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Can the Impasse be Resolved?

In my years as a parliamentary adviser I witnessed some exciting elections - such as Whitlamrsquo;s 1972 victory, and felt the trauma of his defeat three years later - but this political contest has been extraordinary. The coalition's campaign was sensational, but not nearly as impressive as most of the media have claimed. It was Abbott the Gladiator, his performance noisy and confrontational but with little substance. As opinion polls and those who interpret them predicted, it looks as if we are in for a hung Parliament, an outcome that may leave us in a state of political uncertainty. If a durable agreement cannot be concluded with the independents and the Green, nbsp;another election will be needed to resolve the situation. Based on the primary vote outcome,

Abbott is claiming victory on the basis of his larger primary vote but his claim lacks substance under our preferential voting system. In practice proportional representation and preferential voting is designed to widen the choices offered to voters. nbsp;If Tony Abbott becomes prime minister the state of the House, not to speak of a Senate, may of course be rather stifling to the Action Man, though the new senators will not take their seats until July.In the meantime we look like being in for a lengthy period of political uncertainty. If the Coalition manages to get into office they will need to exercise considerable restraint and circumspection if they are to make any headway, and they have not got off to a good start with the independents. Abbott#39;s approach might delight his party faithful, but he will need to modify his approach if he is to win the trust and respect of the Parliament. He will need to tread carefully and show a readiness to compromise on some of the big issues facing the Government.

The news of the killing of two more of our soldiers in Afghanistan, casts a sobering and gloomy light over the post election negotiations. Our part in that long campaign may be seen by some as a proud achievement, but the harsh reality is that the coalition force has made precious little headway against the Taliban. Abbot blamed Labor for all our ills in his election rhetoric, but he said little about Afghanistan, a conflict John Howard took us into ndash; yet another blind act of loyalty to the US. The merit of our Iraq involvement is now clouded thanks to recent US and UK reports that have revealed that the Bush-led Coalition acted in clear violation of the UN Charter. It could therefore be said that we share responsibility for the mistake.

Sure, it got rid of Saddam Hussein, but with him over 100,000 civilian Iraqi lives, not to speak of the massive destruction and the sectarian violence it unleashed. nbsp;Unhappily although the US is now withdrawing their Iraq force, the violence, the suicide bombing and the assassinations continue unabated. It has cost us billions of dollars without enhancing our security against terrorism. nbsp;It made us a target for terrorist action. Against this background the Coalitionrsquo;s promise to boost our military force in Afghanistan is a worry, for it means risking more ADF casualties. Sadly this conflict theatre is really outside the region of our strategic concern and one where, as a minor player, we have little say in the conduct of a dangerous military venture with no end in sight. Ironically it would mean increasing our military activities in the hopeless war-torn environment that is causing many Afghans in despair to flee and seek refuge in Australia. Here, if the Coalition takes office they will get a cool reception, finding themselves being consigned to a distant mid-Pacific gulag.

If the Gillard government stays in office, negotiations will open with East Timor, whose prime minister has now said that he is ready to discuss the problem. However, Xanana has strong ideas on where the proposed centre should be located and on how it is to be administered, while many other Timorese remain opposed to the project. Nor do I find this alternative appealing, but it is better than the Nauru venture, which will mean detention of a people who are merely exercising a right, and have not committed a crime. Surely, by far the best and more humanitarian solution is to bring the refugees to Australia and process them here.

Abbott's Path of Fear and Ignorance

Less than a fortnight from the election date and still neither Labor nor the Coalition leaders have had anything meaningful to say about their view of Australiarsquo;s role in the world. True, we may not be confronting any great political crises, but our world is currently facing some disturbing natural disasters which remind us of an environmental problem that only the Greens seem to be taking seriously.

Years ago the scientific community warned us that one consequence of global warming would be more weather extremes, such a severe cyclones, hurricanes, floods and droughts with destructive bushfires. And we have had plenty of evidence of that in recent months - destructive floods, first in China and most recently in Pakistan and India, and of course the heat wave and destructive fires in Russia, as well as the flood in Central Europe. To continue to ignore the climate change factor is irresponsible in the face of these events. The cost in human life, the destruction of habitat and food sources is considerable. The impact of the heatwave and huge fires in those rich agricultural areas of Russia will drastically reduce the world wheat crop.

Good news for Australian farmers, maybe, but bad news for Europe and the Middle East. Such climatic extremes are rare in Russia were summer temperatures are normally mild.nbsp; The most serious, indeed calamitous, for the local population are the disastrous floods in the Swat area in Northern Pakistan, where the lives of millions are being threatened in one way or another.

All this is happening to a people torn apart by fighting between the Taliban and al Quida forces, on one side, and Pakistan government troops on the other.These events should have forcefully projected environment issues into the election agenda, but politicianrsquo;s visions have been so conditioned by the shallow and noisy nature of this election campaign, that the leading actors of the major parties seem hardly to have noticed them.The treatment of the only issue to be given much attention is what to do about asylum seekers. We are now facing Tony Abbott#39;s revival of the Pacific Solution, a profoundly worrying prospect if the Coalition wins the election. The incarceration of people fleeing wars or persecution to a remote and tiny mid Pacific Island [21 sq. kms] makes it a virtual imprisonment to people who are exercising a right to flee intolerable conditions, resorting to the most dangerous escape route, which has already cost hundreds of lives thanks to the use of unseaworthy craft in treacherous seas.

The focus of both the Government and the Opposition is on the #39;people smugglers#39; who of course deserve our distaste for they are not only profiting from the suffering of refugees; they are knowingly exposing them to grave risks on a dangerous sea voyage. But ournbsp;main attention should be elsewhere. Inbsp;urge those contesting these elections to stretch their minds to gain a broader and more sympathetic understanding of this problem, and we should not be panicked by fears of a flood of intruders.

Let us take a broad view. Most of the refugees come from that region between India and the Mediterranean, where over the past century we Australians have formed part of Western military actions - starting with the dismantling of the Ottaman Empire and finishing with the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan - that have helped keep the area seriously destabilised. These external intrusions may have suited our narrow strategic interests, or those of Allies, whose judgement we unquestioningly deferred to, but the way they were carried out merely served to increase Islamic extremism as well as sectarian conflicts. Some of our intrusions have been well-intentioned but they failed to achieve their own objective to secure democratic reform and regional stability. In some cases the opposite effect was the result. For example, Saddam Hussein rose to power with help from the West, and the Taliban rose to power with the strong support of the CIA, by aiding their struggle against the Soviet invaders. And by always backing Israel against the forcibly displaced Palestinians, we have demonstrated a lack of sympathy for a people who were consigned to a permanent state of homelessness.

In other words Australia has played a part in those Western attempts to tame the Middle East that have had disastrous consequences, creating those very conditions that caused oppressed people to seek refuge in a safer country, even resorting  to escape routes at great risk to themselves. To incarcerate them in Nauru simply means adding another injustice to a people who have already suffered enough. Our main focus should be on removing the cause of this flow of refugees, ending the despair that has driven them to flee their homelands. Let us not be deluded by this narrow and unsoundly based nationalism.

A Callous and Irresponsible Move

The Gillard Government’s first major foreign affairs encounter has not so far been so impressive, casting doubt on the new prime minister’s stand on those humanitarian issues that concern many of us. Obviously this issue was embarking on a role that is new to Julia Gillard, and at least some of the blame for its handling must rest with her advisers. However it casts a despondent backdrop to those of us who were hoping that Gillard would inject a new emphasis on human rights issues into political debate.In the circumstances, the idea of setting up a refugee processing centre in a nearby state seems little more than a variant of Howard’s Pacific Solution, which affronted many of us, and brought shame to this country in the caring international community.

The apparently hasty move to choose East Timor as a possible site for a refugee processing centre has inevitably provoked a reaction in Dili which not long ago was itself a kind of detention centre. It has aroused the ire of East Timor’s National Assembly which moved to condemn the idea. The Government is insisting that it remains on the negotiating table, though we are not likely to hear much about this controversial proposal until after the election and then it may slip off the government’s agenda.

On face value it seemed that the Gillard government was reaching out to placate the concerns of those Australians whose views have been swayed by the Howard government’s exploitation of community fears that the Lucky Country was at risk of being deluged by a flood of undesirable refugees. What I would like to have seen the Government do, was to challenge those false assumptions on which our border protection policies are based, and put this issue into a clearer and more balanced perspective, and seek to encourage a more understanding of what is behind this modest and dangerous refugee movement. Let us remove those fears in our community and the hostility towards genuine refugees, which are kindling racist sentiments in this country. The boat arrivals are desperate victims rather than illegal queue jumping intruders.

In the first instance, the setting up of a centre to process asylum seekers is not really a good idea. The placing of a centre on a nearby crowded and impoverished island, instead of on the thinly populated, affluent Australian mainland, will look absurd, even when placed in the context of deterring people smugglers. The use of East Timor as a haven first came up shortly after the country’s liberation. The flow of desperate asylum seekers then moved some Timorese leaders to offer their devastated country as a temporary safe haven. The offer was quickly scotched, after intervention from UN headquarters in New York, for then devastated East Timor was hardly a suitable location. Nor was it legally appropriate, a senior UN official told me   at the time.For that reason I cannot believe that the scheme advanced by Prime Minister Julia Gillard has the enthusiastic support for UNHCR. It would be a short term fix, a political strategy that is less about our humanitarian concerns than a concession to exaggerated border security problems.

What we should be doing is dispelling unfounded fears. I would like to see Ms Gillard do more to put this matter into a humanitarian perspective that is reflective of the collective conscience of nation based, in its early years, on the flight of refugees from , Europe.  The real issue is not the people smugglers, but the root causes of this influx. One is the dangerous situation in Afghanistan, where there is little sign that the NATO presence, of which we are part, has been able to make much progress.

To consign these refugees to a centre in East Timor, or a like location, means subjecting a people, who are merely exercising a human right, to incarceration in an environment whose inhabitants may not welcome their presence. It might be justified if we were getting a flood of refugees as has been happening in southern Europe, but by comparison the boat people arriving here are a mere trickle, a tiny percentage of those who get to Australia by conventional means.It is profoundly disturbing that the major parties have weak policies on human rights implementation, the litmus test of the strength of our democracy, with Tony Abbott evidently planning to dismantle the existing underfunded institutions. Such moves not only narrow our vision: they also violate the commitments this nation solemnly accepted when the relevant conventions were ratified.

The outcome of last week’s political drama may have pleased many but it does have an unsettling effect. It was not an execution as Tony Abbott presents it, in his aggressive, blustering style, but this change in national leadership did take place outside the normal democratic process, and it is disquieting to those of us who hold the main parties in respect.

For this reason Julia Gillard is understandably out to legitimise her new authority as soon as possible, but many of us would not like to see Kevin Rudd’s considerable talent wasted.There were several irregular changes at the top during my years as an adviser in the Federal Parliament, most of them from within the  parties concerned and  mostly because of doubts about their ability to lead their parties at forthcoming elections. I invariably found these irregular changes a bit troubling. In this case it has meant that the deposing of Kevin Rudd, like that of John Gorton, some 40 years earlier, not as an expression of electorate disapproval, but a political shift generated  by pressures from within the political party concerned. In both cases the leaders in the end acted out their own political downfalls. The circumstances of Whitlam’s sacking were very different, and remains a hotly debated affair, but it was at best a serious constitutional irregularity. Then there were the cases of Bill Hayden and John Hewson, whose leadership aspirations were ended by those motivated by doubts about their abilities to take them to victory at the forthcoming election.  

In terms of policies this time the sudden change is, for the most part, about personalities and style rather than policies – except for the mining supertax issue that has so aroused the ire of an industry that has profited hugely from Australia’s surging trade in commodities. It  has produced a roughneck billionaire group who are now employing their great wealth against to change government policies, if not the government itself. To resolve this issue to the satisfaction of all parties, without capitulating to the miner barons will tax the skills of our new prime minister.

How will this change affect our foreign policy, in particular the new image of Australia in the world at large? Not a lot, I suspect, although the Prime Minister may well choose to play a less prominent part herself in international dialogue and forums. She might eventually consider appointing Kevin Rudd foreign minister, for he has clearly done much to elevate our international standing, developing easy relations with world leaders, especially in Asia and especially with Barak Obama. His rapport with the leaders of China, Japan, India and, of course, Indonesia was an invaluable asset to this country. While Stephen Smith has been a competent minister, it always seemed that he was overshadowed by his prime minister.

Thanks to Kevin Rudd’s work Julia Gillard inherits an atmosphere of goodwill in the international community, especially in our Asian neighbourhood. But her status as a woman leader is no novelty. In Asia woman prime ministers or presidents have been around for some time. India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and the Philippines having had women leading their governments.  There are, however, some thorny issues. One is the war in Afghanistan, and the growing demands in our community for a withdrawal. In the present circumstances that is difficult to do,  and Prime Minister Gillard has already assured President Obama that our troops will continue to be part of the Nato force. There is nothing new about the growing opposition in Australia to our part in this war, at attitude shared by other contributing countries, not least the United States which has borne the greatest cost, in lives as well as money. Unfortunately there is not much light at the end of this dark tunnel to appease their anxiety.

Another thorny issue is the question of asylum seekers, and here the noisy opposition approach is outrageous, and I hope the new prime minister does not back away from the fundamentals of the problem, which Opposition spokesmen continue to distort stimulating, it would seem, Yellow Peril fears. These refugees are not part of an invasion plot. They are fleeing brutal conflict, oppression, and discrimination, their livelihood endangered by conditions that caused us to send troops to their lands. We must always remember that they are using this dangerous route to Australia because they are escaping distressing and dangerous conditions. Australia is a minor target, most heading for European haven. Please, Julia Gillard, give some emphasis to humanitarian aspects, and do your best to counter the unfounded fears many seem out to stimulate, fears that stimulate racist attitudes.

 A Relationship not to be taken for Granted

A decade ago events in East Timor were uppermost in our minds. Australia was playing a leading role in the devastated nation’s reconstruction, and in the shaping of its democracy. As Australians saw it we had just rescued the Timorese from Indonesia’s harsh colonial embrace. This outburst off pride acted as a kind of exorcism.  Our politicians delighted in ourleading role in the Interfet intervention, which at least some saw as justifying forgetting our sordid past role in accommodating Indonesia’s invasion or East Timor and brutal attempts to suppress opposition to integration. Australia’s last minute change of diplomatic direction offered a convenient way to avoid agonising probes into the past, as well as a way to help the Indonesian military off the hook by encouraging Timorese leaders to gloss over their past ordeals and forgive us for what we had shamefully helped inflict on the East Timorese people, by accommodating  the colony’s annexation. 

Ten years ago, under a UN mandate, East Timor was big news, and Australians were seen by Timorese as their rescuers, inspired by memories of the much-admired World War II commando force. When I addressed their first congress several of those present suggested that General Cosgrove be invited to be their first president! Australians, for their part, were proclaiming this country as East Timor’s future protector, both from security and economic points of view, often somewhat patronisingly.

Today the scenario confronting President Horta, who this week is visiting Australia, is rather different. With independence, and with Indonesia’s shift towards democracy, Australia’s interest in affairs in East Timor has begun to lose interest, and the East Timorese leaders have realised that they need to look elsewhere for aid and inspiration, and not put all their eggs in one basket.

Our presence in Timor Leste, both economically and diplomatically, is still strong, but there is now a widening gap in the political relationship. Recently we were reminded of this, when we came in for strong criticism from Timorese political leaders, in particular from Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao, once our preferred choice as a political leader. Xanana recalled those past occasions when Australian governments in effect in effect encouraged the Indonesian occupation, and then ignored the severe humanitarian consequences. Fairfax’s Lindsay Murdoch aside, our media coverage is nowadays thin and erratic, leaving much to be desired. We hear about Timor when there is a crisis of some sort. East Timor may still be on our agenda but its place there is inconspicuous.

The priority focus of the Australian political vision is on the major political players, with much less attention being given to the smaller players in our neighbourhood.  This decline in attention began with the ending to the UNTAET mandate, and a slide in relations between the two countries began with the tortuous negotiations over the Timor Gap Treaty, originally a shameful deal concluded between Canberra and Jakarta when Gareth Evans was foreign minister.  Then Evans and Ali Alatas had set about carving up oil prospects in an area over much of which neither had any moral authority.

Later Timorese Prime Minister Alkatiri managed to get a better outcome for East Timor but it was a David versus Goliath struggle, and the end result still remains a somewhat unequal treaty. Recently attempts by Prime Minister Xanana to get a better outcome for East Timor in talks with Woodside have apparently been unproductive, leading to outbursts from Xanana about our lamentable past roles. Only last week President Horta himself took Australia to task for cutting our aid programme to the Peace Dividend Trust, which is directed at stimulating small projects designed to help ordinary Timorese, at a time when the focus of most aid programmes is on big projects that improve the façade but do little to improve the lot of the impoverished majority who have gained so little from independence.

Do let’s listen to critics rather than shunning them, and eroding our influence in the community.Our security role in East Timor, the International Stabilisation Force, has also come in for some criticism, often unfair and worrying criticism like that from East Timor’s defence force chief, Major General Taur Matan Ruak who recently declared that it was time for the ISF to be removed. It seems that the local military have become increasingly resentful over a foreign military presence that overshadows their own modest force, the FDTL. On the other hand, of course, it offers a restraint that is still necessary.

East Timor is now branching out in ways that will not always please us. But we should listen to the words of Jose Ramos Horta who has several speaking engagements during his visit. Now a respected international personality, President Horta’s voice is today being heard far and wide,  his authority reinforced by his Nobel Prize and  his long experience as the key leader of East Timor’s diplomatic struggle for independence. East Timor’s diplomatic assertiveness today is therefore based on Horta’s long experience, much of it as an underdog in an international environment favouring the powerful and the pugnacious. We should take care not to overrate our capacity to influence the political course of events involving our new neighbour in such an environment.