CULTURE WARS: Has political correctness failed?

Chris Kenny thinks that political correctness has failed "the mainstream"-- but what on earth does this actually mean?

Last night was cheapskate Tuesday. I could have seen a politically correct Hollywood movie for half-price — particularly one starring some pathetic left-wing, anti-Trump, pro-Muslim heart-throb. Instead, I headed to Sydney Town Hall for a mass debate on the topic of whether political correctness (PC) had failed itself.

The debate was hosted by the Ethics Centre. As is often the case with mass debates, few debaters stuck strictly to the topic — but, Chris Kenny did. Kenny was introduced by the chair as the associate editor of “a conservative newspaper” — a strange description for a paper whose editorial writers and columnists often spout ideas on cultural matters more appropriate to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

As the first speaker in the affirmative, Kenny said PC had failed itself. Other speakers focused on how PC had (or hadn’t) failed their community or interests or whatever. But now I’m starting to sound like a high school debating adjudicator, so I’ll stop with this line of interrogation.

Kenny argued PC had become self-defeating, largely because it was no longer based on facts, and therefore led to actions and conclusions that were all out of proportion. The Oz‘s associate editor said that, during the Martin Place siege, the New South Wales police (thanks to PC considerations) gave more priority to shielding Muslims from discrimination, than attacking Man Monis’ “terrorist attack”. Kenny described Man Monis as a “jihadist cleric”.

As I’ve written before, Man Monis was more of a fake sheik than a real one. And while it is true that one expert (presumably a psychiatrist) gave evidence at the inquest on Man Monis’ mental state, describing him as a terrorist — there was hardly consensus on the issue. Under Australian law, it isn’t enough for someone’s actions to terrorise their victims to designate them “terrorist acts”. There has to be political, ideological or religious motive. Were this not the case, thousands of perpetrators of domestic violence would be prosecuted under counter-terror laws. (Kenny also speaks of PC attitudes toward border protection and mentions the existence of a “queue” for refugees. What queue? There is none).

Kenny’s most potent argument — that PC is an invention of the political class, which has divorced them from the “mainstream” — again makes little sense. As first negative speaker, Mikey Robins, noted, Kenny and so many of those going on and on about PC are themselves part of the political class. Indeed, if PC has failed, why do conservatives feel the need to constantly protect us from it? Kenny noted the irony that PC started out not as a conservative insult of the left, but rather, as a self-mocking phrase between different sections of the left. Kenny and his allies may allege PC to be McCarthyist, but Joe McCarthy wasn’t exactly a card-carrying communist.

Without meaning to sound PC in a sexist sort of way, the ladies were the stand-out debaters of the night — starting with second affirmative Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, the Warlpiri/Celtic Alice Springs councillor, as well as singer and advocate against domestic violence. She resents the fact that PC practitioners keep telling her and her people what they should call themselves. In her neck of the woods, the lack of PC is an indication that people (both black and white) don’t take themselves too seriously. And this is because they have more serious fish to fry.

Price says that PC is like racism — both are based on untruths and stereotypes. PC means that indigenous people, especially women, find it hard to speak about violence from black family members and community folk. In this case, PC can be deadly. As for white racism, Price says she would rather know who the racists are so she can face them head on.

The final speaker was second negative, Tasneem Chopra. (Disclaimer: I’ve known Tasneem since 1985. Also, I’ve always called her Tasneem and that won’t stop here. Of course, that doesn’t mean I agree with Tasneem on everything).

Tasneem says that for many urban women from “ethnic” backgrounds, PC is all they have to protect them from discrimination. PC exposes privilege and bias.

It allows us to call out bigotry, to stand up to dominant voices.

Tasneem called upon Kenny (or Chris, to be fair) to share his experiences of racism.

If you feel the need to be violent or racist, to threaten rape or other assault, your politics is incorrect.

With this youngish and largely female crowd, the negative side were always going to win the debate. OK, that wasn’t very PC.

First published in Crikey on 29 May 2017.

CULTURE WARS: How do you stop polygamy? With overreaching surveillance, of course

Pauline Hanson thinks there needs to be a national identity card in order to stop Muslims from claiming Centrelink benefits for multiple wives.

Once again those bloody Muzzlems are up to no good. Marrying more than one wife and then claiming multiple spousal benefits. I mean, can you believe it?

And so the headlines and talkback hosts blared over the weekend. The Channel Seven Sunrise program on Sunday carried the words “MUSLIM MARRIAGE DOLE RORT” on screen. Prue MacSween, one of the panellists, reminded us all that polygamy was illegal. She’s right, except that in Australia the way you get around it is to have only one of the marriages registered. It’s a bit like having a wife and a fuckbuddy or mistress or girlfriend or whatever.

She complained that

... these people are thumbing their nose at us and rorting the system.

These people? Us? Yep, these people have polygamous unions. They marry more than once. We don’t do that. We know that real Australians enjoy adulterous relationships rather than polygamous ones. 

(To be fair, when probed about the use of the word “us”, MacSween said she was referring to taxpayers. Though she then spoke of “them” coming here and not standing up in court.)

She also mentioned Centrelink’s claim that it would cost more money to police and enforce the law against this unknown number of polygamous rorters. I sympathise with her in this respect. Some years back, I worked as a welfare rights lawyer running appeals against Centrelink decisions between the Social Security Appeals Tribunal and the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. Representing the Commonwealth in the AAT was an excellent and highly professional advocate. The poor chap managed appeals in two states and was about to have a third state added to his load. This would mean he wouldn’t be able to attend all hearings and he’d be jammed. The result? More settlements, which were not in the interests of the Commonwealth and the taxpayer.

The Department of Human Services were also cutting down on the expense of investigators to conduct surveillance on suspected cheats. During my own research for client cases, I came across numerous AAT decisions where the evidence of investigators was used to show that the Centrelink client wasn’t being honest about their relationship status. Without such surveillance, the tribunal will have to decide between the client’s word and Centrelink file.

Oh, and by the way, it isn’t just Muslim polygamous arrangements who can breach Centrelink rules. The MacSweens and Bernardis and Hansons of this world might not be aware that our law recognises these thing called de facto relationships. Our Social Security Act recognises that you can live in a domestic arrangement with someone you aren’t married to, or even with someone you can’t legally marry, such as a same-sex partner.

Perhaps the most frightening response to this pseudo-issue was from Pauline Hanson, who called for the introduction of an Australian identity card. Seriously, Pauline, that is sooooo 1980s. Back in 1985 the Hawke government introduced the idea of an Australia card that was designed not so much to catch welfare cheats as tax cheats. Conservatives led by John Howard lined up to oppose the card, only to support a similar proposal 10 years later. After much mass debate, the proposal was dropped. 

Perhaps Hanson or her advisers should read this very helpful e-Brief published by the Commonwealth Parliament’s Law and Bills Digest Section. She should also understand that her constituents will not appreciate a Big Brother ID card forced on them just to stop a handful of polygamous Muslims.

First published in Crikey on 12 December 2016.

CULTURE WARS: The White Australia Policy is over, deal with it

Sadly, ignorance of non-Anglo cultures is the name of the game in both mainstream media and politics in Australia.

I’ve been writing commentary and pious punditry since 2005. Before then, I was a helpless consumer of news. When caught in Sydney traffic driving to work in the morning in the early 2000s, I’d tune into 2UE for the last half hour of Steve Price’s morning show. The last 10 minutes of Pricey’s show also featured John Laws.

One morning there was some controversy about ethnic profiling of criminal suspects, especially those of Middle Eastern/Lebanese backgrounds. Pricey made some comment about how it was easy to identify a Lebanese person as they looked totally different to Anglo-Australians. I couldn’t help myself; I rang the studio and was put on air.

Pricey, there are plenty of Lebanese with light brown or blond or red hair and green eyes.

Pricey dismissed my comment as codswallop, as did Laws. Then, just before the show was about to end, Pricey was handed a note from the state MP for Bankstown. Pricey was being invited to breakfast with the MP and 500 of his Lebanese constituents, all of whom had red hair and green eyes.

Ignorance of non-Anglo cultures is the name of the game in both mainstream media and politics in Australia. Until recently, allegedly respectable newspapers would regularly mistranslate jihad as “holy war” and fatwa as “death sentence”. Last night’s episode of The Drum showed Caroline Overington claiming that Lebanese people in France lived in slums on the outskirts of Paris. She might wish to confirm that with a French-Lebanese person, say writer Amin Maalouf.

On the same show, Josh Manuatu, a staffer for Eric Abetz who identified as part-Tongan, suggested we didn’t want migrants such as Lebanese who came from countries where women who wished to be educated were stoned. Really? Because the last time I checked the website of the American University of Beirut, which this year celebrates its 150th anniversary, I noticed pictures of female students, some wearing headscarves and some not.

It was truly sad to see Abetz’s staffer make ignorant aspersions about Lebanese migrants gravitating to bikie gangs and terror cells. But you know what they say — for every finger you point at others, three point straight back at you. If we are to believe that authority on ethnic crime former Fairfax columnist Paul Sheehan, in April 2008:

... a group of violent racists acted out their YouTube fantasies and stormed into Merrylands High School at 8.50am, armed with machetes and baseball bats. They then started to beat the crap out of people.

And who were these nasty violent radicalised kids terrorising people? Sheehan continues:

A week after this rampage, any member of the public interested in this crime could have deduced the alleged perpetrators were Tongan morons. Or perhaps morons who are, regrettably, Australian citizens but portray themselves as ‘nigga gangstas’.

Gosh, what kind of dangerous ethnicities does Abetz employ? According to The Daily Telegraph, Tongans and bikie gangs have excellent relations in NSW prisons. Still, how unfair it would be to characterise Tongan-Australians as good for nothing except as prisoners or violent gangsters or as comic pawns in a Chris Lilley show.

Which brings me to Noel Pearson’s curious complaint against the ABC. Pearson claims the ABC has a habit of always portraying indigenous people as victims and/or criminals and/or people who are always down and out. Much of this is caused by structural and cultural factors, he says, given the ABC is staffed by people

... willing the wretched to fail.

If anything, Pearson should have directed his criticisms to all Australian news media. And not just news media. How many indigenous and other minority faces do we see in TV and billboard advertising? Are all shoppers and checkout chicks at Woolies and Coles really white? Are all babies who poo in nappies or people driving cars on our roads really white?

Hasn’t the White Australia Policy ended?

First published in Crikey on 23 November 2016.

DIVERSITY: What if our collective racism turned again to Asians?

It turns out 49% of Australians want to stop Muslims from immigrating. But what if they were convinced China's military were a much bigger threat than Islamic State (which it probably is)?

Prejudices. Unless we’re lying, we all have at least one of them. I have a prejudice against music that doesn’t involve at least one hand-played musical instrument. Apologies to Iggy Azalea fans.

The latest Essential Report turned up an interesting mixed bag of voter prejudices. There was prejudice against Pauline Hanson (45% of those polled agreed with the statement that “Pauline Hanson’s views do not reflect Australian values and she should not be given so much media coverage”. Meanwhile 22% of the 49% who said they opposed Muslim immigration did so on the basis that Muslims “do not share our values”. Which I guess means Muslims are more consistent with Australian values than Pauline Hanson.

Still, it requires some nuance and an ability to perform basic statistical analysis to extract the above-mentioned conclusions. The kind of nuance that journalists appear to lack. But in electoral politics and emotive culture wars, nuance and rationality are best kept out of the scene and relegated to wherever it is those Muslims came from.

Funnily enough, the figures were worse (or better, depending on your perspective) for Coalition voters. How much does this make sense historically? Have Liberal voters always ignored the individual in favour of group identities?

The first episode of John Howard’s ABC documentary on his political hero Bob Menzies includes a section on the formation of a new political party for the “forgotten Australians”, the middle class, those who wished to be “lifters, not leaners”, whose core political beliefs included the free market and free individuals. This party’s ideology attracted enough votes in post-war Australia to deliver Menzies a landslide.

Now some 60% of the party’s voters have adopted a new freedom — the freedom to live in a country free of migrants who identify with a disparate group that make up some 25% of humanity. The party’s voters want freedom to imagine that each and every one of this huge rump of humanity are likely terrorists and are unable to integrate into Australia. No doubt the non-integrating terrorist wannabes to be stopped at the border would include people like Houssam Abiad, a former Liberal deputy lord mayor for the City of Adelaide. Three out of five Liberal voters were opposed to immigration by anyone who identifies as Muslim. Or is deemed Muslim.

The national figure was just under one half. Some 34% of Greens voters would oppose the migration of someone like NSW MP Mehreen Faruqi, notwithstanding her PhD in environmental engineering and her passionate support for marriage equality.

Apparently

[t]he most common reasons for wanting a ban were fears over terrorism. 

Little wonder some 40% of ALP voters wouldn’t want any further Muslims from Egypt migrating here, Egyptians like the parents of counterterrorism expert and ALP federal member for Cowan Professor Anne Aly.

Apart from the usual suspects (Greens, a few Labor MP’s and an extra suspect in John Alexander), most pollies have been totally silent on not just the poll but also Hanson’s speech and the underlying prejudices and ignorance it evidences. The silence from the Coalition and from allegedly conservative commentators is even louder. The message this sends to both the perpetrators and victims of the bigotry is that Australia’s political establishment wishes to play a “wait and see” game.
More sober voices can throw facts — that 2% is hardly a swamp, that Hindu communities are growing at a faster rate, that most home-grown terror suspects aren’t migrants but were born here — but since when have facts mattered in such mass debates?

The best we can hope for is that bigger prejudices and problems come along. That other concerns — the economy, health, industrial relations, etc — take over from prejudice against Muslims or Africans or Asians. But how’s this for a scary scenario? The security risks in the future posed by Islamic State and other rogue actors could quickly and easily be dwarfed by the ambitions of the People’s Republic of China flexing its economic and military muscle. Australia could get dragged into conflict in the South China Sea. Our newspapers and media could be swamped with images of Asian-looking people threatening our security, with other Asian-looking people seeking refuge.

How will the average Aussie bigot be able to tell the difference between different kinds of people who look like Chinese leaders giving threatening speeches on TV? Nuance and prejudice tend to go in opposite directions. The likes of George Christensen, Cory Bernardi, Reclaim Australia, Pauline Hanson, etc, may find the notion that a migrant who speaks Mandarin and has a name like Tsai Ing-Wen or Lee Hsien Loong is a security threat.

And why stop at language? That pro-democracy bookseller from Hong Kong Lam Wing-Kee sure has a suspicious name. As does that Suu Kyi woman, who wears funny clothes and lives in Burma.

Why do they celebrate Chinese New Year? What’s wrong with our New Year? What are these moon cakes they eat? How can we tell the difference between a Chinese-looking person from Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia, Burma or Fiji?

Am I insulting the intelligence of the average Australian bigot? I wish I were. So do the thousands of Sikhs who must put up with the nonsense they cop due to non-Sikhs assuming the Sikh turban is the same as Osama bin Laden’s and the Sikh temple is a mosque.

First published in Crikey on 22 September 2016.

DIVERSITY: Are Australians Really Racist?

The late Padraic Pearse (PP) McGuinness was one of Australia’s most eccentric commentators and cultural warriors. At one time a columnist for The Australian - back in the days when its editorial line wasn’t beholden to the SAS (and by that, I mean the Santamaria Appreciation Society) – he went onto take control of what became the rabidly right wing Quadrant.

McGuinness wrote on just about every topic under the sun, whether he knew much about it or not. He seemed determined to be a contrarian, even when his views represented the orthodoxy.

During a spring clean, I found a book of his columns entitled McGuinness Collected Thoughts* and was particularly interested on his views on social issues. Much of the commentary concerned topics of his era which would have interested me back then had I not been chasing other forms of anti-communist activism.

One column, dated June 20 1989 and entitled “THE MYTH OF AUSTRALIAN RACISM” is a reflection on Australian attitudes to East Asians in the days following the Tienanmen Square massacre. McGuinness claims

[t]he events in China, and the Australian response to them, have served to discredit another myth ... the myth that Australians are racist.

McGuiness claims the “myth” has been

... assiduously disseminated by various tendencies in the media … to paint a picture of Australians in general as prone to racist intolerance and hostility to immigration, especially from Asia.

So what does McGuinness see as the real truth?

The truth is that this is not an accurate description of Australian popular opinion, today, and has not been for many years, if it ever was.

McGuinness then moves onto our history of post-Federation immigration. He paints a rosy picture of a nation that has

... treated the immigrants with a tolerance and willingness to live and let live, and to absorb … The Australian experience of immigration and integration is one of which any country in the world could be proud.

Has it all been good? McGuinness acknowledges that

[t]here are difficulties, there are stupidities, there are plenty of cases of bad policy.

But that doesn’t detract from the overall picture that

... of all mixed communities Australia is one of the most tolerant and decent.

McGuinness then moves onto indigenous people. It would be a huge understatement to suggest that his views represent a mere contrarian refusal to accept conventional wisdom.

The accusation against Australians with respect to the treatment of Aboriginal Australians have been wild and damning.

I doubt Tony Abbott would agree with McGuiness’ assessment.

But how many people coming from other countries, whether English-speaking or not, can claim that the history of communal intolerance, of violence of wars, invasions, and conquests, have been better than ours? 

Gee, that should make us all feel so much better.

There is much to be ashamed of in the past for everybody – but to accuse Australians of being any worse than any other country in this respect is simply absurd. Often enough we have been better.

I’m not sure if that means we have anything to be proud of. It just means we are probably at least as bad or perhaps a little better than an awful bunch. Now, try not to fall off your chair at the following:

The mistakes toward Aborigines fifty or eighty years ago may not look so bad in the future … The point is that there is simply no evidence of any general or systematic prejudice against Aboriginals among white Australians.

Shall I continue? Yeah, why not.

Nor is there any general and systematic racial prejudice among Australians toward Asians, or toward other foreigners. There is indeed a certain amount of fear and hostility toward strangers. That is universal. There is a certain amount of red-kneckery” among those wo are not politically sophisticated or well-informed … But it is pure nonsense to say that there is any deep-seated racism and unforgiving intolerance in the Australian community.

McGuinness excuses those he sees as being wrongly accused of being racists. He says their behaviour is often natural given that an influx of people means more competition for limited housing, jobs etc. It isn’t easy for locals

... when established habits of life are disturbed, when new and not easily understood ways of behaviour are encountered. 

Does he have a point here? So by now you would have some idea of where PP McGuinness was coming from. Are his opinions correct today? Where they correct back in 1989? Was he partly right and partly wrong? Are Australians really racist?

*(1990) Schwartz & Wilkinson

CULTURE WARS: An uncomfortable intersection of political interests

On Sunday, thousands of fair dinkum real Aussies will gather at rallies across Australia, raising the Australian flag and shouting slogans. Among the places they'll gather is the central Queensland coastal town of Mackay. Coalition federal MP George Christensen will be speaking. On behalf of Prime Minister Tony Abbott? Reading a message from the PM? Who knows.

A previous Reclaim Australia Rally in Melbourne some months back was characterised by the presence of some, er, interesting people engaging in interesting conduct. A fair few neo-Nazis sporting visible swastika tattoos on shaved heads and/or wearing swastika T-shirts and carrying Aussie flags joined the parade. They were jostling and shouting slogans and carrying placards saying "Abbott! No halal certification" and "No Shariah law!" I doubt even Zaky Mallah would do that sort of thing in an ABC studio.

Christensen certainly has more testicular fortitude than Abbott's frontbenchers who have been ordered not to appear on a certain ABC show whose ratings have gone through the roof. Brisbane's Courier Mail reports Christensen declaring he will defy even the PM's orders and attend the rally.

Reading through the 24 pillars of the Reclaim Australia manifesto, I couldn't help but wonder why Abbott would object. There is a call for ...

... [t]he right to exile or deport traitors ...

... which I guess is akin to Abbott's original call for people engaging in terror-like activities to be stripped of their Australian citizenship even if it was their only one.

Where will Indigenous Australians fit in an Australia reclaimed by the far-right white reclaimers? "Equality at Law", screams pillar No. 3, "No more 'cultural considerations'". That should make Andrew Bolt very happy.

The ideology of Reclaim has a distinctly supremacist feel to it. But in case you thought it was fringe, the reclaimers are singing from virtually the same rhetorical and policy songbook as the federal Coalition on cultural and security matters. Despite trumpeting separation of religion and state, Reclaim's manifesto mentions Christian values and rights numerous more times. How often have we heard Abbott and his ministers lecture us on how Australia has a Christian heritage?

It's true that Coalition MPs tend not to jostle and shout slogans and sport swastika tattoos. But as a former federal Liberal candidate, it pains me to say that in so many ways the more contentious political beliefs on issues like culture and citizenship promoted by the Coalition are effectively the same as those of the far right.

It's hard to say who is influencing who. Certainly the Coalition strategy in the 2001 Tampa election was to destroy Pauline Hanson by mimicking her rhetoric on asylum-seekers. Howard would frequently speak of integration and wasn't too fond of multiculturalism.

Ironically, Tony Abbott held the opposite view. He regarded multiculturalism as a fundamentally sound and inherently conservative social policy. Abbott was one of the few frontbenchers who refused to join the chorus of Muslim-phobic and migrant-phobic hysteria around issues of citizenship and national security. In addresses to various audiences, Abbott recalled what it was like for him and fellow Catholics during previous decades when Catholics were demonised.

Abbott is a victim of the far-right. A former staffer of his walked out to join Pauline Hanson. Abbott and his allies worked hard to ensure One Nation was made accountable for financial irregularities. There was little indication in Abbott's quite brilliant manifesto Battlelines that he would go in an extreme direction. True, he did see Australia as within a broader Anglosphere of nations. But his policy platform did not include stripping people of citizenship for spraying graffiti on public buildings.

If Abbott does give the order to the federal member for Dawson not to attend this rally, it will sound almost hypocritical. I have never seen Tony Jones and the Q&A panel and audience wear swastika T-shirts. There has been no jostling or arrests made, nor are racist slogans tolerated. If Abbott doesn't stop Christensen from attending the Mackay rally, it will show he regards far-right white supremacist extremism as being less troublesome than some kid sporting a marijuana cap and suggesting a minister's rhetoric is pushing Muslim kids to join Islamic State.

It would not be an exaggeration to suggest that events overseas appear to have radicalised the conservative side of politics in Australia than they have local Muslims. Today we see far-right lunatics and their Coalition friends using IS as an excuse to beat their chests. Sikh temples are being attacked as the chest-beaters are happy to attack anything or anyone they deem Muslim. Only God knows what Asian Australians will experience should China decide do more than build islands in the South China Sea.

This all shows that discussions (or lack thereof) on national security in Australia are rarely conducted in a sensible manner. Phillip Adams recently wrote in the Weekend Australian:

The current liturgy chanted in unison by ministers prime and junior in the Gregorian manner, including Stop the Boats and Death Cult. They are not designed to encourage discussion but to end it. To drown out doubt, debate, calibration, nuance and context.

The results of repetitious paranoid Coalition rhetoric, channelled through ridiculously rabid columnists and shock jocks, will be seen this Sunday. Hopefully it won't be too ugly.

Irfan Yusuf is PhD candidate at the Alfred Deakin Research Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation at Deakin University. First published in the Canberra Times on 17 July 2015.

OPINION: Tabloid speculation on Numan Haider and Islamic State threat is best ignored

Last Friday, the Herald Sun editorialised that there are "actively 100 Australians actively supporting terrorist organisations" in the Middle East. It's a figure that gets thrown around a lot these days. Support for terror has blown out among Australians who tick the Muslim box on their census forms.

Metropolitan newspapers across the country have provided saturation coverage to terror "suspects" and terror "supporters". And none of us are any wiser about exactly who they are or exactly what their relationship to ISIS is.

We see Facebook photos of young men boldly brandishing flags that we think look like ISIS flags. Pieces of cloth sprawled with Arabic writing. Arabic, a language spoken by millions of Christians and Muslims and Jews and people of all faiths and none. Arabic script or similar scripts used in Iran and Pakistan. It's so scary, so foreign. But more often than not, the scary words on the flags merely state that there is only one God. Hardly a revelation for a Jew or a Christian or even a Sikh.

Then we're told that Muslim extremists want to implement a strict form of sharia law where women wear burqa and infidel Westerners are beheaded. You don't expect them to be like young Melbourne teenager Numan Haider, having girlfriends and eating not-so-halal burgers at Hungry Jacks.

Haider is an unlikely suspect for what Sydney's Daily Telegraph described as "the country's first Islamic terrorist attack on home soil". And what makes the incident a terrorist attack? The 18 year old stabbed one, perhaps two, police officers. He had a knife. They had guns. He was outnumbered.

We don't know if young Haider was known to police, was involved in petty or even violent crime and had a substantial criminal record. Indeed there is no suggestion of any criminal disposition. All we know is that he was once photographed holding up a black and white flag on Facebook (whether seriously or in jest we won't know), another time driving car. We know he had been dating a girl he met at school in Year 11. We know his siblings were university students. We know he came from an Afghan family, but we have no idea what ethnic group (Hazara, Pashtun, Tajik or other) they came from or whether they were sunni or shiite.

Haider was supposed to be a "known terror suspect" How? By attending a particular mosque when he was not visiting his girlfriend? By hanging around with some radical loud mouths? By accessing online publicly available information to track the Prime Minister's movements in Melbourne? This act of online "terrorism" led one newspaper to declare Haider to be an "Abbott jihadi" or words to that effect.

Saturation reporting transformed Numan Haider. No longer was he a young man from a stable family in a stable relationship. Instead, he was an angry knife-wielding terrorist allegedly trying to behead a police officer. Or perhaps two officers. Perhaps even the PM. And until any CCTV footage is revealed, we won't have any idea of what really happened.

Incidentally, hidden in the middle of a Herald Sun story on Friday were these words: "Victoria Police said it had no evidence of a plot to behead a police officer". So how was the stabbing a terrorist act?

Stabbing police officers is an extremely serious crime. But was Mr Haider the first person to have pulled a knife on a police officer? Or to be shot dead in response? In August last year, an experienced Victorian highway patrol officer shot dead a 44-year-old man after he allegedly pulled a knife. Police Professional Standards and the Coroner became involved in that case.

I'm not suggesting police should not protect themselves when accosted with threats. Victorian Assistant Police Commissioner Luke Cornelius was right to have said last August: "Where an officer chooses to take another person's life, that is a choice which is invariably made and must be made in defence of one's own life or in defence of another person who is facing an imminent threat of serious injury or loss of life."

When Brazilian tourist Roberto Laudisio Curti was killed by a police officer using a Taser gun in Pitt Street, Sydney, in 2012 after stealing two packets of biscuits from a convenience store, both the NSW Ombudsman and the Coroner savaged police actions as "thuggish.

Similar investigations will be carried out into police actions on that fateful night at Endeavour Hills. But that will be unlikely to stop imbecilic reporting that describes the deceased as a "dead terrorist" or that splashes photos of an upset family friend attending the Haider family home to prepare for the young man's funeral.

Tabloid columnists may regard asking critical and forensic questions undermining their simplistic narrative as being akin to "slandering our country". Let them direct their hysterical allegations at the Coroner and Police Professional Standards. The rest of us can ignore tabloid speculation and pray for the families of the dead boy and the injured police officers doing their job.

Irfan Yusuf is a lawyer and award-winning author. This article was first published in the Canberra Times on 2 October 2014.

CRIKEY: Terror hysteria: Herald Sun plays judge, jury and executioner

What do you get when you cross a blatant disregard for facts and legal due process with a “feral Andrew Bolt column”? The Herald Sun, of course.

Regular Herald Sun readers can now breathe easy, secure in the knowledge that an 18-year-old-man has been found guilty of terrorism by the newspaper and is now buried six feet under the ground. For the past week, the tabloid of choice for Victoria’s McDonald’s patrons to spill their special sauce on has been running a campaign against Numan Haider, his family, their friends and anyone deemed to share their faith.

 Haider did stab two police officers before being shot dead. He likely had his passport cancelled and was suspected of being involved in activities that, had he carried them out, might have been found by a court to have breached the provisions of anti-terror laws.

In the real world, he had not been charged, let alone convicted. No evidence against him was brought before a properly constituted court. But as far as the Hun was concerned, all this is legal mumbo jumbo. Haider was a terrorist who planned to assassinate the Prime Minister, even if police denied there was ever such a plot.

The coverage, the allegations, the group responsibility and the hysteria was relentless. The cover of the Hun on Wednesday, September 24, carried the words “DEADLY THREAT TO ABBOTT”, and the deceased was described on page 2 as “A TEEN terror suspect under investigation for making threats against Prime Minister Tony Abbott”. Following this allegation were 11 paragraphs citing a midnight police press conference after Haider’s shooting, during which no mention was made of a plot to kill the PM. One wonders how the five reporters (Angus Thompson, Anthony Dowsley, Wes Hosking, David Hurley and Simon Benson) could not cite a single source for their allegation.

The headline of Thursday, September 25 screamed “JIHAD REVENGE FEARS” and spoke of “terror reprisals”. The following eight pages ended with a feral Andrew Bolt column arguing that the fault for terrorism inevitably is with the 1400-year-old set of religious traditions shared by almost one-quarter of humanity.

The front page of Friday, September 26 featured a man visiting the grieving Haider family holding what appeared to be prayer beads and a cup of coffee in one hand while throwing a stone with the other. “ANGER ERUPTS AS FAMILY PREPARE FOR FUNERAL” screamed the headline. Sensitive choice of photo to match such delicate journalism. More allegations were made including “DEAD TERRORIST GOOGLED PM’S MELBOURNE TRIPS” and allegations the deceased and his friends planned to ambush police at Hungry Jack’s.

On Saturday, September 27, on page 5, the headline read: “Tears for teenage terrorist lost to hate”. The story commenced with the words: “Numan Haider will be remembered as a teenage terrorist”. The cover page showed a young man attending the funeral wearing a hoodie, a black beanie and a black cloth to cover his face. The headline screamed out “DEATH STARE” followed by “MOURNER WEARS PROVOCATIVE MASK TO FUNERAL” and “RAW EMOTION AS FAMILY BURY DEAD TERRORIST”. Yep, they’re a scary lot when they bury terrorists. 

Provocative mask, you say? Given Fairfax newspapers plastered the wrong kid on its front cover and described him as a terrorist, and given the tabloid hysteria leading to hate crimes, who could blame the young man?

On Monday, Hun columnist Rita Panahi argued that the actions of a fictitious uniform entity called “the Muslim community” was behaving in a manner that “threatens to turn inclusive Australians into frightened xenophobes”. Perhaps she imagines all inclusive non-Muslim Australians read her newspaper.

She then says Muslim leaders need to “finally dissociate the Muslim community from the extremist scourge”. As if they haven’t done so already. But two can play that game. I’ll dissociate myself from pseudo-religious nutcases whose actions I have no control over if you dissociate yourself and your buddies from the disgusting criminal actions of your colleagues that led to the closing of the News Of The World and the imprisonment of a number of its staff. Deal?

The Hun can count its lucky stars young Numan Haider is no longer with us. Imagine if he survived the gunshot wounds. Imagine if he were put on trial and convicted of a serious criminal offence that was not terrorism-related. Defamation lawyers would be queuing up to represent him. Andrew Bolt wouldn’t be able to cry freedom of speech then. And he’d look like a right royal fool if he blamed Islam.

First published in Crikey on 30 September 2014.

OPINION: Coalition's change to racial vilification laws kowtows to media mates

Political conservatism is such a wonderful thing. The status quo is worth maintaining because it obviously works. If it didn't, people wouldn't allow it to remain the status quo. But if you find the status quo doesn't work, change it gradually. It recognises that the populace are human beings not accustomed to radical change. Evolution always makes more sense than revolution, unless your preference is the rule of guillotines.

Since 1975, the Commonwealth has had in place the Racial Vilification Act, which seeks to implement our international legal obligations including the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. Twenty years later, the act was amended to introduce provisions on racial hatred.

These provisions, contained in Section 18C, make it unlawful for someone to publicly do something that is reasonably likely to offend, assault, humiliate or intimidate someone or a group. Now it isn't just any action that could be unlawful. It must be an action that is done because of the other person or group's race, colour or national or ethnic origin.

The provision makes such an action unlawful but not necessarily a criminal offence. An offended party or group must first make a complaint to the Human Rights Commission, which will then try to conciliate the matter.

The provisions were passed with the support of the Keating government and the Howard-led opposition. Tony Abbott sat in the same Parliament.

In its 2008-09 publication Federal Discrimination Law, the body we now know of as the Human Rights Commission stated: ''Racial hatred provisions were introduced into the RDA in 1995.

''The majority of cases decided under the RDA in recent years have involved consideration of those provisions.''

In other words, Section 18C has represented the vast majority of cases decided by the Federal and other courts. This in itself is not a bad thing. Judicial decisions make up a fair chunk of our common-law system.

So what is the purpose of such, or indeed, of any law? During his first speech on August 14, 2000, Senator George Brandis spoke of the importance of civil and other liberties. ''It follows from what I have said that the first duty of any government is to protect the liberty of the citizen to choose his own ends - and that includes protecting the liberty of the citizen from government itself.''

But as a relatively ''wet'' or ''small-l'' liberal, Brandis emphasised that ''of all the obligations of government, perhaps the most fundamental is this - the obligation to protect the weak from the strong''. No doubt this is exactly what parliamentarians at the time had in mind. The legislative consensus was that individuals and groups can be, and often are, subject to vilification by the more powerful. Such vilification has real effects on the lives of real people.

This begs the question as to why the provision has all of a sudden become known as the ''Andrew Bolt law'' and why it is all of a sudden so contentious?

 When it comes to the strong versus weak binary, Bolt was hardly in the category of the latter. He is the main columnist of the most widely read newspaper in the country. He has a TV show which, despite poor ratings, still commands a bigger audience than all the allegedly ''white'' Aboriginal complainants in the Bolt case combined. He has the ear of Coalition parties.

On December 7, 2009, Bolt blogged: ''Our traffic last month smashed all our previous records. The blog registered more than 2 million page impressions from more than 300,000 unique browsers.''

In the rare event Bolt's writings land him in a spot of legal bother, he has the benefit of in-house lawyers and external counsel all paid for by Rupert Murdoch.

The existence of Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act hasn't stopped Bolt from vilifying Africans, refugees, Muslims, Lebanese and other groups. Nor has it stopped the moderators of his blogs from publishing violent, paranoid, racist and even genocidal remarks.

Yet now, for the benefit of Bolt and his employers, Brandis is prepared to abandon his own principles, allowing Bolt to use his substantial power to trample on the weak and vilify minorities.

On May 7 this year, Brandis asked an audience at Gerard Henderson's Sydney Institute: ''Who defends freedom of speech in Australia today? Is it really to be left to a few conservative commentators like Andrew Bolt and Janet Albrechtsen; a couple of think tanks like the Sydney Institute and the Institute of Public Affairs; and the Liberal Party?''

Perhaps a better question to ask would have been: Why should an allegedly conservative government introduce revolutionary legal measures to protect the ''right'' of powerful columnists and shock jocks to abuse their freedom of speech to vilify others?

Sadly, this is nothing new. Readers may recall the adverse 2007 report of the Australian Communications and Media Authority about Alan Jones. ACMA's 80-page report had criticised Jones' broadcasts in the days leading up to the 2005 Cronulla riots.

What was the Coalition government's response? Then-communications minister Helen Coonan effectively threatened to gag the independent watchdog she appointed. Coonan, a former barrister like Brandis, said: ''Alan Jones has made an indelible mark on broadcasting during his long and outstanding career and I encourage the industry to address any concerns that they might have with the current code with a review to ensure it best reflects community standards.''

So if your buddies in the media fall foul of the law, no worries. Just change the law.

It doesn't sound like responsible, let alone conservative or liberal, government to me.

• Irfan Yusuf is a lawyer, author and former Liberal candidate. First published in the Canberra Times on 18 November 2013.
 

 

 

MEDIA: The Bolt decision

It must have been an awful feeling for one of Australia’s most loved and hated columnist, a rare moment when he did not enjoy the limelight. But dressed in his dark blue suit and a tie that almost matched the colour of his greying hair, columnist, blogger, TV and radio personality Andrew Bolt was genuinely phased by the judgment of a single Federal Court Judge. For a man who otherwise never shies away from talking about race, Bolt wasn’t amused about being found to have breached the Racial Discrimination Act.

Bolt described the judgment as

… a restriction on the freedom of all Australians to discuss multiculturalism and how people identify themselves. I argued then and I argue now that we should not insist on the differences between us but focus instead on what unites us as human beings.

I personally haven’t read all 470 paragraphs and 143 pages of His Honour Justice Brmberg’s judgment. But the word “multiculturalism” certainly isn’t prominent enough for it to feature in the Catchwords on the first page.

Multiculturalism does appear, however, in the 8-page summary of the judgment. In paragraph 15, His Honour remarked:

Whether conduct is reasonably likely to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate a group of people calls for an objective assessment of the likely reaction of those people. I have concluded that the assessment is to be made by reference to an ordinary and reasonable member of the group of people concerned and the values and circumstances of those people. General community standards are relevant but only to an extent. Tolerance of the views of others may be expected in a multicultural society, including from those persons who are the subject of racially based conduct.

In paragraph 22, His Honour notes:

In reaching those conclusions, I have observed that in seeking to promote tolerance and protect against intolerance in a multicultural society, the Racial Discrimination Act must be taken to include in its objectives tolerance for and acceptance of racial and ethnic diversity. At the core of multiculturalism is the idea that people may identify with and express their racial or ethnic heritage free from pressure not to do so. People should be free to fully identify with their race without fear of public disdain or loss of esteem for so identifying. Disparagement directed at the legitimacy of the racial identification of a group of people is likely to be destructive of racial tolerance, just as disparagement directed at the real or imagined practices or traits of those people is also destructive of racial tolerance.

Is His Honour really seeking to limit freedom to talk about (let alone criticise) multiculturalism? Read the rest of the summary. Remember, it’s only 8 pages.

As for Bolt suggesting that he has always insisted on the things that unite humanity, do yourself a favour and just read the comments that he allows to appear on his blog whenever he writes about just about any subject.

Words © 2011 Irfan Yusuf

DIVERSITY: Ten years on, 9/13 a milestone for minorities

Today is the 13th day of September -- 10 years after an important milestone for the United States and the West. Ten years ago our way of life and our freedoms, our liberal democracy and our rule of law were all assaulted and violated.


No, it didn't take place in New York or Washington. It took place at a small family-run petrol station in Mesa, Arizona. A young man named Balbir Singh Sodhi, sporting a smartly kept beard and a turban, was shot dead. He was planting flowers in the garden of his family business.




But why mention his beard and turban? Was this at all relevant to Sodhi's murder?


When the planes first crashed into the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, men sporting turbans and beards were all suspected of some kind of involvement. The first pictures released by the FBI of suspected terrorist passengers included men sporting beards and turbans. Even Sydney's Daily Telegraph carried a front page showing a man, his head bowed, sporting a small beard and a blue turban, being taken into custody. The headline screamed "FIRST ARREST".




Turbans and beards were now the symbol of terror. Why? Because Obam ... whoops ... Osama bin Ladin wore a turban.


Frank Silva Roque, 44, of Harvest, Ala., was sentenced to death or first-degree murder in the death of Balbir Singh Sodhi:

Roque was convicted of killing Sodhi, a Mesa gas station owner whom prosecutors said was targeted because Roque thought Sodhi was Arab. Sodhi wore a turban and beard as part of his Sikh faith.

According to an AAP report about Roque's sentencing in 2003, after shooting Sodhi, Roque shot at another gas station where the clerk was a man of Lebanese descent, and shot at the home of an Afghan family. They were not injured.  

This was just the beginning. The New York Times reports that

... an eclectic Sikh temple called Gobind Sadan was burnt down by four teenagers who thought that the turbaned worshippers were Muslims and that the temple's sign said 'Go Bin Laden'.

Sikhs, like other minorities, have suffered a disproportionate amount of prejudice since 9/11. They have stood out due to their visible religious devotions including wearing the dastaar, a traditional Punjabi-style head dress.


Until recently, Sikhs had to remove their turbans when flying. Sikhs also have their turbans frisked at airport security, a ridiculous and humiliating practice.


Paranoia about turbans has become so great that they even became an issue in the US Presidential elections when a picture of Obama wearing traditional clothes of Somali elders was leaked by opponents.


September 11 was the day when tragedy struck the US and when men and women of all nationalities and faiths were murdered by crazed fanatics. But 9/13 is the day when minorities of all nationalities and faiths started becoming subjected to abuse and denial of liberty in the name of protecting us from terrorists who wish to abuse our way of life and deny us liberty.


It isn't just about airport searches. Men from certain minorities have been detained more readily and for longer periods of time. Paranoia was even present in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, when immigrants such as painting contractor Abdurrahman Zeitoun were detained and treated like terror suspects.


The war on terror hasn't just led to imbecilic wars that have killed hundreds of thousands of innocents. It has created a scud missile mentality where at home our collective hatred is hardly ever directed at the right people. Just ask the Sodhi family.

First published in Crikey on 13 September 2011.

DIVERSITY: Centre for Independent Studies hosts genetics expert ...

As part of its Big Ideas Forum this year, the Centre for Independent Studies is hosting German Thilo Sarrazin, a German former banker and politician who claims Muslims are lowering German intelligence and that all Jews share certain genes.

Lovely. Janet Albrechtsen will also be sharing the podium. You can read a gushing tribute to Sarrazin in The Australian authored by Oliver Marc Hartwich, a research fellow at the CIS. Hartwich believes that Sarazzin is the victim of German political correctness.

Heck, why shouldn't a German, less than a century after the Holocaust, claim that Jews have shared features that are inherited? Why shouldn't the CIS be allowed to host someone with such rabid views? And why shouldn't those sponsoring the CIS, among them some major Australian corporations that supply goods and services to Jews and Muslims, not be able to finance the promotion of such opinions?

And why shouldn't I and my Jewish friends be allowed to name and shame these corporations? It's a free country.

COMMENT: Running riot across Sydney

The American-owned Sydney tabloid Daily Telegraph carried an article today about a report from the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics about rioting in Sydney. Here are some excerpts:

THOUSANDS of assaults occur within 20m of a hotel or club across Sydney, a damning report has found, as authorities yesterday called for further restrictions on late-night trading ...


The assaults were clustered around Sydney's nightspots and more likely to happen near licensed premises than anywhere else.


More than 2000 assaults occurred just 20m from a club or pub, accounting for 37 per cent of all attacks in the city, while 56.8 per cent of assaults happened within 50m of a liquor outlet.

Did you notice the first word? THOUSANDS. But as usual, the left-wing ALP lefty nasty elites just refuse to blame the real culprits.

Crime statistic experts and senior police yesterday said extended trading laws and a proliferation of licensed premises across Sydney had to be addressed if the community wanted to reduce violence.

What rubbish. It's clearly the fault of nasty drunken Muslims who refuse to integrate and adopt genuine Australian values such as sobriety.

And if you believe that, you'll believe these dudes are al-Qaeda suicide bombers.

OPINION: Reflect reality, and reject monocultural nonsense

Don’t let politicians and other pundits lecture us on who we are, IRFAN YUSUF writes

Something really tragic took place in the Sydney suburb of Rouse Hill last week. Five Christians of various ages were buried. An entire Christian family - mum, dad, two children and an aunt - died in a tragic boating accident. An Anglican priest presided over the service.

A smaller number of people who died in the same accident were being buried at the Muslim section of Rookwood Cemetery in western Sydney. A huge media contingent was there. Virtually all attention was on the Muslims who died, as if the greater number of Christian dead didn't matter.

Virtually all public discussion about asylum-seekers, immigration and multiculturalism focuses on Muslims. It's as if Muslims were this singular wave of migrants who all recently arrived from the Kingdom of Muslimistan in boats. As if the demographic reality that about half of all our Muslims were born in Australia and aged under 40 are a figment of the collective imagination of employees at the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

One need only visit Mareeba in northern Queensland to understand just how entrenched Muslims are in the Australian heartland. You can find Muslims who have lived and worked and farmed in this area since the 1920s. Women from the local mosque have established a dance group consisting of Albanian, Greek, Italian and Irish-Australian backgrounds.

Even when Muslims originate from a country home to many faiths, we assume they're somehow different. I find it hilarious when I hear people say that Lebanese Muslims are different to Lebanese Christians because of their culture. How so? Do Muslims inject chilli in their baklava? Do Christians slip a bit of pork into their felafels? It's a bit like saying that meat pies made by Catholics are different to those made by Protestants.

Some years ago, I was at a function where the majority of the audience were Lebanese Sunni Muslims. Bob Carr had been invited to speak. He had a special message for the crowd.

I'm pleased to announce that the next Governor of NSW will be Professor Marie Bashir.

The roar from the crowd was instantaneous. People whistled and clapped and cheered. Some readers might wonder why Muslims would be excited about the appointment of a Christian. But they miss the point. She was a Lebanese Australian. These people are Lebanese Australians. She is a symbol of their progress.

The same crowd would cheer on a player from their favourite rugby league team regardless of what his faith was, and even if he was roughly tackling Hazem el-Masri. Cricketing fans among them would cheer a non-Muslim Australian bowler if he managed to bowl champion South African batsman
and devout Muslim Hashim Amla out for a duck.

Forget government policies. Australian multiculturalism is a deeply individual affair for those of us with at least one overseas-born parent. We all have layers of identity. At different times, different layers come to the fore. It's our right as individuals to decide how and when we express any of these layers. It isn't for governments to dictate to us how this is to happen.

What governments can and must dictate is that we act within the law. Different interest groups can shape and influence laws and government policies. In this respect, Muslims as a collective have been rather hopeless. They have little impact in the politics of this country and almost no impact on foreign policy. In political parties, their role has been all but marginal, acting largely as branch stackers than factional heavyweights.

Yet still this notion persists that they are somehow receiving special benefits. I wish I knew what these special benefits are. A local council closing off a pool for a few hours for women to swim? Surely that must beat easy access to members of cabinet and shadow cabinet that groups such as the Australian Christian Lobby enjoy to pursue agendas most Christians are uncomfortable with.

So many people who tick "Muslim" on census forms see themselves as so much more than religious actors. They're rarely seen at the mosque even for the congregational prayers on Fridays. For many, religion isn't a matter of conviction. Writing about the India he grew up in, American author Suketu Mehta remembers a place where

... being Muslim or Hindu or Catholic was merely a personal eccentricity, like a hairstyle.

That was my experience growing up in a subcontinental family in John Howard's electorate. That's how it is everywhere in Australia. Australians should be allowed to decide on their personal eccentricities and hairstyles.

When politicians and pundits start lecturing us on what our culture is, we should give them the one-finger salute. It isn't their job to tell us who we are, what layers of identity we should value more. In this respect, we should add an extra finger when this kind of monocultural nonsense is sprouted by those claiming to be Liberal.

Seriously, what kind of Liberal MP tells his or her constituents that we're a Christian country? I mean, which of Jesus' disciples preached the gospel 40,000 years ago in Arnhem Land?

My advice to pollies and commentators who persist in sowing the seeds of monocultural revolution is: save yourselves the effort and move to a country where such revolutions have been won. Say, North Korea.

Irfan Yusuf is a lawyer and author of comic memoir Once Were Radicals: My Years As A Teenage Islamo-fascist. This article was first published in the Canberra Times on Thursday 24 February 2010.

Words © 2011 Irfan Yusuf



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