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Make Politics Boring Again Andrew P Street
The Byron Shire Echo Volume 35 #32 • January 20, 2021
Australia fails on human rights Australia’s failing response to Indigenous Australians, refugees and the treatment of whistleblowers who alert the public to government corruption was once again highlighted in this year’s Human Rights Watch World Report 2021. The continuing failure of the Australian government and people to respect and improve the lives of Indigenous Australians was highlighted on multiple fronts. Indigenous Australians make up 29 per cent of Australia’s adult prison population, but just three per cent of the population. The Report highlighted the impact of laws such as jailing Indigenous people for unpaid fines and the high level of preventable deaths in custody as key issues across the country. In particular, the April 2020 finding by a Victorian coroner who ‘found the 2017 death of Aboriginal woman Tanya Day “clearly preventable� and that “unconscious bias� was a factor in her being reported to police and arrested’. This unconscious bias against First Nations People was also demonstrated in the healthcare system and highlighted by the death of a 6-year-old Indigenous Australian boy who died owing to ‘inadequate’ treatment in 2017. The unconscionable destruction and desecration of Indigenous sites was also demonstrated by the actions of Rio Tinto when they blew up a 46,000-year-old Aboriginal site in Western Australia in May 2020. Not only has the Australian government now marked seven years in holding legitimate refugees in offshore processing facilities but they have also actively blocked offers from the New Zealand government for their resettlement outside Australia. ‘At least 12 refugees and asylum seekers have died in Australia’s offshore processing system since 2013, six of them suicides’, according to the Report.
This leaves about 290 refugees and asylum seekers in Papua New Guinea and Nauru and at least another 1,200 in limbo who were transferred to Australia for medical and other reasons. A bill that would grant detention staff the right to seize phones and give detention officers ‘new search and seize powers without the need of a warrant’ is currently pending in the upper house. The ongoing efforts of the government to cover up their own corrupt actions was again highlighted by the government’s willingness to reduce freedom of expression and lack of protection for whistleblowers. Barrister and former ACT attorneygeneral Bernard Collaery and ‘Witness K’ currently face the risk of jail after they exposed the Australian government’s bugging of the TimorLeste government’s offices in an attempt to gain a trade advantage. Federal attorney-general Christian Porter ‘has invoked powers under the National Security Information Act’ to hold parts of the trial in secret to prevent full public accountability of the government’s actions. The report also examined issues on the rights of older people, people with disabilities, children’s rights, foreign policy, and the government’s lack of action to call out human rights violations in a range of countries. It also points out that Australia continues to export ‘military equipment to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, despite grave concerns about alleged war crimes by the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen’. Find out more about the actions your government is taking on your behalf at: www.hrw.org/worldreport/2021/country-chapters/ australia. Aslan Shand, acting editor News tips are welcome: editor@echo.net.au
T
he new year is still looking awfully like 2020 Part II: The Suckening I hate to be the bearer of less than Pollyanna-level optimism, but it’s fair to say that the first few weeks of 2021 have not manifested the worldwide system reboot that so many of us were fervently hoping for as the final fireworks faded over Sydney Harbour. The global cases, and deaths, from the COVID-19 pandemic are on the rise, and the fitful rollout of the first batches of vaccine is already creating new classes of crony healthcare in countries as diverse as India, Russia and the US where the wealthy get jabbed and frontline medical workers are fashioning masks out of garbage bags. The ineptly handled conclusion of Brexit has ruined UK-Europe supply chains at a time when frictionless movement of goods and services – especially, say, medical ones – might be especially handy. But most notably, we had barely slept off our 2020 hangovers when the world almost got to see an urexample of modern representative democracy collapse as the United States’ four year flirtation with fascism-lite was almost clumsily consummated by an invasion of the Capitol building by a mob who didn’t seem to have any demands or plans beyond Making Democracy White Again. Five people lost their lives, senators had their offices trashed, and Jamiroquai found himself unexpectedly trending on Twitter. In short: 2021 isn’t distinguishing itself from its sibling nearly enough. And there are a lot of think pieces about the likely future of the US under Joe Biden, whether Trumpism will endure, how his love of spreading dangerous fictions has already affected Australia, and so on – although lately that’s been subsumed into an argument that basically runs; ‘government MPs deliberately lying about medical treatments is an important and valuable contribution to the public discourse and must not be censured, much less actually censored, because freedom of speech’. Didn’t we do this with Safe Schools a few years ago? You know, when MPs
When people are scared, and when the future is uncertain, it’s incredibly easy to make them believe things which are objectively ridiculous were lying about an optional online learning module so teachers might recognise the bullying of LGBTIQ+ kids by describing it as classes training children in dildo usage? Anyway, in these articles there’s a common undercurrent of how governments can regain public trust and‌ no, seriously: didn’t we do this with Safe Schools a few years ago? It’s not limited to Australia or the US. There’s been a steady downgrading of faith in governments over the last couple of decades all over the world. And even once Trump is blessedly out of power and facing impatient creditors in a series of courtrooms, the angry – his angry, violent, conspiratorial legacy – will remain. But diminished trust in our democracy can be overcome – and what’s more, the way to get there is simple, although far from easy. And it is this: Govern well. That’s really difficult, true. After all, no one thanks you for being accountable and, say, resigning en masse because you mistakenly pursued welfare recipients for money they didn’t actually owe – as just happened in the Netherlands, and notably didn’t happen in Australia Also, governing for one’s allies is a doddle. You give your supporters plum positions the courts or the Administrative Affairs Tribunal, you punish those who defy you by, say, withholding infrastructure funding to their electorate, or favouring certain sports clubs for upgrades, or by mysteriously mislaying $7 million in emergency arts funding and refusing to explain how. And every obviously partisan decision erodes our general trust in government that little bit more, and society becomes a little less stable as more people feel they’re being excluded from it. The challenge for Joe Biden, and for any other leader of a democratic
nation wracked with fear and anger, is to show what his incoming government can do for its people, especially in a time of crisis. Because the one thing that unites Trump’s followers in the US, and with their fellow travellers around the world, is that they’re aggrieved. They’re missing out on the aspirational life they’re being told they can achieve – that they’ll get a go if they have a go, you might say. And instead of concluding that they’re being lied to by people in power they instead conclude that they’re being denied the lives they deserve by other means – immigrants, or academics, or the media, or LGBTIQ+ folks, or whatever scapegoat is being offered up. When people are scared, and when the future is uncertain, it’s incredibly easy to make them believe things which are objectively ridiculous – like, for example, that the Democrats successfully faked millions of ballots to give to Joe Biden the presidency in such a way which also lost nine House seats and failed to gain a Senate majority, for some reason. If governments continue to use their power to divide, by rewarding their cronies and punishing those they deem unworthy, we can guarantee a future of violently angry people seeking simple answers to difficult and complex questions. On the other hand, it’s possible to turn it around if politicians are brave enough to do their jobs. And just imagine how refreshing it would be for our leaders to try swapping ‘colourful and inflammatory’ for ‘dull and competent’? C’mon, 2021: Make Politics Boring Again! Q Andrew P Street is a Sydneybased, Adelaide-built journalist, columnist, author, editor and broadcaster. For more info, visit www.patreon.com/andrewpstreet.
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