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Tuesday, 10th February 1998
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Day
by day reports on the Constitutional Conventional reports by Peter
Mackay
Our "I'm so sorry Pauline" web page covered by Australian Associated Press.
Yesterday I received a number of phone calls from radio stations who wanted to talk to me about the new "I'm so sorry Pauline" web page. They included a radio station in New South Wales (TUE) and a radio station in South Australia (5) Apparently the page was covered in the news wire yesterday afternoon.
The Courier Mail carried this short piece on their letters page today:
Saying sorry to One Victim:
Brisbane's Jim Soorley has started a trend with his "sorry" event last weekend. Now the One Nation people are muscling in on the apology business.
While 4,000 people fronted up to Lord Mayor Jim Soorley's official apology to Aborigines for the "stolen children", a Pauline Hanson sorry page on the Internet had attracted just two messages of regret (which had been up for just twelve hours and now has several more messages of regret).
According to Australian Associated Press, Karana Downs One nation fan Scott Balson has launched a Pauline sorry page on the Web to provide Australians an opportunity to say "I'm so sorry" for the mistreatment the Ipswich politician has suffered at the hands of the media and other polls.
"Now it is time for good Australians to say 'I'm sorry' to Australia's beacon of hope in a corrupt political system gone wrong," says Balson in his Web page preamble.
Organisations making apologies necessary include media organisations News Limited, Kerry Packer's PBL and the ABC's Triple J radio network as well as the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission, he says.
The web page was also featured nationwide on Channel 10 News last night.
Remember to sign the Pauline Hanson sorry book...
Divisive Aboriginal elder Mick Dodson raises the anti again.
Now Pauline Hanson, according to Dodson, is supposed to be no worse than that violence seeking black American Islamic leader Louis Farrakhan who wants to stir up trouble, like Lorenzo Ervin did last year, in Australia.
Dodson said that he believed that Australia was "mature enough" to deal with Farrakhan's proposed speaking tour. He says that he should be heard "just as the Member for Oxley... and the RSL have the right to free speech."
His comments have outraged the Jewish community who say that the invitation to the black terrorist to visit Australia by Dodson and Charlie Perkins later this week will damage the growing friendship between Jewish people and the Aborigines.
Yesterday Immigration and Multicultural Affairs minister Philip Ruddock confirmed that Farrakhan had not, as yet, made a visa application to enter Australia.
The black terrorist is believed to be travelling to Australia from Indonesia as part of a "friendship" tour. New South Wales Reconciliation Committee Chairwoman, Linda Burney, distanced herself from Dodson and Perkins saying that Mr Farrakhan should be banned from entering Australia.
"Mr Farrakhan sounds like a throw back of the 1970s," Burney said. "We are working very hard to bring about reconciliation... and pitting whites against blacks is totally against what we are trying to achieve."
Irag to wage chemical warfare against Australia?
If we are to believe Prime Minister John Howard Iraq could wage a chemical war against us half way across the world.
It's the sort of stuff that fairy floss and pixies have made famous. His comments are of course nothing more than a warm up for today's cabinet meeting at which Australia's involvement alongside the US in bashing Iraq will be justified.
Latest reports suggest that the US have given Iraq until the 17th February to comply with their demands that their inspectors check out the President's palaces for chemical weapons. If they don't they will face a military attack.
"Nobody wants force used, nobody wants any lives put at risk, nobody wants destruction of civilian assets and a loss of civilian life or indeed the lives of military personnel," John Howard said.
See the letter from a US correspondent below.
Suharto drops a heavy on the Indonesian media
President Suharto yesterday took his own media to task over their coverage of the spreading unrest in Indonesia. He said the media had "apparently been quite involved in creating a situation harmful to the development of the national economy".
The attack is seen as a threat to clamp down on the media at a time when the collapse of the Indonesian currency has seen a dramatic rise in food prices resulting in sporadic acts of violence with more than 1000 people being involved in rampages and looting of shops and property in eastern Indonesia.
The wealthy Indonesian-Chinese population are now bearing the brunt of the indigenous population - while they comprise just 4% of the population in Indonesia they are believed to control about 70% of the country's national wealth.
The Indonesian-Chinese Bakire family run one of Australia's largest leases - Tipperary in the Northern Territory.
Making the
news" -
Fools Rush In!
If there is one common thread running through the vast majority of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention, it is that they are not constitutional lawyers. There are a few in attendance, most notably Professors Greg Craven and George Winterton, who sit at either end of a backbench row in a corner.
When one of these two rise to make a speech, I take note of what they say. I am by no means an expert in constitutional law, but I know enough to realise how little I know. It is not that there is anything in the subject that is difficult to understand, it is just that it is an arcane, interlinked and voluminous field, unknown and unloved by the average Australian.
Professor Craven, in particular, has been warning of the dangers of making well-intentioned but ill-advised changes to the constitution, or of inserting grandiose and platitudinous statements into the preamble.
I don't know whether Victorian delegate Phil Cleary is being disingenuous or demonstrating his own ignorance when he talks of "the smokescreen of constitutional law" or states that "a boring little legal preamble will be a divisive force."
"I don't understand why we can't grapple with these things." he complained today. Well, maybe he doesn't, but the whole point of having experts is that you take notice of what they have to say.
I hoped Natasha Stott-Despoja had seen the light, when she talked of "not the loudest voices but the more reasoned voices prevailing." She meant her own voice, of course, and those of her fellow women, rather than the more reasoned voices of experience and skill amongst the delegates.
The mostly softly-spoken delegates who have actual hands-on constitutional grappling experience are being drowned out in a wash of populist ignorance and well-meaning idiocy. Sir David Smith, a man of immense integrity, knowledge and experience, having been Private Secretary to five Governors-General. He probably knows more about the office of the Australian Governor-General than any other Australian, including fellow delegate Bill Hayden. There's Hayden himself, and one time Victorian Governor Richard McGarvie.
Nobody could call Bill Hayden softly-spoken when he has a bone to pick, but he and his fellows are just not being listened to.
There were three calls for a public education campaign on the details of the constitution before a referendum vote. Two of these wanted the vote delayed until a comprehensive education campaign had taken place. These were defeated - Malcolm Turnbull and the ARM wanted no public education campaign. Instead he insisted that the vote take place in 1999, but that there be additional constitutional education material distributed to voters before hand. Another four page leaflet giving a condensed "Idiot's guide to the Constitution", no doubt.
Turnbull doesn't want the public to actually think about their votes. He doesn't want an informed vote. He wants people to vote for a republic that will promise peace, prosperity, democracy and equality. A smile on every face. As if becoming a republic on the first day of the third millenium could guarantee this.
His objective is plain. He wants to win at all costs, and if he can marginalise the informed voices, play the extremists off against each other and ram a republic down our throats, he will.
His strategy is becoming plainer. Late last week he was throwing out sops to both sides -- the rabid republicans could have a popular nomination process and the monarchists could have their titles of "Commonwealth" for the country and "Governor-General" for the Head of State remain unchanged.
This changed today. Abandoning the Governor-General for a President, he also abandoned the monarchists. Their views and votes are no longer important to him, and if his 26 ARM delegates, and the 30 odd of the Direct Presidential Election Group, and a few dozen of the others can be persuaded to support some sort of compromise republic model, then this is the one that will emerge and will be put to the people in 1999.
A successful referendum campaign in 1999 will see the republic move into high gear, possibly for implementation before the Olympics, but certainly by the first day of the new millenium. A win for Malcolm, and the undoubted title of "Father of the Republic".
I no longer doubt that he can achieve most of this at the convention. He is a lawyer, and a good one. He is a skilled orator, and he has a good grasp of diplomacy. If anyone can weld together a diverse coalition of republicans and others for the crucial day or so required to vote in favour of his model, it is Turnbull.
However, it is one thing to steer the relatively ignorant delegates in his direction, but he cannot sway the monarchists, and the constitutional experts know flannel when they hear it.
As Sir David Smith noted, the convention has given the anti-republicans a target to aim at. The details remain vague, but the broad outlines of the consensus model are growing increasingly more visible. There will be either a popular nomination process whittled down by some committee, or a whittling-down committee will put candidates before the public in a direct election. Dismissal will be by a majority of a joint sitting of both houses.
The details will emerge in the "clear view" desired by the Prime Minister. This is when the anti-republicans, having lost in the convention, will prepare their ammunition for the referendum campaign.
If they are clever, then they will keep up the momentum by making an attack each month on some specific detail of the model. Not a difficult task for a model cobbled together by a committee as an act of tactical politics. By the time the referendum finally arrives, the flaws will be obvious to all, and the referendum will see a crushing defeat.
For fail it must. Without the full co-operation of the States and Territories, without the support of the Government, and open to attack from constitutional experts every day, it will be voted down by the people. It is too complex, too centralised and too un-elegant to gain widespread support of enough people in enough states to win.
Constitutional amendment in this country, as Robert Menzies once pointed out, is one of the labours of Hercules. Only eight amendments have been made in almost a century, all of these obtaining support from both Government and Opposition, and all well-understood solutions to obvious problems. Complex changes and those opposed by significant parties simply do not overcome the mistrust of the people.
The referendum will fail because every voter will be given a reason to hate or fear the change. Some will resent the preamble being turned into a statement of political correctness. Some will see the selection method as not allowing a good shot for someone like themselves. Some will be worried about losing well-loved symbols. And a lot of people will not understand it.
If there is an avenue of attack, then you may be sure that anti-republicans will find and utilise it.
The republic will fail first time up (as did Federation itself), and we will be back in Old Parliament House to "get it right" in a couple of years. Not an unhappy prospect for the politicians and media, who are enjoying this colourful and exciting experience.
Maybe we will see a more rational and acceptable model the next time round. Most of us believe that the republic is inevitable and that the Queen is no longer appropriate as our symbolic Head of State, but if the cost is making several dozen difficult and complex changes to our Constitution on entirely symbolic grounds, then, going on past history, that is a price we will not pay.
The debate over "President" or "Governor-General" highlighted another problem for the republicans. The new President is essentially the old Governor-General with a fresh coat of paint. He or she will not replace the Queen.
So where does this leave the republicans who have been telling us for years now that we need "a resident for president", and that it is time to cut the apron strings? Our actual Head of State has been hiding amongst us all this time. Stamping "PRESIDENT" on his forehead is hardly going to imbue him or her with superhuman powers. As Patrick O'Brien pointed out "changing the symbols will not make one iota of difference to the question of who is Head of State."
The issue of the preamble loomed large today. Simply everybody wanted a piece of it. The bishops wanted more God, the indigenous representatives wanted more natives, the feminists wanted more women, the rabid republicans wanted more platitudes, and the Greens wanted more ozone.
I think that everyone will find something to vote against in this bloated preamble. Atheists will vote against the Almighty, male chauvinists against feminists, farmers against ozone, and simply everyone will vote against more recognition for Aborigines.
Including Aboriginal Australians themselves. At a press conference held near the Aboriginal Tent Embassy this morning, given by three people of different shades and sexes in front of a humpy and behind a smouldering fire, we were told that Aborigines at "grass-roots level" were sick and tired of being drowned out by the voice of government statutory organisations. ATSIC and the various Land Councils were supported by only 20% of Aboriginal Australians. "All the money in the world cannot set this mess right. Money is not the answer to this problem."
I got the impression that money, constitutional platitudes and air-conditioned bureaucracies in capital cities meant little to these representatives from the Outback.
They wanted action and results, rather than words and good intentions. All the constitutions, all the treaties in the world will not extend a lifetime, nor save an infant from dying in squalor.
The "quick fix" is seen by some as the answer. Sell it before it smells. Well, I don't agree. We need to set our sights on our long-term goals before rushing in to make hasty, expensive and ill-considered decisions.
So, as the final days of this Convention are talked away, we will see the fools rush in to an inevitable encounter with the people in a referendum campaign.
The fools. They could have gone for a few simple changes, a minimal move now with perhaps the promise of more in due course, but, like a kid in a lolly shop, they wanted more than could be comfortably swallowed. The greedy, grasping fools.
Subject: Re: MAI Public Meeting in Queensland
At 06:26 AM 2/7/98 +1100, you wrote:
>Dear Sir,
>
>May I suggest that if you had invited Pauline Hanson who was responsible
for
>creating the media following your numbers would be thousands not one
hundred.
>
>Ms Hanson was responsible for breaking the MAI travesty in the Australian
media.
>
>GWB
>Scott Balson
-----------
Scott
You may suggest all you like.
However, I feel obliged to point out that it was not The Member for Oxley who broke the travesty of the MAI, but rather the Australian media. Richard Sanders and others in the Australian Coalition for Economic Justice had been attempting to break the news for some months prior to Ms Hanson's statements. Indeed, it is from them that her lieutenants received much of their information together with a plea not to mingle nonsense with fact. Moreover, Australian Democrats parliamentarians have - in one form or another - been issuing media releases and documents on the perils of economic globalisation for two decades. Media releases on the MAI were issued from Meg Lees' and Vicki Bourne's offices early in the new year.
I should dispell the illusion you appear to harbour that the press were simply awaiting someone to tell them about the MAI when they received a media release from Ms Hanson's office.
Finally, I have no desire to fuel the media's tendency to distort the image of the facts and thereby degrade any common resistance to the MAI by making that resistance synonomous with Ms Hanson's One Nation Party. If that party is in opposition to the MAI then well-and-good. It is about all they and I will ever share.
If I may be so bold as to offer you advice in return for yours, it is to delve beyond the simplistic rhetoric borne of paranoia and conspiracy theories. I have heard it all before..."When I was a child, I spake as a child."
Regards
Corey Watts
-----------------------------------------------------
Corey Watts
Australian Democrats, Ryan Branch & UQ Democrats
Queensland
AUSTRALIA
Nice one... so on an issue as important as MAI the Democrats are not interested in working with One Nation to confront the entrenched major parties on the issue. And I love this classic statement:
However, I feel obliged to point out that it was not The Member for Oxley who broke the travesty of the MAI, but rather the Australian media. Richard Sanders and others in the Australian Coalition for Economic Justice had been attempting to break the news for some months prior to Ms Hanson's statements.
They had tried and failed. Ms Hanson's media pull brought the issue into the open.
For the record we, with Pauline Hanson, had been following the MAI issue since April 1997 (as can be seen in our news archives). It was only when the right moment was selected by David Oldfield, resulting in the issue being taken up by the media - not half hearted attempts by those who, like the Democrats' have nothing better to do than to place themselves on some sort of moralistic, politically correct pedestal as exemplified in the above letter.
Editor
Subject:
Our
views
Thank you for expressing the views of many of us. I
congratulate you. I think your letter should be reprinted every day, because
some people do not read the paper every day.
I think those views should be read by everybody, because
they express what the majority of us think.
Good on you.
Congratulations,
Subject:
To
Sarah
Dear Sir,
I would like to take this opportunity to welcome Sarah
to the world of the Internet and in fact to the real world. Like most people
in our society, Sarah has probably derived her vast knowledge of life from
extremely reliable sources like The Murdoch Press, The Packer Press, television,
videos,her school teachers or even possibly university lecturers. We of course
know that these people always tell the truth.
Now that you have access to the Internet, Sarah, take
the time to research the vast amount of material available and then you may
be in a position to make an informed judgement instead of just bleating the
nonsense that you have been programmed to bleat. Have you ever heard yourself
or read back aloud the words that you write? Do it, you may be
surprised.
Next time you write to the Editor you may like to try
and prove that what he is saying is factually incorrect rather than just
writing about him being offensive to your programmed mind. You are obviously
a perfectly programmed product of the Politically Correct. Who knows, Sarah,
you may even be able to prove to us all that the MAI is only a figment of
a Redneck's imagination.
Allan W. Doak
Subject: Bias and prejudice?
I have always been intrigued to notice that when people
are unable to refute an opposing point of view with facts and convincing
arguments, they simply engage in insult and sarcasm. Yesterday's correspondent
'Sarah' perfectly illustrates my point.
She does not agree withe the sentiments expressed on
this site. Fair enough. But instead of pointing out errors of fact, or presenting
arguments to demonstrate her own convictions, all she can do is indulge herself
in the very stereotypes she despises: 'rednecked', 'conservative nonsense',
'claptrap'.
And what to make of her patronizing, 'I know that you
people must be out there, of course'. You people? Which people? The ones
with tails and horns? The green ones with pink polka dots?
Has Sarah no understanding that the 'you people' she
dismisses with such contempt are actually her fellow Australian citizens
who happen to hold political beliefs different from hers? Where is her tolerance,
that most nauseatingly vaunted virtue of the politically correct?
But the best is yet to come. She scornfully writes,
'I suppose it's useful to be reminded from time to time that such bias and
prejudice still exists amongst all the richness and diversity of modern
Australian society'.
Indeed it does, Sarah. With your intolerance and rudeness
you exemplify the PC 'bias and prejudice' that is destroying civil discourse
in what used to be 'the richness and diversity of modern Australian
society'.
Think about it, Sarah. If the old Australia was such
a morass of xenophobia and discrimination as our elites assert it was, how
did Sir (!) Arvi Parbo end up a millionaire tycoon when he landed in Australia
as a penniless migrant? How did Jenny George, also a Polish migrant end up
President of the ACTU? How did the Polish Jew, Sir (again!) David Smith end
up Secretary to the Governor-General? How did my brother-in-law, landing
in Australia aged 12 unable to speak a word of English end up a consultant
physician? The list of achievements is endless.
These are incontrovertible facts. The old Australia
of the 'fair go', of Australians and the generous-hearted term, 'New
Australians', was vastly superior in outcomes and social harmony to the enforced
multicultural Australia of envious ethnic tribes.
Antonia Feitz
Subject:
Iraq
Dear Sir,
On the TV News Sat, 7, Feb, 1998, it was announced
that USA (President Clinton), contacted Australian Government (Prime Minister
Mr. Howard), for Australian Military Support, to attack Iraq. My views on
the following were gained from various articles and interviews on Australian
press and TV.
The strike against the Iraq is to try to improve
President's Clinton's popularity readings, and to gain total support of American
Jewish Lobby. Do you know, that the Jewish population of US, supposed to
be greater then the Jewish population of Israel.
The Iraq issue was at a quite low key, until Americas
president's Popularity Reading went very low, because of his sex scandal.
America (president Clinton, switches American Population attention from
Presidents Scandals to Iraq question). America sends their Secretary of State,
(by the way, there is a rumour that she is a Jew-ess, is it true ?), to various
countries to bribe cajole etc., (those countries did not want to go in at
their own initiative, they did not think America was right, they had to be
"persuaded"), to back America in their quest in attacking Iraq. Is Australia
going to be "persuaded" ?
With America's population attention, switched from
Presidential Scandal to Iraq, the presidents popularity goes very high, the
people think (without knowing the facts) that the president is acting in
national interests, not his own.
The reason for the action against Iraq, it is not to
enforce UN Resolutions, that is a blatant lie.
President Clinton doesn't give a dam about UN
Resolutions.
To my knowledge there were at least two UN Resolutions
against Israel, to unconditionally give back the occupied territories and
Jerusalem to Palestinians. (No hassling, bargaining or any such rubbish).
Those resolutions started well before the anti Iraq resolutions. Why there
were no wars/strikes/sanctions against Israel, if President Clinton is supposed
to be caring for UN Resolutions ?
Mr. Clinton follows Mrs. Thatcher's Falklands
example:
Mrs. Thatcher's popularity readings were at all time
low, she attacked Falklands, and at an enormous cost of British and Argentinean
lives, because she supposed to have acted in national reasons, her popularity
went sky high, all this at a huge cost of British an Argentinean lives. Just
to increase a politicians popularity readings.
I feel very strongly about it, even a possibility that
one Australian life is lost or one Australian gets injured, to save American
Presidents popularity is to expensive for Australia.
I feel that the one injury of Iraqi or loss of one
life by Iraqi is to high a cost to pay for covering up the scandals affecting
Presidents popularity.
If we are going on with enforcing UN Resolutions, we
should examine them first and the enforce them in the order they were
created.
Therefore the resolution against Israel should be enforced
first, with wars, strikes, sanctions etc., and Iraqi should be resolved/enforced,
after we have resolved/enforced the anti Israeli resolutions. Anyway why
hasn't it been resolved/enforced before ?
Finally by going for the kill of a president of a Country,
would America not create precedent, of murdering a any President, because
somebody in another Country did not like him ? Are we going to have an open
field for Presidents?
Highest regards,
Organization: Gilbert & Tobin
Subject: (no subject)
Your pathetic website must take great pleasure in Abo
bashing. Have you not got anything better to do, or is this just a CONVICT
thing!
Trevor Blencowe
Have a good one.
See GLOBE International for
other world news.
Richard Borowski
Richard Borowski.
Personal trivia, from
the global
office:
Another perfect day in paradise.
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