Top Stories: 2011

2011年7月2日星期六

That's no think tank, that's my lobbyist

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Glen Fuller

Researcher at the Institute of Public Affairs, Chris Berg, drew my attention to a tweet by Simon Banks from Simon's official Hawker Britton (lobbying/PR firm) twitter account:

"More proof that Think Tanks are Lobbyists: and my article on why they should disclose their funding."

It is about the plan to create an industrial relations think tank in the existing Melbourne-based think tank the Institute of Public Affairs. Support for the new think tank is being provided by those who would benefit the most from a dismantling of the existing Fair Work industrial relations policy:

"The [SMH] has learned the former mining executive, Hugh Morgan, has also been a key driver of the process, as has Michael Chaney, a former president of the Business Council of Australia and currently the chairman of Woodside Petroleum. Both have been recruiting executive support."

Bernard Keane has posted an article on Crikey about trying to measure the effect of the existing Fair Work policy on industrial relations. There are a number of measures or indicators for gauging how successful or not the policy has been. He argues that the aspects of industrial relations that would result in the easiest and most beneficial response to the overall economy (the "low hanging fruit") has been addressed. Now there is the far more "complex challenges" to address to lead to greater productivity:

"Now there are more complex challenges like infrastructure investment (and charging for infrastructure), lifting the return from our health and education investment and the “human capital agenda” which the Howard government, under pressure from the Bracks government, belatedly recognised as important to lifting productivity."

Chris got fired up about Simon's tweet and framed the tweet in terms of whether or not "people genuinely hold views about public policy":

Australian researcher of social work and welfare, Philip Mendes, describes two of the most common 'defences' that think tanks mobilise when critiqued for their role in the production of policy and the influence they have on governance. The first is regarding funding (and it is a similar point to that of Simon Banks regarding lobbyists:

"The think tanks claim to be politically independent, and to be offering impartial and disinterested expertise. They insist that their intellectual integrity and hence credibility is protected by their multiple sources of income [...]. However, critics argue that they are generally partisan, motivated by political and ideological bias, practice the art of directed conclusions, and have more in common with corporate-funded vested interest groups or pressure groups concerned with political activism and propaganda than with genuinely academic or scholarly institutions [...]."

Berg defends this new think tank by following similar lines of argument. He argues that the work of the IPA is funded from 1000+ sources:

At stake here for Berg here is a kind of cash for comment scenario where Berg is trying to ward off the impression that the IPA simply becomes an ideological mouthpiece for the highest bidder. The other part of the defence is regarding the "truthfulness" or "genuiness" of the beliefs held by members of the IPA or think tanks more generally. The line of argument is that members genuinely hold their beliefs and that they are not bought by those that fund the think tank. Mendes describes part of this point thus:

"Finally, they persistently claim to be independent and objective purveyors of truth, uninfluenced by vested or sectional interests. Consequently, their pronouncements, however extreme or bound by ideology, are often granted greater legitimacy and receive less critical public attention than the views of organisations holding more obvious political links and interests."

Of course, the "truth" that Berg is advocating is the "truth" of his own (and it seems those of his fellow IPA members) beliefs in relation to the research he carries out and the arguments he mobilises in his research and opinion-piece writing work. He is making a distinction between think tanks and lobby groups, where he is implying that lobby groups do not genuinely hold their beliefs and are therefore less "true" (or authentic maybe?) than the think tanks, such as the IPA, who are also attempting to intervene in policy debates.

A third defence that Berg mobilises in a tweet in response to me is based around an understanding of the public sphere and whether or not participants in policy discussions in the public sphere should be considered "lobbying":

Berg is implicitly defining lobbying as the activity of professional lobbyists. If lobbying is understood to happen as the intent of "non-lobbyists", he suggests, "that would make everyone who participates in public debate a lobbyist, surely". Well, no. The definition of lobbying that most people understand to be lobbying is defined by the activities of special interest groups, such as those that fund the IPA, to advocate their "genuinely held beliefs" in such a way to influence public debate and therefore government policy. For example, one of the wikipedia definitions of lobbying is:

"Lobbying (also 'Lobby') is a form of advocacy with the intention of influencing decisions made by the government by individuals or more usually by Lobby groups; it includes all attempts to influence legislators and officials, whether by other legislators, constituents, or organized groups."

Surely the point of a think tank such as the IPA or the new industrial relations think tank is to advocate a particular position and in doing so influence decisions made by the government?

Of more interest to me is reframing lobbying activities in a "post-political" era. (And here I am going to go off on a tangent concerned with my own research.) Chantal Mouffe has described the "post-political" as characterised by the negation of antagonisms. Distinct from a rational consensus model, the point of democracy is to promote the confrontation of opposing hegemonic positions. She writes:

"This kind of liberalism is unable to adequately grasp the pluralistic nature of the social world, with the conflicts that pluralism entails; conflicts for which no rational solution could ever exist. the typical liberal understanding of pluralism is that we live in a world in which there are indeed many perspectives and values and that, owing to empirical limitations, we will never be able to adopt them all, but that, when put together, they constitute an harmonious and non-conflictual ensemble. this is why this type of liberalism must negate the political in its antagonistic dimension."

The negation of antagonism and the reproduction of a (neo)liberal hegemonic consensus is not simply a philosophical point; it is a political practice. The work of think tanks may, at first glance when taken in isolation, appear to exist purely for the purposes of antagonism. That is, their only point is to advocate their genuinely held political views and work hard to impose their ideologies on the rest of the population by influencing policy decision making. The negation of antagonism and the reproduction of (neo)liberal hegemony does not simply happen through think tanks however. As Mendes notes (writing in the early 2000s):

"It should be emphasised that neoliberal think tanks do not promote these ideas in isolation. Other important sources of neoliberal influence in Australia include sections of the media such as the Australian Financial Review and influential journalists such as Alan Wood, Christopher Pearson and Piers Akerman, academics such as Judith Sloan and Peter Dawkins, senior econocrats in Canberra such as Ted Evans and Ian Macfarlane, business economists and financial analysts, overt corporate lobby groups such as the Business Council of Australia, and significant groupings within the mainstream political parties. The think tanks constitute one specific component of this larger 'economic rationalist' coalition ... "

This coalition or 'media ecology' has changed to some degree over the last decade or so, but there are enough familiar names in Mendes's list for the point to stand. They all work in concert to reproduce the hegemonic 'common sense'. Mouffe's (and Laclau's) arguments about "hegemonic articulations" focus on their apparently self-positing character. A classic example of this is when someone explained to me that "We shouldn't have illegal immigrants because they are illegal".

Another way to frame the post-political era that relates to the work of think tanks is regarding the production of political enthusiasm. "Political enthusiasm", particularly in any kind of liberalist context, would appear to be an oxymoron. "Enthusiasm" was traditionally understood to refer to the religiosity (and therefore, irrationality) of the public in the pre-Enlightenment era. It was the work of great Enlightenment figures to banish enthusiasm (in its religious guise) from the public sphere. It would seem that the (neo)liberal think tanks would align themselves on the side of Enlightenment figures who advocated on the side of rationality in the face of religious enthusiasms. As Mendes (writing about another think tank, the Centre for Independent Studies) notes, they advocate "an economy based on free and competitive markets, and individual liberty and choice, including freedom of association, religion, speech, and the right to property". Hence the apparent contradiction in me suggesting that the work of think tanks and the rest of the hegemonic media ecology is not ideological per se, but primarily regarding the (real or apparent) induction of enthusiasm in a given population for particular policy outcomes. The appearance of population-wide anxiety is a good indicator that the hegemonic media ecology is working to produce enthusiasm for a given set of ideological policy imperatives.

The contemporary media apparatus in general trains audiences to be anxious about "complexities". A "complexity" is the hegemonic term adopted by nearly everyone in politics for the site of what Mouffe calls an "antagonism". The next key term in (neo)liberal discourse when negating antagonism and producing enthusiasm is "challenge". A "challenge" denotes a political contingency that cannot be easy incorporated into existing perceptions of whatever is at stake. It is often used in the phrase "the challenge of [issue]", particularly in speeches. If you do a cursory search for the keywords ["challenge of" speech] you’ll see what I mean. Isolating the "challenge of" in political discourse signals the emergence of a heterogeneity in the normally hegemonic dialectical (for example, us vs them) order. A "challenge" has relatively unique onto-epistemological characteristics in that various populations with various partisan interests can engage with the same, single contingency presented in the social or political order in different ways. (Here is some earlier writing on the subject.)

For example, if you suggest, as Bernard Keane does in his Crikey article, that "more complex challenges" are coming in industrial relations debates, then most casual or informed observers from any side within politics will probably agree in the first instance. In the second instance, the "challenge" will be rearticulated in such a way so as to strip it of its heterogeneity and antagonistic potential. This is the work of the hegemonic media ecology and in particular this is the work of (neo)liberal think tanks to present "ready-made" policy positions so as to frame such heterogeneity in ways that negate the “complexity” of social and political issues. The heterogeneity of antagonisms is important in the political arena as the absence of consensus indicates a site whereby the collective imagination of a population must strive to find a way to accommodate such heterogeneity.

My interest in all this, and an area of possible future research, is the function of think tanks to produce enthusiasm for a given set of ideologies within a population and thus mobilize a population according to the ideologies of that of the think tank and its funders.

Dr Glen Fuller is an Assistant Professor of Journalism and Communications at the University of Canberra.

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Please: don't dump the Monck

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Anson Cameron

More than 50 Australian academics have signed a letter imploring Western Australia's Notre Dame University to cancel a speech by Viscount Monckton of Brenchley. So he must have something profound to tell us. He must be going to reveal unsettling truths. Truths that will upend the stale dogma of the academy and shake the boffins from their tax-feathered nests and render them Emeritus. Just unkempt bar-flies mumbling yesteryear’s eternal verities into their beer.

Or maybe not. Let me tell you, there are few more enjoyable ways to spend an afternoon than to go online and read and watch Viscount Monckton of Brenchley debunked by actual scientists. I worry for golf as a pastime if people cotton on to how much fun the debunking of Monckton is. The TimeZone arcades and bowling alleys will be abandoned by the young if they get wind of what an unholy high Debunking the Monck can give. It’s great fun to see a man of this stripe so scrupulously discredited.

These debunkers are so damned thorough I wish they’d vacuum my house. Forget strongarming scientific fact and misquoting scientists. This is the least of the Monck’s skulduggery. You will find it said on these sites, that he has claimed to have developed a cure for AIDS and multiple sclerosis, among other diseases; and has claimed to be a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, later saying this was a joke (On whom?); has claimed that a Chinese naval squadron sailed right round the Arctic in 1421 and found no ice; and, perhaps worst of all... he attacked mainstream estimates of climate sensitivity by a misapplication of the Stefan-Bolzmann equation (Cad!!) Oh, he also accused NASA of crashing its own satellite so it wouldn’t have to deal with more data that contradicts the scientific consensus about climate change. His recent comparison of Ross Garnaut with Adolf Hitler should have come as no surprise; he has many priors on this front, accusing people of being Nazis and Hitler youth. Always apologizes in a most aristocratic fashion when called to account. And he once suggested rounding up and isolating all AIDS sufferers, later lamenting the problem had got too big and the logistics too unwieldy. Oh, he also claimed to be a member of the House of Lords. Isn’t, though. Not now. Nor ever.

He is, however, a lot of fun. A barrel of monkeys. The type of peer who used to be widespread but is now all too rare. Since antibiotics got on top of syphilis the poms seem to be running short of truly potty peers. Used to be they’d tour a Duke a year through these parts, pontificating about cunning reds and wily natives and slashing at imaginary Hun as they handed over The Cup to an astounded horse trainer unused to dealing with the quality.

But these fellows seem to be going the way of the thylacine and the Auk. Maybe that’s why Monckton reminds me of that grainy black-and-white footage of the last thylacine in the Hobart zoo. A flashback to a day when eccentric Earls made eccentric remarks and the Common Law.

I implore the academy not to add Viscount Monckton to the long and distinguished list of the gagged and banned. He does not deserve to stand alongside Aung San Suu Kyi, Mandela, Darwin or Mick Jagger. If the Academy gags Lord Monckton it will reward? him with a wholly undeserved gravitas, and afford him the glow of the messiah among his flock. Censored by lefties and eggheads sponging off our tax dollar, the things he wasn’t allowed to say will take on an unwarranted profundity. The flock will be whispering of NATO, a world government, thought-control, and only fearless mavericks like the Viscount standing in the way of a global communist dystopia.

Here’s the tastiest irony; these 50 or so academics want a university RUN BY A CHURCH to ban a man from speaking because they are afraid he might speak balderdash. "He stands for the kind of ignorance and superstition that universities have a duty to counter," they say. Well, he does too. But counter him by refutation and argument. Not by banning him. If a person can be banned from University for speaking ignorantly and superstitiously Jesus will have to set up his soapbox across the road from Notre Dame when he returns and shout through the chain-link fence with a bullhorn.

Anson Cameron has written five critically acclaimed novels. He lives in Melbourne.??

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2011年7月1日星期五

A history of marriage in Australia

Rally in support of gay marriage rights (Getty Images: Luis Ascui)

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Rodney Croome

On August 13, 2004, in a debate punctuated by rage and tears, the Senate passed a Howard government amendment to the Marriage Act banning same-sex marriages.

Exactly 45 years earlier, on August 13, 1959, in the midst of debating Australia's first national Marriage Act - the one Howard later amended - the House of Representatives erupted at the news an Aboriginal woman had been denied permission to marry.

In Darwin the protector of Aborigines had refused Gladys Namagu permission to marry her white fiance, Mick Daly. In response to questions from the opposition, the Menzies government promised such discrimination would never be written into Australian marriage law.

This coincidence highlights the direct link between the way Aborigines were once denied freedom to marry the partner of their choice and how gay and lesbian Australians are denied the same freedom today.

Yet the link runs deeper than infringing the principle of individual autonomy.

In an article published in the latest edition of Overland, I argue Australian governments have a shameful history of manipulating who ordinary people marry in order to engineer broader visions of what Australian society should be. This history goes back to the earliest times.

In convict Australia the government assumed control over who the majority of white Australians married and used this control for overt ideological purposes. Governor Philip wanted to create a native Australian yeomanry and rewarded those convicts who exhibited appropriate traits with permission to marry.

Forty years later, governor Arthur sought to inculcate convicts with industrial rather than agrarian values and gave the reward of permission to marry to convicts who conformed. There was resistance to these controls from convicts who insisted on marrying for the sake of love or children, from women convicts who married to escape the convict system and become "free subjects", and of course from the anti-transportationists who despised this kind of governmental intervention in personal life and brought it, and convictism, to an end in the 1850s and 1860s.

But Australian governments had not lost their weakness for infringing freedom to marry. Into the 20th century women had to fight hard for the right to marry who they wished and conduct those marriages free of laws against contraception, abortion and divorce.

Because of the White Australia Policy servicemen in occupied Japan were refused permission to local Japanese women or, if they married anyway, were unable to return to Australia with their Japanese wives.

Infringement of Aboriginal freedom to marry was most notorious of all. Beginning in the 1860s in Victoria and culminating in the 1930s in West Australia and Queensland, authorities assumed ever more control of who Indigenous people married.

In Queensland the purpose was to prevent miscegenation by preventing black/white marriages. In WA it was to absorb blacks into the white population by preventing black/black unions.

The adverse effect on Indigenous people was always the same, and, as with convicts, some Aborigines resisted control. Women deliberately fell pregnant to their forbidden fiancés, couples escaped to states without marriage controls, and in 1935 the "half-caste women of Broome" petitioned the WA Parliament declaring:

Sometimes we have the chance to marry a man of our own choice... therefore we ask for our Freedom so that when the chance comes along we can rule our lives and make ourselves true and good citizens.

Aboriginal advocates in Sydney and Melbourne were slower to pick up on the issue. But when they did – as a way to prick the conscience of an Australia increasingly concerned about "Hitlerism" – the right to marry the partner of one's choice shot to the top of Aboriginal Australia's list of demands above land rights and equal pay, and second only to the right to vote.

When the case of Gladys and Mick hit the headlines across the world, thanks in part to an appeal to the UN Secretary General, it helped end the entire rotten system of Aboriginal protection laws and propelled the nation towards overwhelming endorsement of Aboriginal citizenship in 1967.

Many white Australian's have forgotten how important freedom to marry was, but not so Indigenous people like lawyer, Tammy Williams. When the issue of same-sex marriage was raised during the recent national human rights consultation she said, "I couldn’t help but think about my family, when you talked about the right to choose your partner... In my family, it's only one generation ago that we were prevented from choosing our chosen partner to marry – not because of sexual orientation, but simply because of our race, our Aboriginality.

The denial to gay and lesbian Australians of our freedom to marry follows the historical pattern I have outlined.

The decision to form a lifelong legal union with one other person is one of the most important decisions most of us is ever called on to make. To rob an entire group of citizens of the legal right to make that decision sends the message that they are not fully adults, fully citizens or fully human. This was the burden convicts and Aborigines carried in their day and it is the burden gay and lesbian Australians carry today.

As it was in the past, today's infringement of the freedom to marry is part of a broader ideological vision imposed by government. That vision is a theocratic one which sees the subtle re-introduction of Biblical values back into civil law following their removal in the second half of the 20th century.

Most importantly, the success of today's freedom to marry movement will, like the movements before it, have consequences far beyond those directly affected. It will mean a re-affirmation of equity, impartiality and humanity as the values that govern Australian law. It will mean marriage is no longer manipulated to discriminatory, ideological ends and is instead what it should be, an affirmation of love, a commitment to fidelity, a source of security and a font of personal happiness.

Routine violations of the freedom to marry seem to well up from the bedrock of Australia's history. But so do challenges to these abuses. As a result, when these challenges succeed, Australian society matures quickly and profoundly.

Rodney Croome AM, is an honorary lecturer in sociology at the University of Tasmania.

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Pim, Lucas, Bernard and the poems of Leonard Nimoy

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Justin Shaw

I am well aware, thanks for asking, that my approach to sports journalism could be described in some circles as a little bit haphazard. Those circles would have their own definition of haphazard no doubt, and it would probably match what I do. See the previous two sentences for supporting evidence.

Being thusly aware, I am also aware of the various levels of irony attendant in what I am about to say. (As usual, send your complaints to PO Box Whatevs).

Dear Les Murray: WTF?

As I and several hundred lesser sports journos wrote last week, Les' new book contains a pretty stunning revelation about a Lucas Neill-led player revolt against Pim Verbeek's tactics going into the opening game against Germany at last year's World Cup.

Now "new facts have come to light" (Lucas Neill says it didn't actually happen and is kind of upset by the suggestion that it did) and Les has apologised unreservedly. It’s not that big a deal, though, people get things wrong all the time, even me.

But come on… Les Murray's publisher and editor, WTF?

He is the Face, and Voice, and some would say the Heart, Brains and Duodenal Gland of Football in Australia. Everyone interested in football in this country will be interested in his book.

He sends you the final draft, including the Player Revolt thing, and you just print it? It didn't strike you as perhaps a bit, um, controversial? You didn't consider that that story would be the big selling point of the book, and the first and probably only thing the media latched onto?

Maybe you did, in which case I am stunned like a mullet and have stoned several crows and am shaking the sauce bottle fairly, mate, that you didn't then consider checking his sources and perhaps doing some research and maybe even talking to some lawyers and stuff, or even going out on the ceraaaazy limb of asking Lucas Neill??

My stunnedness is offset somewhat by my new-found knowledge that there are obviously publishers out there dumb enough to consider my proposed coffee table book entitled "The Following Players Are Drug Cheats And These Ones Are Gay".

The publicity surrounding the dozens of wrongly-identified players will guarantee sales, which will be nice. The weeks of mea culpas that follow will hopefully generate enough further sales to cover my legal bills.

Oh hang on, I just realised what's going on, did you?

I HAD a slightly uncomfortable moment the other day, made all the more uncomfortable by the fact that I have had to take some interest in something that I really don't like.

A senior person with whom I have an entirely and necessarily professional and formal relationship let the walls down for a few moments and tried to engage me in a friendly chat.

"So, how far's Tomic going to go, Mr Shaw?" he asked.

Suddenly kicked out of my formal comfort zone, it took a few seconds for the word Tomic to bubble into my frontal lobe.

"I mean, with your knowledge of sport" (like all educated and brilliant people, he's a reader of this page) "what do you think of his chances?"

"Ah, Tomic, the tennis player, yes. Well I do know a fair bit about sport, but unfortunately I can't stand tennis, Sir. Tennis and swimming. Don't like them. Not a bit."

Eventually I stopped telling him how much I loathed something he's interested in, and took a sudden studiousness regarding a paperclip on the table before me.

He wasn't actually offended (I hope) but the silence that followed was so awkward that everyone in the room grew nine extra elbows and started bumping into tables that weren't there.

So in an effort to avoid future awkward moments I have been brushing up on Wimbledon, and I am glad of the illumination gifted me by the Seven Network.

Here are some things I have learned:

Pat Cash is Forty Six years old, and still wears a dangly earring.

Mark Webber's opinion on Tomic is important, as is that of every vaguely Australian celebrity hanging around Wimbledon for the free lunches.

Todd Woodbridge is extremely irritating.

There is a female player who had a breast reduction.

Some of the female players are very pretty, and what they wear on the court is very important, particularly for the slo-mos.

The female players who aren't pretty are variously described as "strong" and "powerful" and whatever other vaguely complimentary words spring into the brains of commentators who have just spent the past five minutes saying "phwoar" about Hantsuchova and are really just thinking "Blerg, what an Uggo" about the less-pretty woman currently on screen.

I have accidentally also learned that this Tomic chap is Australian, and Carried Australia’s Hopes all the way to a few games in, and just recently he Went Down Fighting Bravely, instead of being Bundled Out like other non-Australians, which I think means he eventually lost.

More importantly, Pat Cash is forty six years old, and still wears a dangly earring.

So there. I now know things about tennis, which feels strange. As a result I am now able to engage in harmless and polite conversation, which feels even stranger. I can’t see this being much of a problem with the aforementioned gentleman however; he appears to have learned the lesson that attempting polite harmless conversation with me is on a level of weirdness comparable only to the poetry of Leonard Nimoy.

My efforts at being polite and informed will absolutely not under any circumstances (except of course maybe a really big bag of money – donations to PO Box Yes Please) extend to swimming.

Justin Shaw is the Deputy Editor of The King's Tribune. He Tweets at @JuzzyTribune?

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Getting the WorkChoices band back together

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Simon Banks

The news that Peter Reith is seeking business support to establish a new pro-WorkChoices industrial relations think tank should not be a surprise.?

Nor is the fact that its natural ideological home is the Institute for Public Affairs.

It follows the recent engagement by the HR Nicholls Society of Liberal stalwart Ian Hanke.

The Liberal Party backbench has been active too with calls for debate by newer MPs including Jamie Briggs (John Howard's former industrial relations adviser), Josh Frydenberg, Kelly O'Dwyer and Steven Ciobo.

At the same time, one of the first acts of the O'Farrell Government was to limit the wage increases of public servants including police, nurses, firefighters and ambulance drivers to less than the rate of inflation – sending their wages backwards in real terms.

The processes for setting fair minimum wages, basic terms and conditions of employment and the independent industrial umpire are all under threat.

Tony Abbott has finally declared that 'in good time', the Opposition will have a 'strong and effective workplace policy'.

Abbott, Reith and the Liberal Party are entitled to argue their views in public and will be judged by the Australian people at the next election.

But the role of bodies like the Institute of Public Affairs and the HR Nicholls Society deserve scrutiny too. It is clear that Reith sees the institute as not just a generator of ideas, but an important advocate on behalf of the views that he and some in the business community hold.

It is further proof that these think tanks are increasingly seen as influential lobbyists for the very causes they pursue.

As a result, Australians are entitled to know who will be funding the institute in this expanded role.

The same was true in the recent debate about tobacco advertising, where the institute repeatedly commented in the media on the issue, but also refused to disclose whether it is taking money from big tobacco.

The same disclosure should also be required for think tanks across the political spectrum, such as The Australia Institute, The Climate Institute and GetUp!. Many on the right of politics have expressed concerns about the funding of these bodies too.

United States politics has increasingly become dominated by the power of large political action committees. Think tanks, industry, union and community-based lobby groups are increasingly playing the same role in Australia. It is also an inevitable consequence of the fragmentation of political debate and the decreasing influence of traditional party affiliations.

Disclosure is also becoming increasingly important with the rise of the commentariat in political coverage (of which I am a self-confessed participant).

Political parties have to disclose who their donors are. Third party lobbyists like Hawker Britton disclose who our clients are on publicly available Lobbyist Registers (and in our case we make no secret of our ties to the ALP).

Most industry associations and trade union bodies – from the ACTU to the Minerals Council and Australian Industry Group are proud to declare who their members are. Whether you agree with their views or not, these organisations are also not afraid of stating publicly who they are lobbying on behalf of.

However, some think tanks and industry lobby groups hide their financial backers behind the corporate veil and refuse to say who the ultimate promoters of their views are. For example, the recent debate on plain packaging of tobacco saw an alleged small business coalition being overwhelmingly funded by big tobacco.

Australians deserve better. We are entitled to know who is seeking to influence public debate. Governments and parliaments as decision-makers and the public as participants and voters can then decide what weight to put on these views.

Governments, parliaments and the media can help by laying down a simple standard. They can refuse to receive submissions or publish comments or opinions from industry associations, interest groups and think tanks that refuse to make appropriate disclosure. At the very least, they can indicate that the organisation has not adequately disclosed its funding. The Australian people can then make up their minds.

In the coming debate about workplace reform and the resurrection of WorkChoices, Australians are entitled to know who is bringing the band back together and paying for these views to be promoted on the public stage.

Simon Banks is a government relations, campaigning and strategic communications professional and the director of Hawker Britton.

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No shortage of land or food... or hot air

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Asher Judah

Despite the economic populism and political fear mongering of Senators Brown and Joyce in recent days, Australians need not fear running out of arable land.

Nor should they worry about an impending food security crisis. In fact, the only thing they should worry about is a shortage of politicians prepared to speak the truth about how strong our nation's agricultural future really is.

As the world's ninth largest agriculture producer, Australia is one of the most food-secure nations in the world.

According to the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australia's terrestrial and aquatic food producers are capable of producing enough food to feed approximately 80 million people per year.

And despite the lingering effects of a debilitating national drought, Australian farmers still grow enough to provide 93 per cent of our domestic food supply, including 98 per cent of all locally consumed fresh produce.

Instead of facing a serious food supply problem as alleged this week by Senator Brown, Australia in fact enjoys a healthy oversupply – to the tune of $14 billion per year. This production makes us one of the world's largest food exporters, unlike the 131 other nations around the world who are net food importers.

One of the key reasons Australia produces so much food is because we have so much arable land.

Measured by people per square kilometre of arable land, Australia has 68 times more than Japan, 25 times more than the United Kingdom, 22 times more than China and four times more than the United States.?

In fact, Australia has more arable land than Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Japan, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea combined.

Rather than running out of arable land as routinely suggested by Senator Joyce, Australia has the largest oversupply per person of any nation in the world. If anything, we should feel more relaxed about selling it.

But our agricultural edge doesn't end there.

Despite living on the world's driest inhabited continent, our farmers happen to be amongst the worlds most resourceful. Over 60 per cent of the Australian land mass is used for agricultural activity each year, resulting in the production of over $40 billion worth of agricultural goods.

Our farmers are also ranked amongst the worlds most productive. According to the Productivity Commission, between 1974-75 and 2003-04, Australian farmers consistently achieved productivity growth levels of 2.8 per cent a year – the third highest of any industry sector in Australia. These amazing productivity gains have made our farmers one of our nation's greatest economic success stories, attracting solid foreign investment and sustaining thousands of jobs in regional areas.

Put simply, even in the face of challenging climatic conditions, distorting trade rules and growing competition for land use, Australia's farmers still know how to grow success. Rather than imposing more control over their businesses, as proposed by Brown and Joyce, the Government should just butt out. If a NSW farmer wants to sell his land to a Chinese extraction company, it's his God-given right to do so. Now is not the time to start impinging on farmers' rights for the sake of political popularity.

Through this century, our farm community will face many serious challenges in regard to how it chooses its farm businesses. Vexed issues like live exports, carbon taxes, GMO's, salinity, labour shortages, drought, trade access, pest control and water and native vegetation management will test the farm sector.

As a result, what the farm community needs is not a phony political campaign about a problem which doesn't exist, but a proper discussion on the issues which genuinely threaten their social and economic wellbeing.

Australian farmers have a bright but challenging future ahead of them. Our political leaders could do a lot worse than speak the truth about it.

Asher Judah is a Research Fellow with the Institute of Public Affairs and a former VFF Economics Adviser.

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The plausibility gap in the denial of climate change science

Climate Change (Thinkstock: iStockphoto)

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Nicole Hodgson

For climate change 'sceptics', denialists, contrarians or what Barry Jones recently called 'confusionists' to be right about the science of climate change, an alternative reality must be both plausible and logical.

Firstly, the consensus amongst climate change scientists that human activity is a significant contributing factor to climate change must be misguided at best. The 97 per cent of active publishing climate scientists surveyed in 2009 or the 97 to 98 per cent of climate experts who support the consensus, as evidenced by a 2010 study, must all be wrong.

In addition, the Joint Science Academies from the G8+5 countries statement on climate change must also be misguided, as must be the large number of scientific bodies from around the world which support the consensus on anthropogenic climate change (just part of the long list includes NAASA, American Institute of Physics, in Australia - the CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology, in Europe the European Federation of Geologists, and the Royal Society of the UK).?

In this alternative reality, climate scientists exhibit impressive worldwide powers of persuasion to be able to mislead their scientific peers so decisively.

In this alternative reality, consensus on climate science is anyway irrelevant in the case of climate science - "the language of consensus is the language of politics not science" - but curiously only half the time: consensus in this alternative reality is important when lists are compiled to demonstrate the ostensibly large number of "scientists" who do not support the consensus.?

The expertise of those "scientists" is not important when it comes to demonstrating an opposition to the scientific consensus – geologists with links to the mining and fossil fuel industries are just as valid as climate scientists here.?Those inhabiting this alternative reality, who cannot help but notice that the actual scientific consensus is quite compelling, procure another explanation: the consensus only exists because of malpractice, a stifling of critics and a misuse of the peer review process.

The argument appears to be: the vast majority of publishing climate scientists agree with the basic hypothesis of anthropogenic climate change, therefore it demonstrates that climate scientists are just 'following the pack', primarily because they want to keep their funding grants.? Those scientists with views contrary to the consensus therefore cannot get funding or cannot be published in the peer-reviewed literature.?This is where the narrative of this alternative reality becomes extremely illogical.

Somewhere in the process of doing science around the world, this alternative reality presumes that there must be an inherent bias towards the confirmation of anthropogenic climate change.? That is, some people, somewhere (in government perhaps, or the public funding institutions such as the Australian Research Council) only want to see research that confirms the human causes of climate change, and somehow those people monopolise the funding process to secure that outcome.

Given that climate research is mostly conducted by universities or research institutes funded out of the public purse, this means that in this alternative reality, governments right around the world, regardless of their ideology, have funded scientists for decades and, for reasons unknown, only to affirm anthropogenic climate change.

This is despite the fact that the outcomes of this research are in conflict with the same governments' status-quo economic interests, energy systems and transport systems. In this alternative reality, governments around the world have conspired to fund the creation of a problem that they prove incapable of solving. Why the public research funding bodies of countries such as the US and Australia, whose governments were so opposed to action on climate change in the early to mid 2000s, would at the same time be perverting the independence of the scientific process and directing the science towards enshrining anthropogenic climate change defies a plausible explanation – except in this alternative reality.

In the real world, one could argue that it speaks volumes of the relative independence of the scientific process that important research on climate change could continue to be published in the US and Australia during the early to mid-2000s when the governments in both countries refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol and actively undermined the global policy making efforts. Additionally, in the case of the US, the federal government was shown to have significant political influence in preventing the communication of the current climate science.? In Australia, the self-styled greenhouse mafia consisting of key figures from the fossil fuel industry was shown by whistleblower Guy Pearse to be responsible for much of the Federal Government’s policy on climate change at the time.

Back to the alternative reality, where the bias surrounding climate research is ensuring that only outcomes supportive of anthropogenic climate change are produced. Given the global spread of climate research institutes, this must be happening in every country with a major scientific research program, and in just about every university with a climate research program.?In the alternative reality, there is some kind of globally orchestrated program to influence the public funders of science in every country, to in turn influence all the universities and other scientists, to ‘toe the line’ on climate change and keep developing this apparently fundamentally flawed body of science.

Pause for a moment and consider the plausibility of this scenario in the real world. Is there any group of people clever enough to be able to sustain this level of deception for three decades or more?? This would require the orchestration of a staggering number of people, funding processes and scientists right across the world.? Where are the whistleblowers?? Where are the exposés?? Where are the investigative journalists uncovering this conspiracy? Where are the Auditor-General departments (or their equivalents) monitoring such a blatant and indefensible misallocation of public funds?

The explanation, in the alternative reality, that there must be implicit vested interests behind the scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change is one way of explaining away yet another striking anomaly - the demonstrated links between the fossil fuel industry and the manufacture of doubt about the validity of climate science.? The logic here seems to be if there are demonstrated vested interests on one side of the so-called debate, then there must be vested interests on the other side to explain the scientific consensus on climate change.

In 2006, BBC journalist Richard Black invited so-called sceptics to send in documentation or other firm evidence of bias, undertaking to look into any concrete claims. Expecting a deluge, he received only "one first-hand claim of bias in scientific journals, which was not backed up by documentary evidence; and three second-hand claims, two well-known and one that the scientist in question does not consider evidence of anti-sceptic feeling".

So far the sum total of published explanations of this alternative reality seems to be Michael Crichton’s fictional State of Fear.?The underlying motivation for this scale of scientific fraud is even more difficult to fathom. Most people who subscribe to this alternative reality rely on some creative conspiracy theory, ranging from neo-fascism or Communism (often in the same breath), or the creation of a new world order, to a plot by environmentalists who have a secret agenda to bring down industrial society.? ??

Yet, this bizarre alternative reality is what many in the Australian community are (implicitly) choosing to accept in escalating numbers when they dismiss the science of climate change. ?It is no real surprise that many people would not want to accept the existence of anthropogenic climate change.? The full implications of the process we've set underway are daunting. Taking meaningful action on climate change will require an economic and energy revolution in societies who appear paralysed by the status quo.?

For those with conservative political views, in an increasingly ideologically polarised debate, the prospect of action that requires some level of government intervention is fundamentally at odds with their neo-liberal views.

Yet it is time that we started to recognise this alternative reality for what it is – an elaborate, illogical and implausible work of fiction.

Nicole Hodgson lectures in sustainability at Murdoch University

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A refugee's story: hard to tell

Updated July 1, 2011 09:23:00

Four months after he touched down in Australia, Clement Saidi says he's finally arrived.

'Up until now we've been in the ocean,' he told PM this week.

Not literally of course. What the Congolese refugee means is that his life here can now begin properly.

Last Friday he, his wife and their eight children moved to a new home in the New South Wales city of Newcastle.

The flight from Tanzania, where Clement and his family had spent 12 years in a refugee camp, should have meant an end to squalor.

Instead, the Humanitarian Resettlement Program provided them with what was effectively slum housing.

Theirs was among five homes found by an Ernst and Young report commissioned by the Immigration Minister Chris Bowen to be in a 'state of disrepair'.

One of these homes was deemed uninhabitable. There was 'no hot water, holes in the roof, window panes missing in a bedroom for children and wholly inadequate heating'.

I drove past what I was told was that house on a trip to Newcastle last week. A heavily pregnant woman was hanging up washing in the backyard. A teenage boy ambled home from school across the front lawn. A typical suburban scene on a mid-winter's afternoon. Except this was no average house. It hadn't seen a lick of paint in a long time, the outside walls were marked heavily by wear and tear. The roof didn't look to be in a good state of repair. It stood out in its ramshackle state. I didn't see the inside, but it wasn't hard to imagine how the report's authors might have reached the damning conclusion.

In a neighbouring suburb I found Clement, his wife and three of their children. My meeting with them was arranged by Sister Diana Santleben, a feisty refugee advocate. She's had a series of battles with Navitas, the company which holds the contract for refugee resettlement services in the Hunter region. She and the local MP Sharon Grierson have for years been raising concerns about the service provided, and now she says openly that she's on a mission to get the company out of the refugee housing business.

I was there to follow up on the recommendations in the Ernst and Young report. I wanted to meet for myself some of the people affected.

Simple, right? Apparently not.

Clement Saidi's story almost didn't make it to air.

After I interviewed him I called Navitas, whose subcontractor Resolve FM was until very recently responsible for accommodation services for refugees in the region.

The Ernst and Young report on the services they provided did not, in Chris Bowen's words, 'make for pretty reading'.

In addition to the inadequate housing, rents were often well above market rates and there were suggestions that refugees had been overcharged for repairs and utilities. The Department of Immigration was criticised too, for its management of the issues.

The Minister put the contractors and Departmental staff on notice, ordered a forensic audit of Resolve FM and a nationwide review of refugee resettlement services.

When I called Navitas the reaction was defensive. The company accused me of not having had consent from the refugee family to interview them. This was before they even knew which family we were talking about. They found out soon enough, by calling around all possible suspects. Navitas suggested Sister Diana had forced Clement Saidi into speaking to me. I replied that I had indeed obtained informed consent.

I clearly identified myself, did not misrepresent the ABC and informed Clement when the recording began and ended.

The company said it was very concerned about the fact that no interpreter was present at the interview. Clement's English is limited, but I was confident I would be able to use small sections of the interview to illustrate his story.

He talked of the long journey from Africa, the stopover in Perth, the late night arrival eventually in Newcastle.

He was tired, he said.

The plane had made him feel sick. He couldn't eat much.

The house he was brought to wasn't in a great condition.

It was dirty, things didn't work.

There was one ripped sofa for what was then a family of nine.

The backyard wasn't safe for young children to play.

If you're a regular listener to PM, AM or The World Today you'll know we often interview people with limited English. Depending on the story and situation we sometimes make a point of stating that we have no way of verifying their accounts, but we are confident we understand what they are trying to say, and will not misrepresent them. That's how it was with Clement Saidi.

I found myself getting a lecture from Navitas on what it meant to interview someone who has limited English.

The refugee may not have expressed himself correctly, the company said. It was important to treat these people with respect. Did I understand how his knowledge of English compared with mine? Refugees were vulnerable, the company said.

After I talked to Navitas, they talked to Sandi Logan. Mr Logan is the Immigration Department's spokesman. On that day he just happened to be engaged in a lively debate on Twitter with a number of journalists, including PM's Mark Colvin, about media access to asylum seekers in detention centres. It had been prompted in part by a move to raise from major to critical the level of threat considered posed when reporters try to gain unauthorised access to a detention centre.

That Twitter discussion eventually led 7:30's Leigh Sales, a former ABC Washington correspondent and author of a book on David Hicks, to write on The Drum that it was easier for a reporter to get into Guantanamo Bay than into an Australian asylum seeker detention centre.

My experience with Clement Saidi was increasingly beginning to suggest that the Immigration Department and its contractor see similar threat levels even when the media speaks to a refugee who is not in detention.

"Shd we be concerned?" Sandi Logan tweeted. "Journalist w nun i/views African refugee today. No informed consent provided. Refugee says journo 'was from department'."

This seemed to indicate that the Department was prepared to go public with an accusation solely on the word of Navitas, without asking the journo concerned - me.

Mark Colvin tweeted back to ask Logan if he'd checked this version of the events with the reporter. "We're emailing," Sandi Logan tweeted and promptly sent me an email.

In it, he gave a briefing on multicultural settings and expressed his concern about my treatment of Clement Saidi, because he said he was "responsible for our service providers' clients' well-being in their media interactions."

It was hard not to be sceptical. Where was the concern when these same people were languishing in appalling over-priced and over-crowded accommodation?

He referred to the debate he was having about access to detention centres.

Whatever you think of the rights and wrongs of that discussion, let's be clear.

Clement Saidi has been accepted as a refugee.

He's not an asylum seeker.

He belongs to a pygmy tribe, and fled a life of fear and persecution, in which close family members were abused and abducted, never to be seen again.

He's been granted protection under an international convention, to which Australia is a signatory.

His days of not being free to speak should have ended the moment he set foot in this country.

I decided in light of this chain of events to get back in touch with Clement Saidi. He said his case worker from the Navitas subcontractor Resolve FM had called him after I spoke to him. He said he became worried his English wasn't good enough.

I spoke to him again over the phone for the best part of an hour, this time via an interpreter.

He said pretty much what he'd told me in English.

At the end he took the phone and reiterated in English that it was his English knowledge that was his only concern. The situation, though, is the same, he said, 'The welcome in Australia was bad, the house was bad.'

As I said, Clement Saidi and his family have been moved to a new house now, apparently with a little help from community advocates.

The rent is not cheap, but cheaper. There's more room. It's in better condition. Life is looking a lot brighter. He's arrived. Clement Saidi laughs a lot. It's kind of infectious.

If all goes well it won't be too long before Clement becomes an assistant teacher for the deaf, the occupation he carried out in his previous life.

Refugees like Clement Saidi are people, with faces and voices - and opinions - of their own.

Isn't it time the Government - and the companies it pays handsomely to look after them - stopped trying quite so hard to stop us seeing and hearing them?

Barbara Miller is a reporter with ABC Radio Current Affairs and regular contributor to AM, The World Today and PM. Listen to her report on rehousing refugees on the PM website.

Tags: community-and-society, immigration, government-and-politics, federal-government, information-and-communication, journalism, refugees, australia

First posted June 30, 2011 15:31:00

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Can the cane: corporal punishment has no place in our schools

Unidentifiable kid in playground (File photo)

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Mike Stuchbery

Yesterday at lunchtime I loitered by the canteen - my yard duty beat - watching kids go about their business.

A group of girls played downball, while others studied for an end-of-term test at some tables in the winter sunshine. I got a chorus of 'Hi, Stuchy!' from a group of Year 9s wandering through my patch.

There was an air of joviality, a relaxed calm and respectfulness throughout. It was evident that everybody - myself included - was very happy and thankful to be there. For a moment, I entered into a little, quiet state of teacherly Nirvana. Somewhere, a spectral Mr Chips gave me the thumbs up.

You can imagine, then, how I felt when I came back to my desk to read the news that private Christian schools in Queensland, the Northern Territory and South Australia are still caning students. Reports of corporal punishment have come from Craigmore Christian School, Central Queensland Christian College and a South Australian school that has not been named.

How is it, that in the 21st century, the physical beating of children is still permitted in any school in Australia? Why do we allow teachers to bend a child over and strike them hard with a wooden or bamboo implement?

These punishments, the schools involved say, are part of a disciplinary policy that revolves around 'care', not intimidation. In some schools, these punishments are followed by prayer sessions. The schools also claim that they are widely supported by parents and the broader community.

Regardless of the justifications given, physically beating a child, for any transgression, is unacceptable. The use of a cane or a paddle takes the practice into barbarism. Creating wounds on the backside of a young person who has broken the rules isn't a deterrent, or a means of reinforcing standards, it is simple torture. If a child was to come to school with these wounds, a teacher would have to report it to Child Services.

Some may suggest that these punishments are only for the most severe infractions, that only those continually pushing the boundaries will receive them. It's my experience, however, that any punishment will be overused in the fullness of time. It's also my experience that those kids earmarked for severe punishments are exactly the kind of kids that require a guiding hand and careful mentoring. Not 10 strikes across the buttocks with a piece of cane.

The suggestions that these punishments are in any way 'Christian' are astonishing. Yes, I'm well aware of 'spare the rod, spoil the child' and such, but I also remember from Sunday School that some bloke called Jesus came along and established a new covenant, that was all about loving your neighbour and not raising your hands in anger. To suggest that beating a child is the Christian way of instilling respect and civility is complete nonsense.

I am staggered that state and federal governments can be a party to this kind of cruelty towards children. I consider it a stain upon the work educators do in this country to raise a generation of considerate, civil souls. I would urge parents and teachers across the nation to demand that their governments withdraw funding to these schools until the practices are banned and shelved forever.

We may fret about child asylum seekers being sent to Malaysia to be caned, but we should equally be aware of the despicable punishments being inflicted on children within our own borders.

Mike Stuchbery is a high school teacher, writer and occasional broadcaster living in Melbourne's western suburbs.

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The boring truth about Chomsky: he does not support Pol Pot

Noam Chomsky, 2010 (Khalil Mazraawi : AFP)

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Michael Brull

One does not have to agree with Chomsky to recognise his enormous influence and prestige throughout the world.

Virtually every political essay Chomsky has written since the '60s has included harsh attacks on the New York Times. Yet one could read in the NYT that:

Judged in terms of the power, range, novelty and influence of his thought, Noam Chomsky is arguably the most important intellectual alive.

Similarly, the Guardian noted that:

Chomsky ranks with Marx, Shakespeare and the Bible as one of the 10 most-quoted sources in the humanities - and is the only writer among them still alive.

After he was banned from visiting the country, liberal Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz editorialised that other than Israel:

It is hard to imagine any country that would not feel honoured to be visited by Chomsky.

Ha'aretz went on to call the ban "harmful folly", noting that:

"One does not have to be an ardent supporter of Chomsky in order to agree with his view that Israel is behaving like South Africa in the 1960s"

Keith Windschuttle – no admirer of Chomsky – notes that Chomsky "is today the doyen of the American and much of the world's intellectual left".

Chomsky began his life as a public intellectual with his trenchant essay, The Responsibility of Intellectuals. The most left-wing story permissible in mainstream political discourse in America is that because of overflowing benevolence, the US fought a war in Vietnam to protect its people from communist tyranny. However, because of some variety of blunders, it was unable to achieve this lofty goal, and perhaps committed some cruelties along the way.

Chomsky raised a different issue: that the US had no right to invade a country on the other side of the planet to install its own preferred puppet government, in defiance of the wishes of that country's population. In the leading journal of the American liberal intelligentsia, Chomsky basically accused America's liberal intelligentsia of moral bankruptcy.

In Chomsky's typical fashion, it was written in calm, rational manner, carefully documented, and was deeply revealing. It was politically courageous, and undoubtedly alienated the sober, serious-minded people who edit such journals, and who restrict themselves to the question of how countries like ours can most effectively crush resistance to American imperialism. The millions killed in the war, and the devastation of Cambodia and Laos were not considered moral questions, but tactical ones: American righteousness was presumed by right-thinking intellectuals.

Chomsky raised the fundamental moral question, and so, soon became unwelcome in mainstream American media. This exclusion from the Western media makes his continuing influence all the more remarkable.

As Chomsky is prevented from presenting his views, and refuses on principle to sue for defamation, it is easy to fabricate horrible charges against him, which have lingered for decades, despite easy refutation. As long ago as 1985, Christopher Hitchens went through the dull task of exposing the tedious and scurrilous lies that one finds circulating about Chomsky. The favourites of Chomsky's critics - who rarely show any sign of having read any of Chomsky's work - are that he ignored, downplayed or celebrated the atrocities of Pol Pot. The other is that he supported Robert Faurisson's Holocaust denial (the truth is simply that he supported the freedom of speech of a Holocaust denier).

The basic facts of the Cambodia issue are these: In June 1977, Chomsky and Edward Herman published a study in the Nation, in which they reviewed how scholarship and the mainstream media treated different reports of atrocities in Cambodia. One of the books they reviewed was in French, by Francois Ponchaud. They wrote that his "book is serious and worth reading, as distinct from much of the commentary it has elicited. He gives a grisly account of what refugees have reported to him about the barbarity of their treatment at the hands of the Khmer Rouge". However, they did find it was flawed in many ways. They go on to critique a review of this book by Jean Lacouture, which Lacouture agreed was full of errors. Lacouture response in the New York Review of Books included considerable praise of Chomsky:

Noam Chomsky's corrections have caused me great distress. By pointing out serious errors in citation, he calls into question not only my respect for texts and the truth, but also the cause I was trying to defend. ... I fully understand the concerns of Noam Chomsky, whose honesty and sense of freedom I admire immensely, in criticizing, with his admirable sense of exactitude, the accusations directed at the Cambodian regime.

Ponchaud, in the preface to the American version of the book (translated into English), wrote about the Lacouture review:

With the responsible attitude and precision of thought that are so characteristic of him, Noam Chomsky then embarked on a polemical exchange with Robert Silvers, Editor of the NYR, and with Jean Lacouture, leading to the publication by the latter of a rectification of his initial account.

It was dated September 20, 1977. The British version of the book - amazingly, contained a very different preface, dated for the same day. It began:

Even before this book was translated it was sharply criticised by Mr Noam Chomsky and Mr Gareth Porter. These two "experts" on Asia claim that I am mistakenly trying to convince people that Cambodia was drowned in a sea of blood after the departure of the last American diplomats. They say there have been no massacres, and they lay the blame for the tragedy of the Khmer people on the American bombings. They accuse me of being insufficiently critical in my approach to the refugees' accounts. For them, refugees are not a valid source…

Perhaps Ponchaud believed that the British version would escape their notice.

Let us consider the general tenor of Australian recapitulations of this. Robert Manne - in a 1979 essay for Quadrant, reprinted in Left, Right, Left, explained that Chomsky was part of a "campaign" to deny atrocities were taking place in Cambodia, instead atrocity stories could be explained "as deliberate fabrications of a corrupt and mendacious press in the service of the established order". To prove that Chomsky and Hermans' critique of Ponchaud's book was specious, Manne quoted from the British preface above, saying it "could not be bettered". Sadly, "the former supporters of Pol Pot" won't be "deflated by the fact that concerning their estimation of him and his odious regime they were wholly, shamefully and ludicrously wrong. Pol Pot has passed; Noam Chomsky, I fear, persisteth". In a 1982 follow-up essay, Manne again endorsed the preface which attacked Chomsky as "mild and utterly reasonable", expressing confusion as to why Chomsky and others regarded Ponchaud's attack in that preface as outrageous. Manne went on to claim that Chomsky does not "place any responsibility for mass murder on the ruling clique or cadres of the Cambodian Communist Party". Instead, "sole responsibility" for "the present suffering of the Cambodian people" belonged to the US. Remarkably, Manne wrote this in an article including Chomsky and Herman's comment: "a grisly account of what refugees have reported to him about the barbarity of their treatment at the hands of the Khmer Rouge". Internal consistency would undoubtedly have made the attack on Chomsky more difficult.

Though these polemics against Chomsky have been going on for decades, the intellectual and moral level of them has remained at about the standard set by Manne. Windschuttle, for example, explained that:

In 1975, Chomsky was the most prestigious and persistent Western apologist for the Pol Pot regime.

Presumably, he had the work above in mind: Windschuttle was presumably untroubled by the perhaps trivial fact that Chomsky didn't write anything on the subject until 1977. Funnily enough, Robert Manne later advanced the thesis – without any relevant quote – that Windschuttle was a "Pol Pot enthusiast". With good reason, Windschuttle regarded this as an outrageous slur.

Ben Naparstek, current editor of The Monthly, has also explained that "After Cambodia fell to the Khmer Rouge in 1975," Chomsky's "hatred of American foreign policy led him to write sympathetically about Pol Pot". Perhaps the most revealing thing about Australia's intelligentsia is how unremarkable such a casual remark is considered.

One might suggest that Chomsky's denunciation of much of the Western intelligentsia was never going to make him friends with, for example, what Miranda Devine has called "the vanity publication of a Melbourne property developer".

The latest issue of the Monthly carries an article by Nick Dyrenfurth on Chomsky. Characteristic of his style, Dyrenfurth wrote an article in 2009 with Dr Philip Mendes in which they claimed that an Australian call for an academic boycott on Israel "was directed at the victims of terror". That is, those who called for a boycott supported terrorism against the Israelis civilians blown up inside Israel.

With similar honesty Dyrenfurth sets out Chomsky's views and why they are terrible. Dyrenfurth gets even the most basic facts wrong (for example, attributing a quote to one essay which was actually written in a separate private letter). It is full of innuendos, such as speaking of "many Western leftists" who admire Trotsky, and describing Chomsky as Trotsky's "lineal successor", despite Chomsky's longstanding and well-known contempt for Lenin and Trotsky. Chomsky is also charged with the crime of meeting with Hezbollah (and allegedly issuing uncited praise for them: perhaps properly outrageous praise will be fabricated for the next attack). Unmentioned is the fact that Chomsky also met with Walid Jumblat, who at the time was fiercely anti-Hezbollah (Jumblat's politics swing wildly).

Perhaps one way of explaining the fury Chomsky evokes from the mildly progressive to the reactionary right, is his guiding moral philosophy. Chomsky applies the same moral standards to all atrocities and repression, but he focuses primarily on those for which his country is responsible, because he has the most power to stop them. In 1979, Herman and Chomsky published a two-volume study, The Political Economy of Human Rights. Their major case studies were East Timor and Cambodia. They documented at length that the media ignored evidence of atrocities committed by the West and its client states, whilst expressing enormous outrage at crimes of official enemies, fabricating evidence as needed to prove wrongdoing.

This is considered outrageous, because the respectable Western intelligentsia regards it as morally courageous and important to devote all their attention to denouncing the crimes of official enemies, and even fabricating evidence when needed for such purposes. At the same time, it is their duty to ignore or downplay crimes for which we are responsible, or share responsibility.

Almost 30 years later, Robert Manne wrote critically that:

The willingness of the Australian anticommunist camp to support, in one way or another, one of the great political crimes of the 20th century, the Indonesian mass murder of 1965-6, where approximately as many died as in the Armenian genocide of 1915 or in the Rwanda genocide of 1994 - has never before been discussed by anyone associated with the anticommunist camp. As readers of this exchange will see, Australian anticommunists supported one of the great crimes of the 20th century in a variety of ways - by turning a blind eye to the horror of what had occurred; by openly applauding the consequence of the crime; by failing to discuss the atrocity in an appropriate moral register; by supporting in words and deeds those who helped unleash the mass murder; by denying publicly that these people had been involved, and so on.

Anyone who reads Chomsky would find this very familiar: he has been writing about this for decades. Chomsky also was one of the leading campaigners against Indonesia's brutal occupation of East Timor, which resulted in the deaths of up to 183,000 people. This was almost a third of the population. The slaughter was given crucial military and diplomatic support by Australia and the US, among others.

One of Australia's leading experts on East Timor, Clinton Fernandes, reviewed Robert Manne's record on the issue whilst editor of Quadrant from 1989-1997. Having read "every issue of Quadrant during" these eight years, Fernandes commented on the "paucity of East Timorese voices": instead, space was extended to "a Perth lawyer and poet", Hal Colebatch, who had spent a few days in East Timor nearly 20 years before. Reviewing the handful of articles that addressed the issue, Fernandes concluded that:

Mr Manne railed against crimes that he had no ability to stop, while largely ignoring a privileged opportunity to struggle against crimes in which his government was complicit. This is morally comparable to a Soviet commissar denouncing racism in the USA while saying little about the USSR's support for tyranny in Eastern Europe. Perhaps the comparison is unfair... to the commissar, who had reason to fear for his physical wellbeing in a way that a Western intellectual did not.

This is contrasted with Chomsky's "prodigious and widely-read" speeches and publications "on this topic".

Naparstek, for the record, has claimed in 2008 that "by some accounts" the invasion and occupation "killed more than 100,000 civilians". Naparstek's remark was generally considered uninteresting and trivial, because grossly underestimating and casting doubt on the mass slaughter in East Timor isn't considered significant. Indeed, it was no obstacle to Naparstek becoming editor of the Monthly a few months later.

The lesson is instructive. Chomsky has consistently struggled against atrocities committed by his country and state terrorism by client states for decades. Chomsky has said that "the intellectual tradition is one of servility to power". It is this tradition which Chomsky has denounced repeatedly since his first essay about the Vietnam War. The herd of independent minds has not appreciated his exposure of their loyal service to Western power. However, there are some people who honour the work of a brave dissident and brilliant scholar. Surveying Chomsky's critics cannot begin to do justice to the sheer scope of Chomsky's activism, or the penetrating brilliance of his scholarship and his insight into international politics, Western democracy and the media.

It can simply suggest that Australia should give his writings a fairer hearing than they have received thus far from much of Australia's intelligentsia. Chomsky richly deserves the Sydney Peace Prize. Once again, I salute them for their excellent choice.

Michael Brull has a featured blog at Independent Australian Jewish Voices, and is involved in Stop The Intervention Collective Sydney (STICS).

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Conversations: Is Reith right?

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The Drum, in collaboration with The Conversation, a website that publishes commentary, research and analysis from Australian universities and the CSIRO, is publishing a series of stories interrogating statements made by public figures.

Today, the pressing need to reform industrial relations laws:

Julia Gillard's retrograde changes to workplace relations law are slowly burning our economy and in time the voices of embattled business will be heard across the country. - Peter Reith, The Age, June 28, 2011.

Here's what six academics made of Mr Reith's statement:

Zareh Ghazarian, Lecturer in politics at Monash University

While the Liberal Party is buoyed by strong opinion polls, it must still rise to the challenge of presenting a cohesive suite of policies to the electorate. Reith has just started the ball rolling, albeit in an indirect way. Read the full article here.

Rae Cooper, Senior lecturer at the University of Sydney

Whether you like it or not, Australia has a highly casualised (pay per hour) workforce, this remains largely untouched by the Fair Work system. Employees and employers are free to negotiate 'individual flexibility arrangements' within the collective bargaining system and while there are some protections, for example these arrangements are subject to no disadvantage tests, they can be made over a broad range of matters. 'Good faith' collective bargaining, which the Fair Work Act promotes, is flourishing. Read the full article here.

Carol Johnson, Professor of Politics at Adelaide University

Despite his own support for key aspects of the policy, Abbott described WorkChoices as 'a political mistake' in his post 2007 election book Battlelines. His challenge will be to placate the industrial relations hard liners in the Liberal party (who believe radical IR policies are essential for the Australian economy) while bringing in industrial relations changes that keep WorkChoices 'dead, buried and cremated' in the public mind. Read full article here.

Michael Rafferty, Senior research analyst at the University of Sydney

It seems that Reith is trying to carve out a space on the right of Tony Abbott on industrial relations. Abbott was a staunch supporter of the Liberal government's WorkChoices legislation, but the electoral defeat of the Liberal government sent a shock wave through even the right of the party.

Many Liberal parliamentarians do not want another costly debate over industrial relations. In any case, the Rudd and Gillard governments have only knocked the worst edges off WorkChoices in their equally euphemistically titled FairWork Act. Read the full article here.

Jeff Borland, Professor of Economics at Melbourne University

When it comes to improving living standards in Australia today, labour market reform is not a first-order issue.

Achieving better health and social outcomes for the Indigenous population - yes.? Increasing education attainment, particularly through early interventions targeted at children from disadvantaged backgrounds - yes.?

New infrastructure projects, tax reform, dealing with environmental degradation - yes.? But extra labour market reform - no. Read full article here.

Jill Murray, Associate Professor of Law at LaTrobe University

For every step in implementing its mandate to "rip up" Work Choices, the Government has hesitated and, in cases, quietly placed its foot back down on the ground....? Without the creation of very radical laws, in some areas it is difficult to see how the Coalition could outflank what the Government has done in this field. Read full article here.

The Conversation is a website that publishes commentary, research and analysis from Australian universities and the CSIRO.

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Time to hear, read, review and award the words of women

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Sophie Cunningham

Disinterest in women – the overlooking of them, the walking out of the room without noticing their exclusion, the disavowal of them, the occasional hatred of them – is a profound and deep problem.

It does not only affect women in publishing; it affects women in every industry, and women who work at home. Here are a few statistics quoted by Annie Lennox on International Women's Day this year:

Across the globe, gender-based violence causes more deaths and disabilities among women of childbearing age than cancer, malaria, traffic accidents and war combined. Even in the war-ravaged Democratic Republic of Congo, it's safer to be a soldier than a woman. Women do two-thirds of the world’s work for a paltry 10 per cent of the world’s income, and own just 1 per cent of the means of production. Until recently, in the British Parliament, there were more men called David and Nick than female MPs… Of the 1.3 billion people living in extreme poverty worldwide, the vast majority are female.

Closer to home – and, I concede, less life-threateningly – publishing is a predominantly female industry (62 per cent) yet most senior positions are held by men. That is, according to The Bloom Report in 2007, 68 per cent of men who work in the industry earn more than $100,000 as opposed to 32 per cent of the women.

The shortlist for the Miles Franklin Award in 2011 was announced after I'd first drafted this essay. It was an all-male one, just as it was in 2009. The question I had back in 2009 was whether the judges (Robert Dixon, Morag Fraser, Lesley McKay, Regina Sutton and Murray Waldren) were really suggesting that not a single one of the following female writers, who all had a book published in that year, deserved a shortlisting: Michelle de Kretser, Helen Garner, Amanda Lohrey, Joan London, Kate Grenville. And that's just to mention the women who didn't make the longlist. Several did, which meant, presumably, that the judges liked them. Those writers were Toni Jordan, Claire Thomas and Sofie Laguna. When announcing the list, Morag Fraser said she and her fellow judges had "walked out of our two-hour shortlist meeting without realising what we had done". She went on to say, "I’m sorry, you can draw no conclusions from it".

But I did draw conclusions. I drew them in 2009 and again in 2011. Women continue to be marginalised in our culture. Their words are deemed less interesting, less knowledgeable, less well-formed, less worldly and less worthy. The statistics are – in this humiliating and distressing matter – on my side. Since the Miles Franklin Award began in 1957, a woman has won 13 times. Four times this woman was Thea Astley, but twice she shared the award. Since 2001 two women have won, from the pool of 10 awards.

Let's do a brisk jog through the statistics for the winners of the fiction prize component of other major awards: the Queensland Premier's Prize has been won by a woman four out of 12 times, The Age Book of the Year Award 14 out of 36 times, the NSW Premier's Award 11 out of 31 times, the Victorian Premier's Award eight out of 26 times. In contrast, the WA Premier's Award has been awarded to women more often than men – eight out of 14 times. You can argue the toss about any given year; you can't argue with decades of systematic exclusion.

The gender differential in every area of the literary world is shocking. Surveys consistently find women read more books than men, especially fiction. As Ian McEwan once put it, "when women stop reading, the novel will be dead". But while men are buying around 20 per cent of the books, they are doing most of the reviewing of them, and the books they are reviewing are usually written by men.

The latest interrogation of these figures in Australia has been triggered by a survey undertaken by the American organisation VIDA: Women in the Literary Arts, which was set up "to explore critical and cultural perceptions of writing by women through meaningful conversation and the exchange of ideas among existing and emerging literary communities".

Readers may well be aware of those figures (taken from 2010) but here they are again: in The New York Times Book Review, 40 per cent of book reviewers were women and 35 per cent of books reviewed were by women writers; in The New Yorker, 22 per cent of book reviewers were women and 20 per cent of books reviewed were by women writers; in The Atlantic, 19 per cent of book reviewers were women and 23 per cent of books reviewed were by women writers; in Harpers, 18 per cent of book reviewers were women and 31 per cent of books reviewed were by women writers; in the London Review of Books, 22 per cent of book reviewers were women and 29 per cent of books reviewed were by women writers; in The Times Literary Supplement, 27 per cent of book reviewers were women and 24 per cent of books reviewed were by women writers; in The New York Review of Books, 16 per cent of book reviewers were women and 16 per cent of books reviewed were by women writers. And, just to throw another random figure into the mix, influential US trade magazine Publishers Weekly's list of Top 10 Books of 2009 was all-male. When their attention was drawn to this statistic, Publishers Weekly's response was uncannily close to that of the Miles Franklin judges: "We wanted the list to reflect what we thought were the top 10 books of the year with no other consideration... We ignored gender and genre and who had the buzz... It disturbed us when we were done that our list was all male."

Australian literary pages fare slightly (but not much) better. At The Age, between January 1 and May 22, 2011, of 344 reviewed books, 204 were authored or edited by men and 140 by women (41 per cent). Two hundred and thirteen of those reviews were written by men and 131 by women (38 per cent). At The Australian 180 of 265 books reviewed were authored or edited by men and only 79 of those reviews were written by women (30 per cent). Over at Australian Book Review, 364 books were reviewed in 2010. Two hundred and six of those books were authored by men and 158 by women (43 per cent). The numbers of reviewers was fairly even. At Australian Literary Review, the stats are more damning. From February 1 to May 2011, 43 books were reviewed: 35 authored or edited by men and only eight by women (18 per cent). Thirty-six of those reviewers were men and seven were women.

Literary journals tend to have more positive figures. Kill Your Darlings publishes more women (around 60 per cent) than men. Voiceworks, a magazine that publishes writers under 25, published 56 men and 77 women in 2010. That journal's editor, Johannes Jakob, also told me that Voiceworks read their submissions blind, with no idea of name, gender or geography.

Confidence is just one of the issues that work against women's full representation in our writing culture. Another issue is that it is harder for women's work to be considered literary or taken seriously. My experience, as both a publisher and a novelist, has been that when men write novels drawn from life, it is still considered a "proper" novel (as it should be), but that these qualities in a work are used to dismiss books by women. As well, women's books are often seen as generic (chick lit) when men's are not. So, for example, when Alex Miller writes a wonderfully romantic novel, such as Conditions of Faith (2000), it's seen as literary. But if a woman covers similar territory – longing, forbidden sex, exotic locations – this is called a "romance".

Bestselling writer Jodi Picoult recently raised this issue when she talked about the reception of Jonathan Franzen's novel Freedom compared to those of many female writers (though her argument is complicated by the fact that she is also discussing the dismissal of genre writing, and indeed, by the fact that Freedom is an extremely good novel). 'The NYT has long made it clear that they value literary fiction and disdain commercial fiction – and they disparage it regardless of race or gender of the author,' Picoult wrote in The Guardian in April 2010. "I'm not commenting on one specific critic or even on my own reviews (which are few and far between because I write commercial fiction). How else can the Times explain the fact that white male authors are ROUTINELY assigned reviews in both the Sunday review section AND the daily book review section (often both raves) while so many other writers go unnoticed by their critics?"

Picoult's point was underlined in, frankly, comic terms (in a "if you don’t laugh you'll cry" kind of way) when Jennifer Egan recently won America's National Book Circle Prize for her novel, A Visit From the Goon Squad, only for the Los Angeles Times to run a photo of Franzen because he had not won the prize. (In response to the vocal outrage, the newspaper has since changed the photograph accompanying the online version of the announcement.)

What to do? The problems are nebulous and not easily solved.

You can make it illegal for women to be beaten. You can make it illegal for them to be raped. But legislation can't force men – or indeed women – to find the style in which women write, and the things that they write about, gripping or important. It can't insist that women become more confident and assertive

We need to find ways to advocate for women's voices in the face of their ongoing marginalisation. We need to ignore the inevitable suggestion that to advocate in this way is tokenism.

A group of us – one that includes Louise Swinn, Monica Dux, Jenny Niven, Kerryn Goldsworthy, Aviva Tuffield, Rebecca Starford, Jo Case, Kirsten Tranter, Christine Gordon, Susan Johnson and myself – have decided to set up an organisation that we are calling, for now, A Prize of One's Own. One objective is to set up a prize that brings more readers to novels by Australian women, and respects and rewards the work of local women writers – much as the Orange Prize has done in the UK. We hope we can have the prize up by 2012, but it may be 2013. We're talking to sponsors. At this stage it's for just the one fiction prize – but that may change.

We don't accept the suggestion that women's writing is inferior. Instead of exercising howling restraint, we've chosen the path of joyful celebration, of action.

Sophie Cunningham has worked in publishing for 25 years. She is the author of two novels, Geography and Bird. Her non-fiction book Melbourne is due out in August.

A longer version of this essay appears in the current issue of Kill Your Darlings, a quarterly publication of commentary, interviews, reviews and fiction. It is published today.

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Blood on our hands through official policy

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Michelle Dimasi

As the plane takes off from Christmas Island, flying over the vast Indian Ocean, it is impossible to enjoy the vista.

Staring at the ocean, I think of the 340 asylum seekers who risked everything to cross this perilous sea in search of safety and freedom.

Recently, the Immigration Department permitted me to visit the asylum seekers whose arrival will be affected by the Malaysia refugee swap policy. Since the announcement, seven boats of asylum seekers have come.

Currently, 158 families, unaccompanied minors and women are detained in a low security facility called Construction Camp. Amongst them are unaccompanied children from Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. Some families are from Iran, Palestine and Afghanistan. Around five women arrived alone or with only their children. Adjacent to Construction Camp, 72 men are held in a detention centre called Phosphate Hill.

At North West Point maximum-security detention centre, 110 men are held in separation from the main detention community in Lilac compound one of the main protest sites during the March 2011 detention riots. Some buildings in Lilac are under repair while burnt buildings remain next door in Aqua compound. In Lilac, men are from Afghanistan, Burma, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iran and Syria. A Burmese unaccompanied minor is being held within the maximum-security facility with the adults as there is no-one who speaks his language in Construction Camp.

In most instances, asylum seekers have been satisfied with and grateful for the level of care provided by DIAC and Serco. I observed a Refugee Day BBQ picnic, a women's group at the local recreation centre and 22 children aged 6 to 13 attending the local island school while I was there.

However, I feel it necessary to tell these people's stories.

In the early stages of writing this article I was reluctant to use asylum seekers' names, though they have given me consent to do so. However, having been witness to the unnecessarily bureaucratic and dehumanising practice of referring to asylum seekers in detention by number rather than by name, I feel that it is necessary to do so. In an effort to put a human face on people who have become nameless, voiceless and unidentifiable, I have referred to the asylum seekers by their real name where appropriate. They are no longer numbers. They are real people.

They are Zahara, a Persian woman who is four months pregnant, who had no choice but to leave her partner to flee Iran and take the dangerous journey on her own; and Nazanin (name changed) a 27-year-old Iranian woman who, having been sexually assaulted by a powerful Iranian politician, was forced to flee her country where she could not seek justice. There is four-year-old Sina, whose wish is to ride his bicycle in Australia and go on more excursions outside Construction Camp to see the crabs that Christmas Island is host to. They are Ahmadi, who was forced to flee Afghanistan who regularly risked being persecuted by the Talban while working for the US Army in Kandahar. They are Reza and his sister Roya, who denounced the government by publicly stating that true democracy and fair elections were non-existent in Iran, an act that puts them both at risk of political persecution.

The asylum seekers requested I share these stories. They are not only refugees, they are well-educated and hard working people. They believe in freedom, democracy and equality like most of us. They make a plea to Australia to let them stay and not send them to Malaysia, a country they say "does not care about refugees". They maintain they knew nothing of this new policy and were unfamiliar with the "new rules". Some of the asylum seekers have written a letter to the Prime Minister describing their professions; they are adamant that their skills will be put to good use in Australia. They have not come here for economic reasons; the decision to leave their lives, loved ones, and homes was not one of choice, but of necessity. However, they want to assure Australia that they will contribute to this nation.

After saying goodbye to the asylum seekers, I took the weekly Christmas Island to Kuala Lumpur flight. As Kuala Lumpur neared, I considered the asylum seekers' statement: "Malaysia does not care about refugees". They are correct. Malaysia is not a signatory to the Refugee Convention and has a poor human rights record. There are over 90, 000 refugees in Malaysia who risk being subjected to punitive measures such as caning and detention. Around 1,300 people died in Malaysian detention centres from 2002 to 2008. Families are separated in detention centres with the men in one centre and women and children in another. Asylum seekers that Australia will return to Malaysia will have no working rights. Many will be forced to support themselves through what the Immigration Minister himself called "informal work;" illegal work which possibly translates to exploitation and modern day slavery.

My flight was rocky and not because of the turbulence. Moments were spent crying in the plane bathroom as mental images surfaced of the forcible removal of these innocent people, possibly hand-cuffed and pushed on to a plane, flying this route to be left in squalid conditions in Malaysia. This could be Nazanin and pregnant Zahara in weeks to come.

Malaysia is no place for these women who have come here alone, where reports of sexual harassment in Malaysian detention centres are common. Or it could be young Sina who risks being malnourished, where detainees receive half a cup of water a day and no vegetables with their meals. This could also be Ahmadi, who said, "We had hope when we came to Australia… If they want to send us to Malaysia I will ask to be returned to Afghanistan instead. While this would ultimately be suicide, it would mean that I would get to see my family one more time before my death".

My tears were not just for the asylum seekers. They were for what Australia has become. As an Australian, I am ashamed that my government thinks sending highly vulnerable people to Malaysia is acceptable in the name of politics.

As human beings, we have a moral responsibility to look out for one another. Compassion is what makes us human. As a nation, we can afford to be compassionate to asylum seekers who need our help and protection. What we cannot afford as human beings is to send refugees to traumatic and punitive conditions in Malaysia. If we do, it will be blood on our hands.

Michelle Dimasi is the founding director of Asylum Seekers Christmas Island.

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