Crispin Hull

The United States is on a mission of sabotage. It is not satisfied merely to walk away from the Kyoto protocol on environment change, rather it wants to see it destroyed. President Bush as the democratically elected leader of the United States is well within his rights to question whether the protocol is necessarily or whether the US should join the agreement to make it legally enforceable. Presumably, the US electorate will judge him on his actions on that due course. But the US has gone beyond this.

Since President Bush announced in March, shortly after assuming the presidency, that the US would not ratify the Kyoto protocol as it stood, the US has actively done its best to ensure that countries like Canada, Japan and the Australia do not sign up. These three countries are critical to the Kyoto process. Under the Kyoto protocol 55 nations with 55 per cent of the global emissions must ratify the protocol to give it a legal force. Under the 55-55 rule the European Union and Eastern European countries cannot ago it alone. On their own they do not add up to 55 per cent of emissions nor do they add up to 55 countries. If Kyoto is to go anywhere, Japan and perhaps some other countries must join the European camp. But US pressure is strong. The Japanese, Canadian and Australian Governments are particularly subservient to whatever position the US takes in foreign-policy matters.
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The Howard Government continued pork barrelling again this week. One day after Prime Minister John Howard turned the first sod for the $1.3 billion Alice Springs-to-Darwin railway, his Minister for Defence, Peter Reith, announced that the Australian Defence Force’s new operational headquarters would go to Queanbeyan.

The decision to build the railway was flawed it from the beginning. It will always be a large white elephant and a burden on the taxpayer. The idea that it would be used to ship goods into the Asian market was fanciful. Producers of goods in that the southern part of Australia will use the cheaper and only slightly less timely sea routes, as they do now. The railway was only ever a plan to help the last remaining Liberal state government in South Australia and to help the Coalition in the fight for the two new Northern Territory seats at the next election. Hitherto, the single Northern Territory seat had always been marginal, swinging backwards and forwards from Labor to the Coalition over past 25 years. At the next election the Northern Territory will have to two seats – Solomon, based on Darwin and Lingiari, comprising and the remainder of the territory. Notionally, Solomon is a marginal coalition seat requiring a 2.4 per cent swing to fall to Labor.

Queanbeyan, the place Mr Reith announced as the host for the new operational headquarters, is the largest population centre in at the seat of Eden-Monaro. Eden-Monaro is held by the Liberal Party’s Gary Nairn by just 262 votes. It is the fifth most marginal seat in the nation. It has gone with the election winner in every election for the past 29 years.
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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.

The talks over the past two days could be described as a success merely because the parties have agreed to further talks at a high level and because Pakistan has invited Mr Vajpayee to visit Islamabad. Continuation of dialogue between the two nations has become more imperative since both became openly nuclear powers in 1998.

Pakistan still maintains a fairly hard line on Kashmir. It says that Kashmir is a core issue and until it is discussed and resolved there can be no progress on other matters. Conversely, India says that Kashmir is not up for negotiation and that there can be no vote that would lead to the territory becoming part of Pakistan. India accuses Pakistan of supporting Muslim guerrillas and of sending guerrillas from Pakistani territory into Kashmir. Pakistan describes any insurgents against Indian rule as home-grown ones.

It will take a mighty diplomatic effort to bridge the gap between those polar positions. The talks in the past couple of days are at least a starting point.

There is a danger that General Musharraf is using his invitation to India as a means of enhancing his position domestically. General Musharraf recently declared himself President of Pakistan. When he took over in his bloodless coup in 1999 there was some thought that it was a temporary military takeover in the face of endemic corruption under civilian rule and that there would be a return to democracy sooner rather than later. General Musharraf’s declaration that he is president coupled by his visit to India in that role indicate that he sees for himself long-term political prospects. It would be unfortunate if a resolution of the Kashmiri dispute and other differences with India were merely a pawn in those political aspirations.

There is a paradox here. While the military-led Pakistan seeks an act of self-determination in Kashmir, the world’s largest democracy, India, is resisting any democratic expression in the territory.

However, Mr Vajpayee since becoming Prime Minister in 1998 has shown considerable goodwill to Pakistan by his bus diplomacy in going to Pakistan by road in 1999, by initiating more dialogue, easing visa requirements and promoting trade. But because he initiated nuclear tests in 1998 (albeit largely for domestic political purposes) he has a lot of catching up to do. There is still a long way to attaining a settlement in Kashmir, but presents signs indicate some cause for optimism.

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.
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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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