Month: July 2000

Indonesia is heading for a potentially explosive situation. The President Abdurrahman Wahid is facing impeachment hearings in Indonesia’s Parliament beginning on August 1. The impeachment is over corruption charges involving at the alleged raising and misallocation of party funds. There is no question of any personal gain on the part of Mr Wahid and a lot of the evidence appears to be quite weak. However, Mr Wahid quite reasonably fears that he will not be judged on the merits of the charges against him but rather on political matters.

As a consequence, he has been wondering aloud whether he should declare a state of emergency. He was quoted as telling a students’ forum, “I can issue a state of emergency. I have it the power to do it, but would it be a wise decision?” Alternatively, he mused, that he might merely suspend parliament in order to avoid the impeachment hearing.

This is dangerous and foolish talk and indicates a lack of hard political acumen. If Mr Wahid was even thinking such things it would have been wiser to keep them to himself.
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There have been at some encouraging signs on the Indian sub-continent in the past few days. For the first time in two years there have been high-level talks between long-time enemies India and Pakistan. Pakistan’s military ruler, General Pervez Musharraf had talks with the Indian Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee near the Taj Mahal in Agra.

It would have been too much to expect a wide-ranging, all-embracing agreement to come out of these talks. In particular, it would have been naive to imagine that there would have been agreement over the disputed territory of Kashmir. India and Pakistan have been at loggerheads over Kashmir since partition in 1947. At partition, it was understood that while initially Kashmir would be administered by India, after a couple of years there would be an act of self-determination in Kashmir to determine whether the territory would go to Pakistan or to India. The act of self-determination has never taken place. Pakistan believes that in any plebiscite the Muslim majority in Kashmir would vote to go to Pakistan. This is why India has resisted any call for a vote.

India and Pakistan have gone to war twice over the territory. An undeclared war began to years ago in northern Kashmir and there has been an uneasy ceasefire in the past seven months.
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The International Olympic Committee will announce today (Australian time) its decision on where the 2008 Olympic Games will be held. It is likely the IOC will choose Beijing. If so it will be an appalling decision.

The Olympic Games is not just another sporting event, like a swimming meeting or a football carnival. The Olympic Games by its own motto and own aspirations stands for universal human aspirations that go beyond a sporting contest. In the time of the ancient Greeks, when the first games were held, it was a time when the various cities of Greece put aside war and came together in a contest of physical and spiritual human excellence. So when the IOC makes its decision it must look beyond the mere sporting contest. It must look beyond whether the several cities seeking the right to host the Games are physically capable of holding the Games in terms of sporting venues, transport and accommodation. The IOC should also look at the spiritual fitness of the host city.

When the IOC looks at Beijing it may well conclude that despite the smog and the mediocre transport systems and sporting facilities that the Chinese regime in the next seven years will be able to create the physical infrastructure to hold the Games. But it must look beyond this. At present, and for the foreseeable future, Beijing is also the seat of government of one of the most politically repressive regimes on earth. The Chinese regime has brutally repressed the religious freedom of those who wish to embrace the Falun Gong movement. It has imprisoned and executed – – often without trial – – those who criticise it on political grounds. There are no rights of self-determination for minorities in China, particularly those who seek independence for Tibet.
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The Minister for Workplace Relations, Tony Abbott, has stirred considerable debate over poverty in Australia with comments he made on the ABC’s Four Corners program on Monday night. Mr Abbott was responding to suggestions that more people in Australia are living in poverty and that there is now a new class of working poor.

Taken sentence by sentence, what Mr Abbott had to say had a ring of truth about it. But taken together his comments gave the unfortunate impression that the government cannot eradicate poverty and therefore should not try.

Essentially, Mr Abbott’s view of the world is one in which individuals in poverty are to blame for their poverty; that they are the authors of their own misfortune. It is a very Dickensian of view of the world. It is a pessimistic one and one that minimises the role of government.
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The desertion of the member for Kennedy, Bob Katter, from the National Party probably marks the death-throes of what has been an abiding debate in Australian politics – – protectionism verses free trade. Mr Katter himself would probably proclaim himself a free trader. However, his stand as an opponent of privatisation, economic rationalism and globalisation in fact it puts him in the corner with what, at least until the election of the Howard Government, had been the National Party’s traditional protectionist position. The National Party and its predecessor the Country Party had always agreed that the Australian industry should be protected against competition from the rest of the world and the Government should subsidise services into regional and rural Australia. Also, for a long time it had supported the he the regulation of the marketing of agricultural products.

Australia and the rest of the world began deregulation, privatisation and a globalisation in the 1980s. Then, Australia had a Labor Government and the Liberal and National Party’s could attack that Government from both ends of the stick. The Liberals could rant against the big power of unions and the National Party could attack the consequences of Labor’s freeing of the financial markets and privatisation of the Commonwealth bank. However, once in government the fundamental philosophical differences between the Liberal Party and National Party could no longer be papered over. Both parts of the coalition had to support coalition policy. John Howard came to government with a committed privatisation and deregulation agenda. In the past five years that has had considerable fall-out in the bush, as unprofitable banking, public-sector, telecommunications and other services could no longer be cross subsidised under a pro-privatisation regime.
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The ACT Liberal Party is toying with the idea of conducting a referendum at the election on October 20th. The referendum would ask whether there should be trials for a safe injecting room, for the provision of heroin under medical supervision for addicts and a trial for the use of the drug Naltrexone in a detoxification program.

At first blush, many voters would welcome more consultation from governments in of the form of a referendums. Calls for referendums are quite frequent among the contributors to Letters to the Editor columns, for example. Referendums are used to very frequently in the United States and Europe to resolve policy questions. In Australia, of course, we use them as the only method to change our federal Constitution. There is, however, a big difference between a referendum on a complex question of medical or criminal law and a question about the system of government. Questions about the latter are very suitable as referendum questions. It is important for the legitimacy of government that the people are sovereign and that the people have consented to the way in which there are ruled. Referendums also perhaps have a place in citizens’ veto once laws are passed.

The trouble with submitting specific policy matters to referendum is that people by and large do not see it their job to get to themselves thoroughly knowledgeable about every issue of government. That is the purpose for which they elect others. Moreover, governments have access to a bureaucracy and any number of specialist advisers, so should be in a better position to make a decision.
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The Australian a Council of Trade Unions has put forward a number of policy priorities which it would like to see implemented if Labor wins the next election.

They are a mixed bag. The six demands were for a GST roll-back; tax cuts for low income families; a system of tax credits; a test case for more reasonable working hours; a decent annual wage rise for the low paid; and abolition of workplace laws that have weakened unions. Some of those demands coincide with existing Labor policy. On other points, the ACTU would like to break new ground.

It is the aim of both major parties, unions and employers to lift the living standards of Australian workers, including those who at present are among the lowest paid in the community. The only difference is how does one go about achieving that. There is little point granting pay rises to employees if employers businesses do not get productivity gains to sustain those rises. All that results in is higher inflation and everyone being worse off. On this score, the idea of passing new laws that will give the unions a more privileged position is flawed. So, too, is the idea that the mere say-so of an arbitration commission can generate additional community wealth sufficient to pay some arbitrated pay rise. Any attempt by industrial-relations tribunals to increase wages must be paid for by its someone somewhere – – usually in the form of fewer jobs as employers desert for more competitive environments or force their existing workforce to fill the gap, often in the form of a longer working hours – – ironically one of the other concerns of the ACTU.
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Independent member of the Legislative Assembly Michael Moore has made a significant contribution to government in the ACT over the past 12 and a half years. Mr Moore announced yesterday that he would not contest the upcoming election for the assembly in October.

Mr Moore has been in at the Assembly since the beginning of self-government in 1989, winning four elections – always the last candidate to be elected in the ACT when it was a single electorate or last when he stood in Molonglo after the introduction of the three-electorate Hare-Clark system in 1995. Even though last elected, his influence has been profound.

There is a paradox about Mr Moore’s career. He has often been accused of being a single issue candidate, either directly or as part of a general criticism of independents and cross benches. Yet looking back over his 12 and half years it is difficult to see a single issue that he pursued that got on to the statute book intact. His greatest contribution has not been in a single issue politics. Rather, it has been in challenging the standard two-party model of Australian politics and in doing so helping develop the unique method of governance that we have in the ACT.
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The Leader of the Opposition, Kim Beazley, is on the right track with Knowledge Nation. The Labor Party received a report this week from a committee it had appointed to examine ways in which Australia could become what is now called a “”Knowledge Nation”. The committee brought to forward a number of uncosted recommendations that ranged from higher retention rates, so that 90 per cent of teenagers have Year 12 or higher, to the doubling of research and development financing by 2010. Other recommendations included the creation of 1000 commercial and university research positions to encourage Australian scientists and researchers to return home, significant increases in public funding of universities, the boosting of online education and the making of access to digital broadband a national priority.

An immediate attack has been made up on the program because it is uncosted and represents just a wish-list, in the words of Prime Minister John Howard.

Some of the reaction indicates the difficulty of the Opposition’s task. On one hand, many people are crying out for leadership and vision and a movement away from the bean-counting mentality. On the other hand, many people are shouting where is the money coming from.
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The Government’s decision to waive debts of up to $1,000 for about 400,000 families who have been overpaid family tax benefits is the wrong deed for the wrong reason.

The matter arose as a result of the introduction of the new tax system. Eleven separate benefits were very sensibly brought down to three, and a new method of calculating them was applied. The old system was unfair because if people understated their income, they would not be able to retrieve the entitlements they would have got if they had stated it correctly in the first place. The Coalition introduced a system whereby people could tell Centrelink of their income as it varied and their family benefits would be varied accordingly. However, many people did not tell Centrelink when their income rose. As a result, when their final income was totalled at the end of the financial year it would it transpire that they had been paid too much family allowance. In the ordinary course of events, they would be required to repay the overpayment. However, it is not “the ordinary course of events”. It is instead, the lead-up to a federal election. Moreover, it is the first anniversary of the introduction of the new tax system so the Government is sensitive to criticism.
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