The Coalition’s blunderbuss approach to governing the nation and diplomacy has delivered a triple whammy to Australia’s international reputation. Clint Howitt comments.
Twitter meme arising since Abbott's surprising statements about torture in Colombo at CHOGM (by @punky_moz).
A Government that set itself up for failure
AS BUSINESS OWNERS WILL TELL YOU, it takes time and effort and good will to build up a solid reputation, but a single incompetent manager can destroy it overnight.
If we follow Australia’s post war record, we can trace how our country has been transformed from a nineteenth century European backwater into a twenty first century success story.
Whether it be our economic strength, our championing of human rights and democracy, our generosity as a people especially within our region, our efforts to promote peace or our achievements in science and technology, we have won the respect of the world.
A measure of that respect was the strong support given to Australia’s successful bid to gain a coveted seat on the UN Security Council.
Well, that’s how we had been going until September 2013. Since the new management took over, Australia has suffered long term collateral damage. Our international stocks have plummeted.
Their focus in opposition on being masters of spin led to seriously superficial policies. This was certain to find them out of their depth in government. As a result, they have gone from being masters of spin to masters of mismanagement.
The Coalition’s blundering has delivered a triple whammy to Australia’s international reputation. The three major casualties are:
- Our regional relationships which were characterised by international co-operation and engagement.
- Our world standing as a multicultural nation which is opposed to discrimination.
- As a leading achiever in science and an advocate for taking effective action against dangerous global warming.
How our neighbours have been offended
Despite all the pre-election talk about making “Jakarta and not Geneva” the primary focus of our foreign policy, in just a few weeks Abbott has seriously damaged Australia’s relationship with our large and increasingly powerful neighbour.
The antipathy from Jakarta is now at its lowest point since our intervention in the East Timor crisis.
When Kevin Rudd warned in June that the “Turn Back the Boats” policy risked a confrontation with Indonesia, former Prime Minister Howard and the Murdoch press attacked Rudd for making such an outrageous claim.
In fact, Rudd did no more than identify possible risks associated with the policy — a procedure any wise politician would follow.
The standoff he warned against is the one we now find ourselves in, thanks to Abbott’s bulldozer approach to foreign affairs.
Abbott and Bishop blithely disregard the fact that most of our regional neighbours were former European Colonies. Many of them only won their independence after long and bitter struggles against their colonial overlords. In that context, Australia is an aberration because the European colonisers remain in control.
It has taken Australia a long time to win the confidence of our neighbours.
We needed to convince them that we respected them as equals not as “coolies” or “kanakas”. We recognised the way they had been exploited by offering aid to help their development and to deal with disasters.
When Abbott went stomping around the country promising to “Turn back the boats”, to buy up Indonesian fishing boats and to pay Indonesian citizens for spying on people smugglers, he failed to consult with Indonesia.
When Indonesia reacted sharply to each of these intrusions into their sovereignty, Julie Bishop tried to play down the tension by explaining:
"We're not asking for Indonesia's permission, we're asking for their understanding.”
The Coalition’s high handed assumptions implied that only Australia’s sovereignty mattered on this issue.
It’s inevitable that the Coalition’s handling of their boats policy has re-awakened raw memories of the arrogance and paternalism of nineteenth century European Imperialists.
Already, Abbott’s attempt to placate Jakarta on his Asian Apology Tour is in tatters. Indonesia’s early resistance to boat turnarounds has hardened into outright refusal in the wake of the revelations about the use of our embassies for espionage.
It seems hypocritical to bleat about Indonesia not abiding by the conventions of rescues inside their territorial waters when your embassy has just been caught out spying on the country we claimed was our friend.
Abbott and Morrison are learning what it’s like to be on the receiving end of political implacability and they haven’t handled it well. Morrison further inflamed the situation by suggesting the Indonesians were illogical because they refused to co-operate.
Just to confirm the new Australian government’s disdain for Indonesian sensibilities, two further insults were delivered. Abbott excluded Indonesian media from his press conference in Jakarta, seriously angering Indonesian journalists who accused him of acting illegally.
Minister for Defence, David Johnston failed to appear at a joint press conference with his Indonesian counterpart, Purnomo Yusgiantoro, who had encouraged a large media contingent to be in attendance to quiz the minister on the extent of Australia’s wire tapping activities.
The no show was reminiscent of Abbott’s failure, as Minister for Health, to turn up for the first 30 minutes of a debate against Nicola Roxon at the National Press Club in the run up to the 2007 election.
The final straw in the government’s disregard of our international obligations was the cutting of AU$3 billion from the AusAID program. For one of the world’s most affluent nations to make such a massive cut in our aid to the world’s most needy people, especially in our region, sends a terrible message to our neighbours about our humanitarian values.
How our anti-discrimination credentials have been weakened
Australians grow up with a belief that their country is the “Land of the Fair Go”.
However, there were many times in our history when our conduct demonstrated that our cherished belief was honoured more in the breach than the observance.
Aboriginal people were denied citizenship; women were expected to play a subservient role to men; people whose first language was not English were ridiculed and marginalised.
Gradually ingrained attitudes of sexism, racism, religious intolerance and xenophobia were challenged. Laws and education combined to erode prejudices.
Despite the charges of “political correctness” and other forms of resistance, the country began to embrace a raft of major social reforms — multiculturalism, anti -discrimination laws, workplace equality for women, citizenship and land rights for Aboriginal people, racial vilification laws.
Now the reactionaries in the Coalition are unravelling important threads in that protective social and legal fabric.
The three years of sexist denigration of Julia Gillard by the Coalition and its supporters was beyond disgraceful. The inclusion of just one woman in the Abbott cabinet speaks volume about their commitment to gender equality.
The denigration of asylum seekers as “illegal” resurrects the old xenophobic attitudes.
In what is probably the most retrograde measure yet proposed to weaken anti-discrimination legislation, George Brandis, the country’s first law officer, wants to make it okay to racially vilify our fellow citizens, by amending Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, passing it off as a “freedom of speech issue”.
This move is a direct response to the 2011 defamation finding in the Federal Court of Australia against Andrew Bolt’s slurs on ''light-skinned'' indigenous Australians. When he was found guilty, Bolt played the innocent victim whose “freedom of speech” had been denied.
Race Discrimination Commissioner, Tim Soutphommasane, pointed out that, as the law stands already,
'... the fundamental value of free speech is explicitly protected by section 18D.'
He went on to explain that Section 18C doesn't apply to ''mere slights'' but must involve “racial vilification of a standard that goes well beyond trivial name-calling.”
This argument is corroborated by the judge in the Bolt case. Justice Mordecai Bromberg was unequivocal [IA emphasis]:
“I have not been satisfied that the offensive conduct that I have found occurred, is exempted from unlawfulness by section 18D. The reasons for that conclusion have to do with the manner in which the articles were written, including that they contained errors of fact, distortions of the truth and inflammatory and provocative language.”
In other words, freedom of speech does not extend to telling lies about people as a basis for racist accusations.
Legislating to make racial insults acceptable is a move which will give a green light to overt racism. It is guaranteed to impact on our relations with our Asian, African and Polynesian neighbours, as well as on visitors and Australian citizens of ethnic origin.
Spokespersons for the Jewish community have already criticized the move as likely to “give succour to racists”.
How the international scientific community has been appalled
In a recent interview with the Washington Post, Abbott invoked Cold War rhetoric when he made the bizarre claim that
"...the carbon tax was socialism masquerading as environmentalism.”
He liked the sound of that so much he has repeated it a number of times since, even in the first Question Time after the election.
It was pretty clear from that extraordinary statement just who was leading a “wacko government”.
While this may have pleased the climate change deniers and right wing conspiracy theorists, it has associated us with the lunatic fringe and damaged our reputation as a nation with an impressive scientific tradition.
Since becoming a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol in 2007, Australia had sent a message to the world that we respected the science and were serious participants in taking action on climate change.
In Copenhagen in 2009, those credentials were enhanced when Kevin Rudd and Penny Wong worked extremely hard, although unsuccessfully, to get support for a global agreement on reducing carbon emissions.
But their efforts were not in vain. Australia’s leadership provided a role model for others to start taking meaningful action — even without an international consensus.
Since then, even emerging industrial giants like China, Mexico and South Korea have gone much further than we have in improving energy efficiency, reducing their reliance on fossil fuels and turning to renewable energy sources.
Our low lying island neighbours appreciated the role we had taken to deal with the very real threat of inundation that they face in the years ahead and that some are already experiencing now.
The world still does not have that agreement, but 32 out of 33 of the countries with advanced economies have now taken unilateral action just as Australia did. We had a price on carbon in place. We had bodies in place to support renewable energy initiatives.
Abbott is proudly proclaiming his first bill will be to remove the price on carbon. The disbanding of government agencies to tackle the impact of global warming has been announced.
When the rest of the world is moving towards an acceptance of the need for nations to make binding commitments to reducing our carbon emissions, neither our Prime Minister, nor our Minister for Climate Change, nor any minister for that matter, is attending the United Nations Climate Conference in Warsaw this week.
For a new government to snub such an important meeting is highly irregular.
As Michelle Grattan observed:
'It seems to be going out of its way to signal a lack of interest in the issue and the talks.'
It’s hard to think of a more obvious indication that climate change does not register as a priority for our government.
By dismantling the small but important steps we had taken to reduce our CO2 emissions, the Coalition is setting us up for a much more costly future.
A 9 per cent increase in power bills will look miniscule compared to the cost of dealing with the consequences of a global temperature rise of more than 2ᵒC.
What is equally insidious is the way the Coalition’s ideological zealotry on climate change is infecting the future of science in Australia more generally.
Rather than “respect the science,” Abbott is demonstrating his contempt.
Scientific advisory bodies have been shut down, Australia’s peak scientific organisation, the prestigious CSIRO, is being emasculated, the stand-alone Science portfolio has disappeared from the federal ministry.
Penny-pinching threatens a huge field of scientific and technological expertise.
Australian science has given us 14 Nobel Laureates in Science and Medicine, five since 1990. Australian scientists have discovered both the cause and the cure of cervical cancer. They gave the world the technology of the cochlear implant. These are but two in a long list of Australian contributions to science and technology.
If you use Aerogard, a solar hot water system, Australian banknotes or wi fi technology, you are indebted to the CSIRO, which pioneered these innovations. In its contribution to science and technology worldwide, it has punched far above its weight across the whole gamut of applications — from agriculture to zoology.
Instead of harnessing the talents of our gifted scientists to benefit the community, Abbott will drive them offshore to benefit nations with more enlightened governments. Instead we will be reduced to the status of a pariah among the scientific community.
Why would any bright young science student harbour any ambitions of making a contribution in this vital field when everything his government is doing is sending the clear message that science does not rate? We cannot afford to lose our best and brightest to benefit other countries.
In the field of technology, so far this year we have witnessed the closure of the Ford Assembly line in Broadmeadows and Geelong, the likely shutdown of Holden production in South Australia by General Motors and the closure of Qantas’s Heavy Maintenance facility at Altona. In each case, the government has been gripped by paralysis. It had no policy in place to preserve strategically important manufacturing industries and their large support networks, employing thousands of highly skilled technicians and tradespeople.
The rest of the world, following the trail of wreckage left in the wake of these political incompetents, must be asking of the Australians who voted for them: “What were they thinking?”
Note: This article was written just prior to the PM's comments about torture mentioned in the opening graphic.
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