Category: Oz Politics

Mulrunji, again

John Quiggin19 Comments

It appears that neither criminal charges nor any kind of misconduct proceedings will arise from the death of an innocent man, Mulrunji, from injuries received in custody at Palm Island. What’s even worse, is that the Director of Public Prosecutions chose, not merely to state that there was insufficient evidence to proceed to trial, but to make a positive finding of accidental death, contrary to the findings of the Coroner on the same evidence. The Courier-Mail reported the decision as “overturning the findings of a two-year coronial inquest”.

As far as I can tell, the DPP has no power to do anything of the kind. Certainly, I can’t recall anything like this announcement in the past. Maybe someone with more legal background can clarify this. But even if the DPP hasn’t exceeded her powers, the statement was ill-advised and inflammatory.

As Noel Pearson points out, this isn’t the first dubious decision made by Leanne Clare, and something of a pattern seems to be emerging. If you’re on the outer with the establishment (Pauline Hanson, Di Fingleton) dubious charges will be pursued to the limit. But if you’re on the inside, things are very different. The government and the Police Force have mishandled this case from day one, and it’s unsurprising the the victim’s family feel that they have been railroaded.

And I agree with Federal Minister Mal Brough. We need a public inquiry into the whole tragic business, including the government’s handling of it.

Blair concedes defeat

John Quiggin38 Comments

Tim Blair quotes a statement I and others wrote in 1996, criticising expenditure cuts, and saying in part

More attention needs to be given to the role of government expenditure on repairing the nation’s rundown infrastructure, creating jobs and fostering industry and regional development. If necessary, increased taxation and other revenue options should be under consideration. Savage expenditure cuts are economically irresponsible and socially damaging.

As Blair points out^, this is an argument that has now been pretty generally accepted. Most of the cuts we were criticising have been reversed (not without doing damage along the way). Infrastructure spending is now a high priority for governments. Without getting into sterile arguments about whether or not the current Federal government is the highest taxing in Australian history, it’s clear that the idea of radical cuts in public expenditure and taxation, which Blair has long advocated, is politically defunct in Australia.

The case was well stated by one of our political leaders in 2004, when he observed

There is a desire on the part of the community for an investment in infrastructure and human resources and I think there has been a shift in attitude in the community on this, even among the most ardent economic rationalists.

He could just about have been quoting our words from 1996.

As I noted at the time

A new bipartisan consensus has emerged, in favor of the social-democratic policies that have, until recently, been derisively described as ‘tax and spend’.

The only surprise is that it has taken Blair so long to wake up to the fact that he’s on the losing side of this debate.

^ With yet another kind reference to my success in winning a Federation Fellowship.

Petition against the death penalty for Scott Rush and others

John Quiggin

I’ve attached a copy of a petition I’ve signed opposing the imposition of the death penalty on Scott Rush and others of the “Bali Nine”. Apart from general issues concerning the death penalty, I agree with the petition’s view that the actions of the Australian Federal Police in this matter have been deplorable. Although the primary offence being committed was against Australia, and the AFP was in a position to arrest Rush and others on their arrival in Australia, they chose to hand them over to the Indonesian police instead. As noted in Rush’s case, the police ignored an approach from his parents to prevent his committing the crimes.
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Rudd and Gillard to win

John Quiggin42 Comments

I’m backing Rudd and Gillard to win in Monday’s leadership ballot both in the sense that I think they will win and in the sense that I think they should win.

The remorseless logic of leadership challenges is such as to guarantee the defeat of the incumbent in most cases. By the time there are enough people discontented enough to call on a challenge, the possibility of a convincing win for the incumbent has just about vanished. And anything less leaves them mortally wounded, while the challenger is encouraged to wait for another go.

In this case, Labor can’t afford a mortally wounded leader and there’s no time for a second round. So the logic is that those who are concerned about a win have to vote for the challengers.

As regards the substantive choice, I backed Rudd in 2003 and again in 2005. Since then I’ve only given up more on Beazley. Like lots of others apparently, I turn off as soon as he starts talking, even if I agree with what he’s saying at the time. On the other hand, Rudd has put in a solid performance, and shows some actual signs of thought.

The case for a change is even stronger when you consider the tickets as a whole. Macklin has been invisible as deputy leader (not always a defect in a deputy, but a disaster when the leader is as inchoate as Beazley). Gillard usually has something to say, and can attract attention when she says it.

I don’t know how this will run electorally, but I don’t see any reason Labor should suffer much damage from a change, assuming the losers retire gracefully.

Cole concludes

John Quiggin37 Comments

The Cole Commission has finally reported, and I can take some comfort from the fact that my predictions at the start have been borne out almost entirely.* No conclusive proof of government wrongdoing has emerged, no minister has resigned, and the government’s defenders have had no trouble squaring their denunciations of Saddam with the fact that we were financing his rearmament program up to the day the war began.

Only the last of these points really mattered, since it called into question the whole rationale for our participation in the war, and the good faith of those who urged. But now that the war is almost universally recognised as a disaster, this probably no longer matters. Even for those who justified the whole deal on the basis of commercial self-interest, it should be clear by now that we have lost any positive standing we had in the world wheat market and that the US will be able to lock us out of many markets we might otherwise have competed in with success.

For those who want more, though, occasional commenter Stepehn Bartos has produced a book called “Against the Grain – The AWB Scandal and why it happened”. It is published by UNSW Press in their briefings series, can be ordered online at http://www.unireps.com.au. He says

The book goes beyond the Cole Inquiry concerns of who did what when, and instead looks at the underlying causes of the scandal including inadequate due diligence at the time of AWB privatisation in 1999, poor design of regulatory supervision, and most importantly, the fact that Ministers and AWB officials were all part of the same small, closed circle and not inclined to ask questions even when information alerting the government to the possibility of the kickbacks started to come out.

It sounds like a substantial effort, given the short time, but of course many of the fundamental issues have been familiar from previous episode.

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Precognition

John Quiggin35 Comments

Faced with documentary evidence that the Australian Ambassador to the UN, John Dauth, told AWB chairman Trevor Flugge of the Iraq invasion a year in advance, correctly observing that even if weapons inspectors were readmitted this would only produce a brief delay, DFAT’s response is to say that it was just a lucky guess. This line has been swallowed with enthusiasm by JF Beck and, in comments here, by Currency Lad.

If this is an example of Dauth’s unaided powers of prediction, it’s a pity no-one asked him what would happen after the invasion.

Gaffes

John Quiggin18 Comments

In ordinary life, we know that the word “gaffe” means an inconvenient truth. If your SO asks “does this make me look fat” or “can I get away with a combover” the true answer is almost certainly a gaffe (if not, they wouldn’t have asked).

In politics, some avoidance of inconvenient truths is inevitable for much the same reasons. Ambitious upstarts have to say somethng along the lines of “I love and respect our leader” and patient leaders have to say “Colleague X is doing a great job” until the day the knife or axe is ready for use. In matters of this kind, no-one expects truthfulness.

But, as used by the MSM, the term “gaffe” means inconvenient speaking of the truth about policy questions. the latest instance is the statement by Queensland Liberal leader Bruce Flegg that recycled water is safe, and that, given the uncertainty of future rainfall, there is little choice but to go for recycling.

The first statement is supported by overwhelming evidence, and the second by any reasoned assessment of the situation. But because the Nationals are bidding for the support of the large segment of the public with irrational fears on the topic, and Labor is ducking the issue with proposals for a referendum, Flegg’s statment of the plain truth is a gaffe.

Sleaze

John Quiggin22 Comments

With a string of financial and sexual scandals affecting State Labor governments, and “corruption” being listed as one of the factors contributing to the Republicans defeat in the US, it’s worth thinking about whether issues of this kind are ephemeral events, making the headlines and then disappearing, or whether they have longer-term implications. It’s possible to point to examples going both ways. The British Conservatives acquired a reputation for sleaze in the declining years of the Thatcher-Major governments, and it took them at least a decade to recover, even up against a government that is scarcely an exemplar of probity. On the other hand, the Howard government hasn’t suffered much from a string of scandals, of which AWB is just the most recent.

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