. An Indian perspective here.

I observed in a news commentary in 1989, actually thoughts offered privately by a Chinese official at the time, that the Chinese leadership did not have the maturity and sensitivity to handle the crisis arising then in Tiananmen Square. How easy it is to hammer the Chinese Government for mishandling that.

By comparison, capacity to handle a coming economic crisis is ... where? This wasn't even on the agenda at the G20 meeting last month and there seems little willingness in political quarters to focus on the situation now. Alarm at the prospects for the Australian economy is constrained by very insular thinking: the general narrowness of the government's perspective, with just a small concession now that contractionary policy is unwise (as it has been throughout the time they imposed it and told everyone to be afraid) and with the financial markets in the hands of people who have no knowledge of history and precious little understanding of strategic matters beyond short-term money-shoving.

power and stubbornness, power and willingness, 'power' and blindness

Four months into the internationally declared Ebola emergency, in December 2014, who leads the world in direct medical support to fight the epidemic?

The answer to this question as discussed in The Guardian today is illuminating, as the country concerned is truly in a situation exemplifying the futility of long term superpower grudges. And illustrates how difficult it is to turn around big battleships, even when they don't work, or should be going somewhere else.



While The Guardian's discussion focuses on that country and the United States, we should note that the United States has committed massively to the Ebola challenge on the ground. Which brings us to consider just how limited the Australian 'contribution' is. And to note again another new moment in United States criticism of the Australian Government... also to note that the also-conservative Labor Party feels safe to use the US view to criticise the poverty of the government's response.

Senator-Dr Richard di Natale, in Liberia at his own expense and informed by the Australian Government that he will have no consular assistance if in trouble, reports also that the decision of the government to close the door to anyone from an Ebola-affected country has done us considerable political damage and impaired the Ebola response more widely


Life follows consistent patterns at many levels. I argued years ago that the willingness of the government to go and act with violence in another country in a sense of righteousness fed down to increase community and domestic violence. In my garden blog this week I talked about the permaculture concept of edge and realised what I was writing was very relevant to the incessant clang of this government shutting its mind and doors to people and ideas. Tragically it strengthens an old an negative door-closing quality of Australian community fearful thinking... to break which requires political leadership of a positive kind.

Edge is productive, overlaps are productive, edge is the basis of creativity, not only for plant life but also for human life in community. No edge, no connection – no multiculturalism – no new life, limited creativity and imagination. Perhaps I should also write about this in my strategic directions blog, my country seems increasingly anxious about shoulders that come to rub it in this complex world. Seize the day, not shut the door... Which leads back to Michael [Pollan]'s comment about peoples' concerns about his lawn. The dominant meme being that gardening is about plonking in and then maintaining the barricades with weapons various, to keep permanent all those arrangements you stubbornly want unchanged.
But actually, can't.




Tuesday 18 November 2014

The rage against Chinese ownership of agricultural land in Australia

When the rednecked populist radio jock Alan Jones attacked the Prime Minister on the subject of the free trade agreement with China, The Guardian reported this exchange:
The conservative 2GB broadcaster Alan Jones told Abbott he did not have a mandate for the new trade deal and repeatedly raised concerns over the sale of Australian dairy farms to Chinese entities. A Tasmanian investor, Troy Harper, said last month Chinese interests would be among investors in 50 dairy farms in Victoria as part of a deal reported to be worth $400m. 
After listing other prospective sales involvingChina, Jones told Abbott: “By this time next week who’s going to own little Tasmania? The public are very, very angry about this prime minister, I can tell you.” 
Abbott said he understood people were “always anxious at what’s often referred to as selling off the farm” but “no one can buy land unless the person who currently owns the land wants to sell”. 
“Presumably you only want to sell to an overseas buyer because the overseas buyer is offering you a better price than any Australian. That’s the first point,” Abbott said. 
Jones replied: “Of course … but can Tony Abbott go and buy a farm in China? The answer’s no, prime minister … nor can he buy a coal mine, nor can he buy a steel mill.” 
Abbott said: “Well, Alan, I’m no expert on land ownership arrangements in China but China is still run by the Communist party. I’m not sure that anyone is that able to own land in China on an individual basis.”
With seeming rattled aplomb Abbott had allowed the discussion to take him into territory where he could as usual 'make it up' with the assurance of the dunderhead who just doesn't know but does not fear to say. One of his ministers once famously used Wikipedia to refute official advice on climate change, it's a shame Abbott had not read Wikipedia on property ownership in China.

But it's a greater shame he didn't bother to clarify the situation of actual foreign ownership of agriculture in Australia, to do something to push back against the racist hysteria arising with Chinese interest in Australian agriculture.

The ABC's Rural Department has this excellent article on the subject of foreign ownership of agriculture.

In which, regarding the selling off of 'little Tasmania' we find such information as:

Foreign investment double-standard in Tasmanian dairying
Tasmania's dairy industry is heavily reliant on foreign investment. Its oldest dairy processor, Van Diemen's Land Company (VDL), has been in foreign hands for close to 200 years and the Tamar Valley Dairy recently sold to New Zealand dairy giant Fonterra.Cows on the way for milkingPHOTO: A line of cows, on their way for milking (Supplied)While international ownership is nothing new, the story of these two processors highlights the mixed messages sent to some global businesses.
A recent Van Diemen's Land Company (VDL) tender for a multi-million dollar equity investment, sparked community and media concern about a possible Chinese takeover. At least one Chinese company dropped out of the process as a result of the negative press.
Yet last month Tamar Valley Dairy, a wholly-Australian owned dairy processor, was sold to a New Zealand agribusiness giant, without a murmur about foreign takeovers.
It's bigotry, ignorance, racism... and the Prime Minister has no way from his own cubby house at the end of that street to come out and help clarify the situation. He has risen to office on the tide of his fomented madnesses of populist hysteria. Who knows where he will go now to get it back behind him..

 Before you wander off to weep a bit, consider this:
...just under 99 per cent of Australian farm businesses are fully Australian owned and just under 90 per cent of farmland is fully Australian owned. 
But of course that's the work of public servants and this government knows what it thinks of public servants as it knows what it thinks of the ABC, with its evil propensity to deliver facts to refute government wisdom.

The federal parliament's own research organisation prepared this detailed study early in 2014. So the facts are knowable in the parliament. Here is  table from that paper:



That staid old farmers' paper The Land tried to get a few facts out in this article.

The author of this comment has tongue in cheek, click on name for other irreverent fun:
Dickytiger
20/06/2014 9:45:57 AM
You can't fool us with statistics. We know there are foreigners under the bed. They are right beside the reds. 


Sunday 16 November 2014

an extraordinary reprimand of Australia by the United States

Let the record state: never has a United States president reprimanded Australia on Australian soil and never has an American president so bluntly and firmly as a positive ally told Australia it is strategically in the wrong.***

We are a country in which the major parties fervently support the alliance with the United States, for reasons positive, obtuse, opportunist, cringely, take your pick, pick your moment.

The overturning of the mean spirited and stupid policy perspectives of the Abbott government on several issues at the G20, the pigheaded and fantastically misguided imagination that they could change the world by being their stubborn ideological selves, as hosts who insist that guests eat old pig and drink plonk, has come a cropper.

Read and admire:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/15/g20-obama-puts-climate-change-in-spotlight-as-australian-agenda-sidelined

Of course, of course, Abbott and his team will say this is just a passing moment in American president, this president will be washed away by the tea party in the Congress now and the presidential elections in two years time. But this is to fail to understand history and become entangled with US politics as not before. I wrote in an earlier entry that a very important thing for any new government is to understand the feasible and know how to get it. They have not learned from the bitter lessons of their budget, and indeed Abbott, playing anti-statesman, has whined to the G20 about his failures. And will be scoffed here and abroad. If I were there I would leave early like Putin may or may not.

*** Nixon and Kissinger despised the Whitlam Government but did not make it a centre point of any speech. Nor did they take the opportunity to address a receptive Australian audience in Australia to lay it all out and get swooning support for things the Australian government hates.

Monday 10 November 2014

Casting ourselves like the old South Africa, against the world

Climate policy is where our current leaders demonstrate the determined qualities shown by the leaders of old apartheid South Africa. See in this report how we resist pressure to be constructive about the future.

There is an entrenched cultural tendency in Australia to sneer at thoughtfulness, which combines with a tendency to make up arguments to suit prejudice. As is the case with the Prime Minister's business adviser as he argues among other things about climate change.

It's depressing then also that the Labor party in opposition is too timid, too burned, to carry the case that the government is wrong.

This week APEC in Beijing and then the hosting by Australia of the G20 in Brisbane. Another international burden thrust upon this conservative government by the previous Labor government along with membership of the Security Council which the conservatives so disparaged in opposition but which has with war and plane crashes given them so much space in which to march up and down and whip chauvinist sentiment in this centenary of the beginning of the First World War, without focus on the fact that the world fell into WWI through pigheaded focus on hard, old, military mindedness.

When you are at a turning point in history only the twisted remain steadfast against change. 

Thursday 6 November 2014

Cate Blanchette at the Whitlam memorial service

A wonderful intelligent speech by Cate Blanchette reflecting on the Whitlam initiatives, as they made possible her life path at various stages, as they changed the nature of Australia, as the placed women where they should have been, in equality and the placing of the arts at the centre of national life.

Where Pearson's speech contains an important catalogue of the rolling back of legislation and attitude discriminatory to indigenous people, Blanchette weaves the history of removal of discrimination against women.

Transcript at SMH

ABC News video, as uploaded to YouTube.


Excerpts:

"The loss I felt came down to something very deep and very simple. I am the beneficiary of free, tertiary education. When I went to university I could explore different courses and engage with the student union in extracurricular activity. It was through that that I discovered acting.I am the product of an Australia that wanted, and was encouraged, to explore its voice culturally.I am the beneficiary of good, free healthcare, and that meant the little I earned after tax and rent could go towards seeing shows, bands, and living inside my generation's expression. I am a product of the Australia Council.I am the beneficiary of a foreign policy that put us on the world stage and on the front foot in our region. I am the product of an Australia that engages with the globe and engages honestly with its history and its indigenous peoples.I am a small part of Australia's coming of age, and so many of those initiatives were enacted when I was three... 


... Women were probably the main beneficiaries of free tertiary education. So here today I may stand as an exemplar, but if you combine the modernising and enabling capacity afforded women by his legislation you can begin to see that the nation was truly changed by him through the arts and through gender, thereby leading us towards an inclusive, compassionate maturity. So much of this achievement is directly attributable to policy initiatives Gough Whitlam began with a series of reforms to extend the degree and quality of social opportunities to women in Australia."



Noel Pearson at the memorial service for Gough Whitlam


Noel Pearson delivered an extraordinary speech-of-a-generation or more at the memorial service for Gough Whitlam yesterday. It began from his own experience of the massive changes to the situation and opportunities of Aboriginal and Islander people made possible by the Whitlam program. It went on to deal more broadly with issues for Australia, the transformation of Australia. Speaking before positive people and also in front of those who would corrupt it all again.

The transcript is here. The ABC News video-audio as uploaded to YouTube is embedded below.



Here are some excerpts:

"Of course recalling the Whitlam Government's legacy has been, for the past four decades since the dismissal, a fraught and partisan business.Assessments of those three highly charged years and their aftermath divide between the nostalgia and fierce pride of the faithful, and the equally vociferous opinion that the Whitlam years represented the nadir of national government in Australia. 
Let me venture a perspective.
The Whitlam government is the textbook case of reform trumping management."
 ...
"...In less than three years an astonishing reform agenda leapt off the policy platform and into legislation and the machinery and programs of government.The country would change forever. The modern cosmopolitan Australia finally emerged like a technicolour butterfly from its long dormant chrysalis.And 38 years later we are like John Cleese, Eric Idle and Michael Palin's Jewish insurgents ranting against the despotic rule of Rome, defiantly demanding "and what did the Romans ever do for us anyway?"Apart from Medibank and the Trade Practices Act, cutting tariff protections and no-fault divorce in the Family Law Act, the Australia Council, the Federal Court, the Order of Australia, federal legal aid, the Racial Discrimination Act, needs-based schools funding, the recognition of China, the abolition of conscription, the law reform commission, student financial assistance, the Heritage Commission, non-discriminatory immigration rules, community health clinics, Aboriginal land rights, paid maternity leave for public servants, lowering the minimum voting age to 18 years and fair electoral boundaries and Senate representation for the territories. Apart from all of this, what did this Roman ever do for us?"
...
 "I don't know why someone with this old man's upper middle class background could carry such a burning conviction that the barriers of class and race of the Australia of his upbringing and maturation should be torn down and replaced with the unapologetic principle of equality. I can scarcely point to any white Australian political leader of his vintage and of generations following of whom it could be said without a shadow of doubt, he harboured not a bone of racial, ethnic or gender prejudice in his body. This was more than urbane liberalism disguising human equivocation and private failings; it was a modernity that was so before its time as to be utterly anachronistic. For people like me who had no chance if left to the means of our families we could not be more indebted to this old man's foresight and moral vision for universal opportunity. Only those born bereft truly know the power of opportunity. Only those accustomed to its consolations can deprecate a public life dedicated to its furtherance and renewal. 
"This old man never wanted opportunity himself but he possessed the keenest conviction in its importance.For it behoves the good society through its government to ensure everyone has chance and opportunity.This is where the policy convictions of Prime Minister Whitlam were so germane to the uplift of many millions of Australians."
Thank you Mr Pearson.


Tuesday 4 November 2014

Understanding the Moslem world

The Brookings Brief email yesterday contained a link to an article providing valuable insight into Moslem perceptions of religion and state, and the appeal of Islamic State, pointing out how much western policy is ill founded, or founded on misperceptions. The article is here. It points to the necessity of understanding the complex, not to any simple solutions.

ISIS draws on, and draws strength from, ideas that have broad resonance among Muslim-majority populations. They may not agree with ISIS’s interpretation of the caliphate, but the notion of a caliphate—the historical political entity governed by Islamic law and tradition—is a powerful one, even among more secular-minded Muslims. The caliphate, something that hasn’t existed since 1924, is a reminder of how one of the world’s great civilizations endured one of the more precipitous declines in human history. The gap between what Muslims once were and where they now find themselves is at the center of the anger and humiliation that drive political violence in the Middle East. But there is also a sense of loss and longing for an organic legal and political order that succeeded for centuries before its slow but decisive dismantling. Ever since, Muslims, and particularly Arab Muslims, have been struggling to define the contours of an appropriate post-caliphate political model.


originally posted in The Atlantic.

See also this earlier thoughtful piece in the Boston Globe.

Friday 24 October 2014

Whitlam reminiscence and strategic observations on government

Others are writing reminiscences of life at the beginning of the Whitlam Government. This is my story, entertaining I hope, but if you get bored duck down to my strategic observations at the end.

I recorded some of this as oral history at the National Library.

When Whitlam was elected, I was in a strategic policy job in Defence. I had gone to that from Foreign Affairs, where I was China desk officer, gone to Defence not because of a hankering to soldier but in pursuit of national interest which was not the focus of Foreign Affairs, and because there were new interesting jobs created by the new secretary of the Defence Department, Sir Arthur Tange, who was determinedly in favour of civilian command and who infuriated many service personnel with his direction that no one should come into his office in uniform unless there was that day a ceremonial obligation, because he wanted to hear merits of arguments, not dictums from uniform badges.

Several weeks before the 2 December elections, I called my former boss, head of the North Asia Branch in Foreign Affairs and asked to see him. I went and told him I had been in conversations with Peter Wilenski (to become head of Whitlam's staff) and Stephen FitzGerald (to be first ambassador to Beijing). "There will be an embassy in Beijing before Christmas," I said. "No, that's impossible," said Michael.. for these and those reasons it can't be done. I simply replied: "There will be an embassy in Beijing by Christmas, Michael, I leave it with you."

Well, it was there by New Year. And long long years later, the heavy seniors of the department boasted of their prescience in being prepared for the new government and meeting this objective. Standard operating procedures.

Shortly after the election, Sir Arthur reached down through the foliage of the Defence Department to call me to his office, I think because at my modest level I was next in line person who knew the USA was a foreign country. "You know about the bases [Pine Gap and Nurrungar]?" he asked, knowing full well that I did. "You know the party platform?" Yes, I did, a very interesting indicator of the times, that any and every public servant with policy duties, except perhaps some altitudinous hide-bound fellows, had the ALP Party Platform by bedside. This is the closest National Library holding I can find.

'Well," said Sir Arthur. "I've just come from the Prime Minister and Defence Minister and they have agreed it is in the national interest that the bases stay. We have until the first sitting day of the parliament to negotiate a statement with the Americans." Which we did, which created the curious situation that Sir Arthur and I, who had left the Jesuits, more or less, in leaving Foreign Affairs, had charge of the most difficult issue in Australia-US relations apart from the slanging match arising from the American resumption of the bombing of North Vietnam at Chistmas, slanging led by ministers Cairns and Uren, neither of course with a national security portfolio, Whitlam was both Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, but that did not prevent them from describing Nixon and Kissinger as homicidal maniacs.

So while that traffic was passing overhead, I was involved in a daily process of collecting responses from the Washington embassy, preparing advice for Sir Arthur, which we would discuss around 6pm, as we worked on the Americans for space for sensible policy on the bases.  At the same time, I was sharing a house with a duty officer in current intelligence, who received through the night a phone call conveying a 'critical message' every time the North Vietnamese shot down a B-52.

We pressed the Americans to be able to argue that the bases contributed to war avoidance and arms control, which was true, but the Americans didn't want to say it because they believed the Soviet Union did not understand big bases versus little bases and they did not want to draw attention to Pine Gap. Presumably the Soviet Embassy did not read the local press or talk to people on the Australian left, the Americans surely must know those things.

I remain on the 'silent list' as regards the bases but here's some of the story as I worked out what we could do. We pulled the silly habit-applied secret wraps off two other installations in Australia that were justifiable for arms control and needed to be known about. "See, two rabbits for you to admire, from this hat. See, no see, you can't see what we've got still in the hat because secrecy is important (and it was).. but these things serve arms control and disarmament, indeed they form part of the United States' National Technical Means of Verification under the SALT Treaty."

Albeit with some amazing atmospherics, as when someone reported from the Washington Embassy that an Assistant Secretary of the Air Force had this advice: "You don't want to tell the truth, you need a new cover story: how about "it's to understand better the effect on the ground of incoming nukies." Hard to believe... The truth as we got it out in 1973, was there in a ministerial statement in 2013:
The Joint Geological and Geophysical Research Station is a seismic monitoring station originally established to monitor nuclear explosions during the Cold War. It continues to monitor such explosions as part of the International Monitoring System of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. It also monitors earthquakes. It is jointly operated by Geoscience Australia and the US Air Force.
...in Alice Springs. The Assistant Secretary International Affairs, Department of the Air Force, United States Government wanted us to say we were monitoring the likely effect of nuclear warheads landing in Alice Springs, just up the road from Pine Gap about which the left was screaming "It's a nuclear target, we don't want it!!"

Sir Arthur received one evening a trembling US ambassador who read but did not hand over (big important distinction) a piece of paper from the State Department, brought it to us, not to the Prime Minister or Foreign Minister, to tell us that if we continued as we proposed the alliance would never be the same again. And Sir Arthur did his wonder-shift from office tyrant to totally persuasive man of decency for two hours and the ambassador left assuring Sir Arthur he would do everything in his power to see things unfolded as we wished. Which eventually they did.

In the midst of all the hyper-top-secret- codeworded atmosphere, one day when Sir Arthur was away the Deputy Secretary called me down to say wide-eyed that he had just had X on the phone, on the open phone, from this organisation in Washington I can't mention, that invented and ran that thing out in the desert, shouting abuse... on the open line: "I've just got back from holiday in Paris and I'm telling you...". Such are the wonders of security.

Well, we got a text agreed. The draft speech went from Whitlam to Cabinet on the morning of the first day of the parliament 28 February 1973.

I went over to the Prime Minister's office with Sir Arthur. Sir Arthur drove. As usual, there was uncertainty about whether his official small Ford Cortina (parked out front of his department, alongside the limousine with four star admiral's flag sticks being smooched by the Chief Petty Officer driver of the Chairman Chiefs of Staff) would start. At parliament house, we took quite a bit of time in the summer sun for Sir Arthur to discuss with the secretary of another department the merits of the latter's new tiny car before going in to the under-reconstruction Cabinet Room. There I found myself, with my standard dithersome difficulties shuffling papers, the only person in the room, except the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister (Defence Minister Barnard), who did not have half glasses to glare over, or a knighthood: Bunting PM&C, Tange Defence and Waller Foreign Affairs. Waller showed me the unlooking disdain a man who had only recently stopped wearing spats (a fact) would offer a dead cockroach. The Prime Minister opened the batting, to the shock of the mighty, by saying: "Argall! Argall: your father was in the Commonwealth Bank." "Yes Prime Minister, he was president of the union..." He cut me off: "No, no housing, he was responsible for housing, he taught me everything I know about housing."

Earlier, Whitlam, in the jammed corridor, myself pretending not to be party to it, hauled Barnard and Tange nose to nose and proclaimed, with fingers tapping chests: "He's your minister. Look after him. He's the best you are going to get." Lance Barnard meekly continued to look his natural florid and weepy-eyed self, but was never ever this dumb.

In the Cabinet Room then Whitlam raged: "I will never send anything to that Foreign Affairs sub-committee again! I would have won if I'd gone straight to Cabinet. But that bastard Murphy said 'damn you, you can have your bases, but I won't accept this argument...' "

So after some discussion, Mr Barnard left to introduce the Repatriation Bill 1973, very helpful for ex-service personnel, however much they hated this government, Sir Keith Waller left to speak to the American Ambassador, Sir Arthur left to speak to the Leader of the Opposition... and I was left with the Prime Minister and Sir John Bunting, by whom I was charged to finalise the less than best eviscerated text, all the guts and argument on the floor, just limpy bones left... which was delivered at 8pm by the Deputy Prime Minister. See page 67 of Hansard.

This was not of course the end of it. I next day attended upon the Leader of the Government in the Senate, the lovely Senator Don Willessee who became a friend later. With him Senator Reg Bishop, Minister representing the Minister for Defence in the Senate. There too, the chiefs of Whitlam's and Willessee's offices, the late Peter Wilenski and Geoff Briot. This was a world unfamiliar, everyone a first name or called comrade. For Bishop and I there was a curious visceral feeling of slight exclusion. Willessee, Wilenski and Briot all were blessed with a lazy or wandering eye, that which Anthony Burgess liked to call a 'slight venerean strabismus'... These three could, it seemed, as almost an exclusive court, look at each other collectively, leaving Reg and I in the outer.

"It's all very simple, isn't it," offered Reg, "we can talk about SALT!"*** ... demonstrating wonderfully that he had read the original draft speech, perhaps even liked it. "No, no, sighed Willessee and Wilenski, we can't.
*** A sad contrast: the new government abolished the departments of army, navy, air and supply and brought all under defence. The Secretary of the Navy was found a job as head of the defence staff in Washington. I went to brief him. "An interesting time to go to Washington," I ventured. "Why's that?" he asked. "So many thing happening, like Nixons' visits to China and Moscow and the SALT agreement." "What's that?" he said. 

"What's simple,' said Senator Willessee, looking now at me, "is this. We need two speeches. Saying no more than the Minister said in the House. How long did the Minister's speech take in the House?" "Ah, 19 minutes." "OK then, here it is. This is the Senate: I speak for 40 minutes, Reg speaks for 15 minutes and ... and we'll need another speech for a backbencher. And not going beyond what the Minister said."

Well, I went back to the office and prepared all that. The backbench Senator, the gentle and gracious Tony Mulvihill, was over the moon, nobody had ever helped him with anything before. The speeches set out a whole lot of background to relevant agreements and why this thing was acceptable and that was unacceptable; what had been accepted, what not; what now revealed, what now would remain secret. No new policy, lots of background. The chamber began to fill as Willessee spoke, more so on the conservative side, with cries of "this is a new statement", "this is better than the minister's speech", "where's the text."

3 March 1973, I can't find the relevant Senate Hansard, so sad.

Brilliant, I thought.

"Money for jam!" said the one person I'd consulted, in Foreign Affairs... :-)

==
What, if any, lessons can be drawn?

[1] The only decent subordinate ally is one that has a view and chucks ideas in and seriously questions folly. Toadying will not get you kissed by princesses, though Andrew Peacock (search for suntan on that page) may demur. This is a lesson so sadly so often and constantly forgotten by ministers, civilian officials and the defence force. Though the defence force leadership is not called upon to argue with Americans, it needs must argue strategic effect and consequence from perspectives other than precious allied interoperability and equipment they want to drive. This [PLEASE WATCH LINK] is the coat-tail, this is the business we have to be aware of and seek to turn around or dissociate from.

A decade later, when briefing Prime Minister Hawke for his meeting with Chinese Premier Zhao Ziyang, the first head of government to visit Australia after Hawke took office, the PM snarled in disbelief when someone suggested that China valued our relationship with the US. I was then able to take him through recent years' developments, how Ronald Reagan, before his election as president of the US, had said he would restore relations with the true free Republic of China on Taiwan (ending relations with Beijing).
The Chinese Foreign Ministry did indeed then ask if we could speak to the Americans on their behalf. We said we could not speak on their behalf but would put our views to them. I noted to the PM that the US was not to be thought a homogeneous lump but that there were many in Washington who were delighted to have us put a sensible view and it was even more valued that the sensible advice about the importance of relations with Beijing came from a conservative Australian government at the time. 
There is always a problem of the awe factor. Australian political leaders have not had behind them a history of diplomatic negotiation or measured urging of change in strategy. Encounters with the great are opportunities to look great.
[2] It's harder to do anything now than it was then. Why, in those days I could walk out of my office, when in Foreign Affairs, meander through the rose garden, nod to the policeman at the door of the parliament and duck down to the men's toilet for a haircut, that being the abode of the Parliament House barber. Though policy making was harder then than earlier, more encouraging of toilet visits frankly. In 1971, China policy had been taken from my China section to a new so called policy planning unit: they filled a file a month with useless unworkable debris as the McMahon Government flailed and the foreign minister said to us "show me how I can change the policy and remain consistent with the last 20 year and I'll do it straight away." Somewhere then, looking at the history of it all, I found a tiny telegram from Sir Keith Officer, then ambassador to China, during the revolution, July 1949, in which he reported simply that:
CHIANG KAI SHEK [head of the Nationalist government] LEFT SHANGHAI TODAY FOR TAIWAN FOR WHAT WILL IN EFFECT BE EXILE STOP DO NOT PROPOSE TO FOLLOW HIM STOP OFFICER
 At the bottom, the Communications Section, where the inwards telegrams were decyphered and printed, had inserted the price of the telegram (£5?) which they often did as stern discouragement to verbose wastefulness.

This was on a slender file. Two initials had noted having read it.  In consequence of that decision we did not open an embassy in Taipei till 1967, though the ROC had an embassy in Canberra till 1972.

These days "Ambassadors Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary", as they are described still on the letter of credence from the Queen to the receiving head of state, ain't got such plenipotentiary opportunities. Or time to go to the toilet, I suspect...

[3] In new governments, paths have to be found, to do the possible. This is obvious, I suppose, but oft forgotten. The Abbott Government is still eyes-fixed on impossibles and dogmas and now also the gathering mysticisms of self-inflicted battles real and fantasised. And mates and brothers-in-war.

[4] Never presume people know anything. Or want to know, or don't know that they don't know everything. When questioned in London about Australia's high carbon emissions, Treasurer Hockey replied that our coal was clean. It's like a miasm you can't shake off. But you have to try and please dear parliamentary opposition, you have to demonstrate an agenda, a strategic purpose and vision that shifts debate out of the stupids. 

[5] Memorable experiences should be available to young policy officers, even if your papers are getting sweaty and falling on the floor (chance to watch again). It would be helpful if newly elected governments understood that within their departments there is knowledge and there are ideas they would do well to tap into. Gillard was renowned for asking and listening.

Alas we are now in a period when there is contempt for machinery and capacity of government and long term damage is being done. It will be hard for future governments to find their way back from a world top-heavy with politically appointed advisors, shredded departmental advisory capacities and flight of intellectual capital, the only valuable currency of the future.