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.

CRIKEY: News Corp encouraged Zaky Mallah’s extremism: judge

News Corp is in no place to take the moral high ground on giving Zaky Mallah a media platform, write lawyer and author Irfan Yusuf and senior lecturer at UNSW Helen Pringle. 

Yesterday’s Daily Telegraph front page screamed: “TERROR VISION”. The question was posed:

How dare the taxpayer funded ABC allow this man to spout his bile on national TV?.

A picture showed a smiling Zaky Mallah holding a gun.

On page 4, under the infantile headline “SYRIAL AGITATOR”, a heavily edited chronology of Mallah’s life is provided: employment history, overseas trips and alleged involvement with Syrian resistance groups fighting both Assad and Daesh (otherwise known as Islamic State or ISIS). There’s a brief mention of the New South Wales Supreme Court acquitting Mallah “of terrorism-related charges”. Not much more on that topic. We wondered why.

We went back to the April 21, 2005, judgment of Justice James Wood. We now know why News Corp and some other Australian media outlets would not be keen on publicising its contents.

In 2002, Mallah’s passport application had been refused. He appeared on A Current Affair as well as on Alan Jones’ radio program. Paragraph 13 of the 2005 judgment speaks of Mallah as

... beginning to enjoy, if not to crave, the media attention, which was providing him with an interest or cause in an otherwise unfulfilling or empty life.

Media outlets happily entertained his craving,

... particularly with The Australian, and The Daily Telegraph but also with several television stations.

Paragraph 14 describes how in late 2003 Mallah

... showed, or sold, to the journalists copies of some of the documents which police had earlier seized, as well as some photographs of himself in dramatic poses, holding a knife, and wearing the kind of garb that, it seems, he considered appropriate for a would-be terrorist or suicide bomber.

Gosh. News Corp and commercial TV journos appear to have bought photos of Mallah in dangerous poses. Perhaps looking like a suicide bomber. Or like a younger Man Monis. Surely responsible scribes wouldn’t just sit on this. Surely they’d think going to the cops might be an idea. Let’s wait and see. Wood says in paragraph 15:

In the weekend edition of The Australian of November 22-23 [2003], he featured in an article on the front page entitled ‘Tortured World of an Angry Young Man’. It contained some of the photographs that he had supplied, and extracted portions of his manifesto or final message. Reference was made to his grievances and prior arrest [on firearms charges], and the article concluded with some observations as to his potential dangerousness and vulnerability to manipulation, noting that ‘without urgent help, Zak Mallah, Islam and his problems make a deadly cocktail’ ...

The transactions then went further. Paragraph 20:

At the same time as these discussions [with an anti-terror command agent posing as a journalist, between 28 October and November 3, 2003] were taking place, the Prisoner was also in contact with journalists from The Australian, and The Daily Telegraph and possibly also Channel 9, with a view to obtaining further coverage and the sale of photographs or the video.

Did News Corp and/or Channel Nine pay Mallah any money? Mallah certainly needed it. Paragraph 25:

[T]he Prisoner was in straightened financial circumstances, and living in a Housing Commission flat, without any substantial means of income.

Mallah, in fact, claimed that he had discussions with the government agent in order to be paid a sum of money. Wood was scathing about the behaviour of journalists and editors in contact with Mallah at this time. Paragraph 34:

Had real fears been entertained as to his potential dangerousness, then the preferable course surely would have been to pass any relevant information concerning him, to the appropriate policing and security agencies. Had he been dismissed as an attention seeker, of no moment, then there surely would have been no occasion to give him the extensive public exposure which he obviously enjoyed and indeed craved.

Dob him in as a dangerous threat or ignore him as an attention-seeker. Unless you just wanted to manufacture false hysteria about terrorism and minorities. Paragraph 37:

[P]lacing a person such as the Prisoner into the public spotlight is not only likely to encourage him to embark on even more outrageous and extravagant behaviour but, perhaps more importantly, it risks unnecessarily heightening the existing public concerns about terrorist activity as well as encouraging or fanning divisive and discriminatory views among some members of the community.

There’s more to this than simply irresponsible journalism. Our security could have been at stake. And breaches of the law might have taken place. Paragraph 35:

[H]ad the Prisoner’s plan in this case been genuine, the journalists dealing with him, and indeed any police officer doing so without a controlled operations certificate, risked committing offences themselves, under the widely crafted terrorism laws, for example, under s 101.4 or 101.5 of the Criminal Code if they obtained possession of, or collected, documents connected with the preparation for a terrorist act by him; or under s 103.1 if they paid monies to him and were reckless as to whether they might be used by him to facilitate or engage in such an act.

Had Mallah actually committed a real attack with real people dying, then The Australian, the tabloids, Channel Nine and other media outlets might have found themselves on trial for terrorism offences for their actions in facilitating such an attack. No amount of hysterical front-page headlines would save the scribes from the anger of readers and advertisers.

When you point the finger at your competitors, chances are three fingers will be pointing straight back at you. The actions of News Corp in 2002 and 2003 not only gave Zaky Mallah a media platform but perhaps also payments worth more than a ride on a shuttle bus. After Mallah was sentenced in 2005, Vanda Carson in The Australian of April 22, 2005, drew attention to Wood’s warnings on media involvement and coverage of Mallah’s actions. She inaccurately, if ingeniously, wrote:

A senior judge has admitted intelligence agencies would never have picked up Sydney terror suspect Zaky Mallah without the interest of the media.

Wood’s implication, however, was that without the media’s actions, Mallah might have been committed for nuisance at most. Not for terror — for which he was, at any rate, acquitted — and not on a “technicality”, but because, Wood noted, “the Crown failed” to make its case.

One need not agree with everything Wood has to say. But for some media outlets to suggest the ABC was helping out Islamic State by giving an Australian citizen (for now, at least) a voice is downright hypocrisy.

First published in Crikey on 25 June 2015.

CRIKEY: Pakistan school massacre and the nature of terrorism

At funerals for the dead students kill Pakistan, mourners will recite the same words uttered by the terrorists. And yet some would have us believe Islam has something to answer for.

In his column yesterday, Chris Kenny lectured us on how “sections of the media and political class” are pressuring him and his colleagues to “play down the Islamist element” in various terror attacks affecting Australians. These forces would have us ignore the “horror of Islamic extremist terrorism”.

Kenny wrote of 9/11, when “10 of our nationals were killed”, then of the Bali bombings, when “88 of our citizens” were among the victims, then of the attack on our embassy in Jakarta. We are facing this. We are the victims. And all the left-wing elites care about is “a backlash” and of “repercussions against Muslims” that will never arrive. Kenny’s simplistic binary seems to be “we” Aussie versus them … um … er … Islamic Islamist types.

There wasn’t much evidence of playing down anything from Chris Uhlmann during his conversation with the PM this morning. Uhlmann asked some tough questions that needed answering, then made the extraordinary claim about a certain set of religious and legal denominations and traditions whose adherents make up one-quarter of humanity: “[T]his is a religion that is resistant to scrutiny or criticism, that is utterly incapable of laughing at itself, and when it is criticised the reaction often tends to be violent.”

Blaming this attack on Islam won’t help survivors of the hostage drama any more than an attack on Christianity would help victims of child sexual assault who gave evidence at the royal commission.

Right now people are in mourning. The Lindt Cafe is a popular destination, situated between the financial and legal districts of Sydney CBD. I’ve been shouted coffee there myself by barristers grateful for the work. It could have been me among those hostages. It could have been the mufti wearing a suit. It was almost Chris Kenny.

Of course, real terrorists who are part of real terrorist groups tend not to care much about having the right flag or talking to the prime minister or other delusional wishes. Real terrorists like the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) don’t allow the age or gender or religion of their victims to stop them from walking into a school and starting to shoot.

Imagine being a year 10 student and witnessing 40 of your fellow students being murdered during an exam. Imagine being shot in both legs and then shoving a tie down your throat so that you don’t scream in agony and you can successfully play dead. Imagine being a parent and not knowing whether your children will still be in their school uniforms or draped in a burial shroud.

The idea that many terrorists are inspired by theocratic “Islamist” ideas is a given. Pakistani newspapers and Urdu cable TV channels are vociferous in their condemnation of dehshat gardi (terrorism). The current government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif may have won the argument about peace talks with the Taliban, but Pakistan looks like it is fast losing the war.

Now here’s a thought. At the funerals of the young students, people will be reciting the Arabic sentence hung up in the window of the Lindt coffee shop in Martin Place. They will recite Allahu Akbar (God is Greater) as was shouted by Taliban assailants as the bullets entered the victims. With whom do the mourners of Peshawar have more in common? The self-styled Sheikh Haron? The Taliban murderers? Or the Sydney folk of all colours and ethnicities and faiths laying flowers and praying at Martin Place?

First published in Crikey on 17 December 2014.

CRIKEY: Emma Alberici (and the West) doesn’t understand anything about Muslims

Emma Alberici’s drawn praise for her heated interview with the head of a radical Islam group, but her conduct was not exemplary.

Tony Abbott copped a few guffaws when he said that in Syria there were no clear goodies and baddies, just lots of baddies. But in fact it was one of the wisest things he ever said about foreign policy. If only he didn’t limit such wisdom to Syria.

What Abbott and the rest of Australia (including our fourth estate) needs to understand is that the national boundaries drawn up in the Middle East were the result of shenanigans of colonial powers on their last legs. Religious, cultural and language groups were split up and even denied some kind of nationhood. Artificial nations were created.

In his memoir Leave to Remain, Australian Lebanese writer Abbas El-Zein recounts his visits to Iraq, where his relatives, from a long line of Shia Muslim religious scholars, studied and worked. He visited what is perhaps the largest cemetery on earth, the Wadi al-Salaam (Valley of Peace) in Najaf Iraq, where Shia Muslims from across the globe aspire to be laid to rest.

Yes, it’s true. Shia Muslims in southern Lebanon have direct links to Shia Muslims in Iraq. Sunni Muslims in Lebanon have direct family and spiritual links to Sunni Muslims in Syria. A Sunni Muslim tribe in Syria is being housed by their direct tribal relatives from Jordan. The boundaries may be real to us, living in the Westphalian world of nation states. But to the people of the region, it really doesn’t make sense. The ties of language and culture and faith and sect go back much further. Those ties and loyalties may extend to communities in Australia, affecting even people born here. It may well be much more complex than just Shias hating Sunnis.

It also explains why the simplistic vision of “the Muslim world”, a singular rump of 25% of humanity yearning for a caliphate, also makes little sense to all but a tiny minority of nominally Muslim migrants and their offspring. This is the fringe simplistic ideology promoted by groups such as Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT), the organisation of “hate preachers” Tony Abbott has promised another hate preacher he will ban.

Emma Alberici’s Lateline interview  with former HT Australian spokesman Wassim Doureihi started well enough. “We’ve invited you here tonight to help Australians better understand what it is that you stand for.” It went downhill from there, with decontextualised questions like, “Do you support the murderous campaign being waged by Islamic State fighters in Iraq?”

Then again, Doureihi could have just used some strategic sense. He’s in luck that HT leaders overseas were having serious issues with ISIS/ISIL/IS before the first Western aid worker or journalist was decapitated. Or rather, when other Western journalists were ignoring the large number of Lebanese, Kurds and other non-Westerners being slaughtered by Daesh, which is the correct Arabic name for Islamic State.

All Doureihi had to do is read out the HT rejection of the Daesh caliphate. Inane questions such as these are something any seasoned media operator should be used to. And Doureihi is about as seasoned as they come. He’s been an HT spokesman since around 2006.

But Doureihi cannot remove himself from this simplistic vision of human beings as computer hardware who just need the correct religious and political software to operate a caliphate network. HT see the idea of a caliphate as sole political glue that binds Muslims together, despite the fact that Shia Muslims don’t believe in a caliphate. As if issues like language never led to the phenomenon of Kurdish separatism or the establishment of Bangladesh in 1971 and the ongoing tensions within this relatively new Muslim nation.

Perhaps Alberici could have asked Doureihi to explain this diagram from The Guardian  — it doesn’t look much like a singular Muslim world to me. Or if complicated is her thing, perhaps this one from Slate. But then Alberici was stuck in a simplistic paradigm handed to her, one where a handful of white people being decapitated was more tragic than thousands of brown people being slaughtered by Daesh and then bombed to shreds by righteous Western forces.

Doureihi had an opportunity to decontextualise and recontextualise all he wanted if he just got past Alberici’s threshold questions. Instead, he became bogged down in a sad attempt to rejig the war on terror “narrative” in a single interview.

WASSIM DOUREIHI: Let me make it very clear: you’ve invited me on to this platform to express my views.

EMMA ALBERICI: Yes!

WASSIM DOUREIHI: You’re not allowing me to do that.

EMMA ALBERICI: But you want to express your views quite separate to the questions that I’m putting to you.

WASSIM DOUREIHI: I’m answering the question that I deem appropriate.

How hard is it to say, “I am against beheadings. I am against genocide. And I was wondering why we never gave a flying fuck about the toxic fallout in Fallujah being worse than Hiroshima”?

But Alberici’s own responses to Doureihi’s questions reinforced Doureihi’s claims that some kind of underlying narrative was at play. She was becoming flustered by a phenomenon — an interviewee answering her question in a manner he wished — that she should be well used to. Heck, politicians do this all the time. HT is a political party. Doureihi is a Muslim politician wannabe.

Alberici lectured Doureihi on how to combat phobia. “You can dispel any supposed phobia out there by putting a line in the sand and giving people a yes or a no about what your position is”. She even asks : “What are Islamic State fighters doing in your name?”

It’s easy for Doureihi and others (including me) to be offended by this. Daesh don’t fight in my name. They are violent wackos, thugs, criminals. I don’t think HT are violent, even if they are silly. But to ban them would be ridiculous. If Abbott and other pollies cannot win such a simple battle of ideas against such simpleton opponents, it says a lot about the pathetic discourse on foreign policy in this country.​

First published in Crikey on Friday 10 October 2014.

HUMOUR: Islamic French superheroes

It’s often said that Paris is the city of lovers. Which might make you wonder whether such wimped-out lovey-dovey Parisian types might ever need superheroes to protect them. After all, isn’t love supposed to conquer all?


But like any big city, the real Paris is a place where organised crime and terrorism can flourish. This might explain a recent decision by the board of multinational Batman Incorporated to expand its operations beyond Gotham City, with new branch offices established in Paris and Tokyo.

Heading up the Parisian operation is some bloke named Nightrunner. Nicely tanned and sporting black and grey tights, Nightrunner is on a mission to defeat a group of highly organised criminals and leftist and rightist terrorists carrying out high-profile assassinations.

There’s just one problem. This particular Frenchman isn’t really French at all. One righteous blogger, Warner Todd Huston, complains that DC Comics and “Batman couldn’t find any actual Frenchman to be the ‘French saviour’”.

It’s easy to laugh off the likes of Huston as just a bunch of far-Right fruitloops. But their claims seem to resonate across so much of the mainstream. For a change, let’s try and take Huston’s argument a little seriously. Not too much. Just a little.

So what’s so un-French about Nightrunner? Apart from Nightrunner’s attire suggesting dubious sexual preference (heck, real blokes wouldn’t be caught dead in black and grey tights!), what else could any conservative blogger have a problem with?

I did notice that Nightrunner’s skin is of a slightly darker Mediterranean shade. Does Mr Huston imagine that persons of Mediterranean appearance aren’t welcome in a country with a Mediterranean coast? Not exactly.

You see, DC Comics has decided that the ‘French saviour’, the French Batman, is to be a Muslim immigrant ... The character’s name is Bilal Asselah and he is an Algerian Sunni Muslim and an immigrant that is physically fit and adept at gymnastic sport Parkour.

Mr Huston goes further:

The whole situation is a misreading of what ails France. The truth is, neither communist union members nor neo-Nazi parties are causing riots in France. Muslims are. Yet DC Comics is absurdly making a Muslim immigrant the 'French saviour'?

Bloody oath! These immigrants can never be real Frenchmen. Marshall Philippe Benoni Petain understood this well. He was a French national war hero and eventually headed the government of the French State during the 1940s. Petain’s government managed to rid France (which in those days included Algeria) of many nasty foreign types – Jews and Gypsies. I wonder how Petain would feel at his beloved capital having yet another foreign superhero!

Huston continues:

This is PCism at its worst. Not only that but it is pretty condescending to France, too. France is a proud nation. Yet DC Comics has made a foreigner the 'French saviour'. This will not sit well with many Frenchmen, for sure. Nor should it.

Huston is absolutely right. The French have had experience with nasty undisciplined foreign Mozzlems. This explains why they never allow Muslim guys like Bacary Sagna or Abou Diabyinto their national side. The French only allow real actual Frenchmen like Franck Ribery to be their football saviours, not a bunch of non-Christian immigrants. Anyone who disagrees deserves to be headbutted by this dude.

And so we have a problem. To fight Parisian terror, the folks at Batman Incorporated have chosen a superhero whose background means he is genetically disposed to being a nasty Ay-rab Mozzlem jihadist Islamist fundamentalist Islamofascist extremist Talibanist terrorist.

Seriously, if Batman had to choose an immigrant as the first French superhero, couldn’t he have found a Christian? Perhaps a Christian of Romanian heritage, a kid emerging from a Roma gypsy camp and with a history of fighting street crime. French people love gypsies because they’ve never been involved in rioting anywhere in France. We also know how welcome these good European Christian Roma folk are made to feel in the Republic. Just ask the current head of the French State, Nicolas Sarkozy.

OK, I've tried my best to take Huston's argument seriously, but I just can't. The idea that migrants from particular backgrounds cannot be saviours of their (or their parents’) adopted country is just ridiculous. It’s too dumb even for the world of comic strips. If only it was too stupid for certain elements of the allegedly conservative blogosphere.

First published on ABC The Drum on 18 January 2011.

CRIKEY: Al Jazeera English’s Cairo performance: it’s the new CNN

Last night, ABC24’s coverage turned from cyclone Yasi to Egypt at about 7.45. ABC correspondent Ben Knight was interviewed as he stood in his hotel room. He said words to this effect: “It’s too dangerous to venture outside my hotel room. In fact, it’s too dangerous for any journalist to be out there.” The real and serious journos were forced to seek safety in their hotel rooms.


At that very moment, I switched over to Al Jazeera English (AJE). On the screen were live scenes of night-time crowds chanting and throwing petrol bombs in Tahrir Square. And there was the familiar voice of the AJE correspondent among the crowd speaking in flawless English in an American accent and translating people’s slogans from Arabic. In the background was the sound of rocks and small explosions and shouting.


I’d been watching the coverage in Egypt of AJE for the previous few days. AJE had at least three correspondents among the crowd in Tahrir Square in Cairo where more than 1 million people had gathered to protest against Hosni Mubarak. They also interviewed people in the crowd and in other parts of Cairo. All this despite the fact that their Cairo bureau had been closed by the authorities and at least one of their camera crews detained by security forces.


No one should criticise Ben Knight or any other foreign journalist for staying in their hotel rooms. Heck, it seems anyone not from Egyptian state media is being attacked by pro-Mubarak thugs. But the bravery of AJE reporters risking their lives by continuously embedding themselves amongst volatile crowds must surely be earning them a cult following.


During the Gaza conflict in 2009, the best English language reporting came from AJE reporters Shirene Tadros and Ayman Mohyeldin. These two were the undisputed media stars of that war, embedding themselves among the embattled Palestinians of Gaza. Their language skills and understanding of political and cultural sensitivities made them ideal correspondents.


Now they’re embedded in the Cairo crowds. At  8.27pm Sydney time, Mohyeldin sent this tweet from his blackberry: “received threats yesterday but that will not stop AJE from showing the world what’s happening here. i’m now tweeting personally”.


If the first Iraq War in 1991 made CNN’s reputation, surely its ongoing coverage of the Egypt uprising should cement AJE’s reputation as a world-class broadcaster. Just accept it.


First published in Crikey on Friday 4 February 2011.


Words © 2011 Irfan Yusuf



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OPINION: Artful dodger does himself no favours on David Hicks ...

A recent episode of the ABC's Q&A almost became a battle of the memoirs. John Howard was the sole guest, his appearance fitting very neatly in with his publisher's promotion schedule. Howard was buoyed by audience responses to his mantras about the economy and his gentle pokes in the eyes of Peter Costello and Malcolm Fraser.

Then, out of the blue, David Hicks's face appears via webcam. Contrary to the image Howard and others drew of him as a raving terrorist, Hicks calmly and in a dignified manner posed Howard his question.

Hicks wanted to simply understand why his own government showed indifference to his incarceration and torture at Guantanamo. Hicks also wanted to know what Howard thought of military tribunals. Hicks even ended his question with a polite "thank you". Osama bin Laden would have been pulling his beard out at Hicks's demeanour toward Howard.

It was obvious that Howard was rattled by Hicks's very appearance, let alone by questions Howard avoided for so many years in office. At first, Howard played politician by avoiding the question, instead reminding us of how lucky we were to have a free exchange on an ABC that members of his government tried ever so hard to restrict and intimidate.

Howard also reminded us that there was ...

... a lot of criticism of that book from sources unrelated to me and I've read some very severe criticisms of that book.

No doubt a perceived absence of literary merit may justify an appearance before a military tribunal. Either that, or Howard was praying Hicks's memoirs might end up on the remaindered shelves faster than his own.

Unlike Howard, I prefer to not to judge Hicks's memoirs (entitled Guantanamo: My Journey) until I have actually read them. Based on what I've read so far, Hicks' work is certainly more interesting than another book I've read, one Howard would perhaps prefer and one which actually glorifies a terrorist act - Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.

Sitting opposite Tony Jones, Howard justified his government's position of allowing Hicks to rot at the Guantanamo gulag for years without trial or charge and where he was tortured. Howard reminded us that military commissions ...

... date a long way into American history ...

... and were not ...

... something invented by the Bush administration.

Indeed. Torture also wasn't invented by the Bush administration. As for history, torture has a much longer one not just in America but indeed the history of all nations. One can only wonder whether in Howard's eyes, Hicks's detention, torture and unfair trial was all part of an historically justifiable package.

Howard went on to blame delays in Hicks' charges and trial on the fact that many civil rights lawyers were busy ...

... fighting the legality and the basis on which the military commissions had been established.

So fighting unjust laws delays (and hence denies) justice somehow. Using Howard's logic, one can only assume that constitutions are a source of grave injustice.

Howard also insisted his government urged the Bush administration to bring on the trial quickly. Rubbish. Howard only did this when he saw it was becoming an election issue, when even his own backbenchers like Danna Vale saw this as becoming a vote drainer.

In a column for The Age in November 2005, Vale described Hicks as ...

... the only Western man with 500 others incarcerated in the worst prison known to the Western world that was especially created outside the Geneva Convention, and with all the ramifications of what that means to those who believe in the rule of law
and the humane treatment of prisoners.

Howard artfully dodged the question as to why he allowed an Australian citizen to be tried before a military tribunal when the US and Britain didn't see such procedure as good enough for their citizens.

Indeed, George W.Bush did not allow American citizen John Walker Lindh, the "American Taliban" fighter, anywhere near the Guantanamo gulag. British authorities also strenuously lobbied for the release of British detainees.

Danna Vale herself asked these questions:

It has been said that if Hicks is returned to Australia, we have no law under which he can be charged and he would walk free. But why should he not walk free if he has not committed an offence against Australian law. He has already been incarcerated for four years, which is more than some get for rape or murder in our country. How long a sentence is considered enough punishment for a misguided fool and prize dill?

John Howard did not agree with Vale's assessment. He said on Q&A:

I took the view that it was better that someone went before a military commission, given the charges and allegations made against him ... then that they be brought back to Australia and not be capable of being charged.

So if someone accused you of committing an act for which no charge existed in any Australian statute book, the prime minister of Australia would prefer to have you brought before a kangaroo commission to be charged and convicted on the basis of evidence extracted as a result of the torture of yourself and God-knows how many others. Howard somehow reasons this can actually be better for the national interest.

Howard's government valued its Guantanamo citizens as much as the Middle Eastern dictatorships whose citizens shared cells with Hicks. Actually, Howard's attitude toward Hicks was worse.

Countries like Saudi Arabia, Libya and Algeria aren't known for having depoliticised criminal justice systems. Their detainees would probably be just as "lawfully" detained and tortured back home.

Howard was happy to see an alien legal regime imposed on an Australian citizen not by some tinpot dictatorship but by an ally in circumstances where that Australian would have walked free in Australia.

Howard was so keen to please Dubya in his so-called war on terror that he was prepared to sacrifice the human rights and liberty of two Australian citizens David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib. In Habib's case, no charges were ever laid and he was subjected to torture in numerous countries before reaching Guantanamo.

Howard continues to defend the indefensible. Is it any wonder he lost both the election and his own seat?

Irfan Yusuf is a lawyer and author of Once Were Radicals. This column was first published in The Canberra Times.

OPINION: Why Conservatives should have been the first to apologise to indigenous Australians ...

(This article was first published on ABC Unleashed on 31 January 2008 to coincide with the Prime Minister's token apology to the Stolen Generation.)

Australian conservatives love talking about the importance of family values and of strengthening families. They also love talking about why migrants should be force-fed a good dose of cultural integration, even if it means having them memorise a dodgy citizenship booklet.

But for some reason, when it comes to the cultures and families of Indigenous Aussies, the rules applying to families and integration are turned on their head. Confused? Read on.


Budget dinners and Indigenous telephones...

On budget night two years ago, I found myself sitting in the Great Hall of Parliament House chatting away with some woman from a Liberal Party branch. After being lectured by her for 10 minutes on why "those nasty Mozzlems" didn't belong in Australia, I thought I might change the topic. So I switched to Indigenous affairs. The conversation went something like this:


SHE: Oh, them Abbos! What they need is a good dose of Western Christian civilisation.

ME: Well, madam, do you consider yourself a conservative?

SHE: Of course!

ME: And do you support the status quo?

SHE: Well, yes I do.

ME: Now on the one hand, we have around 200 years of European cultural status quo on this continent. We also have 40,000 years of Indigenous cultural status quo.

SHE: Yes, and ...

ME: Well, surely a genuine conservative would show more reverence and respect to a 40,000-year-old cultural status quo, wouldn't they?

SHE: Why? Did you know that the Aborigines didn't have telephones?

ME: Neither did Arthur Phillip, for that matter.

SHE: Huh! You must be one of them. You certainly look like it!

It's a bit rich for white-skinned Anglo-Aussies to lecture newer migrants on integration. What efforts did English, Irish, Scottish and other convicts and settlers make to integrate with Indigenous cultures?


Dr Nelson puts his heart in it...

One of my most memorable tasks as a member of the NSW Liberal Party State Council was to sit on the pre-selection panel for Dr Brendan Nelson. I've written about that experience here. After entering Parliament, Dr Nelson regularly bombarded us with all kinds of newsletters, reports and speeches.

Nelson had his own distinctive slogan and logo on all stationery - letterheads, envelopes etc. With the stars of the Southern Cross in the background, the words "Bradfield: Put your heart in it!" screamed out at you each time you received something from the good doctor.

Back in those days, Nelson was relying on the good graces of the relatively more left wing "Group" faction of the party which had secured him the preselection. The Group were always taunted by us for wanting to look more like the ALP than the ALP, supporting allegedly trendy causes such as the Republic and Aboriginal land rights.

One report Dr Nelson sent out was a summary of the 689-page Bringing Them Home report produced by the Human Rights & Equal Opportunity Commission as part of its "National Inquiry into the separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families". Accompanying the summary was a letter from Dr Nelson urging all delegates to read the report. I can't recall whether Nelson mentioned a national apology back then, but it was clear from Nelson's covering letter that he regarded the treatment of Indigenous families as a source of profound national shame.


Dr Nelson takes his heart out of it...

That was then. Nelson is now Opposition Leader, heavily reliant on the votes of more conservative Liberal MPs. His home state is dominated by a small cabal of far-Right apparatchiks. His back bench includes a young MP who, as president of the NSW Young Libs and staffer for Liberal MLC David Clarke, engaged in a war of attrition against anyone (including a former NSW Opposition Leader) deemed insufficiently right wing.

Now Nelson has to beat his chest and prove his conservative credentials by standing up for good clean wholesome family values. Even if it means showing gross insensitivity toward Indigenous Australians whose families were forcibly ripped apart.

Nelson claims an apology to victims of the stolen generation will reinforce a "victim mentality". In fact, the opposite is more likely the case. The fact that no apology has yet been made ensures this issue remains even more of a festering sore among Indigenous Aussies. An apology may well go a long way to healing that sore and taking reconciliation forward.

Nelson asks whether the apology is "the most important issue that's facing Australia when we've seen a decline in the share market, home interest rates go up, petrol get more expensive and a basket full of groceries harder to fill". Yet how much influence does the government really have over these matters? Or is Nelson going to lead the next Federal Opposition with the campaign slogan "Keeping interest rates at record lows"?

John Howard had little control over interest rates, yet he still apologised to voters each time interest rates rose. Neither Brendan Nelson nor Kevin Rudd nor me nor most readers had anything to do with stealing Indigenous kids from their parents. Methinks being stolen from your family is worse than having troubles with your mortgage.

Brendan doesn't seem to understand this. Malcolm certainly does. Which probably explains why most punters and pundits take for granted that the future belongs to Malcolm.

A lesson on Christian values...

I asked an Aboriginal mate of mine named John about whether an apology would be nice. John was one of thousands of Aboriginal Aussies whose family was forcibly broken up in an attempt to "Christianise" them. It must have worked on John as he approached the issue in a very Christian manner.

"It isn't about whether you should say sorry even though you had nothing to do with it. What you should really be asking is this: If this happened to you, if you were stolen from your family, would you want to receive an apology? And more importantly, would the apology help in taking us all beyond the original injustice?"

I guess it's an extension of Christ's saying that we should love our neighbour as we love ourselves. Certainly I had that drummed into me during 10 years at St Andrews.

If we really are a Christian nation (as some conservatives claim), surely we should be taking some advice from the man (or rather, Son of Man) himself in how we deal with each other. Conservatives should be tripping over each other to make a collective apology not just to the Stolen Generation but to all Indigenous Aussies for all they have suffered thanks to our presence here.

Conclusion

Dr Nelson, follow your own advice and put your heart in it!


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MEDIA: Janet finds reds under her television set ...?

Resident cultural researcher at The Australian's opinion page, Janet Albrechtsen, complains yet again about the left wing bias allegedly evident in the products of a Broadcasting Corporation on whose Board she once sat.

Her five years as ABC director seems to have softened her stance.

Having just completed a five-year term on the board, I am the first to cheer about what is best about the ABC, an organisation filled with many first-rate professionals. From its inception in 1932, it has provided a stellar range of services. Indeed, its rural and regional network of radio stations are filled with local presenters and producers who have a real sense of the cross-section of people who listen.

Her inevitable criticism was preceded by this reasonable remark:

But there is a difference between cheering and cheerleading for the ABC. The former means being honest enough to suggest constructive ways to make the ABC better.

Fair enough. But then she makes this rather unusual remark, while praising the independence of one ABC reporter Chris Uhlmann:

Anyone who writes about balance at the ABC mentions Uhlmann as a standout from the rest of the crowd. It should not be like this at the public broadcaster. There should be plenty of Uhlmanns and others, too, with different perspectives. I know of only one. An ABC reporter once introduced herself to me at a gathering by whispering in my ear that she was secretly a conservative. Why whisper it?

Is Janet suggesting that a balanced journo must, of necessity, be of conservative bent? Is she suggesting there is only one openly conervative journo working for the ABC? What about Dai Le, the State Liberal Candidate for Cabramatta? What about at least one host of the radio show Counterpoint? And what about the articles published by Helen Coonan, Marise Payne, Tony Abbott etc on ABC Unleashed?

Perhaps Janet has the ABC confused with genuinely biased publications such as the Monthly and the opinion page of The Australian ...

Words © 2010 Irfan Yusuf


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