Category Archives: john howard is a fool

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This article is old but since David Hicks is still in Guantanamo I think it’s worth posting. It’s also a fantastic example of the power of the arts.
“In June an open letter to the Prime Minister, signed by 76 of Australia’s top legal minds (including four former Supreme and Federal Court judges), urged Mr Howard to take immediate action on Hicks’ behalf to secure his rights under international law.
He is an Australian citizen and as such it was the Australian Government’s duty to protect his rights; his incarceration was illegal, they argued; and Hicks, whether innocent or guilty, at least deserved a fair trial. The Australian Government’s refusal to act, they said, has profound implications for the nation.
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Even the British Attorney-General, Lord Goldsmith, whose own government is an active participant in the war on terrorism, condemned the goings-on at Guantanamo, describing its procedures as “unacceptable” and calling for its closure.
To all of this Prime Minister John Howard, speaking on our behalf, responded: “We make up our own minds about these things.”
Theatre director Nigel Jamieson has also made up his mind on certain things. One of them is that what is happening to David Hicks at Guantanamo is unconscionable – whether he is innocent or guilty.
“If he were an axe murderer he would have rights,” Jamieson says. “He would have a lawyer, he’d be free from physical and psychological abuse. David Hicks, as an Australian citizen, has rights. That’s the first thing. But the second thing is that this is a country that defines itself by the belief in things like trial by jury, innocence until proved guilty, the Geneva conventions, the Declaration of Human Rights, those incredibly important documents. We were part of forming and forging these documents.
“These were things we thought incredibly important, the things we thought to be the bedrock of our civilisation and which defined our system,” Jamieson says.
“What troubled me about the whole Hicks thing was that if we were going to accept a system which threw away a lot of those things, got rid of those safeguards, surely we owed it to ourselves and to the country to have a look at what that means.
“Not to have a look, not to have a debate, but just to quietly acquiesce, that really seemed shocking to me.”
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“My imagination is primarily a visual one,” he says, “and when the project was first put to me, I was left with a strong image in my head of this human figure spinning and turning in a void.””
Doing the Guantanamo shuffle – it’s really worth reading the rest of the article.

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More of me thinking about Australian identity. I don’t know if this writer is just an optimist or whether there is still hope for Australia.
“Perhaps it’s a reflection of the more dangerous international climate in which we live, but in the political and media arenas particularly, there seems a growing insecurity that not being able to narrow the essence of the national psyche down to a particular object or symbol makes us somehow less of a nation.
I beg to differ. One of the things I’ve always felt proudest of about living in this country is the very fact our character can’t be so easily typecast.
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We don’t need another posturing, po-faced portrait of a popular figure cloaked in the national flag to tug at our heartstrings. That’s likely to make as many of us roll our eyes and cringe not just a little as feel our chests swell with pride.
Some would argue that’s unpatriotic. But that mild sense of cynicism, or what I’d prefer to call perspective, is a healthy Australian trait.
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The love of a good, hard tussle, played in the right spirit, by men and women who get the job done without the need for boorish, egocentric self-promotion — that’s Australian. So is the team ethic, the love of the underdog, and the belief that enduring the hard times with grace makes the triumphs all the sweeter.” Blind barracking for the Aussie is not our way
Not being a sports fan, I can’t say how much the last paragraph is true, but I suspect those are exactly the values politicians are currently trying to undermine or co-opt.

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The BBC’s perspective: Controversies cloud Australia Day.
“In past elections, Prime Minister John Howard has proved himself particularly adept at exploiting voter fears about the threat to Australian identity from asylum seekers and new immigrants.
This year, a rejuvenated Labor Party, under its new leader Kevin Rudd, is determined not to be outflanked.
In condemning the organisers’ decision, Mr Rudd was wrapping himself just as tightly in the flag as Mr Howard.”
Just lovely. The two major parties are building their platforms on xenophobia.
I’d like to propose that being unAustralian is the new Australian:
“Prime Minister John Howard regularly touts his ideas for a so-called “Aussie test” for new immigrants hoping to become citizens – an examination both of historical knowledge and Australian values, like “mateship” and fair play.
In announcing a major cabinet reshuffle this week, he also renamed the Ministry of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs.
Quite deliberately, he dropped the reference to multiculturalism and replaced it with “citizenship”. ”
John Howard wouldn’t know mateship if it shouted him a beer in the pub.
And this is equally hilarious and scary:
“Speaking on Egyptian television, Sheikh Hilali said that Muslims had a much greater right to be in Australia than whites.
“Anglo Saxons came to Australia in chains,” he told the chat show Cairo Today, “while we paid our way and came in freedom. We are more Australian than them. Australia is not an Anglo-Saxon country – Islam has deep roots in Australian soil that were there before the English arrived.””
I’ll be sure to tell my Irish ancestors that they’re due a refund because they shouldn’t have paid their way to Australia.

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Big Day Out bans national flag

“The Australian flag has been banned by the organisers of a major Sydney rock music festival, who fear it may be used as a symbol of hate.
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The event tours six cities in Australia and New Zealand but the ban will only affect Sydney, where the festival has been shifted to the day before its usual Australia Day date to avoid nationalistic overtones.
Last year in Sydney, festival-goers were intimidated by music fans brandishing flags and demanding people pledge their allegiance.
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Event organiser Ken West said the fans’ behaviour last year in the wake of the Cronulla riots and the recent ethnic violence at the Australian Open tennis tournament had forced his hand.
“The Australian flag was being used as gang colours. It was racism disguised as patriotism and I’m not going to tolerate it.”” Age
What’s happening to Australia? I really don’t get it. Were these people always there and I just didn’t notice, or can things change so much in only a few years?

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“Late last year, I shared a podium at the NSW Parliament House with a radical cleric for the first time. That religious leader refused outright to condemn a terrorist organisation responsible for more suicide bombings than any terror outfit on earth. The cleric called on his religious group to take over politics in Australia. He also asked his congregation to pray for the houses of worship of other faiths to be pulled down.
But far from being condemned or threatened with prosecution, The Age reported yesterday that this cleric and his group are to receive a special video message from the Prime Minister.” The Age
Ok, I’ll stop now.

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Secondly, the cover of a report from the Australian Liberal Party about the ‘Achievements’ of the Coalition Government since 1996.
The title, ‘Strong Direction, Mainstream Values’, sends a chill through my heart. Isn’t a democratic government meant to represent all citizens of its country? In the case of modern Australia I won’t waste anyone’s time by suggesting the government should represent everyone resident in Australia because we all know that won’t happen.
As Kirsty says, “Check the white faces on the front page. I can’t believe it.”
And further, look at the gender roles represented. What do women do? Have kids and work as hairdressers. What to men do? Manly stuff! Business! Welding! Work in the outdoors. Oh, and breed. Because we need more White Australians.
Mainstream values
John Pilger, writing in The Guardian, Cruelty and xenophobia stir and shame the lucky country:
“Australia is not often news, cricket and bushfires aside. That is a pity, because the regression of this social democracy into a state of fabricated fear and xenophobia is an object lesson for all societies claiming to be free.”
“Flag-waving and an unctuous hand-on-heart jingoism, about which sceptical Australians once felt a healthy ambivalence, are now standard features at sporting and other public events.” That’s incredibly depressing if it’s true. Australians used to mock Americans for exactly that kind of thing.
I’d like to be cheered by the final paragraph but the truth of the first sentence is too strong for me to ignore: “Howard faces no real opposition from the compliant Labor party.”
“During the recent Ashes series, Ian Chappell, one of Australia’s most admired cricket captains, walked out of the commentary box when Howard walked in. After seeing for himself conditions in a refugee prison, Chappell said: “These are human beings and you can’t just treat them like that … in cricketing parlance it was like cheating. They were being cheated out of a fair go.””
Thanks to Kirsty, Grant and KD for the Howard tip-offs today.

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Why I won’t live in Australia while Howard is in power

To add to the “reasons I’m never going back to Australia while John Howard is in power” pile:
“Prime Minister John Howard has defended his decision to record a goodwill message for an Australia Day prayer event organised by a controversial group involved in an anti-Islamic court case.”
According to Howard, “Christianity has been an enormous force for good and has done more than anything else to shape the lives, not only of millions of Australians, but the character of our nation.”
Every time I start to comment on that my blood pressure rises, so for the sake of my own health I won’t – there is so much wrong with that statement I’d be dead by the end of the sentence.
So let me close with this quote:
“Member of the prime minister’s Muslim Community Reference Group and former president of the Islamic Council of Victoria, Yasser Soliman, said Mr Howard should have thought twice about making the DVD.
“Of course the prime minister is free to address anyone he chooses,” Mr Soliman told AAP.
“But what he says is extremely influential and what he fails to say is also influential.
“I would hope that he would clearly condemn hate speeches in all their forms irrespective of who the perpetrators are.
“It could be perceived that he might have a different standard for some sectors of the community than he has for other sectors in the Australian community, and that would be sending a very dangerous message here and overseas.””
The Age
In the interests of fairness, I look forward to John Howard’s goodwill messages for Australia’s LGBT communities at Midsumma and Mardi Gras.

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In an article titled “What value our passport?” I came across this:
“Instead of a guarantee of support, [the passports] value lies in the strength and good sense of the government of the day, he said. Australia was the only Western country not to have enshrined the rights and obligations of its people in a legal charter, he said.
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“But when that system breaks down, particularly in a climate of fear, goodwill and good sense tends to go out the window and opportunism and other issues come to the fore.”
Law Council of Australia president Tim Bugg said a bill of rights had not seemed necessary until the war on terror, which saw the commitment to due process discarded. “We ought not need to have a bill of rights, but I think we now have to look at having one,” Mr Bugg said.
“The Australian passport means nothing if political considerations are involved.””

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I was sent this ages ago but never got around to blogging it. I don’t agree with it all but it does raise some good points about opportunities that just aren’t available in Australia. Personally one of the main reasons I left was that I couldn’t face life under a Howard government and because I wanted to travel, but I can’t imagine going back anytime soon.
“In this extract from his new book, Ryan Heath, author of Please Just F* Off, It’s Our Turn Now, writes about the generation of young Australians who live overseas – why they leave and why they really hope to come back and what it means if they don’t.” Ful article in The Age