Crispin Hull

Well may John Howard try to save Australia’s face by the glory of East Timor peace-keeping, but nothing will save Australia’s face over its complicity in Indonesia’s East Timor war-making. The documents released on Tuesday confirm what many people in Australia have long suspected – that successive Australian Governments through a combination of naivety, stupidity and cupidity have been complicit in the violent subjugation of the rights of the people of East Timor by the Java-based Indonesian political-military regime. Australia implicitly encouraged the military takeover. It was forewarned about it. It did nothing on the international stage to prevent it. Worse, it did nothing to warn its own nations – five journalists – who were in the direct line of fire of the Indonesian invaders.

The best light possible to put on these events is naivety. Then Prime Minister Gough Whitlam foolishly thought that an indication that Australia would not resist integration of East Timor into Indonesia without force meant that Indonesia would allow an act of self-determination and that if that act of self-determination opted for integration Australia would welcome it. In fact Indonesia took it as a wink and a nod that Australia would not protest if Indonesia integrated East Timor by coercion. But naivety was followed by foolish complicity. Once Mr Whitlam had suggested that integration would not be opposed by Australia, according to the documents, Indonesian political and military leaders gave Australia on-going information about when, where and how the invasion leading to integration would take place. And Australia did nothing.
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The Leader of the Opposition, Kim Beazley, is in danger of looking faintly ridiculous when he talks about Labor’s policy on the GST. For nearly two years, he has been talking about GST roll-back. Until this week, the details of that were unclear. Hitherto, Mr Beazley has spoken only of making the GST simpler and of making its impact fairer.

On the question of fairness, it seems that all Labor has got to offer is speaking about one or two motherhood goods or services and removing the tax on them. Labor had already mentioned sanitary items, caravan park site fees and charities. This week it was funeral expenses.

“Imposing a GST on funeral expenses is an unfair burden on Australian families, especially the elderly,” Mr Beazley said. “It is the equivalent of a death tax.”

Will, yes, the elderly tend to die in a higher proportion than the young, and so the equally elderly widows and widowers will inevitably pay more funeral GST than others. But the elderly have had more time to save and prepare. And, yes, people who die tend to leave families behind who will have to pay the GST, so families will have to pay the GST. Once this waffly logic is taken to its inevitable conclusion, one would have to do away with the GST altogether. But Mr Beazley has not got the ticker to do that, nor is there the financial wherewithal to do it because it would leave a huge hole in the Budget and make Mr Beazley’s promises on health and education undeliverable. Besides, all these families “”unfairly burdened” have been given compensation in the form of welfare increases and tax cuts so an efficient, universal tax could be implemented.
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Unfortunately, it may be far too close to an election for Australian taxpayers to come out unscathed from the Ansett debacle.

The crisis has been triggered by two major factors. First, Ansett itself is losing more than $1.3 million a day, largely due to past poor management, in particular an inability to update its fleet. Secondly, its parent, Air New Zealand is also in strife. Air New Zealand’s strife has continued because Singapore Airlines withdrew from an earlier proposal to increase its stake from 25 per cent to 49 per cent. This increase in the capital would have flowed through to Ansett.

Ansett’s position has been made worse after comments from Air New Zealand’s acting chairman, Jim Farmer, that the future of Ansett was essentially in the hands of the Australian Government. That statement was at odds with the commercial reality that Ansett is the subsidiary of a New Zealand company.
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The trial of two Australians and six Arab foreign aid workers detained in Afghanistan on charges of preaching Christianity is causing justifiable international disquiet.

Much of that disquiet arises from the unpredictability of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, the absence of the rule of law independent from the Government, and the huge disparity in possible sentencing, form a few days’ jail to public execution.

Further disquiet is caused by the fact that the offence they have been charged with has no equivalent in Australian law, and in Australia their conduct would be completely lawful. The Taliban law prohibiting freedom of religious expression is offensive and conflicts with Australian ideas about basic freedoms.

For these reasons it is important for Australian to take an active consular interest in this case. The Australian Government should do its best to achieve the release of the jailed aid workers, Diana Thomas and Peter Bunch, and it should do its best to help them with legal aid and general living support.
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Many people will be disappointed that self-confessor entertainer John Laws was not jailed this week. Others will be relieved that he was not. Unfortunately, it is likely that most people’s view on whether the man who possesses the golden tonsils should have been jailed would have been formed by their view of the man himself rather than upon the more important wider point of the nature of freedom of speech in Australia.

Laws was convicted under a section of NSW Jury Act that provides seven years’ jail for soliciting or publishing views from jurors about what went on in the jury room. The ACT’s equivalent also provides a penalty for any juror who goes to the media with their view of what happened in the jury room. Laws interviewed a juror in a murder case. The juror said she had been coerced into agreeing to an acquittal.
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Opposition Leader Kim Beazley and the Labor Party were being reactive and minimalist in his frontbench shuffle. They did the minimum necessary to deal with several matters. They had to fill the position created by the resignation of Aboriginal affairs spokesman Daryl Melham. That was a rare frontbench resignation on a question of principle. Small wonder the Labor Party was taken by surprise and so not in a position to do a full-scale shuffle. Mr Melham resigned from the frontbench after his party voted in the Senate to approve Queensland’s native title legislation which he thought would reduce Aboriginal rights. Next the Labor Party had to get Carmen Lawrence back to the frontbench after an absence of three years. Mr Beazley said a year ago that Dr Lawrence should be back on the frontbench as soon as possible. That was immediately after Dr Lawrence was cleared by a jury in Western Australia of having perjured herself at the Royal Commission set up by the Western Australian Liberal Government into the Eason affair. In that 12 months Mr Beazley did nothing to restore Dr Lawrence. He did not want to increase his frontbench by one nor replace someone on it. Both of those possibilities would upset the delicate factional balance in the party and the former would be viewed unfavourably in the electorate which views any extra position (even if unpaid) as an unnecessary perk.
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Australians are working too long, according to a study published yesterday by the Australian Council of Trade Unions. It may well be that the study will be used for self-serving ends when the ACTU puts it in a submission to the Australian Industrial Relations Commission in a test case on work hours due to be heard in November. Nevertheless, the study points to some alarming trends. Moreover, it was conducted by Sydney University and Adelaide University’s Centre for Labour Research, so it has an element of independence about it which gives it credibility demanding attention.

The study found that more than a third of full-time employees in Australia work more than 48 hours a week, which it would be illegal in Europe. Australians have the second-longest average working week of any developed nation, and is one of the few countries where hours are increasing. The study showed that employees’ lives were becoming narrow as they gave up hobbies and sport, spent less time with friends and family, and were too tired or simply did not have enough time for sex. The long working week was causing rocky marriages or marital breakdowns, health problems and fatigue-related accidents at work. It seems that the long working week is not due to the pursuit of money because 60 per cent of overtime goes unpaid. Much of the overtime appears to be done because of employees’ commitment to the job, under-staffing and fears of reprisals or loss of employment.
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As the 438 asylum-seekers are transferred from the Norwegian freighter Tampa, which rescued them, to the Australian naval vessel HMAS Manoora, questions arise as to why the government is engaging this expensive and humiliating operation.

Yesterday, Federal Court judge Tony North lifted a temporary injunction that would have prevented a transfer of the asylum seekers from Australian waters. He did so after the Commonwealth government gave an undertaking that it would abide by any court ruling when the case is fully heard during this week. The Victorian Council for Civil Liberties and others are seeking court orders to have the asylum seekers brought to Australia for processing. The Government’s position is that they should not be brought on to Australian soil.

Instead, the government proposes to use its naval vessel to take the asylum seekers on a 10-day day voyage to Port Moresby. From there some will be sent to Nauru and others to New Zealand for determination of their refugee status. Whatever happens, the Government must abide by its undertaking to the court. If the court orders the asylum-seekers back to Christmas Island, they should be turned around. It may well be that many of the asylum-seekers will ultimately end in Australia if that they are found to be refugees. The question arises why does Australia not just bring them on to shore immediately and process them as if they had landed on Australian soil in the first place.
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Out of the blue last week, the Minister for Communications, Senator Richard Alston, announced that the Government was prepared to consider an overhaul of the media-ownership laws. He said he was in favour of a comprehensive review of the laws which at present prohibit the owner of a newspaper to own a broadcasting licence in the same city and which restrict foreign ownership in newspapers, television and radio.

There is quite a lot wrong with the present legal regime for media ownership. It is obvious that it has failed dismally in its primary objectives of retaining Australian ownership of major media assets and of having a diversity of media ownership. For a start, one foreign citizen controls the major circulating newspaper in five Australian capitals and the leading national newspaper. For a time, another foreign citizen in effect controlled the Fairfax group, which dominates the classified advertisement market in both Sydney and Melbourne.
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