Andrew West ABC radio presenter and columnist

March 1, 2013

Many in the political class - politicians, aides, consultants, even many journalists - have decided the crisis facing the Labor Party in NSW can be explained away in one man, or at least one family: the Obeids.

Labor is wallowing around, sometimes below, a 30 per cent primary vote supposedly because of the bad news out of the Independent Commission Against Corruption. The former Labor MP and patriarch Eddie Obeid was apparently so omnipotent he leant on ministers for alleged favours worth an estimated $75 million and felled unco-operative party leaders at will.

So the answer seems simple. Expel Obeid from the party, declare your disgust at, and distance from, him. ''I've never met Eddie Obeid and I never want to,'' the federal minister Greg Combet told the ABC at the weekend. It was a truthful, curt response. End of conversation. Sorry, too easy.

"Labor can change and be that party again. Or it can be the party of Eddie Obeid." Photo: Michele Mossop

Edward Moses Obeid and his disgraced former colleague Ian Macdonald are not the cause of Labor's crisis. They are the symptoms.

On this page last week, Waleed Aly wrote persuasively about Labor's loss of that unfashionable but vital commodity: ideology. But that was only chapter one in the explanation of the party's malaise. Chapter two is about Labor's crisis of character and ethics.

In an ethical and democratic party, people such as Obeid and Macdonald would have never achieved office, let alone power. If both men had been compelled to seek support among a mass membership, and compete on a level playing field with those who did not have, in Obeid's case, wealth or, in Macdonald's, the blind support of some decent union leaders who should have known better, they would have fallen at the first hurdle.

Labor's version of the Old Testament prophet, the former education minister Rodney Cavalier, has been crying in the wilderness for almost 20 years about the democratic deficit inside his party. After every election debacle, those with a vested interest in keeping power - even if it is power amid a smoking ruin - insist that ''we in the party have to stop talking about ourselves''. Their tactic is to deflect.

But as Cavalier argues, the structure and processes of the Labor Party are everything because they determine everything. Who will decide the policy? Who will choose the candidates? Who will represent those policies in the electorate? Who will decide the leader who explains those policies to voters?

Only by being a truly democratic organisation, where every member's vote is equal and all MPs - from leader down to backbencher - are required to face a regular ballot of all party members to keep their endorsements, can Labor can restore its ethical base. Only through such a transparent process will Labor again attract people of strong character.

One of the party's most serious deficiencies is that its MPs are arguably the most coddled in Australian politics. Many will invoke stories of widowed mothers and hard-scrabble childhoods. But the truth is, from the moment they joined Young Labor and pledged fealty to one of the personality cliques - for they cannot be called ideological factions - they were set. The well-paid job in the minister's office or the union followed, then the seat in Parliament.

Now Labor is facing defeat federally and can no longer dispense patronage in NSW, and with many unions financially squeezed, Cavalier is considering opening a book on who among the ambitious Labor youngsters will be the first to defect to the Liberals. Being of Presbyterian stock, there is no money involved in Cavalier's ''book''.

From the late 1990s, few state Labor MPs faced party members in ballots for their jobs. But many, such as Macdonald, became vulnerable to, if not reliant on, the Obeids of this world.

The former NSW planning minister Frank Sartor told ICAC about how Obeid was trying to coax him into Parliament from the lord mayoralty of Sydney. Obeid thought Sartor could be an ally, even an acolyte. When Sartor joked that he wouldn't mind a million-dollar nest-egg in his bereft superannuation, Obeid allegedly told him, ''I think I can help you with that.''

Sartor knew when to back off - and no doubt remembered why he had spent all those years as an independent alderman fighting Labor's machine.

A party that attracts people of strong character, who are prepared to run in impossible pre-selections, to lose but run again; to contest unwinnable seats, to fall and rise again; and to lose elections because of principle and policy, rather than because of self-made scandal, as in the 2011 NSW election, will ultimately prevail. Labor can change and be that party again. Or it can be the party of Eddie Obeid.

Andrew West is the presenter of the Religion & Ethics Report on ABC Radio National. Disclosure: Between 1985 and 1997 he was a member of the Labor Party.

Labor must get to the heart of the rot, and it's not all about Obeid

 Peter Hannam, Ben Cubby

March 1, 2013

The government's proposal to raise Sydney's Warragamba dam has been welcomed by the Insurance Council of Australia says spokesperson Campbell Fuller.

Raising the Warragamba Dam wall by 23 metres will cost up to $800 million, it has been claimed, with experts divided over its value for reducing flooding.

The Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, reignited debate by pledging $50 million to building up the dam wall by 23 metres.

Steve Knight, the executive engineer of the state government's dams safety committee, said without a higher dam wall, there was little scope for Warragamba to reduce downstream flooding in a big event.

Raising the dam wall ... if the Warragamba is raised 23m, 3715 more houses will be saved from flooding in a one in 100-year flood.

''The full supply water level of the dam is very close to the top of the gates, compared with several metres lower at Wivenhoe Dam that provides flood mitigation space for Brisbane,'' he said.

However, Stuart Khan, a senior lecturer at the water research centre at the University of NSW, said while the risk was ''very real'' that the Hawkesbury Nepean Valley would flood, raising the height of Warragamba was the wrong way to deal with the issues.''It doesn't matter how big that dam is. It's not that it's not big enough; it's just that the management needs to change,'' he said. ''We need to reserve some storage capacity in the reservoir for when those big inflows come along.''

The Premier, Barry O'Farrell, was non-committal about the Prime Minister's suggestion for raising the wall of the dam because it was not backed with a sufficient financial commitment.

Warragamba Dam has opened the gates of the spillway as it overflows into the Nepean River. Photo: Carlos Furtado

He declined to support the idea and would only say that the NSW government announced in December that it would review the major flood mitigation options in the Hawkesbury Nepean Valley.

He said it would look at ''minimising the potential economic and social impact of flooding within the catchment''.

The NSW Greens said the proposal was ''an expensive and ill-thought policy that fails to consider the cheaper, low-impact options''. The Greens MP John Kaye said ''at best it will be an expensive Band-Aid solution that will fail to effectively eliminate flood risk''.

Construction of Warragamba Dam in April 1957. Photo: RL Stewart

While the region has not had a major flood since 1991, it remains a focus of insurers and emergency service planners alike. The area has recorded 120 floods in the past two centuries but the influx of many more residents from Sydney's sprawl has raised the economic and human risks of future floods. The damage bill from a major flood is estimated to reach as high as $8 billion.

The biggest flood recorded in the river's history took place in 1867, when water levels at Windsor peaked at 19.3 metres. However, raising the dam wall by 23 metres would only have reduced the impact of a flood on that scale by four to five metres, a report commissioned by the state government last year found.

The cost of raising the wall, put at $411 million last year, is likely to be much higher when construction is complete.

''It would be $700 million to $800 million,'' said Amir Deen, a water consultant and former senior hydrologist with Sydney Catchment Authority.

''There would be water quality issues for Sydney'' during construction, he said.

Apart from the direct financial cost, building up the wall would massively expand Lake Burragorang, which would back up along about 118 kilometres of remote rivers behind the dam.

It would inundate about 7500 hectares of protected bushland and spill into three adjoining national parks.

''It's a wild, wild area that's beautifully rugged, with deep ravines, some sweeping bends with rock pebbles and glassy water,'' said Keith Muir, of the Colong Foundation for Wilderness.

But, with the current dam, there remains a bigger danger of massive floods hitting thousands of homes downstream, said a former senior engineer at the dam, who declined to be named.

''It's got the potential for vast inflows,'' the engineer said. ''Keeping the dam partially lower would have a marginal effect on flooding. Those people sitting there are in danger as we speak,'' he said, noting the dam was full and more rain was on the way.

Experts split over value of raising dam wall

Peter Martin Economics correspondent

March 1, 2013

It's as audacious as a raid could be. In order to find $100 million to extend dam walls in Sydney and Brisbane, the Gillard government is raiding the equivalent of its coffee jar.

Even better, it is taking out more than it needs - $150 million, directing the extra $50 million to cutting its deficit. Who could possibly complain?

"A whole lot of suits in Switzerland" is how one government source puts it.

Julia Gillard ... pledged $50 million to lift the Warragamba dam wall. Photo: Harrison Saragossi

After the September 11 US terrorist attacks in 2001, the Howard government rammed through the Terrorism Insurance Act. Australian insurers were refusing to insure big city buildings against the same sort of attack here. The act forced them to offer the insurance and forced them to contribute to a newly established Australian Reinsurance Pool Corporation, which would meet the claims.

Backed by an Australian government guarantee of $10 billion, the corporation has been buying international insurance, spending $75 million a year.

No more. Its $75 million a year contributions will stop for at least two years. Instead they will be paid to the government as extra dividends (on top of a special dividend announced in the last budget). It will bank $25 million a year and spend $50 million a year on worthwhile projects such as extending dam walls.

The Insurance Council of Australia welcomes the spending because it will make it easier to insure homes at risk of flooding.

"It will certainly reduce the upward pressure on premiums," said Rob Whelan, the council's chief executive, on Thursday.

Looked at another way, it is a heist from the central business district (which houses the buildings at risk of terrorist attack) to the suburbs at risk from the Warragamba Dam. It's sneaky, its popular and it will save money.

Gillard raids the coffee jar to upset Swiss suits

Kate McClymont Senior Reporter

March 1, 2013

Oversight … Arthur Sinodinos. Photo: Andrew Meares

Liberal senator Arthur Sinodinos, already in strife over his involvement in a company with alleged links to embattled Labor powerbroker Eddie Obeid, last night apologised ''unreservedly'' to Federal Parliament for failing to declare interests in several other companies.

Mr Sinodinos blamed an ''innocent oversight'' for failing to declare his directorship of start-up healthcare company Move2Live Pty Ltd, which he said had not traded and from which he had now resigned.

The senator also failed to record his interest in Firestick ICT Pty Ltd, which provided IT services to a non-for-profit company that helps indigenous people finding employment.

A fellow director in Move2Live is Santo Santoro, a minister in the Howard government who resigned in disgrace over his failure to properly declare his shareholdings. Mr Santoro was also a director of Australian Water Holding's Queensland subsidiary. Mr Sinodinos was also a director was a director of AWH.

Mr Sinodinos said that although it was well known he was president of the NSW Liberal Party until December 2012, he should have disclosed his directorship of three entities related to the party.

He said that his amendments to his statement of registrable interest was prompted by an inquiry from a journalist.

''By making a full breast of this,'' he said he hoped it would serve as a warning for other politicians to be more careful and that in the future he would be ''much more punctilious and rigorous''.

In the rest of his statement Mr Sinodinos also tried to distance himself from the corruption scandal which is engulfing the NSW Labor party. The Independent Commission Against Corruption has heard that Mr Obeid, a former NSW minister, and his family, made $30 million from an allegedly corrupt government coal licence tender.

Before being elected to the Senate in 2011, Mr Sinodinos was a director of AWH, which ICAC has heard is an Obeid-related company.

In early 2012 the NSW Coalition government awarded AWH a 25-year water infrastructure deal without any tenders. Corporate records show that Mr Sinodinos was a director of AWH from November 2008 until November 2011. On Wednesday, apparently to distance himself from AWH, the senator announced he would forgo his 5 per cent shareholding to which he was entitled following his time as chairman, worth up to $3.75 million.

These shares were held on his behalf in a ''gentleman's agreement'' by AWH boss and major shareholder Nick di Girolamo, who the Herald last year revealed was a close friend of the Obeid family.

Mr Sinodinos, who is the shadow parliamentary secretary to the federal Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, denied last night he had at any time asked that the shares ''be held secretly on my behalf''.

He said he was ''shocked and disappointed'' to discover AWH was ''financially linked to the Obeid family''.

He said that he became aware that Mr Obeid's youngest son Eddie jnr was employed by AWH after he himself joined. ''I had no reason to regard his presence in the company as signifying some greater involvement by the Obeid family in AWH.''

AWH made a $30,000 donation to the NSW Liberals while Mr Sinodinos was the state party treasurer but last night he said he did not recollect the donations being discussed at a board level.

with Judith Ireland

Sinodinos comes clean on more directorships

Michael Gordon National Affairs Editor, The Age

February 27, 2013

The kindest thing that can be said of Scott Morrison's call for a freeze on the release of asylum seekers into the community on bridging visas is that it is a massive overreaction.

More reprehensible is Morrison's demonising of those who come to this country seeking refuge and who, overwhelmingly, are found to be deserving of this country's protection.

The Coalition's immigration spokesman says that you should be told if ''boat arrivals'' on bridging visas are to be located in your community; that police should be notified when they are released into their jurisdictions; and that ''behaviour protocols'' should be introduced with ''clear negative sanctions''.

And why? The only justification for any of the above would be if these people were more likely to misbehave than any other member of society – and there is simply not a scintilla of evidence to suggest this is the case.

Certainly, the charging of one person – who is entitled to the presumption of innocence – out of the many thousands on bridging visas does not constitute a ''wake-up call''. On the contrary, we know that the overwhelming motivation of the vast majority of those who risk their lives on boats is to live in peace and to rebuild their lives.

We also know that those on bridging visas are already required to tell the Immigration Department where they live.

Of course, they are subject to ''behaviour protocols'' that carry ''negative sanctions'' if they are breached – in the form of the same laws that apply to every other member of the community.

Mr Morrison's opportunism would be easier to excuse if this was his first offence. It isn't.

Demonisation Of Asylum Seekers

 Lenore Taylor, Judith Ireland

February 28, 2013

Calls for 'behavioural protocols' for asylum seekers on bridging visas from Shadow immigration minister Scott Morrison have prompted a political backlash.

A Liberal backbencher has accused his party of ''vilifying'' asylum seekers after the Coalition immigration spokesman, Scott Morrison, called for ''behaviour protocols'' for those released into the community.

Mr Morrison also said there should be mandatory notification of asylum seekers to local police and residents in the areas where they are housed.

He said the charging of a Sri Lankan asylum seeker with the indecent assault of a young woman in a university dorm in Sydney ''demanded'' an immediate suspension of the community release program and a review to determine new ''behavioural protocols . . . with clear negative sanctions for breaches''.

Unacceptable ... there should "never be special categories of laws fort different categories of people..." says Russell Broadbent. Photo: Chris Lane

But the Victorian backbencher Russell Broadbent said there should ''never be special categories of laws for different categories of people . . . The rule of law should apply to all and we should not set some people apart.''

''This kind of vilification of asylum seekers is unacceptable in this nation,'' said Mr Broadbent, one of a small group of backbenchers who successfully demanded the softening of asylum laws during the Howard government.

Fellow Liberal backbencher Mal Washer told ABC Radio on Thursday that he thought the "thrust" of Mr Broadbent's argument was correct.

"In this country what we want to ensure is that people of all ethnicity and religious backgrounds are treated equally under the eyes of the law," he said. "And we don't want to discriminate one from the other on that and there's a risk of doing that when you say those things."

He said he was sure Mr Morrison "didn't mean it that way" but that his comments could be misinterpreted.

When asked about Mr Morrison's call to notify police and neighbours about asylum seekers in their local area, Dr Washer said: "I don't think that achieves much in reality."

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott defended Mr Morrison against claims of dog whistling.

''If anyone is guilty of that, I would ask you to look at what the government has had to say about 457 visas,'' Mr Abbott said after leaving a university conference in Canberra.

Mr Morrison said the government had ''no idea'' where 8700 people released on bridging visas, pending assessment of their refugee claims, were living and it was ''very reasonable'' to ask why asylum seekers were not released with reporting requirements similar to offenders released on bail.

''This is a wake-up call . . . This case has exposed the complete absence of commonsense safeguards,'' he said.

He said the behaviour protocols should be the ''terms and conditions of how one is expected to behave in the community . . . the expected standards of conduct'', similar to codes applying in immigration detention centres. Service providers such as the Red Cross and accommodation services would be required to report any breaches of these standards.

It did not make sense to ''wait around for another incident to happen before we put a better system in place''.

But the government said Mr Morrison was ''cynically exploiting an incident which is before the courts to cause fear and unrest in the community''.

A spokeswoman for Immigration Minister Brendan O'Connor said people were subject to security assessments before they were released from immigration detention, but Mr Morrison said asylum seekers could be released before their identity had been properly established.

A spokeswoman for the Immigration Department said that, of the 12,000 people who have been released on bridging visas since November 2011, when the program began, only a ''small handful'' had been charged with offences. The department was not able to specify.

Based on 2011-12 statistics, most of the 8700 asylum seekers on bridging visas are refugees. In that year, about 90 per cent of boat arrivals were later found to be refugees.

Barrister Greg Barns, a spokesman for the Australian Lawyers Alliance, denounced the ''fear campaign'' of Mr Morrison, ''which implies that there are large criminal elements among asylum seekers, which is just not the case''.

Mr Barns said he had acted for many asylum seekers in the refugee law area.

''Interactions by asylum seekers with police around Australia are few and far between,'' he said, and were ''usually very low-level stuff''.

Morrison Calls For Behaviour Protocols For Asylum Seekers

 Kim Rubenstein and Danny Ben Moshe

February 26, 2013

There is no reason why migrants cannot faithfully maintain dual citizenship.

Illustration: John Spooner.

It is staggering that with one albeit very serious case overseas, that of the Ben Zygier suicide, Ben Saul (The Age, 20/2/13) wants to turn back the clock of globalisation and multiculturalism. In so doing he demonstrates profound ignorance of the reality of the contemporary migrant experience and normative global legal practice around citizenship.

The essence of his argument is that for Jews in particular, although this may extend to other migrants, any shared loyalty with another country is contradictory, nothing less than a ''betrayal'' of Australia, with all the sinister implications this infers.

Once upon a time migrants left their old countries and severed ties with their homelands, but today with cheaper and more frequent travel and communication that facilitates and defines what we have come to know as globalisation, migrants maintain ties with the countries they came from.

This is also part of a process known as trans-nationalism. It is not the preserve of the Jewish community in Australia; it is something governments such as Australia and organisations like the World Bank and United Nations encourage because it facilitates bilateral trade, investment, cultural exchange and public diplomacy.

We need look no further than the Australian Diaspora to work this out. There are 1 million Australians living overseas. Is Saul arguing that they should sever affiliation with their Australian identity and heritage? Should they surrender their passports in demonstrations of loyalty to the UK, America, China or wherever else they reside? Or should they add to global cultural exchange by maintaining and expressing their dual identities overseas?

The problem with Saul's argument is that he takes the Zygier case to not only tarnish the entire Jewish community by invoking classical anti-Semitic allegations of divided loyalty and the enemy within, but he ignores the fact that in our globalised world with transnational identities, multiple citizenship - holding more than one passport - is increasingly the norm.

There is no contradiction in this reality with democracy and human rights, evident by the growth of acceptance of dual citizenship around the world and Australia adopting new laws allowing for dual citizenship in 2002.

The fundamental flaw in Saul's argument is his assertion that having a relationship with two countries (whether it be Kiwis in Australia with our neighbours across the Tasman, or Jews in Israel) is about making a choice between them, rather than being able to balance and maintain both, which is what trans-nationalism and our global village allows, encourages and thrives on.

Of course there are differences for Australia's relationship with New Zealand to Israel and her neighbours. Saul refers to Israel killing scientists in neighbouring countries. Australian security agencies are less concerned about close to completion attempts of New Zealand, New Caledonia or Papua New Guinea to develop nuclear weapons at the behest of their leaders who have explicitly called for Australia to be destroyed.

The failure of Saul's argument, and the great offence it causes many Jews, is that for the overwhelming majority of Australian Jews, irrespective of whether they agree or not with specific policies of the Israeli government, just as Australians agree or disagree with policies of their government, identification with Israel as their cultural and spiritual homeland is part of being a Jew. As it has been for millennia.

For want of a better analogy, it's like telling overseas Australians they can't identify with or support their footy teams any more. Disconcertingly, Saul invokes rationale espoused from darker periods of history calling on this boundary to be imposed because fundamentally the loyalty of Jews cannot be trusted.

Saul's claim that ''there comes a point where a Jewish person cannot faithfully be both Australian and Israeli. One has to choose'' is fundamentally wrong. While Pauline Hanson tried to revive such sentiments towards Asians and other migrants in the 1990s, this is an archaic notion and today's migrants in Australia and migrants all around the world have multiple identities that coexist and are balanced. Saul's view of citizenship is like marriage - you can only have one life partner.

Countries all around the world are acknowledging that citizenship is more like parenthood - you can have more than one child without that undermining your commitment to them, and we are all the richer for it.

Danny Ben Moshe is an associate professor specialising in trans-nationalism at the Centre for Citizenship and Globalisation at Deakin University, and Kim Rubenstein is a professor of law specialising in citizenship at the Australian National University.

Prisoner X | Ben Zygier | ASIO

Tim Soutphommasane Political philosopher and regular columnist

February 25, 2013

Our liberal toleration of the Dutch MP's vile views is a triumph.

It was a good thing that Geert Wilders, the controversial Dutch politician, came to visit Australia last week. Because sometimes we need to be reminded that living in a liberal democracy isn't always easy or edifying. Sometimes it can be hard work.

I'm referring to the brute fact that we can't always come to agreement. Often when there is unavoidable disagreement, the best we can do is to exercise the virtue of toleration. To put it plainly, we have to put up with things we may find repugnant. We have to tolerate the intolerable.

The Wilders visit has presented, if anything, an occasion for us to reaffirm the success of multicultural Australia.

For the vast majority of us, Wilders' views belong to this category. He believes Islam is ''a dangerous totalitarian ideology'' that is incompatible with liberal freedom. The prophet Muhammad was, he argues, ''a warlord, terrorist and paedophile''.

According to Wilders, Australia should cease accepting Muslim immigrants. While we're at it, we should ban the Koran and the building of mosques. Any accommodation of Islam will ultimately deprive us of ''our freedom, our identity, our democracy, our rule of law, and all our liberties''.

It doesn't take too much thought to understand that Wilders' message is one of hate and division. Even so, I've always believed it was right that he be allowed into the country. Short of Wilders breaking laws or inciting violence, the proper response wasn't to keep him out or expel him - it was to demonstrate the falsehood of his views.

The Wilders visit has presented, if anything, an occasion for us to reaffirm the success of multicultural Australia. Somewhat ironically, the past week has been a good demonstration of how Muslim communities in this country have exercised that liberal virtue of tolerating the intolerable. Contrary to type, there were no burnings of effigies, no local fatwahs issued.

Not nearly enough has been said about our liberal toleration of Wilders. For all the predictable complaints about political correctness shutting down free speech, our Dutch guest enjoyed a broad national audience. There have been interviews and news reports on television, radio and newspapers (not to mention social media). At the time of writing, the Victorian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission has received not one complaint about his visit to Melbourne. So much for any alleged multicultural censorship.

Wilders may have done us a service in getting us to exercise our muscles of civic forbearance, but let's also outline why he is so wildly wrong.

For all of their talk about liberal freedoms, Wilders and his ilk are profoundly illiberal. They endorse free speech, but fail to accept this means those who disagree with them have the freedom to denounce them too. They speak highly of a free society, yet forget that a liberal state must not dictate its citizens' religious convictions.

Let's not mince words. Wilders and his local Q Society supporters are proponents of a thinly veiled form of racism. It's the sort you hear from the sly bigot who says he hates Asians or Jews or Muslims - but only in the abstract. It's the sort that results in someone being judged not on their deeds or character, but on something else.

It is assuring that most political leaders rejected Wilders' views as unacceptable. Particularly noteworthy was the response of Opposition Leader Tony Abbott, who said that ''Muslims in this country see themselves rightly as fair dinkum, dinky-di Australians, just as the Catholics and the Jews and the Protestants and the atheists see [themselves] as Australians.'' Moreover, Abbott noted that ''there are very few lessons that Holland has to teach Australia when it comes to the integration of newcomers''.

On this, Abbott is correct. It is true that the Netherlands, like many countries in Europe, has had its difficulties with migrant integration. In the case of the Dutch, their governments believed that the ''pillarisation'' model they traditionally used to deal with religious and social differences would work with cultural diversity. They never put in place policies to ensure new arrivals would be equipped to participate in Dutch life. They were too diffident in asserting the importance of a unifying Dutch national identity.

In Australia, however, we have struck the right balance between solidarity and diversity, between rights and responsibilities. Where a cultural practice is inconsistent with parliamentary democracy, the rule of law or individual liberties, we are bound to decline to endorse it.

It's as simple as that. Official multiculturalism has never meant cultural relativism. It has been about ensuring all immigrants make as smooth a journey as possible to becoming Australian citizens. The debate about culture and religion is clearly a live one. But if we are to conduct it in good faith, one thing must be made clear. Europeans have a lot more to learn from us than we have from them.

Tim Soutphommasane is an Age columnist, a political philosopher at the University of Sydney and a member of the Australian Multicultural Council.

Geert Wilders Visits Australia | Protests At A Minimum

By ABC's Barrie Cassidy

Posted Fri Feb 22, 2013 7:48am AEDT

Photo: The already difficult task of winning the next election is a lot harder for the Prime Minister thanks to the current leadership speculation. (AAP)

Related Story: An imminent assassin or Gillard's final shield?

Related Story: Greens in 2013: between a rock and a hard place

Labor's political divorce from the Greens this week proved just how far Australian politics has ventured into the 'anything goes' zone. From here until the election nothing can be ruled in or out, writes Barrie Cassidy.

Even under Australia's no fault divorce laws, the break up this week between the Greens and the ALP was hard to figure.

Greens leader Christine Milne put most of the emphasis on the Government's failure to wring any real money from the major miners.

But that tax agreement was negotiated before the last election - and before the alliance was agreed to. What's more, when the Greens amendments were lost, they supported the legislation that they now say is so flawed.

So the published grounds for divorce were decidedly shaky. The truth is the Greens married for the money, only to discover their partner was a disappointment and a potential embarrassment. Better to run away now and seek a better life before it gets any worse.

Labor on the other hand, merely shrugged and said good riddance.

They do, after all, retain the one undertaking that really matters: the Greens will guarantee supply and never support a vote of no confidence. As Insiders colleague, Malcolm Farr, observed: that's like getting a divorce and keeping the kids. Not bad in the circumstances.

Now the focus for the Greens is on saving Senate spots and the single seat of Melbourne in the House of Representatives.

It's always difficult to judge why people vote as they do in the Senate. It is easier for me as a constituent in Melbourne to analyse why they voted as they did in that seat in 2010.

With the departure of the popular local member, Lindsay Tanner, the electorate walked away from Labor for essentially two reasons: the softening of its position on a carbon tax and the toughening of its policy towards asylum seekers.

Since then, the concerns on climate change have largely been met. The asylum seekers issue, on the other hand,  still rankles with some. They would have understood the breakup a little better if that had been put forward as the key reason.

The sitting member, Adam Bandt, will struggle if the Liberals this time around choose not to direct preferences to the Greens. Even if they do, it will be tight.

Bandt is seen as a conscientious and capable representative, but his opponent in 2010, Cath Bowtell, who is running again, is popular as well.

Bandt's chances will improve if  – in September – the electorate thinks Labor is a lost cause and the seat doesn't matter.

And certainly that impression gained currency this week.

The already difficult task of winning the next election got a lot harder for the Prime Minister - and not just because of worsening opinion polls.

Troubling for the Government, Fairfax at varying levels has joined News Ltd in baying for Julia Gillard's blood.

Caucus members will deny it, but most of them are heavily influenced by opinion polls and media coverage.

And while they stress about the poor polls and the increasing number of media commentators calling on the Prime Minister to resign, Tony Abbott is simultaneously starting to get his political act together.

He is using short, sharp doorstop interviews to get out a single uncluttered message every day. For example, "The faceless men cut down Kevin Rudd, and now they're coming for Julia Gillard. I say it's time to get rid of the faceless men!"

Abbott too, is refraining from the tackier issues like the AWU scandal, eschewing the worst elements of political dialogue while adopting a more Prime Minister-in-waiting persona.

All the while, those around him are working hard at softening his image with women voters.

It's a comfortable place to be, sitting back and observing media reports on their opponents' various leadership scenarios.

That exercise has so far been unhelpful for the Government to say the least.  What none of the private and public procrastinators have so far provided is a viable, credible alternative to the status quo that has a half-way reasonable prospect of improving the situation. That tends to be the result whenever the party infrequently looks over the cliff and thinks about its options.

In that context, it is worth going beyond the scenarios themselves and looking at the flaws in each and every one of them.

(a) Julia Gillard resigns

That of course is not going to happen. She is far too determined for that. Only one Prime Minister since the war has given up without a fight; without a party room ballot. That was Kevin Rudd in 2010, because he knew that about 80 per cent of the caucus had deserted him.

(b) The Prime Minister's supporters have a change of mind and tap her on the shoulder

They will not do that in the absence of the credible alternative referred to earlier. The third man - or woman - has been mentioned, but who among the leading contenders would want to be Prime Minister for a few months and then almost certainly preside over a thrashing at the polls?

It would be obvious to all of them that the electorate would punish a party that needed to sack two Prime Ministers, in three years.

That leaves (c), a return to Kevin Rudd.

The polls suggest that might work. The trouble with the polls is that Coalition voters get a voice in the Labor leadership. Given a choice between the incumbent Julia Gillard and the hypothetical Kevin Rudd, of course they go for Rudd.

It's in part mischief making from a solid 30 per cent of the electorate. At the federal election, they'll vote not for Rudd, but for Abbott.

The situation is further complicated because Rudd so firmly rules out a challenge. Drafting him is the only option.

However, if the party was to do that, some of the most senior ministers would have to roll over and they are showing no signs of doing that. And if they did, who among them would  explain why they were bringing back somebody they sacked three years ago; then humiliated again just a year ago; somebody variously described by them as chaotic, dysfunctional, and contemptuous of colleagues.

Australian politics entered the 'anything goes' zone more than a year ago. It is deeper into that territory now than ever before. Nothing can be ruled in or out.

But such a dramatic gesture as a second change of Prime Minister in three years - outside of the election cycle - would only be done if backed by a high degree of confidence that such a change would help. As it stands, that doesn't exist.

Those in the Coalition who promote the idea and suggest Rudd would be a more formidable opponent don't really believe it either, otherwise they wouldn't be promoting it in the first place.

Barrie Cassidy is the presenter of ABC programs Insiders and Offsiders. View his full profile here.

Another week, another political show stopper - The Drum - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Waleed Aly February 22, 2013

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If you're inclined to take a long-term view of politics, the hand-wringing on whether Julia Gillard should stay or go is really just so much white noise.

Labor is in crisis, but not principally for the reasons that occupy the commentariat.

A party without a narrative is reduced to seeking your support as a lesser evil. Hence Labor's focus on Tony Abbott.

It's not about a bitterly divided caucus, or political miscalculations such as the ham-fisted Nova Peris saga. It's not even simply about policy missteps such as the creation of an impotent mining tax.

Illustration: Simon Letch

Labor's problems are not nearly so managerial and technocratic. They are much, much bigger than that.

Labor's problem is ideological. It doesn't really mean anything any more, and probably hasn't since Paul Keating lost power in 1996. Sure, Labor has had its moments - most notably in its campaign against WorkChoices, which jolted its ideological memory and gave it a momentary reason to exist.

But this was no ideological revival. It was reactive: a political opportunity well taken rather than a world view reborn.

Only John Howard's pro-business, anti-union zeal, unencumbered by any resistance in the Senate, made this possible. After WorkChoices, much as before it, what then?

This isn't an optional, esoteric extra. Governments ultimately thrive on narrative. Voters are not merely electing a suite of set policies. They are electing a party that will respond to future, unforeseen policy questions. They therefore need to know what you're about. That's what a clear consistent story tells them.

A party without a narrative is reduced to seeking your support as a lesser evil. Hence Labor's focus on Tony Abbott.

Every successful government can be summarised in a phrase or two. Bob Hawke: a new, deregulated, globalised economy. Keating inherited that story, then added Asia, a growing economic power in our backyard we should embrace by shedding our British skin. Howard was about nationalism, security and capital's triumph over labour. Everything - asylum seeker policy, counterterrorism, foreign affairs, even unsolicited social commentary about minority groups - was tailored to fit the story.

Exactly what story has Labor told us since 2007? It began with something about ''Australian working families'', but that too was a relic of the WorkChoices campaign. After that, it has been mostly a blancmange of conflicting messages. Perhaps it started when Kevin Rudd wanted to be ''tough but humane'' on asylum seekers. It took Gillard only a matter of days as Prime Minister to continue the incoherence, declaring both that the number of boat people arriving in Australia was much smaller than many imagined, before swiftly going on to reassure those worried about invading hordes that their concerns were legitimate, and that they're ''certainly [not] racist''. We learn nothing from this about how Labor sees asylum seekers. We learn only that it's trying to please everyone.

The problem persists even in Labor-friendly policy areas. Take education, where the Rudd government announced a bold new focus on literacy and numeracy, much as Howard might have. More recently, it commissioned the Gonski review, but tied its hands on the question of private school funding so the panel couldn't even consider cutting it. Then it pledged a response it is yet to detail or fund.

Indeed, its only real response to date has been a bill it hailed as the most important of last year, but which had nothing in it at all. Explicitly. It has a section specifically saying the bill creates no rights or obligations on anyone - especially the government. To paraphrase, ''section 10: this legislation does not exist''.

Even Labor's most significant reform, the carbon tax, merely symbolises the party's ideological malaise. The government's heftiest achievement isn't even its own policy. Indeed, it was so infamously promised not to be its policy.

Remember the citizens' assembly? That was Gillard's pledge before the last election: a random gathering of ordinary people who would somehow reach a consensus on pricing carbon. That's a process, not a policy. It's the kind of thing you do when you want to announce something but you're not prepared to commit to a compelling vision of your own.

As the opposition hammers it on Labor's broken pledge to deliver a surplus this financial year, the government seems to have found some coherence. Confronted with falling corporate profit (and therefore falling tax revenue), it had a choice: either keep finding cuts that would make lots of people unemployed and deflate the economy, or prioritise jobs and growth. It's a nice line. It sounds like a Labor line. But it follows years of saying the opposite; of elevating the surplus to some inviolable standard of good economic management; of saying the main game was giving the Reserve Bank ''room to cut interest rates''. And this in the face of the ever-lengthening queue of economists advising to the contrary.

In short, Labor had bought wholly into the Coalition's narrative for no discernible reason. It conceded the philosophical debate, then lost the political fight. So now, when it has finally found a Labor story to tell, it sounds convenient and insincere. Labor has become a liberal party, so it isn't even convincing when it sounds like itself.

That's not about incompetent leadership; it is the flipside of the Hawke/Keating legacy. Once Labor embraced a deregulated, liberal economy, the political landscape was forever changed, leaving a diabolical question for subsequent Labor leaders: what exactly is the point of Labor politics? The compromise has been to talk about Labor's ''reforming tradition'', but reform is an act, not an ideology. WorkChoices was a reform, too.

Labor has been chasing its base ever since. Often it watched helplessly as workers became small business owners and turned into Howard's socially conservative battlers. Labor cannot offer them industrial protection, and desperately doesn't want to offend their cultural sensibilities, which is why it says things like ''tough but humane''.

The result is that Labor cannot even compete on social and cultural politics. Hence the flight to the Greens, the party Gillard so venomously dismissed this week as a ''party of protest''. To which the most devastating reply is surely: ''Fine. But what are you?''

Waleed Aly is the presenter of Drive on Radio National.

Labor Slumps In Polls

Nick Dyrenfurth February 21, 2013

It's not a ramshackle government and there's no need for the PM to fall on her sword.

Kevin Rudd will not be winding back his frequent public appearances, saying he has a role to play in helping his Labor colleagues campaign to retain their seats.

Click to play video: I won't stop campaigning, says Rudd

This past week has seen an outbreak of the ''relevance deprivation syndrome'' among the political class. Witness Christine Milne, the Greens' stocks having plummeted since Bob Brown's retirement, performing a Clayton's ending of her party's alliance with the Labor government. See, too, the phalanx of commentators calling on Julia Gillard to fall on her prime ministerial sword.

Perhaps the most spectacular case of the syndrome involves Kevin Rudd, our self-styled prime minister-in-exile. Undeterred by his own party's thunderous rejection of his ambition to seize back the prime ministership 12 months ago, the humble Queensland backbencher is once more omnipresent.

Whether it is his daily television appearances uttering folksy denials of a leadership challenge, or lodging a freedom of information request into his own correspondence with the Australian Federal Police, Rudd is one happy little Vegemite. The party he joined at the age of 15 in 1972, not so much.

It wasn't enough that he sabotaged Labor's 2010 election campaign. Rudd's resignation as foreign minister in 2012 and subsequent challenge was a far superior exercise in self-destructive vanity. Now Rudd seeks to inflict further pain, even if his behaviour increasingly condemns him to the status of a Labor ''rat''.

Demagogic narcissists who treat the party as a personal plaything usually get their just desserts. It is perplexing then to witness commentators and even some Labor MPs urging that Rudd be rewarded for his disloyalty.

Instead, Gillard must remain as PM in the name of what this paper's Mark Baker terms the ''greater good''. First, the demise of our first female PM would be a devastating blow to our political culture. It would reward the bilious campaign waged by misogynist nut-jobs, Tea Party-style activists and the policy-free zone that is Tony Abbott's Liberal Party.

Removing a second-straight PM without reference to electors, based upon poor but not irreversible polling numbers, would seriously damage the public's trust in our democracy. The now-exuberant Liberals would not be immune. Celebrity politicians who think Sunrise is more important than Parliament would be here to stay.

Second, this is not a ''dysfunctional'' government. It has produced a raft of nation-building reforms: a carbon price, the national broadband network, the National Disability Insurance Scheme, paid parental leave, and the first serious attempt to formulate an industry policy in decades. The mining tax is a work in progress. This is a welcome departure from Howard-era style ''reform'': workplace laws which treated human beings as mere commodities.

As such, is it disappointing to see David Day, one of our finest historians, assert on this page on Tuesday that Gillard ''has turned out to be less of a Labor leader than her predecessor . . . And on some limited measures . . . even less of a Labor leader than . . . John Howard.'' Day adduced little evidence to support this proposition. And Rudd may be in ''a sweet place'', but at the potential cost of wiping out an entire Labor generation.

Granted, Gillard's leadership is not without fault. I profoundly disagree with her stances on gay marriage and refugees (neither of which Rudd fundamentally opposes). Gillard has made tactical mistakes, such as her whatever-it-takes commitment to achieving a budget surplus and rejection of reviving the republic issue before the current monarch's passing. Her government has struggled to communicate the economy's rude health.

It is in Labor's long-term interests for Gillard to prevail. Like the best Labor leaders - Andrew Fisher, John Curtin and Bob Hawke to name but a few - Gillard ''gets'' the labour movement. It would be far better that she led her party to an honourable loss than the party have to deal with the apocalyptic effects of a Rudd redux: ministers resigning en masse, unions disaffiliating or withholding campaign funds, the ultimate triumph of the revolving door leadership model, and several years of bitter recriminations.

Commenting on the long-lived Queensland Labor government's 1929 defeat, the Labor Call newspaper suggested: ''Labor with power in its hands, finds the struggle forward impeded in many new and more subtle ways . . . What keeps up the strength of the anti-Labor party is its solidarity. It never scabs on its mates.'' Right-wing bullies and conservative politicians are scarcely known for rousing renditions of Solidarity Forever. Yet they appear more adept at practising the labour movement's famous creed.

For its part Labor should focus on the bigger picture. Electoral recovery is not out of the question. Moreover, if it is to retain a modicum of self-respect in the eyes of voters and its membership, it must - and almost certainly will - ignore Rudd's siren song. Perhaps, too, Australia's happiest little Vegemite might care to mull over his place in Labor's illustrious 122-year history.

Nick Dyrenfurth is the author or editor of several books on Australian political history, including Heroes and Villains: the Rise and Fall of the Early Australian Labor Party.

Labor Headed For Landslide Loss

Paul Sheehan Sydney Morning Herald columnist

February 21, 2013

Julia Gillard should stay where she is. The Labor Party has run out of party tricks. The federal government's perceived unpopularity is a collective effort, an effort that began with Kevin Rudd, who as prime minister was so dysfunctional in his leadership and his megalomania that his own colleagues revolted against him.

Now he's being touted as prime minister again but not by those who removed him. The only people who will never be cured of the disease called ''leadership fever'' are the Canberra press corps and the media commentariat. When I tried to create a database of stories about leadership speculation, there were so many of them - about Howard and Costello, Beazley and Crean, Crean and Latham, Latham and Beazley, Beazley and Rudd, Costello and Turnbull, Nelson and Turnbull, Hockey and Turnbull, Gillard and Rudd, Abbott and Turnbull, and now Gillard and Rudd again and Gillard and Shorten - that I gave up. Let's just say there have been, oh, about 10,000 stories about federal leadership over the past eight years, a period of unprecedented carnage for federal political leaders.

Driving all this public speculation are the opinion polls. Who creates the opinion polls? The media. Who drafts the questions? The media. Who promotes the results? The media. Who acts as if opinion surveys are surrogate elections? The media. Who profits from the publicity and the speculation? The media.

Julia Gillard ... should stay where she is. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

The only group that takes these polls as seriously as the media is the political class, the group of politicians, courtiers, aides, ideologues, lobbyists and power groupies to whom politics is a career and a living.

Now the Gillard government's primary vote has slumped to 30 per cent according to the latest Fairfax/Nielsen national phone poll, ''leadership fever'' has broken out again with a fury.

The justification for removing Australia's first woman prime minister is the recent polling showing Gillard trails behind the Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, as preferred prime minister.

This faux news event - a phone poll is a scripted media event that has nothing to do with the electoral process - has prompted the speculative fever to intensify, with a collective titillation and agitation about the prospect of an Ides of March assassination.

The fact that only 30 per cent of Australians surveyed have indicated they intend to vote Labor at the next federal elections suggests Labor's support has fallen back to the rump of the electorate whose perceived self-interest is tied to Labor's fortunes, the public sector workers and unionists who benefit most from having a Labor government in Canberra.

Gillard may be responsible for a series of moral, ethical and policy mistakes but she had nothing to do with the collapse of Labor's credibility in the core electoral battle ground of greater Sydney, where Eddie Obeid, Joe Tripodi, Craig Thomson, Mark Arbib and Anthony Albanese have all left an indelible mark on the electorate's psyche.

Even if Labor were to be spooked and goaded into another leadership change by the media, nothing can remove the stain on Labor's reputation in Sydney and the central coast between now and September 14, the date set by the Prime Minister for the next election.

The entire federal Labor caucus is responsible for protecting and promoting Thomson in the 2010 election even after his troubles had become public knowledge, and the entire party is culpable for protecting him thereafter. The Labor machine tried to bury what this newspaper exposed.

The entire federal caucus is responsible for voting Peter Slipper into the speakership, a collective act of cynicism.

The entire caucus is responsible for deciding to run the campaign of personal attack on the character of the Leader of the Opposition as the government's main election campaign issue.

It was not Gillard, but the famously foul-mouthed Treasurer, Wayne Swan, who carries primary responsibility for the multiple blunders in the budget calculation. The same Treasurer who led the charge in the politics of personal vituperation. The same Treasurer Wayne Swan who was the first and last man standing in peddling the fantasy that this Labor government could ever deliver a budget surplus. The same Wayne Swan who negotiated the mining tax.

Also largely ignored is the stagnation of the Greens, which says a lot about where the electorate is heading. The indicative primary vote for the Greens is lower in this poll, 11 per cent, than it was in the 2010 federal election. The corruption and gold-plated stuff-ups that have afflicted the Gillard government have not translated into any benefit for the Greens.

The great weakness in this latest outbreak of ''leadership fever'' is the widespread assumption Labor could, or even would, snatch victory from defeat if it changed leader simply because the polls indicate that Rudd is more popular than Gillard or Abbott.

It is a facile assumption. It cannot factor in the reaction of the electorate. It assumes voters would not see another leadership pivot by Labor as an act of cynical desperation, no matter who ends up as the shiny new leader.

Let us not forget voters in NSW have already seen Labor pull this trick four times in recent years, have had a gutful of this tactic, and a gutful of Queenslanders shafting NSW on water rights, and would almost certainly see yet another Labor leadership pivot as an act of political bankruptcy.

Gillard Under Leadership Pressure

James Dowling From: Herald Sun

February 20, 2013 8:36AM

Dutch politician and the founder and leader of the Party for Freedom Geert Wilders speaks in Melbourne. Photo by Scott Barbour/Getty Images Source: Getty Images

PROTESTERS clashed violently with police and guests tonight before a speech by controversial anti-Muslim Dutch MP Geert Wilders.

Activists pushed and shoved guests to stop them entering, and linked arms to try to form a blockade.

One middle-aged invitee was shoved to the ground in the skirmish.

A protester with a blood nose said a guest he'd called "one of the fascist cohort" assaulted him.

The 22-year-old, who would only give his name as James, said: "He threatened to punch me unless I let him through. And he then started clawing at my face."

There were reports of activists ripping up guests' tickets.

Violent scenes outside the La Mirage in Melbourne where Dutch MP Geert Wilders was giving a talk. Picture: Jake Nowakowski

Police moved in to clear the gates to allow guests to enter to hear the speech.

A line of officers, backed by mounted police, swarmed in to remove protesters from the entrance of the La Mirage Function Centre on the Hume Highway at Somerton, in Melbourne's north.

Up to 60 police then formed a ring of steel around the venue, as Mr Wilders spoke inside.

Senior Sergeant Michael Maloney said there had been no arrests.

Geert Wilders talks at La Mirage in Somerton. Picture: Tony Gough

Tony Iltis, from the Socialist Alliance, said the group were stopping fascists from entering.

"Police came in pushing us and grabbing shouting 'Move, move' and all that garbage," he said.

Protesters remained beside the venue to continue to voice their opposition, chanting "Racist scum!"

About 100 protesters had gathered in the minutes before Mr Wilders spoke.

The venue for the speech had been kept secret, but protesters got wind of it earlier today.

Mounted police were called in to move on protesters outside the venue. Picture: Jake Nowakowski

Protesters linked arms to block access, forcing police to use mounted officers to clear the entrance.

Entering the reception centre was like passing through airport-security, with guests forced to be scanned by metal detectors. The serene environment inside contrasted with the violent clashes of the protesters outside, with the 500 guests sitting quietly to hear the speeches. 

Mr Wilders, entered the ballroom to a standing ovation, opening his speech with a condemnation of Australian politicians, including Federal Minister Chris Bowen, who had labelled him an "extremist" and a "fringe-figure from the far right".

While he said Western Australia Premier Colin Barnett had even told the press he would not be welcome in the state. 

"I am the leader of a party who have nearly one million voters in a country that is known for its tolerance. I am not a fringe figure and I am not a far-right figure either.

Protesters gather outside the La Mirage in Somerton where Dutch MP Geert Wilders was giving a talk. Picture: Tony Gough

Mr Wilders said he was forced to live under 24-hour police protection only because he had "criticised Islam". 

He said his speeches were carrying on the traditions of Australian who fought at Gallopili and to uphold the "defence of our freedom". But warned the well-heeled crowd to be "vigilant" against the mass-migration of Muslims to Australia.

"Islam is not just a religion, as so many people mistakenly think, but a dangerous ideology," Mr Wilders said.

"Australian tourists visiting our major cities in Europe can still see the postcard views ... but if they are not careful and walk a few miles in the wrong direction they risk entering a dangerous Muslim ghetto.

"I am here to warn Australia, learn from us, learn from our mistake, learn from the European lessons. The more Islam you get in your society the less civilised it becomes and the less free it will be."

Protesters rallied against Dutch MP Geert Wilders appearance in Melbourne. Picture: Jake Nowakowski

Mr Wilders used the ANZAC tradition as a rallying for the crowd to defend Australia against the "rising tide of Islam."

"The old ANZAC spirit that helped keep Europe free in the past can and will keep you free in the future. Be as brave as your fathers and you will be free."

Punters paid $66 for a ticket to hear Mr Wilders speak for more than an hour.

The speech was widely broadcast on social media and left-wing groups used Twitter and Facebook to rally protesters to the venue.

Q-Society spokesman Andrew Horwood said there were lots of protesters.

Mr Wilders is constantly protected by security guards, including Dutch policemen, since he rose to global infamy for his hard-line views on Islam.

He has linked Islam to mass murder and advocated a ban on mass-migration from Muslim countries to Western nations, as well as the banning of the Koran.

Mr Wilders said that Islam was a "fascist ideology" and the prophet Mohammed a "pedophile" and "murderer".

It was the first time he had spoken in Australia.

The right-wing MP wants a ban on Islamic immigration and says the religion is incompatible with freedom, but he insists he's not trying to incite violence or insult people during his Australian visit.

The protesters say Mr Wilders is a racist.

He is due to speak in Perth and Sydney later this month, but the Q-Society claims more than 30 venues have cancelled engagements.

Earlier, speaking in Melbourne at his first Australian press conference amid tight security, Mr Wilders said Islam could not integrate into western societies.

"Islam is totalitarianism ... Islam and freedom are incompatible," he said.

Despite threats of protests, no demonstrators attended the press conference, which was held in the outer western suburbs.

About a dozen security guards were present, including personnel from the Netherlands.

Mr Wilders said mass migration from Islamic countries to Western nations should be stopped, except for certain humanitarian cases.

"If a homosexual who is taken to jail or threatened to be killed in Iran or a Christian that is mistreated in so many countries today in the Middle East ... when it comes to asylum seekers it's a different story,'' he said.

Mr Wilders said he wasn’t in the business of insulting people or inciting hatred, but he made derogatory remarks about the prophet Mohammed .

"We have to be able to talk in a free society about the character of Mohammed," he said.

"Mohammed  was a warlord, a terrorist, a pedophile, and I would not say that if not today 1.5 billion people believe that Mohammed is the best example to follow.

“It would be totally ridiculous to suggest that they are all following the example, but in the ideology the Koran is the word of God and the life of Mohammed ... is the person that they should copy, that they should try to follow.”

Mr Wilders said that those stopped from migrating from countries such as Lebanon would include Christians.

But Q Society's Mr Horwood interjected to say that the situation in the Netherlands was different to Australia.

"We don't have a policy of stopping people coming to this country, we welcome people coming to this country, we ask them to obey our laws,'' Mr Horwood said.

"What's happening in the Netherlands can be different, we're just hearing from some of the experiences, we're not asking that they all happen here.''

- with John Masanauskas and AAP

Protesters call Dutch MP Geert Wilders a racist as he calls for end to mass migration from Islamic countries | Herald Sun

Dutch political leader Geert Wilders, now on a speaking tour of Australia, on why he came to fear Islam:

In the Islamic world, I was always struck by two things. I was impressed by the kindness and helpfulness of many people. But there was also their fear. Islamic societies are ruled by terror. Muslims are good people, but they live under the yoke of Islamic sharia. If they leave Islam, or even just mildly criticise it, they sign their own death verdict.

I returned to The Netherlands and became a politician. I used to live in the Kanaleneiland district of Utrecht. During my years there, the district was transformed into a dangerous neighbourhood for non-Muslims. I have been robbed. On several occasions I had to run for safety. The same transformation happened in several cities in The Netherlands and other European countries where Islam settled. Europe is going through an Islamification process, which makes our continent less free and less safe.

Contrary to what many Westerners think, Islam, rather than a religion, is a totalitarian political ideology. It is an ideology because it aims for an Islamic state and wants to impose sharia on all of us. It is totalitarian because it is not voluntary: once you are in, you cannot get out. Unlike genuine religions, Islam also makes demands on non-Muslims. We, too, are marked for death if we criticise it.

For nine years I have been living under constant police protection. I live in a government safe house. I am driven every day to my office in an armoured police car. I have even lived in army barracks and prison cells just to be safe from assassins. I am threatened because I am a a critic of Islam.

Some critics will scoff, knowing that to do so puts them in no danger at all. It will make them seem more tolerant, and enable them to walk down the street in danger of nothing but praise from the like-minded.

Wilders’ life, though, is proof of at least part of his message. Here are just some of the security guidelines distributed to journalists covering the visit here of an elected Dutch political leader simply expressing a point of view:

To facilitate the required level of security and to ensure an enjoyable time for us all, you are kindly requested to familiarise yourself with the following notes and the T&Cs* applicable to the evening events. We understand that this are not everyday requirements, but are essential for the security of Mr Wilders and his staff.

1.) For most media opportunities we will send to you the location details the night before the event. The venue information is privileged and confidential and must not be made available for publication or made available to a third party prior to or during the event....

2.) Besides your ‘tools of trade’ only one small handbag is permitted into the venues… If you refuse to be screened, security will refuse entry.
4.) Immediately upon arrival on location please approach one of our security operatives. Kindly identify yourself with photo ID and the confirmed media accreditation and you will be given a location pass, please wear this visibly and return this to security when you leave the venue…

8.) Do not assume patrons and members have given permission to be filmed. Aside from Mr Wilders and our board members speaking from the podium, any other face on your recording must be pixelated, or the relevant frames deleted before broadcasting; unless you have received written permission from this person.

9.) As a security requirement, officers providing close personal protection for Mr Wilders will not allow persons to directly approach Mr Wilders without prior arrangement…

10.) All of the meetings/press conferences will be taken indoors in secure locations.  We understand the desire to get ‘shots outside/movement shots’, but for security reasons this will not be possible.

If criticising Islam requires this much protection, there must be something to criticise.

If you need this much security for criticising Islam… | Herald Sun Andrew Bolt Blog

 By Hamish Fitzsimmons and staff

Video: Protesters demonstrate against Wilders (Lateline)

A large group of angry protesters has scuffled with people attending a Melbourne speech by controversial Dutch MP Geert Wilders.

There were verbal exchanges on Monday evening as about 200 protesters wrestled with those trying to access the venue at Somerton, in the city's north.

The demonstrators took guests' tickets and pushed them to the ground.

"What are you doing? This is a democratic society. We're allowed to go in there," one guest told the protesters.

Mounted police then moved in, forming a line to try to stop the scuffles.

"We do not want this to be an issue of confrontation and we ask you to accept the rights of all the other members of the community," one policeman said.

"If you do not move aside, we will be using force."

Most of the protesters, who chanted "racism, no way, we're going to fight it all the way", then moved on.

The group Students for Palestine organised the protest, and say demonstrators did not come looking for trouble.

"We were just standing there while actually, a number of people were charging at us, are hurting us," the group's Yasmin Shamsil said.

"There are actually people in here with bloody noses and these are all the demonstrators who are just peacefully trying to raise awareness of the fact that we oppose Islamophobia and all the things that Geert Wilders and the people who come to Geert Wilders' event preach."

The far-right politician's Australian speaking tour has been sponsored by a group called the Q Society, which is against multiculturalism.

Andrew Horwood from the Q Society blamed political correctness for the trouble.

"I think it's very sad that we've got to this stage with the cloak of political correctness that's descended on this land," he said.

"That it's hard for an organisation like this, a group of volunteers, to get places where we can freely speak and discuss something that concerns the future of this country."

Security inside the function centre was tight for Mr Wilders, who told an enthusiastic audience large-scale immigration by Muslims threatened the fabric of Australian life.

"I'm also here to warn Australia about the true nature of Islam," he said.

"It's not just a religion, as so many people mistakenly think. It's primarily a dangerous and totalitarian ideology.

"And I'm also here to warn you what is happening in my native country, the Netherlands, that that might soon happen in Australia too if you fail to be vigilant."

Mr Wilders will press on to other speaking engagements across Australia, and no doubt more protests.

Photo: Earlier on Monday, Geert Wilders held his first Australian media conference. (Getty Images: Ryan Pierse)

Clashes erupt outside Wilders' Melbourne speech - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

 Alan Stokes February 20, 2013

I love you Julia Gillard, in a platonic ''gee you're brave, wish I were as smart as you, you've done some great things, had a red hot go, our daughters will thank you, we'll miss you, no one blames you for not being perfect, we're all flawed and those flaws can take us a long way,'' sort of way.

And what's not to love about a politician such as you?

Stay and it's harder for those who love you to ... protect your legacy.

One who turns up in trackie dacks to a Chinese restaurant after a federal budget looking like your daggy sister who's as shocked to be where she is as you are to see her there.

Missing all the signals ... Julia Gillard. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

But Jesus wept, Julia Gillard, I hate you, in a fatherly ''why didn't you just wait, the faceless men used you, your time would have come, why promise things then dump them, let the Greens and big business con you, put on a face, hide the warmth, lost your guiding light along the way,'' sort of way.

And what's not to hate about a politician such as you?

One so focused on the job, but caught up in the grief of how it wasn't meant to turn out this way and it's just not fair, that you are missing all the signals.

So with utmost respect, allow me to spell it out for you, as one pride-riven, deeply weakened individual to a far less flawed one.

Julia Gillard, it is time for you to make your graceful, dignified, humble, selfless exit from the prime ministership.

Stay and it's harder for those who love you to save the furniture and protect your legacy.

Stay and you will hurt more.

Forget Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott. This is about you.

Forget the loss of face. Life's too short.

Admitting the dream is over is painful. Maybe you have known all along. Maybe you did not want to let your supporters down. Maybe you owe it to your family. Maybe to your father.

Now, you know about grieving.

How at first you deny it's happened and grasp every skerrick of how things were.

Then you get angry because you did not get to do everything you wanted.

Then you start bargaining for some sort of compromise - gimme just one last chance and I promise to deliver.

Then you get depressed when reality sets in. The pain won't go away. You make silly decisions, won't take wise counsel, won't listen.

But, one day, you just have to realise that what will be, will be.

Let today be that day.

Take this chance to end the grieving over your dream of what Australia could have been had you managed just a few extra months.

You are now the adult. You are the one who has to lead the way, be the example, carry the secrets, dispense the wisdom, keep it all together.

Of course you cannot, not inside your head.

On the outside, though, you can deliver the most dignified of resignation speeches, one that digs up fond memories and spreads them evenly among the needy.

You are the only one who can, with a little help from Whitlam, Carr, Beazley, Keating, Hawke and, yes, even Rudd.

And it starts like this: Men and women of Australia, I shall call my Labor colleagues to Canberra on Friday to elect a new executive.

I myself will not be nominating for the position of leader.

There is never a perfect time in these things. Sharing this past weekend with Tim, we were impressed by the notion that you could spend more of your time in a nice way. And we've decided that time has come.

I thank you for your support but please don't make this any harder than it is.

I've got to say that not once did I tackle and take on a second-best option, I never threw a policy fight, I always went . . . I always went for the big ones. In the end, it's the big picture that changes nations.

Australia is now more outward-looking, more tolerant and competitive than it was when I came to office.

I'm proud of all we've done. What I'm less proud of is the fact that I have now blubbered.

I thank the Australian people for putting their trust in me.

And having said all that, folks, I've got to zip.

Such is life.

Gillard Versus Rudd | Labor Slumps in Polls

Mark Baker Editor-at-Large, The Age

February 20, 2013

This dysfunctional government should face the harsh reality. For the greater good, Gillard must go, Rudd should be reinstated and an election called immediately.

It's time, Labor. Time to end the delusion that Julia Gillard and her battle-scarred camp followers have any chance of political resurrection. Kevin Rudd might well be a very naughty boy, but Labor has no choice but to test whether he still has the makings of a messiah.

It is the only card this discredited, demoralised and dysfunctional government has left to play.

The caucus and union hatchet men who toppled Rudd in June 2010 need to polish their knuckledusters and head back to the prime ministerial suite. Gillard needs to be told that her time is up and she must resign the leadership for the greater good. Rudd needs to be reinstated by unanimous accord and his first act back on the throne must be to call an immediate election.

Illustration: Andrew Dyson.

Of course, many voters would view this as being yet another seedy episode in the march of seediness that has been Labor in power over the past couple of years - and the Coalition would be quick to remind them of the poisonous things all those colleagues said about Rudd when he had the temerity to challenge Gillard early last year.

But the harnessing of Rudd's remarkably persistent popularity is the only obvious action that can turn electoral annihilation into salvageable defeat for Labor - the difference between a chance of winning back power after three years and the certainty of at least two parliamentary terms in the exile of opposition. Every Labor MP on a margin of 7 per cent or less - even those who loathe Rudd - now lives this truth.

And should Labor act to stop this unstoppable rot then maybe, just maybe, sufficient voters would be so elated at being spared the unimaginable sufferings of a seven-month campaign to a September 14 poll, that they would let Kevin13 steal a miraculous win.

This week's Age/Nielsen poll was not just another bad poll for Gillard. It was the poll that demolished what faint hope remained among her supporters that she might have what it takes to rebuild her fortunes and those of the government.

It proved the lift in the Prime Minister's ratings late last year - fuelled by her stirring stand against the rising tide of misogyny (aka Tony Abbott) - was no more than a wistful blip on the radar of her persistent unpopularity. She has never as prime minister achieved the levels of electoral support needed to sustain a leader in a Western democracy and the hard-learnt lessons of political history shout that she never will.

The poll showed a slump in Labor's primary vote, leaving the party trailing the Coalition by a disastrous 44 to 56 per cent on a two-party preferred basis. It showed Abbott now leading Gillard as preferred prime minister for the first time in seven months. And it showed that almost twice as many Labor voters want Rudd as their leader as want Gillard.

In a way, perhaps the only surprising thing is that the numbers were not worse.

This is surely Gillard's annus horribilis - and it's hardly started. Already we've had the bizarre decision to call the election eight months out, the still puzzling resignations of two senior cabinet ministers, the charging of Craig Thomson, the scandalous soap opera of the corruption hearings involving the former New South Wales Labor government, and the confirmation that the mining tax is a bad joke that is doing nothing to help our beleaguered budget bottom line. The only tricks Labor can take, it seems, are those allegedly procured by Mr Thomson on his union-funded credit card.

In the midst of this turmoil, the Prime Minister and her Treasurer are spending quality time at the Australian Workers Union national conference on the Gold Coast, cuddling up with national secretary Paul Howes and doing high-fives with union elder statesman Bill Ludwig. Of course it was Howes - along with his predecessor as AWU boss, Workplace Minister Bill Shorten - who played a central role replacing Rudd with Gillard and whose inordinate influence over the internal processes of the ALP is pivotal to her remaining in the job.

One might have thought Gillard would be wiser to keep her distance from anything involving the initials AWU as the Victorian police fraud squad continues its intensive investigation into the hundreds of thousands of dollars stolen from an AWU slush fund she helped to incorporate as a young lawyer by her former boyfriend and AWU official Bruce Wilson, once the golden-haired protege of Bill Ludwig.

Meanwhile, Kevin Rudd has been busy getting himself back on breakfast television and hawking himself around every media outlet in the country not nimble enough to avoid his dance of the seven veils - and his endless protestations that he's a man cured of ambition and driven solely by the obligations of team play.

But it is a tad rich for Gillard's supporters to decry Rudd's antics and blame him for the government's woes.

The harsh reality for Gillard is that Rudd would have no traction if she were not so persistently accident-prone, so often inclined to taking rash decisions without fully consulting her colleagues - as in the Nova Peris shambles - and so incapable of winning over the Australian electorate.

And in the vacuum created by her failings of leadership, Rudd has as much right as anyone else to again stake his claim to the top job - as she and her associates did when he stumbled three years ago.

A consensus decision to reinstate Rudd is now the only clear way out of Labor's mess. There are no obvious alternatives. Shorten, the man most often mentioned, is tarred by his role in the Rudd coup and there is little evidence that the public shares his conviction about his leadership credentials.

A snap election would give Labor a potential edge by catching the Coalition when it still has unresolved policy and leadership issues of its own. It would also mean voters who still think Kevin is the best, or the best of a bad lot, will have little time to change their mind about a man whose period in the wilderness appears to have done nothing to moderate his ego or his enduring sense of entitlement.

Rudd Versus Gillard | Labor Slumps in Latest Poll

Barney Zwartz Religion editor, The Age.

February 20, 2013 - 11:13AM

All Muslims should renounce their religion immediately in favour of Christianity or atheism - it would be better for them and for everyone else, controversial Dutch politician Geert Wilders said in Melbourne on Tuesday.

Insisting politely that he did not want to incite or offend anyone, the anti-Islam campaigner described the prophet Muhammad as ''a warlord, terrorist and paedophile'' and urged Australia to ban the Koran and all migration from Muslim countries.

Told that Premier Ted Baillieu had advised Victorians to ignore him, Mr Wilders said the Premier could ignore the threat of Islam and ''sing Kumbaya'' all day long, but the voters would wake up eventually.

Geert Wilders at the clandestine press conference. Photo: Wayne Taylor

Mr Wilders was speaking to the assembled media at a secret location 40 minutes' drive north-west of Melbourne, of which they were notified only in the morning.

The media had to register in advance, show ID on arrival and pass several burly men in dark suits with black radio earpieces.

For years, Mr Wilders has lived under constant police protection, staying in a government safe house and being driven in an armoured car, but before his visit Melbourne Muslim leaders said he was under no threat of violence from local Muslims. However, the Q Society, which is hosting his three-city tour, says it has had more than two dozen venues refuse to host him or cancel bookings for fear of violent protests.

The Q Society was founded in 2010 to ''educate Australians about Islam'', media spokesman Andrew Horwood said.

Mr Wilders - impeccably dressed and coiffured and a polished media performer who never raised his voice despite some hostile questioning - said Islam was a totalitarian system that was incompatible with freedom.

''I am here to talk about the Islamisation of Europe,'' he said. ''If you think what happened in Europe will not happen in Australia you are totally wrong.''

He said he did not oppose the multiculturalism on which Australia prides itself, but cultural relativism, ''the crazy idea that all cultures are equal, so you don't have a dominant culture''.

He said Islam was based on the Koran, which contained more anti-Semitism than Hitler's manifesto Mein Kampf, and on the example of the life of the prophet Muhammad.

''Muhammad was a warlord, terrorist and paedophile (who slept with a wife when she was nine). If 1.5 billion people think he is the best example to follow it's fair and necessary to analyse it and be able to talk about it.

''I call on all the Muslims in the world to leave Islam for Christianity or atheism or whatever they want. This will be good for them and also for our free society.''

Australian Multicultural Foundation chief executive Hass Dellal said that call was so outlandish there was no sensible reply.

''He is full of contradictions and is wrapped up in his own notoriety. He never speaks of tolerance, understanding or cohesion,'' Mr Dellal said.

Islamic Council of Victoria past president Ramzi Elsayed said Mr Wilders' remarks simply showed ignorance. ''He seems to be losing rationality in his argument,'' he said.

Mr Wilders cancelled the Perth leg of his tour because a hotel hosting him pulled out late on Tuesday.

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott said on Wednesday that Mr Wilders was ''substantially'' wrong on Islam.

''He's entitled to his viewpoint but I think that the Muslims in this country see themselves rightly as fair dinkum, dinky-di Australians, just as the Catholics and the Jews and the Protestants and the atheists,'' Mr Abbott told Fairfax Radio.

''That's one of the great strengths of our country - we are always conscious of what we have in common, rather than the things that divide us.''

Dutch Politician Geert Wilders Tells Muslims To Change Religion