"The People"

Believe it or not, but for the past few days those two, deceptively simple words have been an infinite source of frustration and anger for me. Never have i been so perplexed in trying to understand two words used so casually and so often in everyday speech.

Politicians use the phrase all the time. Laws that are passed for the greater good of "the people". The uprising against privatization of the freshwater system in Cochabamba, Bolivia carried the chant "the people united will never be defeated". But what did they mean?

Are "the people" those who choose to vote, and act within the system? Are "the people" those who elect the government, and are thus considered the majority? Or are "the people", as it was in the case of Cochabamba, those who are denied their rights?

It's neither one. Because whenever i think of "the people", another, more infamous phrase comes to mind - George W. Bush's "Axis of Evil". On the surface they appear to have very little in common. One seems to describe a collective of nations, whilst the other seems to describe a collective of individuals (whoever those individuals may be is beside the point). Yet, both phrases serve the same purpose: to provide it's user with an escape from having to explain themselves, whether it be their actions or beliefs. They are used to incite fear or halt argument. Simply stating that a nation is part of the "Axis of Evil" seems to be reason enough for a future military offensive. Seditions laws are necessary because it seems “the (Australian) people” are united against terrorism. Or so i’m told.

"The people" is a brand name. It's used as a short-cut. It's an easy way out for those who can’t be bothered or have nothing to say. It’s meaningless. Irrelevant. Imaginary.

And which two words would i replace "the people" with?

"Absolute Bullshit". : )

Paternalism not the answer in a town like Alice

By Kate Bean

THERE is a sense of the surreal from working in Alice Springs observing indigenous communities and their living conditions. As The Age has reported recently, some of the conditions are as bad as anything you will find in Asia's worst slums.

I have worked for aid agencies both in Australia and overseas for many years and know the slums of Mumbai, Jakarta, Delhi and Lahore.

Here, like there, there is grinding poverty, frustration and helplessness that leaves you with an overwhelming sadness at the way in which people are surviving. Alcohol, violence, racism and all the usual factors present in developing countries also exist here. The real shock is that this is not somebody else's country I am working in or somebody else's community. This is my country and these are my people.

While working in a refugee camp in Peshawar on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, I held children whose starving bodies were like fragile twigs inside a fine skin casing. Here in Alice Springs, I have held children and babies severely undernourished and covered with scabies.

But only to describe this is to continue to perpetuate the same incomplete snapshot of indigenous communities. I have had the privilege to meet and learn from a diverse range of committed, passionate and well-informed individuals in Alice Springs. These have included Aboriginal women from remote communities in town to discuss developing health sessions in the bush and Aboriginal clients who use our services and are incredibly generous in sharing their stories with me and gently reconstructing my down-south perspective.

We have worked very positively with indigenous communities and organisations on projects identified by the communities as priorities. These have included developing a health training model for Aboriginal health workers and an Aboriginal women's clinic.

The Government's latest response to the problem of Aboriginal disadvantage is Shared Responsibility Agreements — under which communities are required to meet corporate-style performance standards in return for assistance. They are not the answer. At best, they present some kind of transparent attempt to reconstruct the community development model, but power remains with the Government. At worst, they not only hold communities to ransom over basic health and social issues but also, more importantly, blame the victim when key performance indicators are not met. If the agreed objective of the Shared Responsibility Agreement is not met, it is deemed to have failed. In the community development model, there is opportunity to re-evaluate and be more strategic in project planning with communities.

Shared Responsibility Agreements remain tainted with a colonialist attitude and continue the patronising of marginalised and disempowered communities in a way that would not be tolerated in a non-indigenous community.

These agreements are not about giving communities the right to determine priorities. They are punitively driven contracts in which lip service is paid to community control.

There is no quick-fix solution to the problems of indigenous communities. However, I believe the community development model is the only way for us to begin to progress towards becoming one community that truly embraces diversity. It is also the most difficult model to put into operation, given how easy it is for people to simply talk the talk.

We are all very familiar with the notion of hierarchy, and historically tend to value those with academic qualifications and so-called expertise in any given area. Encouraging people to relinquish this power and embrace a model that inverts the pyramid of traditional hierarchy is often regarded as threatening, both personally and professionally.

This is what community development is, in essence, about. Managers, team leaders and self-appointed experts form the bottom rung of the pyramid, with the community and representative workers from these communities at the pointy end. This is a challenge for most bureaucrats and health professional experts, but must be embraced if this model is to be successful.

The community development model empowers communities. It embraces devolution and place management, values social capital and mutual respect, rejects traditional hierarchies and is driven by and responsive to community determined priorities and direction, interwoven with the social and cultural norms that make up the discrete social fabric of all indigenous communities.

The model values skills and experience not traditionally recognised in our workforce and emphasises how integral cultural etiquette is to developing strong and meaningful relationships, which truly incorporate trust and mutual respect. Working for harmonious collaboration between the funding body, service provider and community enables enhanced mutual understanding in achieving good governance in project management and outcomes.

The debate about housing conditions in indigenous communities is a graphic example of how unsuccessful the current model has been. Historically, it has been nearly impossible for us to grasp the notion that other communities don't endorse our European lifestyle and values. The indigenous culture embraces family, both immediate and extended, and it is normal for several generations to live together. Whereas we tend to place our elderly in residential care, for their own good these communities value their elderly as an integral part of the family network. I remember discussing this with an Indian man in Himachal Pradesh who told me it was an honour and a privilege to be chosen by his elderly mother as her primary caretaker.

Listening to communities is not rocket science. Community development projects are an accepted and highly successful model all around the world. Aid agencies I have worked with such as Australian Volunteers International and the United Nations Development Program collaborate all the time with communities in developing such projects.

We need to listen to Aboriginal communities, rather than impose solutions — and accept the process will take much longer than we are all comfortable with.

Developing trust between a community and outsiders takes as long as it takes.

Kate Bean is regional manager, Family Planning Alice Springs

Freedom and Democracy...

"Democracies die behind closed doors"
- Sixth Circuit Court of Appeal (US)

"Majority rule only works if you're considering individual rights. Because you can't have five wolves and one sheep voting on what to have for supper"
- Larry Flynt

"The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding"
- Justice Louis D. Brandeis

"Bad laws go heavily armed, with masks of gold"
- Bruce Dawe

The old Australia Day-ja-vu

By Christopher Bantick

There can be few images more crass than Australians parading with bobbing corks on their hat brims. It's Australia Day and these jolly swagmen apparitions are set to reappear.

This is an Australia that exists in the imaginations of romantics given to hum Waltzing Matilda. For Henry Lawson, these up-country chums soon went widdershins in Australia's crushing isolation. In the company of jumbucks, they went mad with loneliness.

Australia's preoccupation with simplistic national symbols borders on being infantile. The nation's young country status revisited annually on Australia Day in mantras of achievement - chanted by ruddy-faced civic leaders in community breakfasts - is anachronistic and increasingly irrelevant.

The bush ethos is a haven when uncertainty exists. Australia's iconic figures remain outdoors men (women rarely make the cut). They are cricketers, footballers - a race of athletes, no less, as the British Gallipoli correspondent Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett described them.

Australia makes much of its Akubra-wearing mateship tradition. It is touted every year that there is something quintessentially Australian about being a mate. But cobbers in Australia are no different from American, English, German or just about any other nationality where companionship is configured through mutual dependence.

Such easily defined national symbols remind us of what we like to believe our antecedents to be and what we like about ourselves. The truth is we are some far distance from the lucky country.

When A. A. Phillips declared in his famous 1950 Meanjin essay The Cultural Cringe that Australia regarded its literature as inferior to that produced overseas, he hit a national nerve.

Phillips was right for his time. Thankfully, Australia no longer cringes away from its writers and artistic community. This has been replaced by a suspicion of outsiders. The new cringism is to be found behind the fences of border protection.

Australia is increasingly and worryingly more bellicose and jingoistic about expressing its national identity. This is not just in Aussie green and gold shirts at sporting events. The Cronulla riots reflected much about national contemporary identity that Australia actively encourages.

Where is the difference between a boozed-up sunburnt ocker who drapes himself in an Australian flag at Cronulla and wistful backpackers similarly attired at Anzac Cove?

The December Sydney beach riots were an ugly example of mateship gone awfully wrong. The aggressive racial Australianness expressed at Cronulla flows from the same wellspring of national pride heard in the cheering crowds at any international event where Australia is represented.

Even so, the xenophobia that has typified much of Australian history and was the dark undercurrent at Cronulla, is now part, for a significant number of Australians, of what it means to be Australian. This is borne out in the acceptance of mandatory detention and in suspicion displacing charity towards asylum seekers.

Australia Day should be a day - perhaps more so this year with the Cronulla riots in mind - where Australia's diversity is celebrated. Multiculturalism is the success story of Australia. It is what unambiguously defines the nation. But is Australia still the country of the fair go?

Children these days are growing up in a very different, less open, society than when I grew up in the 1950s. Curiously, even with high postwar levels of Mediterranean migration, there was less need to ostentatiously show what being an Australian meant. Those simple days were measured out with Vegemite on crusts at the school tuckshop and singing the national anthem on Monday mornings.

Back then, there were no wire fences in the desert keeping new arrivals from the rest of Australian society. Never did I think I would have to explain to my young son why people were locked up in camps. Never did I think I'd feel ashamed as an Australian when there was so little that apparently could be done to save Nguyen Tuong Van. Or so utterly shamed that Australia remains for many indigenous people a Third World country where children are born into unspeakable disadvantage.

The barbecues and festivities on Australia Day need to be put in perspective. Recognising identity is one thing. Rock concerts, parades and legions of flag-wearing, stubby-guzzling mates are the distillation of a culture that cringes from looking beyond irrelevant symbols of itself.

Christopher Bantick is a Melbourne writer.

How's this for sedition? Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny

By Chas Savage

The latest legislative threat to our freedoms is worthy of contempt.

Edmund Burke, who declared the tyranny of bad laws, was a deep political thinker and a ferocious polemicist. In 1777, he wrote to the Sheriffs of Bristol that the true danger to freedom was when liberty was nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts.

We should wish that 1777 is now, and that Burke was writing to our prime minister. Perhaps then John Howard would be less reckless in his pursuit of additional security powers and more concerned about the damage his legislation will do to important traditions of free association, opinion and debate.

I declare, therefore, that i write the following with open, seditious intention.

The Federal Government proposes to amend the Crimes Act 1914 so as to be able to jail any body of persons, incorporated or unincorporated, which by its constitution or propaganda or otherwise, advocates or encourages the doing of any act having or purporting to have as an object the carrying out of seditious intention.

Seditious intention means an intention to bring the sovereign into hatred or contempt; or to urge disaffection against the constitution; the government of the Commonwealth; either house of parliament; to urge another person to attempt, otherwise than by lawful means, to procure a change in any matter established by law in the Commonwealth; and to promote feelings of ill-will or hostility between different groups so as to threaten the peace, order and good government of the Commonwealth.

Just so it is clear, i urge all Australians to hold the sovereign and her heirs and successors with hatred and contempt. Lecherous, callow, adulterous; inbreed, exclusive and foreign; they remind us that by them, we are made no democratic people. Because they are appointed by bloodline, and because talent, accomplishment and merit enter not into the question of their position and the prominence accorded to them, they exist as proof that the government can be degraded by the powerful in service of their own interests. As such, they deserve our democratic hatred and contempt.

I openly urge disaffection with the constitution. Concerned with matters of commerce, and gerrymandered to protect states instead of individuals, the Australian constitution serves a reduced purpose poorly. Under this constitution a High Court can rule that a man, charged with and guilty of no crime, can be locked up indefinitely. Under this constitution, rights are left to the mercy of predators such as Howard and expedient windbags like Beazley. The Australian constitution enables the government to spend without constraint to serve its own political interest. As such, it deserves the disaffection of decent, democratic people.

I openly urge disaffection with the Government of the Commonwealth. Its leaders behave with the morality of the gangster. They are shameless in their pursuit of their own self-interest and in the efforts they make to maintain their control on power. They plunder the public purse to benefit their own careers and to maintain their own grip on power. They reward incompetence and cruelty; they themselves behave incompetently and cruelly.

Moreover, they work not to strengthen democratic practice but to strangle it. The good health of a democracy depends on the engagement of informed citizens. In turn, a citizenry is made informed by public debate, between parties of opposing views. John Stuart Mill, who once was precious to the Liberal Party, made it clear that diversity of opinion was not an evil, but a good. This gang, however, chooses to debate laws bearing on matters of our freedom behind closed doors, and then ambush a compliant parliament.

I openly urge disaffection with both houses of the Parliament. They have become an imperial court, tending to their own affairs before and above all else. Indifferent to matters of good policy, they are focused on the gaining and distribution of positions of power. Houses of Parliament? - our democratic houses are now foul, muddy and stinking - no better than sties. Our Parliament also deserves the disaffection of decent, democratic people.

I have read the proposed anti-terrorist bill and see reference is made to sayings and acts done in good faith. I make as clear as possible, in terms as unambiguous as possible, that in urging disaffection - and hatred and contempt - i am motivated by no sense of good faith whatsoever.

Instead, i am prompted by a sense of malice and ill-will and seek to create a maximum level of public discontent, disorder and disturbance.

Because i don't want to see liberty nibbled at, i urge an association of Australian men and women to act mightily, with seditious intention, against the sovereign and against the Government of the Commonwealth of Australia.


Chas Savage is a Canberra writer and outlaw. This article appeared in The Age late last year. Since then, the proposed anti-terror bill has passed through parliament and become law.

Confused about Islam? Get your HIT

By Maher Mughrabi

How not to let facts get in the way of a good religious stereotype.

It's really amazing how much easier it has become to understand the myriad political situations between Morocco and Indonesia, or Nigeria and Chechnya since September 11, 2001. Gone are the tiresome days of having to study each country and its historical and social circumstances, its language and thought, before you can write about it. You just whip out your Handy Islam Template and presto: everything falls into place.

If young women are being genitally mutilated in Africa, your template can help you understand it without any need to talk about tribal practices that existed in Africa before Islam arrived; if young people are blowing themselves and others to bits in Israel, you can talk about Islam's "culture of death" without having to figure out what it means when Sri Lankan Tamils, hardly any of whom are Muslim, adopt the same terrorist method.

But the usefulness of your Handy Islam Template (or HIT for short) doesn't end there. You can use it to make sense of your civilised Western surroundings too. Once upon a time you might have bored your readers by examining the tendency of first-generation migrants to concentrate in certain neighbourhoods, how governments responded, and what that meant for their children and their integration.

But now, thanks to your HIT, you can titillate your audience with totally new and hair-raising scenarios: when Muslims migrate, they don't do so to escape political persecution or find ecomonic opportunity like migrants of other cultures. What an outdated notion. In fact they re sent by underground leaders to overthrow Western civilisation and wreak revenge on behalf of the Moors. They live close to one another so that they can plan their jihad without being disturbed, and the women wear burqas to hide the secret weapon. What is the secret weapon? No one knows - it's secret. But as Donald Rumsfeld so sagely said, the absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence.

(An important reminder: when using your HIT, make sure you drop in some of those exotic Arabic words. No, you don't actually have to speak Arabic. Your HIT is designed for convenience and easy use.)

Which brings us to the rioting in Paris over the past fortnight. Two kid trying to avoid police end up getting themselves killed? In the bad old days you might have been tempted to compare this with the Los Angeles riots after the Rodney King verdict, or even what happened in Redfern last year.

With your Handy Islam Template you can actually trace rioting like this right back to the Middle East, without having to wonder about the fact that many young French Arabs dress like American rappers and idolise the guns, drugs and scantily clad women of hip-hop culture. Forget all that urban guerilla warfare you might have read about in French history (the reason Baron Hausmann made the boulevards of Paris so wide in the 19th century was to stop the mob barricading them) and get your HIT out.

After taking a potshot at French multiculturalism (whatever that is), you don't have to identify a single reliable source that claims this is a religious rising. You just have to hint at shadowy Islamic radicals and chuck in the word "intifada". After all, that was what the intifada was, right? Just a big riot (that's certainly what it looked like on TV) run by mad mullahs under the bed. If someone asks you whether there was a "failed Israeli experiment with multiculturalism" in the Gaza Strip, or what kind of police they had in Nablus in 1987, then you know for certain that this person doesn't own a HIT.

One more lucky customer.


Maher Mughrabi is a staff writer at The Age, where this article first appeared in November 17 2005

Dad...what's a terrorist?

By David Campell

Surely even a child can understand the difference between good and evil.

Dad...what's a terrorist?
Well, according to the Oxford dictionary a terrorist is "a person who uses violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims". Which means that terrorists are very bad men and women who frighten ordinary people like us, and sometimes even kill them.

Why do they kill them?
Because they hate them or their country. It's hard to explain...it's just the way things are. For many different reasons a lot of people in our world are full of hate.

Like the ones in Iraq who are capturing people and saying that they'll kill them if all the soldiers don't leave?
Exactly! That's an evil thing called "blackmail". Those innocent people are hostages, and the terrorists are saying that if governments don't do what they want the hostages will be killed.

So it was blackmail when we said we'd attack Iraq and kill innocent people unless they told us where all their weapons were?
No! Well...yes, I suppose. In a way. But that was an "ultimatum"...call it "good blackmail".

Good blackmail? What's that?
That's when it's done for good reasons. Those weapons were very dangerous and could have hurt a lot of people all over the world. It was very important to find them and destroy them.

But Dad...there weren't any weapons.
True. We know that now. But we didn't at the time. We thought there were.

So was killing all those innocent people in Iraq a mistake?
No. It was a tragedy, but we also saved a lot of lives. You see, we had to stop a very cruel man called Saddam Hussein from killing a great many ordinary Iraqi people. Saddam Hussein stayed in power by giving orders that meant thousands of people died or were horribly injured. Mothers and fathers. Even children.

Like that boy I saw on TV? The one who had his arms blown off by a bomb?
Yes...just like him.

But we did that. Does that mean our leaders are terrorists?
Good heavens, no! Whatever gave you that idea? That was just an accident. Unfortunately, innocent people get hurt in a war. You can't expect anything else when you drop bombs on cities. Nobody wants it to happen...it's just the way things are.

So in a war only soldiers are supposed to get killed?
Well, soldiers are trained to fight for their country. It's their job, and they're very brave. They know war is dangerous and that they might be killed. As soon as they put on a uniform they became a target.

What uniform do terrorists wear?
That's just the problem...they don't! We can't tell them apart from the civilians. We don't know who we're fighting. And that's why so many innocent people are getting killed...the terrorists don't follow the rules of war.

War has rules?
Oh, yes. Soldiers must wear uniforms. And you can't just suddenly attack someone unless they do something first. Then you can defend yourself.

So that's why we attacked Iraq? Because Iraq attacked us first and we were just defending ourselves?
Not exactly. Iraq didn't attack us...but it might have. We decided to get in first. Just in case Iraq used those weapons we were talking about.

The ones they didn't have? So we broke the rules of war?
Technically speaking, yes. But...

So if we broke the rules first, why isn't it OK for those people in Iraq who aren't wearing uniforms to break the rules?
Well, that's different. We were doing the right thing when we broke the rules.

But Dad...how do we know we were doing the right thing?
Our leaders...Bush and Blair and Howard...they told us it was the right thing. And if they don't know, who does? They say that something had to be done to make Iraq a better place.

Is it a better place?
I suppose so, but I don't know for sure. Innocent people are still being killed and these kidnappings are terrible things. I feel sorry for the families of those poor hostages, but we simply can't give in to terrorists. We must stand firm.

Would you say that if I was captured by terrorists?
Uh...yes...no...I mean, it's very difficult.

So you'd let me be killed? Don't you love me?
Of course! I love you very much. It's just that it's a very complicated issue and I don't know what i'd do...

Well, if somebody attacked us and bombed our house and killed you and Mum and Jamie I know what i'd do.
What?

I'd find out who did it and kill them. Any way I could. I'd hate them for ever and ever. And then i'd get a plane and bomb their cities.
But...but...you'd kill a lot of innocent people.

I know. But it's a war, Dad. And that's just the way things are. Remember?

This is an article I saved a while back. It dates from about 2003 and appeared in The Age newspaper.David Campbell is a Melbourne writer.