OPINION: Who Made The Dogs Bark?

This article was first published in NewMatilda on 6 September 2006.

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Howard and Costello's comments about Australian Muslims are classic examples of the dog whistle, writes Irfan Yusuf.

On 1 September, on Radio 2GB, there was the following dialogue between Prime Minister John Howard and a talkback caller:

PRIME MINISTER: what I want to do is to reinforce the need for everybody who comes to this country to fully integrate and fully integrating means accepting Australian values, it means learning as rapidly as you can the English language, if you don’t already speak it, and it means understanding that in certain areas, such as the equality of men and women, the societies that some people have left were not as contemporary and as progressive as ours is.

And I think people who come from societies where women are treated in an inferior fashion have to learn very quickly that that is not the case in Australia. That men and women do have equality and they’re each entitled to full respect. I think Australia has benefited enormously from immigration

[A]nd I think there is a section, a small section of the Islamic population and I say a small section and I’ve said this before which is very resistant to integration. And this is a worry of their community as much as it is of the rest of the community.

RADIO PRESENTER, CHRIS SMITH: Is there own community doing enough to tell and weed out these people?

PRIME MINISTER: Some are, some are, and some aren’t. Most of the Islamic people I know are as appalled by the attitude of a small minority as you are and I am. But there are some who see appeals for people to fully integrate into the Australian community, they try and turn that into some kind of act of discrimination against them and I think that’s the sort of thing [the CALLER] is reacting against and she’s quite right to do so.

Howard was still defending his comments at the time I wrote a response published in the Canberra Times. On the same day, he climed to have ‘clarified’ his comments.

As usual, Howard was testing the waters. He was blowing a whistle and testing how loud the dogs barked. And boy, did the dogs bark loudly!

Sheik Rupert bin Murdoch’s Limited News went crazy. The Australian’s Dick Kerbaj started the howling his sub-editors giving his 1 September article the explosive headline: ‘PM Tells Muslims to Learn English.’ (The fact that most Muslims speak better English than Kerbaj speaks Arabic didn’t occur to the headline writers.)

Piers Akerman followed closely behind, showing off his Arab cultural expertise by claiming Syrian-born female psychiatrist Dr Wafa Sultan was really a bloke. (He now claims it was a typo.)

The headlines flowed thick and fast the Daily Telegraph’s Luke McIlveen exaggerating both the PM’s words and some Muslim responses.

Predictably, Peter Costello tried to out-Howard Howard, while the PM himself went in the other direction telling every man and his Middle Eastern dog more or less that ‘99 per cent of Muslims make really good hommus! Only 1 per cent add extreme garlic!!’

On Sunday night, I was relaxed and comfortable in Canberra watching re-runs of Family Guy when Channel 9’s Today Show phoned to ask me to go head-to-head with Andrew Bolt. I reluctantly agreed.

The next morning, a limousine picked me up and took me to the Canberra studio of WIN-9. They hooked me up with a microphone, though there was no screen for me to see either Bolt or my interviewer Karl Stefanovic.

This was supposed to be a cultural show-down, an old-fashioned ‘death match’ from the days of World Championship Wrestling, beamed live across Australia and New Zealand. I was to be the dude defending non-English speaking, wife-beating Mullahs. Bolt was meant to be the reasonable Dutchman defending good ol’ Aussie values.

They played Costello’s sound bite in which he basically said that Muslim leaders need to condemn terrorism so that Muslim converts could get the message that real Islam isn’t a radical violent political ideology. It was the first time I’d heard it. I was shocked. How could this brilliant industrial lawyer now shoot himself in the foot again?

Here’s how the conversation went, more or less:

KARL: Let me start with you, Irfan. In what sense is Peter Costello wrong in suggesting Muslim migrants should preach true Islam and condemn terrorism?

ME: Well, Karl, I have to tell you that I can find nothing wrong in Costello’s statement you just aired.

BOLT: Well I’m really pleased to hear that, Irfan, but there are still crazy clerics and their interpreters opposing the PM and Costello. When will you Muslims oppose these radical clerics?

ME: Andrew, you are right as well. There are extreme clerics threatening people’s lives. There are clerics preaching terror. Then there are clerics opposing stem-cell research that could save people’s lives. There are even clerics threatening the health and lives of women by lobbying to limit access to abortion for those who genuinely need it. It’s terrible!

KARL: Andrew, what do you say about that?

I couldn’t see what happened next, but I could hear Bolt jamming the word ‘Hezbollah!’ into each sentence as many times as possible. I sat back and tried not to snigger. Karl called it game, set and match.

Back in the Channel 9 limo, I switched on my phone. Calls arrived in quick succession from Canberra, Sydney, Brisbane and Allah-knows where else. They were all from women : ‘Good on you. That bastard is so anti-abortion!’ ‘Well done for exposing the real extremists!!’

(OK, I’ll admit they were from my buddies.)

So Howard and Costello have placed the final nail into the anti-Muslim hate speech coffin. Their combined message can be summarised as follows:

Ninety-nine per cent of Muslims are perfectly integrated, speak English, adopt Australian values, and treat women as badly as the rest of us do. Converts need pastoral support to understand Islam isn’t violent or terroristic.

Thanks, John and Pete.

Now the Bolts and Akermans and Albrechtsens and Stones and Steyns and Sheehans and Devines have lost 70 per cent of their content. They can no longer say Muslims have inherently violent misogynistic cultures, or claim Islam is inherently violent, without directly contradicting their political masters.

It also means that Howard and Costello have effectively dismissed Rupert Murdoch’s suggestion that Western Muslims are likely to suffer from dual loyalties. Because every time they make such claims, I’ll be quoting Howard & Costello.

And throwing in a few stem cells for good measure!

Words © 2010 Irfan Yusuf

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CRIKEY: Costello shows little faith in the possibilities of education ...

In 1980, I started grade five at Sydney’s only Anglican cathedral school. My parents wanted to send me to a school which taught their values. But my parents are not Anglican. They are South Asian Sunni Muslims. Among my closest friends at school were a Jew, a Mormon and an atheist brought up in a nominally Catholic family. Their parents may have sent them to the school for similar reasons.

But Peter Costello thinks the main reason parents send their kids to a Christian school is this:

Parents who choose to send their children to a Christian school have a reasonable expectation that the child will get a Christian education. How could the school fulfil its obligation to the parents if it is required by law to employ non-Christian or anti-Christian teachers to provide it?

Perhaps Mr Costello should consult his well-heeled constituents of Sikh, Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist and other non-Christian faiths to find out why they choose to send their kids to exclusive (often selective) Christian schools. Perhaps having a name like Sydney Grammar or St Andrews on one’s resume can help overcome the prejudice of employers at allegedly unpronounceable surnames.

Presently religious institutions and faith schools are exempt from the provisions of anti-discrimination legislation which forbid discrimination in employment on the basis of religion. This could change in Victoria, and Costello writes in both The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald expressing his opposition ...

... to restrict the freedom of religious schools to choose their employees on the basis of their religious faith.

I’ve acted for both Muslim and non-denominational independent schools in workplace relations matters. Muslim schools employ non-Muslim teachers, only requiring them to display respect and empathy to Muslim religious values. Female teachers aren’t required to cover their hair. School principals told me that they had to hire non-Muslim staff as there weren’t enough Muslim teachers.

This presumably means these schools would take advantage of discrimination exemptions and employ only Muslim teachers if they had half a chance. Would Costello support Muslim schools insisting Muslim kids only be taught by Muslim teachers? Perish the thought! This kind of non-integration and breach of Australian values is what Costello so often pontificated on when he was treasurer.

I’d be appalled by the idea of kids from Islamic schools not having non-Muslim teachers. Hopefully by the time there are enough Muslim teachers, the law will have changed so that neither Muslim nor any other faith schools can discriminate. Religious and cultural cocoons aren’t healthy for children or for social cohesion.

Then again, Anglican cocoons didn’t harm me. Back when I was at school, to be employed at St Andrews as a teacher, you had to show some kind of commitment to Christianity. Some teachers evidenced this by a letter from their parish priest. We’re not sure exactly how my popular Year 11 English Teacher, Mr Scott, evidenced his Christian commitment. But at the last St Andrews’ Class of ’87 reunion, one of the lads recalled Scott had a habit of wearing polka-dotted ties. I’m not sure if he still wears them to work.

First published in Crikey on 29 July 2009.

VIDEO: US conservatives still talking Turkey over the "Judeo-Christian" nation ...

Some alleged conservatives in the United States are getting their nickers in a knot (or should that be knickers in a not?) over President Obama's remarks at a joint press conference with his counterpart in Turkey. It seems some are still peddling this myth that there is such a thing as a Judeo-Christian tradition.

In Australia, conservatives have also been peddling this myth of our country being founded on "Judeo-Christian values". Peter Costello has made such claims from time to time. Including during a speech he made to a crowd of Pentecostal Christians at Scots Church in Melbourne in 2004.

If the Arab traders that brought Islam to Australia, had … settled or spread their faith among the Indigenous population, our country today would be vastly different. Our laws, our institutions, our economy would be vastly different.

But that did not happen. Our society was founded by British colonists. And the single most decisive feature that determined the way it developed was the Judeo-Christian-Western tradition. As a society, we are who we are because of that tradition … one founded on that faith and one that draws on the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Indeed he's right. Arab traders didn't bring Islam to Australia. Indonesian fisherman did. But they didn't come here to preach and conquer but rather to trade with local indigenous people in the Northern Territory. And these Indonesian fishermen kept trading up until the early part of the twentieth century when their centuries-old trade was stopped by legislators in Adelaide behaving in an allegedly Judeo-Christian manner.

But what of this whole idea of Judeo-Christian values? When did they come about? And what role, if any, did the "Judeo" bit play in the 18th century? At this point it might be appropriate to plagiarise myself:

Costello’s 2004 speech suggests only the traditions of British colonists mattered. Australia’s first few fleets consisted of a handful of English free settlers accompanying shiploads of convicts of various faiths - Jews, Catholics, Muslims and a smattering of perhaps reluctant followers of the Church of England.

Costello’s much touted Judeo-Christian culture wasn’t exactly alive and well in England. Both colonists and convicts would have been aware of the passing of the Jew Bill through the English Parliament in 1753, allowing Jews to be naturalised by application to Parliament. Mr Costello’s ideological ancestors, the Tories, opposed the Bill, claiming it involved an “abandonment of Christianity”. Conservative protesters burnt effigies of Jews and carried placards reading “No Jews, no wooden shoes”.

Jews were forbidden from attending university and practising law in England until the mid 19th century. One can only imagine the prejudice the 750-odd First Fleet Jewish convicts faced from English jailors brought up in such an anti-Semitic environment.

These considerations would apply even more in the United States, where the Founding Fathers deliberately avoided any mention of a religious qualification for public office.

Anyway, watch a Republican chap try and resurrect the Judeo-Christian myth in the context of Obama's recent comments in Turkey.

Words © 2009 Irfan Yusuf




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CRIKEY: Mafia scandal should make O'Farrell and Turnbull very nervous ...

Well it’s been a bad few weeks for the Federal Parliamentary Liberal Party.

Brendan Nelson decided to POQ, his parting message to many of his more senior colleagues to join him. Julie Bishop was effectively demoted. Former leader John Hewson wrote op-eds in Fairfax papers telling Costello to also POQ. Joe Hockey reckons Costello’s refusal to POQ makes him resemble Prince Charles waiting for Queen Lizzy to kick the bucket or abdicate. Both Phillip Ruddock and Bronwyn Bishop are facing pressure from their branches to POQ. And just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse, it now seems the Federal Police have been investigating links between the Liberal Party organisation and a local franchise of the Calabrian mafia.

The Party has seen better days. Who could forget that famous scene when John Howard told a packed hall of Liberal Party faithful on the eve of the 2001 federal election: "We will decide who comes into this country and the circumstances in which they come". If allegations raised in The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald today are anything to go by, it seems the Howard government had decided who (persons with links to organised crime) would entered and remained in Australia and the circumstances (political donations) in which they would come.

It shamelessly lied in accusing asylum seekers of throwing their children overboard. John Howard and Phillip Ruddock, in the name of "border protection", happily took a cue from Saddam Hussein and Donald Rumsfeld by locking up in detention centres ordinary Iraqis and Afghans (including children) fleeing persecution, all the while boasting of a "war on terror" designed to liberate Iraq and Afghanistan.

Yet the Liberal Party Division in both John Howard’s and Malcolm Turnbull’s home state was happy to accept donations from people allegedly close to the Calabrian mafia. Liberal MP’s happily lobbied to keep a man accused of having mafia links in Australia and happily received donations of up to $150,000 from his buddies.

Vanstone denies donations affected her decision to intervene, which she claimed was made on humanitarian grounds. Vanstone had evidence of the person’s links to organised crime. She overruled her Department’s recommendation and exercised her discretion to allow the individual to remain in Australia, overturning the decision of her predecessor. Fairfax also reports that the man was subsequently arrested in relation to his alleged involvement in the world’s largest importation of the illegal drug ecstasy.

This was supposed to be the government which prided itself on its national security credentials. This is the party which wants to form the next State Government in New South Wales. Barry O’Farrell should be more than a little nervous And Malcolm Turnbull must be on the verge of a cardiac arrest.

First published in Crikey on Monday 23 February 2009.

Words © 2009 Irfan Yusuf


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COMMENT: Danny Nalliah catches fire ...

Well, it seems even Peter Costello cannot stomach the nonsense that emerges from the alegedly prophetic mouth of Pastor Danny Nalliah. It seems that on this occasion Nalliah has just gone too far.

It wasn't bad enough for Nalliah to call on his flock to pray to God that Hindu and masonic temples (not to mention mosques) be torn down. It wasn't enough for Nalliah to meet with the moronically anti-Semitic League of Rights. It wsn't enough for Nalliah to argue that domestic violence shouldn't be grounds for a Christian divorce.

None of this was enough for Costello to condemn Nalliah. None of this was enough for Costello to stop sending Australia Day messages to Nalliah's cult.

While other clergy at the heart of the tragedy were expressing more restrained and heart-felt emotion, Peter Costello's favourite pastor was lecturing Victorian bushfire victims about how the flams represented divine punishment for supporting abortion.

CTFM leader, Pastor Danny Nalliah said ... he was not surprised by the bush fires due to a dream he had last October relating to consequences of the abortion laws passed in Victoria.

He said these bushfires have come as a result of the incendiary abortion laws which decimate life in the womb.

Gee, how very sensitive of you, Pastor Nalliah. But as if the contents of CTFM's press release were not bad enough. Nalliah went further in this interview with the Sydney Morning Herald:

Asked by the Herald if he did not believe most Australians would regard his remarks as being in appallingly bad taste, he said today: "I must tell people what they need to hear, not what they want to hear."

He said it was no use "molly-coddling" Australians.

Asked if he believed in a God who would take vengeance by killing so many people indiscriminately - even those who opposed abortion, Mr Nalliah referred to 2 Chronicles 7:14 to vouch for his assertion that God could withdraw his protection from a nation.

"The Bible is very clear," he said. "If you walk out of God's protection and turn your back on Him, you are an open target for the devil to destroy."

In the New King James version of the Bible, 2 Chronicles 7:14 states that: "If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land."

Still, don't be surprised if, come Easter or Christmas or next year's Australia Day, Costello again sends Nalliah a special videotaped message.

UPDATE I: I spoke to someone at the Herald Sun. I was curious if they would run anything on the latest Nalliah stupidity. The Herald Sun chap told me that they are too busy running sensible stuff about the fires. Fair enough? Then again, even Andrew Bolt refused to use his blog to spread "fire jihad" conspiracy theories.

Words © 2009 Irfan Yusuf


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BOOK REVIEW: Dirty politics across the ditch ...

The Hollow Men: A study in the politics of deception
Nicky Hager
Craig Potton Publishing, 352pp
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Believe it or not, politics can get pretty interesting across the Tasman. Our Kiwistani cousins in Wellington have certainly mastered all those finer Machiavellian arts Canberrans are used to reading about in this newspaper.

And the issues fought over in Wellington ’s “beehive” (the affectionate name given by Kiwis to their parliament house – even the official government website address is www.beehive.govt.nz) are much the same. Last year, Peter Costello delivered some modest tax cuts. Within 2 months, New Zealand ’s ruling Labour-led coalition government delivered a budget with even smaller tax cuts.

It was a high point for opposition National Party leader Dr Don Brash, who used his budget reply speech to talk about Labour’s “Bondi budget”. To thundering applause and laughter from the Opposition benches, Brash declared:

Helen Clark and [NZ Treasurer] Michael Cullen clearly believe there is a place for tax cuts - it's called Australia.

That was June 2006. By November the National Party leader wasn’t sounding so … er … brash. The book that played a key role in his demise is the subject of this review.

The Hollow Men is the work of Nicky Hager, said to be one of New Zealand ’s most celebrated investigative journalists. This is Hager’s third book.

The controversy surrounding the book is perhaps more exciting than the book itself. Set for release on Tuesday 21 November 2006, crucial contents of the book were the subject of an injunction made on the previous Friday in the Wellington High Court banning its publication. The legal proceedings brought by none other than Dr Brash himself. The injunction barred publication of certain e-mail correspondence between Dr Brash and other parties (presumably advisers, constituents and Party colleagues). These leaked e-mails were crucial source material used by Hager in his book.

Two days after the scheduled publication date, Brash withdraw the injunction application and announced his resignation from the National Party leadership. The book hit New Zealand bookshelves the following day. Brash left the beehive for good in February 2007.

The book is largely about the rise of Don Brash to the leadership of the National Party, and what almost became the coming to power of a Brash government in the September 2005 elections. Many of the themes Brash used – indigenous and racial wedge politics, policy making in the financial interests of donors, adoption of far-Right policy positions – will be familiar to close observers of the 11 years of Howard rule. Brash no doubt tried to model himself on John Howard.

This book has promise, but the author tends to ramble on and becomes lost in superfluous detail arising from the e-mail exchanges he uses. Sadly, much of the alleged “exposure” of National Party policy processes borders on polemical rant. It’s one thing to accuse the Kiwi-Nats of telling lies over their dealings with Crosby Textor and the Exclusive Brethren. It’s another to pass off one’s criticisms of certain National policies as fact.

Peter Costello recently described Howard as a lacklustre treasurer and economic reformer. I doubt Costello would say the same about Dr Brash, who worked for the World Bank before serving for 14 years as Governor of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand. His tenure coincided with the free market reforms of former Labour Finance Minister Sir Roger Douglas. Later Douglas went onto establish the free market fundamentalist ACT Party.

However, this book isn’t just a political biography of the former National Party leader. The book exposes the secretive political campaign tactics used by the fringe fundamentalist Christian sect known as the Exclusive Brethren. Although officially the Brethren bars its members from voting and regards worldly politics as evil, key members of the Brethren have been involved in a number of campaigns supporting conservative candidates in the United States, Australia and New Zealand.

The Brethren campaign was especially active in the September 2005 elections. Large advertisements were published in major newspapers calling on Kiwi voters to “change the government”. National MP’s denied any knowledge of the Brethren campaign. Yet sources inside the National Party provided Hager with e-mail correspondence which showed that Brash and other National MP’s held meetings with Brethren officials and were aware of Brethren political advertising.

The book also contains a very interesting chapter on the role Australian pollsters Crosby Textor (C/T) played in the Brash campaign. Like much of the book, the contents of the book’s C/T chapter (titled “The Manipulators”) border on the conspiratorial. The chapter starts to get interesting when it talks about C/T focus groups in late 2004.

Hager’s primary source document is dated 10 December 2004 and entitled “Strategic Memorandum on National party Qualitative Benchmark”. Two other reports dated April 2005 are also cited. Here is Hager’s reading of the reports and events:

You might imagine that focus groups are designed to find out what groups of people think and want … the Crosby/Textor groups had a completely different purpose and revealed a deeper level off political manipulation.

… The intention is to ‘uncover’ perceptions and feelings of which the people concerned may be consciously aware – or even just potential perceptions and feelings – and find ways to use these ‘persuasive creative leads’ to influence target groups of voters.

Hager then goes onto show how C/T used ‘prompted concerns’ to help the Nats develop and frame policy. He continues …

In this way they strategise the possibility of moving voters from, for instance, thinking that tax cuts ‘miss the point’ to the ‘prompted perception’ that tax cuts are necessary in response to uncertainty about the growth of the economy. The [C/T] word for this is
leveraging … Such perceptions may have little to do with how people feel and the leveraging messages may not even be true, but they may still provide ‘strategic
opportunities’ …

Much C/T work with the Kiwi-Nats focussed on developing dog-whistle messages about immigrants and indigenous people. Simplistic messages containing thinly-veiled racism were almost enough to get Brash over the line.

The balance of the book is somewhat tedious, especially for readers with little interest in provincial New Zealand politics. Hager seems to get carried away with the novelty of having a year’s e-mail exchanges between National MP’s, their staff and their supporters in business, conservative think tanks, pollsters and fringe fundamentalist churches. A more interesting version of the book probably would have been half its current length.

First published in The Canberra Times on 13 October 2007.

Words © 2007 Irfan Yusuf

CRIKEY: Studying the PM through the Crosby/Textor prism

The entrails of Crosby/Textor' s leaked polling advice to the PM have been picked over by the commentators and yesterday Piers Akerman seemed to suggest that John Howard should consider sacking his pollsters.

While we're viewing the PM's actions through the prism of the pollster's leaked advice, it's worth revisiting Nicky Hager’s book The Hollow Men: A study in the politics of deception, which contains a chapter detailing the methods used by Crosby/Textor in the UK and New Zealand.

The Hollow Men is the product of a series of leaked internal NZ National Party correspondence, e-mails obtained during the period of the leadership of Dr Don Brash. The book provides detailed material on the methods and messages C/T shared with the NZ Nats, methods which almost took them over the line in the September 2005 election.

The chapter entitled "The Manipulators" starts getting interesting when it talks about C/T focus groups in late 2004:

You might imagine that focus groups are designed to find out what groups of people think and want … the Crosby/Textor groups had a completely different purpose and revealed a deeper level of political manipulation.

Each [C/T] research report makes this difference clear at the start: ‘it should be kept in mind’, says the first page, that this qualitative research is designed to ‘uncover ideas and persuasive creative leads … It is not designed to quantitatively define the marketplace.’ The intention is to ‘uncover’ perceptions and feelings of which the people concerned may be consciously aware – or even just potential perceptions and feelings – and find ways to use these ‘persuasive creative leads’ to influence target groups of voters.

C/T then used ‘prompted concerns’ to help the Nats develop and frame policy:

In this way they strategise the possibility of moving voters from, for instance, thinking that tax cuts ‘miss the point’ to the ‘prompted perception’ that tax cuts are necessary in response to uncertainty about the growth of the economy. The [C/T] word for this is leveraging … Such perceptions may have little to do with how people feel and the leveraging messages may not even be true, but they
may still provide ‘strategic opportunities’ …

Then there's Crosby Textor's knack at identifying the prejudices of ‘soft’ voters:

… [C/T] also pointed to immigration and security as useful issues for National. The increase of migrants … was ‘perceived’ to have put significant pressures on the infrastructure … ‘evidenced through increased class sizes, lack of hospital beds and traffic congestion. They found the voters were ‘concerned that the current intake policy lets “just about anyone” come in without regard to the skills and education they can bring.

The KiwiNats were quite happy to use immigration as a wedge, especially if it meant stealing votes from anti-immigrant parties like New Zealand First:

Brash declared: ‘Nor, frankly, do we want immigrants who come with no intention of becoming New Zealanders or adopting New Zealand values. We do not want those who insist on their right to spit in the street; or demand the right to practise female circumcision; or believe that New Zealand would be a better place if gays and adulterers were stoned.'

Of course, Brash’s language was far more brutal than that of Howard or Costello. Yet the principle was the same.

… Brash was playing the politics that [C/T] have become famous for, presenting himself as reasonable and mainstream … while to stereotypes and prejudice. When Textor highlighted concerns about immigration policies that let ‘just anyone’ into New Zealand, he was signalling the ‘opportunity’ of appealing to racist feelings.

First published in the Crikey daily alert for 8 August 2007.

POLITICS: A Matter of Distrust

John Howard’s repeated electoral mantra has been based on trust.

He went to the last election asking voters to trust him and his government to keep interest rates down, to secure the nation and its borders against terrorism and queue-jumpers, to manage the economy.

At the heart of this trust involved trusting his ministers to perform. The most important minister in this regard was and remains the Treasurer.

Howard has been able to weather repeated political storms – children overboard, AWB and much more. The electorate was prepared to overlook these scandals provided the economy was strong. Howard’s formula of trust depended on it.

Now, the man Howard relies on to manage the economy has effectively called him a liar. Peter Costello claims John Howard made a commitment in 1994, some 12 years ago and around 18 months following Paul Keating’s “victory for the true believers”.

At the time, the Federal Parliamentary Liberal Party was in the political wilderness. John Hewson was failing in his attempts to transform himself into a small “l” liberal. His rival Bronwyn Bishop was busily slipping on her own verbal banana peels, her leadership ambitions in tatters.

The party looked to a young team, led by Alexander Downer and Peter Costello. The pair released a policy platform described as “The Things That Matter”.

Downer’s leadership was still-born thanks to an almost unbelievable case of foot-in-mouth disease. Downer described the Liberal policy on domestic violence as “the things that batter”. It was meant to be a joke. For the Federal Liberal Party’s political fortunes, it was no laughing matter.

By now, the Liberals were desperate and effectively leaderless. Powerbrokers looked toward drafting former leader and then-IR spokesman John Howard to the leadership. Howard was among the most experienced MP’s, having been both a senior government minister and shadow minister. He was also a formidable parliamentary debater, one of the few Coalition MP’s who could successfully intimidate Keating.

It is in this context that the alleged meeting was held in December 1994. Howard claims this meeting was one of a number of meetings held to discuss the vexed issue of leadership in the run-up to the 1996 election. He thereby claims that the discussion was merely a discussion, not a final deal.

One of Howard’s most loyal supporters, former National Farmers’ Federation head and former Minister Ian McLaughlan, disagrees. He has produced his own record, a contemporaneous note confirming the outcome of the discussion.

Howard agreed to take on the mantle of leadership. He agreed to stay for a fixed time, following which the leadership would be passed on to Peter Costello in time to enable him to maximize his chances of winning voter approval.

Who is to be believed? Was there really a deal? Or was it just brainstorming about hypotheticals?

The answer to this question is more than likely another question: who cares? Been accused by his own deputy of lying, Howard’s continued leadership of the Parliamentary Party is fast becoming untenable.

Howard might have the numbers today. His backbenchers might feel more comfortable presently with him leading the Party at the next election. But Howard’s trustworthiness has taken a mortal blow.

Costello doesn’t look like backing down. His ambition makes him almost sound like a drama queen, preferring the Coalition to lose the next election than be deprived of leadership.

Unless the leadership issue is dealt with, the Coalition looks almost certain to handing Beazley victory in a plate. It certainly isn’t a victory Beazley will have earned.

OPINION: Costello's views of sharia code don't coincide with the reality

IN A SPEECH to the Sydney Institute last week, Peter Costello says that people coming to Australia should evidence commitment to Australia and certain undefined but apparently understood Australian values. Mr Howard agrees. So do I.

Costello also says anyone who believes that sharia can co-exist with Australian law should leave Australia. Howard says Costello's comments are fundamentally accurate.

In fact, both Costello's comments and Howard's endorsement illustrate their fundamental ignorance on Muslim religious cultures. That ignorance is echoed in the broader community. However, migrant Muslim leaders have responded immaturely. They have relied more on media spin than on a careful consideration of the speech itself.

I myself was initially almost swept away by the tsunami of spin. Then I thought I should at least make an effort to read the speech. On the Saturday afternoon following the speech, I had to address a forum on the topic of Unity in Diversity organised by a Canberra group called Forum Australia. Joining with me were a number of community leaders, including Liberal MLA Steve Pratt.

Pratt is no dummy when it comes to sharia. He has spent years working in Muslim-majority countries as an aid worker. Pratt and I agreed that when it came to sharia, Costello was shooting from the hip. Costello probably has little knowledge of what sharia is or how Muslims understand and implement it.

Aussie Muslims view sharia as another word for liturgy, the outward manifestation of worship and ritual. Banning sharia effectively means banning Islam. Muslims also view sharia as the broad corpus of Muslim legal tradition evolved over 1400 years, a legal tradition in the same sense that we have the common law and European civil law traditions.

For Costello, sharia seems little more than a synonym for disloyalty, violence, amputation or stoning. Therefore Muslims compromise their Australianness by subscribing to a religion which has its own sacred legal tradition.

Both Howard and Costello have legal training. Both should understand there is more to any legal tradition than merely criminal punishment. Both are showing a surprising degree of ignorance about what sharia actually is.

Sharia has rules limiting its jurisdiction, with the ultimate sanction being conscience. Sharia itself says that its criminal sanctions and public law have no jurisdiction in Australia or any other western country. The most important principle of sharia affecting Australian Muslims is that they obey the law of the land.

Fundamental to Australian practise of sharia are certain broad ethical principles which most people practise without necessarily knowing these form part of sharia. The principles in no way conflict with the current state of Australia's evolving law and culture. What are these principles?

In December 2002, Professor Muhammad Fajrul Falaakh, VICE Dean of the prestigious Gadjah Mada University and one of Indonesia's top legal academics, gave lectures as a guest of the Centre for Independent Studies. His talks focused on the place of sharia in emerging pluralist liberal societies such as Indonesia. He described sharia ethics as guaranteeing five basic protections: protection of freedom of religious practice, of life, of freedom of thought and conscience, of property rights and of matrimonial and reproductive rights.

Perhaps Mr Costello could point out where any of these sharia principles conflict with Australian law, Australian values or Australian citizenship. Surely these principles would form the basis of any civilised society, Islamic or otherwise.

Professor Abdullah Saeed's 2004 study entitled "Muslims in Australia - Their Beliefs, Practices and Institutions", funded by the Howard Government and based on the 2001 Census, showed that Muslims represent less than 2 per cent of the population.

However, for reasons perhaps best known to Liberal Party pollsters, the PM and his Treasurer have spent much of the last week misrepresenting the fundamental religious teachings of this tiny portion of the Australian community. Mr Costello recently called for Muslims to pledge their allegiance to Australia and Australian values before criticising his comments. Will Mr Costello be asking the same of the Federal Opposition before each Question Time?

The challenge for Muslims now is to inform ordinary Australians on exactly why Howard and Costello's expressed views on basic Islamic teachings are wrong. The vast majority of Muslims aren't interested in imposing sharia law as more than just a set of personal religious values which in no way conflict with mainstream Australian values. People who dispute this simply have no idea of what sharia means to Aussie Muslims. The time has come for Muslims to educate them.

Irfan Yusuf is a Sydney lawyer and endorsed Liberal candidate for the seat of Reid in the 2001 Federal Elections. This article was first published in the Canberra Times on 1 March 2006.