By James Glenday

Photo: Under scrutiny: Immigration Minister Scott Morrison (right) and Lieutenant General Angus Campbell. (AAP: Alan Porritt)

Related Story: Scott Morrison fronts Senate committee over asylum seeker policies

Immigration Minister Scott Morrison has stood by the Government's decision not to release details about its border protection policy.

Mr Morrison and senior officials from Customs, Immigration and Defence were questioned at a Senate inquiry, which was called to investigate the Government's refusal to produce documents relating to Operation Sovereign Borders.

Mr Morrison says releasing secret documents about the border protection policy would make it harder to stop the boats.

"It would not be in our national interest or the public interest to disclose this information that would impede our ability to stop the boats," he told senators.

"It would be reckless and irresponsible, particularly given the significant progress that is being made."

Look back at how the hearing unfolded in our live blog.

Under heated questioning by Labor senator Kim Carr, Mr Morrison refused to confirm he has read the documents he is withholding from public release.

"I am aware of them," Mr Morrison said.

"You have not read the documents," Senator Carr said.

"Well, that is your assertion," Mr Morrison replied.

Mr Morrison also outlined the type of information that is being withheld from the public.

"[It] includes but is not limited to on water tactics, training procedures, operational instructions, specific incident reports, intelligence, posturing and deployment of assets, timing and occurrence of operations, and the identification of attempted individual voyages, passenger information, including nationalities," he said.

Video: Kim Carr in heated exchange with Scott Morrison (ABC News)

The Government says boat arrivals have dropped dramatically since it took office.

But Mr Morrison would not say how many asylum seeker boats have entered Australian waters in recent weeks.

He says to do so would not be in the "national interest" and could even give people smugglers a tactical advantage.

However the Commander of Operation Sovereign Borders, Lieutenant General Angus Campbell, says the number of "arrivals" - the asylum seekers taken into Immigration Detention - has dropped dramatically.

"It's now been 43 days since maritime arrivals were transferred into our control," he said.

"Without the approach of the release of information that has been adopted under Operation Sovereign Borders, it is my judgement that we would not be where we are today."

The head of Customs, Michael Pezzullo, told the inquiry that withholding information also helps keep Australian officials safe at sea.

"We frankly don't give a damn about the media cycle and what's going to be said on [ABC show] Q&A and all the rest of it," he said.

"What matters to us is how do you successfully execute and implement a Government policy."

Greens want Morrison to release footage

The Greens have called on the Immigration Minister to release the recorded vision of a boat turn-back operation.

A Somali asylum seeker has also said his burns occurred after being temporarily blinded after sailors sprayed him in the eyes.

The claims that Navy personnel may have acted inappropriately, which first appeared in the Indonesian media on January 7, have been emphatically denied by Mr Morrison.

The Minister insists there is no evidence Navy personnel caused the burns and he has confirmed that some operations are filmed.

Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young says the footage should be made public.

"Rather than continuing to smear the stories from either Navy personnel or refugees themselves, let's be upfront and see the footage released," she said.

Ms Hanson-Young says there is a clear double standard because the Government cooperates with a commercial television station to broadcast a border security program in Australian airports.

Mr Morrison is the first House of Representatives minister to front a Senate inquiry since 1992.

He said he did so voluntarily because he wanted to support his border protection colleagues.

"I respect the Senate, which my presence here today without invitation and my own initiative, hopefully demonstrates," he said.

"But to reply with the request [to release documents] would impede the continued success of our operations."

Asylum seekers: Releasing Operation Sovereign Borders details not in the national interest, Scott Morrison tells Senate committee - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

By political reporter Latika Bourke Updated Thu 30 Jan 2014

Photo: Tony Abbott's comments about the ABC have been rejected by Malcolm Turnbull. (AAP: Daniel Munoz)

Related Story: Tony Abbott steps up criticism of ABC

Federal Government MPs are openly feuding about the Coalition's treatment of the ABC with some defending it against Prime Minister Tony Abbott's claim that the broadcaster is unpatriotic and others continuing to call for it to be reined in.

Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull is reminding his colleagues that the corporation's "internal programming and editorial decisions" are the responsibility of the "ABC board and executive".

Mr Turnbull said while politicians were entitled to express disappointment with the ABC, they could not tell them what to write.

"What's the alternative...the editor-in-chief [of the ABC] becomes the Prime Minister?" the minister told Fairfax.

Mr Turnbull's comments have been echoed by some of his parliamentary colleagues including the new Liberal member for the western Sydney seat of Reid Craig Laundy, who has defended the ABC on his Facebook page.

Mr Laundy said he was not coming out in support of the ABC but speaking out in favour of free speech and a free media.

Video: Liberal MP Craig Laundy says the ABC has a fundamental right to speak freely. (ABC News)

"These are fundamental to our way of life, what I am here to defend is their right to go about their business and say what they want," Mr Laundy told ABC News 24.

The row over the ABC ignited yesterday when Mr Abbott accused the corporation of being on everybody's side "except Australia's".

Asked whether it was the ABC's role to be patriotic, Mr Laundy said it was the ABC's role to be impartial.

Victorian Liberal Sharman Stone said the charge that the ABC was "un-Australian" had not been her experience.

She said it was "precious" to rural and regional Australians, but it should not be exempted from finding budget efficiencies.

Mr Abbott's comments were strongly backed by Liberal National Senator Ian MacDonald who told Radio National he had long held the view that the ABC lacked balance.

ABC chief defends spy article

ABC managing director Mark Scott last month defended publishing the Indonesian spying story after senior minister Malcolm Turnbull called the move an "error of judgment".

 

"I guess you could extend that to patriotism... it'd be nice to see it occasionally reporting some positives," he said.

Arriving at Canberra airport ahead of today's Cabinet meeting, Social Services Minister Kevin Andrews said the ABC should be open to constructive criticism about its performance.

"What goes around comes around," he said.

Greens leader Christine Milne has also spoken out in defence of the ABC.

"What Tony Abbott is suggesting is that any news outlet, particularly the ABC, which is critical of any government policy, will come in for criticism from him," she said earlier today.

"The ABC is independent. It is loved by Australians. It produces excellent stories and news bulletins and it must be allowed to freely, fairly and fearlessly report the news."

Plibersek says Government preparing to break funding promise

It comes as acting Opposition Leader Tanya Plibersek seized on a report that the Government would axe the ABC's overseas arm the Australia Network, which costs more than $220 million in funding.

She accused the Government of preparing to break its pre-election promise that there would be no funding cuts to the ABC, and said the Coalition was engaging in a "petty tit-for-tat exchange with our national broadcaster".

A spokesman for the Prime Minister said the story was "pure speculation".

Malcolm Turnbull defends ABC independence as Coalition MPs feud over treatment of broadcaster - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Margaret Simons theguardian.com, Friday 31 January 2014

For Tony Abbott to berate the ABC for not being on 'Australia's side' and ask them to bat for the home team is bad media policy. Why? It simply doesn't work

A crowd funded billboard is unveiled calling for the protection of the ABC, in the heart of Malcolm Turnbull's electorate in Rushcutters Bay, Sydney. Photograph: Dean Lewins/AAP

Prime minister Tony Abbott's view that the role of state-owned media is to be patriotic, cheering on the home team, is not particularly unusual or radical. It's just that one would normally expect to hear it from government leaders in countries without a tradition of a free media.

In Chinese media policy, for example, the media is not outside government, but rather an instrument of governance. Recent policy announcements as the Chinese Communist party struggles with the impact of social media talk about the role of journalists as being to "guide public opinion" and maintain the cohesiveness of the nation.

It's a tempting view of journalism for those faced with the challenge of governing at a time of rapid change. It is also completely wrong-headed and dangerous.

This is not only because of the ideals of a free media. After all, as we saw in last year's controversies over the Labor government's attempts to increase regulation of the media, "media freedom" (like "the public interest") can be a hollow catch phrase meaning little more in some mouths than more power for the dominant media corporations, no matter how badly they do their jobs.

Freedom of speech is a right held by individuals, not organisations. Media organisations have freedoms not because the organisations are good things in themselves, but to the extent that they serve individuals’ right to freedom of expression. While this has always been the case, it is newly important to remember it in our own time when, for the first time in human history, the means of publication are in the hands of most citizens.

The wording of every important statement of the right to freedom of speech, from Milton's famous 1644 speech to the English parliament to the Australian high court decision in the Lange case, makes clear that freedom of speech is an individual right, and is held by "the press" only consequentially. Every individual has a right to publish.

The right to freedom of speech can be claimed by media organisations only because they are composed of individuals, and because they disseminate news, views and information to citizens. They hold it to the extent that they put the rights of citizens to freedom of speech and access to information into practical effect.

It is worth remembering, too, that the focus of last year's attempts to introduce more media regulation was the power to enforce the publication of corrections. If those reforms had gone through, and if the ABC's reporting of abuse of refugees was inaccurate, then a correction could have been more powerfully demanded. But Abbott, then in opposition, was vehemently opposed to any such increase in government control of the media.

There is a more pragmatic reason, though, why calling on journalists to bat for the home team is bad media policy. It doesn't work.

As the media historian Mitchell Stephens has observed, the lesson of history is that the sharing of news and information, over time, exercises a subtle cohesive force on society. It keeps us all thinking about the same things, and facing in the same direction, even when we disagree. This is the case even when individual news items and pieces of journalism might appear to have a corrosive effect on social cohesiveness. There is a larger force at work.

But as China is discovering, in the new media world if people begin to distrust the content and pitch of mainstream media, if they suspect it of being propaganda, then mainstream media loses its agenda-setting power.

In the Chinese context, party owned outlets are no longer as effective as an instrument of governance as they used to be, because people are turning to social media, to privately owned newspapers and the internet to get their news. By batting for the home team, party-owned papers have lost the trust of their audiences.

Consider, in this context, the Snowden stories, the ABC's involvement in which has so displeased Abbott and the government.

Imagine if the ABC had decided not to get involved, not seeing breaking such news as part of its charter. Would its credibility have risen? Of course not. People would simply have obtained the news from elsewhere and, to a degree, the nation-building capacity that was the justification for founding a national broadcaster in the first place would have been diminished.

The capacity of the ABC to contribute to a healthy Australia depends on it being a trusted source of news - and all the surveys tell us that by and large, it is exactly that. If it becomes bland and non-controversial, then it loses the power to fulfil its charter.

Meanwhile the planned efficiency review of the ABC is not necessarily a bad thing for Auntie. Long term ABC watchers will be feeling déjà vu: it was 2005, and the ABC was in the sites of the Howard government. The ABC board - stacked by the government with cultural warriors of the first water - requested an external review. The Government commissioned KPMG.

The result, leaked in 2006, was a report that found the ABC was very efficient, and needed an extra $125.8m in core funding over the next three years to maintain its present operations. After comparing the ABC to Australian commercial broadcasters and public broadcasters overseas, KPMG concluded:

The ABC provides a high volume of outputs and quality relative to the level of funding it receives … the ABC appears to be a broadly efficient organisation.

The result was modest increases in the ABC funding in the following budget. It may be that in the current exercise, the motivations of minister for communications Malcolm Turnbull include insulating the ABC from swinging cuts. If so, management's support for the exercise is not surprising.

There is room for some cost cutting at the ABC, but the cost is heavy. Further denuding the broadcasting capacity in Hobart, Adelaide and Brisbane, for example, and ceasing coverage of things such as local football, would free up more funds but also unleash a political storm, including in marginal electorates.

Could the ABC management be looking for excuses and external justification to bolster them in making these cuts? The appointment of commercial television veteran Peter Lewis, who could only blanch at the costs of, for example, bringing state-based football to tiny audiences, suggests so.

Reading between the lines of the terms of reference, there is another issue which has been perennial ever since SBS was founded in the early 1980s. Could the two public broadcasters be merged? Or, failing that, could their "back office" functions be combined, leading to efficiencies?

In a recent interview with me, ABC managing director Mark Scott said an SBS and ABC merger was a "matter for government", and not one the ABC would pursue. However he also observed that if, in the current day, one was seeking to establish an ethnic broadcasting presence, the natural solution would be found a new digital multichannel or two, rather than establish a whole organisation.

The terms of reference for the inquiry also make it clear that the government is taking separate advice on the transmission costs for the ABC and SBS. Not before time, since that particular heavy cost centre has a nasty and expensive history.

There is a reason the ABC has survived, when so many other nation-building "commissions" founded in previous centuries have disappeared. It is because media has a fundamental role in nation-building, and the ABC's high public trust ratings show that most people implicitly understand that.

But it is not exercised by being bland, partisan for the home team, or skewing the news. A public broadcaster that failed in breaking uncomfortable news would lose much of its reason for being.

A 'patriotic' state-owned ABC would not serve Australia's best interests | Margaret Simons | Comment is free | theguardian.com

 Daniel Hurst theguardian.com, Thursday 2 January 2014

Foreign affairs minister says she has 'concerns about the quality of the programming' on Australia Network service

Julie Bishop said she had received negative feedback from overseas about Australia Network. Photograph: Daniel Munoz/AAP

The foreign affairs minister, Julie Bishop, has added her voice to a chorus of conservative criticism of the national broadcaster by questioning whether the ABC-run Australia Network is meeting its goal of promoting Australia’s interests overseas.

Her concerns, raised in a front-page story in the Australian newspaper on Thursday, follow a series of complaints by conservative politicians and commentators about the ABC.

In December, the prime minister, Tony Abbott, and communications minister, Malcolm Turnbull, accused the broadcaster of making an error of judgment by collaborating with Guardian Australia on the story revealing Australia’s past efforts to spy on the Indonesian president. Other Coalition MPs questioned the cost of the ABC and whether it was meeting its charter obligations.

The latest concerns centre on the Australia Network – the government-funded overseas television broadcasting service created to facilitate “soft diplomacy” by improving understanding of Australia. The former Gillard government’s handling of the tender process to deliver the service at the expiry of the ABC’s contract in 2011 attracted controversy. The government shut down the tender process and awarded the contract to the ABC after leaks suggested the tender assessment panel had reaffirmed its view that Sky News, part-owned by News Corp, should win the $233m, 10-year contract.

Bishop told the News Corp-owned Australian newspaper the way the previous Labor government “corrupted the tender process ... and prevented a competitive process from occurring has resulted in ongoing concerns about the contract that was awarded to the ABC”.

Bishop said she was aware of concerns within the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (Dfat) about the ABC’s fulfilment of its contractual obligations.

“I also have concerns about the quality of the programming and whether it is meeting the goal of promoting Australia's interests overseas,” she told the newspaper. “It is meant to be a tool of public diplomacy and I am concerned by the level of negative feedback I receive from overseas.”

The shadow treasurer, Chris Bowen, said he hoped and expected the government was not trying to apply undue pressure to the ABC in relation to its coverage.

“The ABC is independent. It is entitled to cover matters entirely as it sees fit at all times and the government needs to reassure the ABC and the Australian people that this is not some sort of way of trying to influence ABC coverage on matters domestic or international,” Bowen said in Sydney on Thursday.

The debate follows a letter from Dfat’s first assistant secretary, Justin Brown, indicating the department is closely monitoring the ABC’s performance in fulfilling its obligations, including ensuring the integrated Australia Network-Radio Australia service “becomes a more effective vehicle for advancing Australia’s broad and enduring interests in the Asian region”.

The Sydney-based conservative blogger and former radio talkback host Michael Smith wrote to the Dfat secretary, Peter Varghese, in November to complain about Australia Network’s performance.

Smith said the department paid $21.9m to the ABC last financial year and the program’s stated objective included “to project a positive and contemporary image of Australia and promote a clear understanding of government policies”.

Smith complained about an ABC story from 23 November, which was also carried on the Australia Network News website, headlined: “Opposition labels government’s asylum seeker briefings ‘a weekly embarrassment’”.

He also pointed to the lead story on the Australia Network News home page on 24 November headlined “Climate deadlock broken” and the summary: “Negotiators from about 195 countries have reached consensus on some of the cornerstones of an ambitious climate pact to combat global warming.”

Smith said the report on the “purported agreement” related to meetings in Warsaw – “a UN conference to which Australia did not send a ministerial representative”.

He concluded his letter by asking: “Why are you paying the ABC? Have you advised it of a default or breach of our contract with it?”

Brown replied that the Dfat-ABC funding agreement committed the ABC “to meet several key government objectives in delivering the Australia Network, including to foster the improved understanding of Australia’s global role and to increase awareness of the links between Australia and the Asian region”.

“Under the terms of the agreement, however, the department has no authority to direct the ABC in relation to program selection; editorial matters remain the ABC’s responsibility in accordance with the ABC charter and the codes of practice,” Brown told Smith in the response.

“Over the past year, the department has worked with the ABC to ensure the objectives of the agreement are advanced. The department is continuing to closely monitor the ABC’s performance in that respect and there is ongoing contact between the two organisations to identify what is needed to ensure the integrated Australia Network-Radio Australia service becomes a more effective vehicle for advancing Australia’s broad and enduring interests in the Asian region.”

Smith, a long-time critic of the ABC, described Brown’s reply as “amongst the best letters from an Australian government departmental head I have read”.

The ABC said its agreement provided for it "to deliver a converged international media service to the region that integrates Radio Australia, Australia Network and a range of digital and mobile services drawing on content from across the ABC and other Australian media".

"This converged service provides opportunities to increase links between Australia and the region that the previously separate and distinct offerings of Radio Australia and Australia Network did not," the ABC said. "The ABC works closely with Dfat to realise those opportunities."

The Australian National Audit Office has previously found the Gillard government’s handling of the Australia Network tender process “presented the Australian government in a poor light and cost the two tenderers … time and money”.

The ABC and the operator of Sky News participated in the competitive tender process, which was extended and complicated by a decision to change the decision-maker from the secretary of Dfat – then headed by Kevin Rudd – to the communications minister, Stephen Conroy.

In May 2011 a tender evaluation board suggested Australian News Channel – which operates Sky News – should be the preferred tenderer. The government subsequently changed the tender process by appointing the communications minister as the nominated approver and allowing him to make a decision that did not reflect the recommendations of the tender evaluation board.

The Audit Office said this raised perceptions of a conflict of interest, given Conroy’s portfolio responsibilities for the ABC and his backing of a November 2009 submission to government that proposed the ABC deliver the Australia Network on a permanent basis.

After revised tenders, the tender evaluation board reaffirmed its view the Australian News Channel offered the best value for money, and the board’s views were reported in the media. Conroy announced in November 2011 the termination of the tender process, saying the leaks of confidential information meant the process had been “compromised to such a degree that a fair and equitable outcome may no longer be able to be achieved”.

The government decided in December 2011 the ABC would deliver the Australia Network permanently.

The finance minister, Mathias Cormann, said the ABC was independent but Labor "completely mismanaged the tender process" and Bishop, as the responsible minister, would "continue to work through" the issues.

Asked whether the government's financial commission of audit would look for Australia Network cost savings, Cormann said it would seek efficiencies right across government.

The Labor frontbencher Brendan O'Connor told parliament last month that Coalition members and New Corp commentators appeared to be working in concert on "an assault on the ABC".

Julie Bishop: ABC failing its mandate to promote Australian interests overseas | Media | theguardian.com

Katharine Murphy, deputy political editor

theguardian.com, Thursday 30 January 2014

Growing signs that Abbott government will strip the ABC of international broadcasting as a concession to conservative critics

Julie Bishop argues the Australia Network is not serving Australia’s regional interests. Photograph: Stefan Postles/AAP

Another signal has emerged that the Abbott government intends to strip the ABC of its international broadcasting service – the Australia Network – in a significant concession to Rupert Murdoch and to conservative commentators critical of public broadcasting.

The foreign affairs minister, Julie Bishop, has been preparing the public ground since opposition for the ABC to lose its Australia Network regional broadcasting service, which it was awarded by the previous Labor government after a bitterly contested process.

In January Bishop criticised the quality of the programming on the Australia Network, and argued it was not serving Australia’s regional interests as “a tool of public diplomacy”.

The Australian newspaper reported on Thursday that the service was likely to be scrapped in the May budget as a savings measure. The commission of audit established by the government will also run the ruler over other ABC services.

The Sky News network lost out to the ABC in the Australia Network tender process carried out under the previous Labor government. The multimillion-dollar tender was botched due to sharp divisions within Labor over whether the ABC or Sky should emerge with the regional service.

Sky, a broadcaster part owned by BSkyB – a British company controlled by 21st Century Fox, which is a sister company to Murdoch’s Australian publishing arm, News Corp – has made no secret of its fury about that process, and has lobbied the Coalition to have the ABC’s contract dumped.

In its aborted media reform package in early 2013, Labor did manage to legislate a provision where only the ABC or its associated companies could provide “commonwealth funded international broadcasting services”. It was a means of trying to lock in the ABC’s position regarding the Australian Network after any change of government.

The reform suggests the Coalition would need further legislation if it wanted not to bank the saving, but clear the field for a commercial broadcaster. Whether the ABC would need to be compensated for the dumped contract is unclear.

The acting opposition leader, Tanya Plibersek, said she did not watch a lot of the Australia Network because she lived in Australia, but believed the channel was providing “a very valuable service” in projecting Australian values to the region.

She said the government was "proposing to cut almost a quarter of a billion dollars" through the axing of the Australia Network contract, despite signalling before the election that it would not reduce funding to the ABC.

Asked whether the Australia Network should reflect support for Australia to achieve the aim of soft diplomacy, Plibersek said freedom of speech was a worthy value to promote.

“I'm very happy for the world to see that in Australia you can stand up, you can criticise the government, the government can respond and everybody goes home that night safe and sound,” she said.

The Greens leader, Christine Milne, said the Australia Network did an "outstanding job" and it would be "a very bad mistake" for Abbott to abandon the service.

In addition to bruised feelings over the Australia Network process, the Murdoch-owned News Corp is also campaigning to have the ABC pushed out of digital news services. The ABC’s online content is offered free to readers and viewers, and News Corp is one of several publishers arguing the national broadcaster’s ongoing digital expansion threatens their business.

News Corp faces further commercial pressure in 2014. The tabloids will face competition in Australia for the first time in many years with the entry of the British-owned Daily Mail – one of the most successful digital news sites in the world.

The prime minister, Tony Abbott, launched a strong public criticism of the ABC on Wednesday during a radio appearance on 2GB in Sydney.

Abbott took issue with the ABC's reporting of claims by asylum seekers of mistreatment at the hands of the Australian navy. The prime minister suggested the national broadcaster needed to be more patriotic, and should be inclined to give the navy the benefit of the doubt.

The ABC has taken steps to check the accuracy of the claims made by the asylum seekers, and an email from an ABC researcher made its way into the public domain indicating that some editorial executives doubted the allegations were accurate.

This email has given impetus to the broadcaster’s critics who contend the story should not have been broadcast. A spokeswoman for the national broadcaster said: “In a climate where official information about asylum seeker operations is scarce and hard to come by, the ABC makes no apologies for seeking as much information as it can from as many sources as it can to either verify or disprove the allegations at the centre of the story.”

Abbott also reaffirmed his concerns about the ABC's collaboration with Guardian Australia on the story that revealed Australian spy agencies’ past efforts to target the phones of the Indonesian president, his wife and inner circle. Those disclosures were based on documents provided by the former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden.

Abbott’s intervention was amplified in Sydney’s Daily Telegraph newspaper on Thursday with strong page one treatment.

The paper quoted Abbott’s key business adviser, and former ABC chairman Maurice Newman as saying: “In relation to the navy, [the ABC has] given credence to the idea that the navy may well have tortured people … 99% of Australians would think that's highly unlikely. I think [the allegations] are inimical to Australia's best interests.

“It casts doubt on Australia's reputation and I think it's regrettable.”

The communications minister, Malcolm Turnbull, however, launched a defence of the ABC. He told Fairfax Media that politicians may have issues with ABC content, but could not tell media outlets what to write.

“What's the alternative … the editor-in-chief [of the ABC] becomes the prime minister?” Turnbull said. “Politicians, whether prime ministers or communications ministers, will often be unhappy with the ABC … but you can't tell them what to write.'”

- with Daniel Hurst

ABC may lose Australia Network | Media | theguardian.com

Katharine Murphy, deputy political editor

theguardian.com, Wednesday 29 January 2014

Tony Abbott's airing of people's 'feelings' on the ABC may be a subtle warning to the national broadcaster to get back in its box

Tony Abbott has accused the ABC of not backing Australia in its coverage of asylum seekers and the Edward Snowden leaks. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP

It is the era of feelings. Feelpinions require no facts, no research, they aren’t required to make sense, or be logical, and they thunder around the internet and cable television around the clock.

So why should we be surprised that the prime minister has a feeling in his waters about the ABC?

“A lot of people feel,” Abbott told Sydney broadcaster Ray Hadley on Wednesday morning, that the national broadcaster is not a paid up member of team Australia – that it takes “everybody’s side but our own.”

This failure of patriotism is a problem. (Many people feel.) Evidently not the people who tell survey gatherers and pollsters in droves that the ABC is the most trusted news organisation in the country by a considerable margin.

Strangely they don’t share this “many people feel” feeling. They seem to think in a toxic media market, dominated by professional ranters and by one player, News Corp, intent on using its market dominance to pursue bleedingly obvious political and commercial agendas – that the ABC is not only comprehensive and reliable, but essential. It is even more essential in an environment where commercial media is contracting due to cost pressures, delivering viewers and readers less services than it used to deliver.

But anyway, given the inconvenience of these facts, back to the feelings.

The prime minister evidently feels the ABC should put nationalism ahead of public interest. Cut through the crude and reductionist “whose side are they on?” framing, that’s what Abbott is saying. Nation before public interest.

Independent news organisations are of course not in the nationalism business. They are in the public interest business. If nationalism is supposed to come first, whatever the facts suggest, then you are in the jingoism business, or the propaganda business, not the news business.

Governments are in the propaganda business. News organisations are in the cut-through-the-propaganda business.

This is the public interest transaction in a democracy. Tony Abbott, not being a fool, and not being born yesterday, knows that’s the transaction. He knows full well what he’s saying is a distortion and a deliberate one.

So why is he ventilating these feelings?

Well, I have a feeling about the prime minister’s feelings.

I have a feeling the prime minister is warning the ABC to get back in its box. He’s giving the national broadcaster a chance to bland out, take no editorial risks whatsoever, and walk off the field with its tail between its legs. Like good boys and girls.

I have a feeling the prime minister didn’t really want a fight with the ABC, but he’s under increasing pressure from inside his partyroom and from News Corp (which wants the ABC out of digital publishing and out of international broadcasting) and from the rightwing culture warriors to Do Something because they miss the cold war.

At the moment Abbott is substituting feelpinion for action.

But the current jawboning and bullying is serious, and if things escalate, readers and viewers will be the losers.

In the case of the Coalition v the ABC, 'feelpinions' have become evidence | World news | theguardian.com

Daniel Hurst, political correspondent

theguardian.com, Wednesday 29 January 2014

Prime minister takes issue with national broadcaster’s reporting on asylum seeker claims and ‘traitor' Edward Snowden

Tony Abbott wants the ABC to show some 'basic affection for the home team'. Photograph: Lucas Coch/AAP

The prime minister, Tony Abbott, has mounted a fresh attack on the national broadcaster, suggesting the ABC instinctively took "everyone's side but Australia's" and should show "some basic affection for the home team".

Abbott took issue with the ABC's reporting of claims by asylum seekers of mistreatment at the hands of the Australian navy, saying journalists should give the navy the benefit of the doubt.

In an interview with conservative radio host Ray Hadley on Wednesday, Abbott also reaffirmed his concerns about the ABC's collaboration with Guardian Australia on the story that revealed Australian spy agencies’ past efforts to target the phones of the Indonesian president, his wife and inner circle. Those disclosures were based on documents provided by the former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden.

The prime minister's comments add to complaints by conservative politicians and commentators of perceived left-wing bias at the ABC, amid demands in some quarters for funding cuts. Labor figures have previously accused the government of trying to bully the independent ABC to produce more favourable coverage.

Abbott’s remarks were triggered by Hadley’s complaint about the ABC’s recent stories in which asylum seekers claimed to have been mistreated and burned by Australian personnel during turnback operations at sea. Hadley said he and fellow "shock jock" Alan Jones faced regular attacks from the commercial broadcasting regulator, yet the ABC was not held accountable.

Abbott said he could understand the frustration “because at times there does appear to be a double standard in large swaths of our national life”.

“I want the ABC to be a straight news gathering and news reporting organisation and a lot of people feel at the moment the ABC instinctively takes everyone's side but Australia's,” the prime minister said.

"I was very worried and concerned a few months back when the ABC seemed to delight in broadcasting allegations by a traitor, this gentleman Snowden, or this individual Snowden, who has betrayed his country and in the process has badly damaged other countries that are friends with the United States. Of course, the ABC didn't just report what he said; they took the lead in advertising what he said."

Earlier this month, the US president, Barack Obama, criticised Snowden for disclosing details of government surveillance but announced reforms to the National Security Agency and acknowledged the resulting debate would “make us stronger”.

Abbott said the ABC, like any other news organisation, was entitled to report matters for which there was credible evidence. "But you can't leap to be critical, you shouldn't leap to be critical of your own country, and you certainly ought to be prepared to give the Australian navy and its hard-working personnel the benefit of the doubt," he said.

Hadley said shocks jocks "who lean a bit to the right" faced sustained scrutiny from the Australian Communications and Media Authority, but "the other side of the fence, so the so-called left-leaning ABC" was left to its own devices.

Abbott replied that he thought there was "quite an issue of double standards" but he could not promise "that it's going to be fixed tomorrow". The prime minister was conscious of it and would call it as he saw it.

"I think it dismays Australians when the national broadcaster appears to take everyone's side but our own and I think it is a problem,” he said.

Abbott explicitly questioned the creation last year of the ABC's fact-checking unit to examine the truthfulness of politicians' public statements. The unit has previously disputed statements by both major parties.

Referring to increased costs, Abbott said: "There was the establishment of some fact checking entity inside the ABC a while back and surely that should just come naturally to any media organisation.”

Abbott said he would like the national broadcaster "to have a rigorous commitment to truth and at least some basic affection for the home team, so to speak".

The acting opposition leader, Tanya Plibersek, said Abbott "should stop complaining about media coverage and start behaving like a prime minister".

Plibersek said the ABC was a longstanding part of Australia's cultural fabric.

"From emergency broadcasts in times of trouble to coverage of the events that shape our nation, the ABC is there, free for all Australians," she said.

"Since it began, every government has been subject to the close scrutiny of the ABC and we should all welcome that."

The former Labor communications minister, Stephen Conroy, warned of "a systematic attack on the independence of the ABC".

Conroy, who was a frequent critic of News Corp news coverage, said the ABC had to abide by its independent charter. Anyone with concerns could make a complaint through the ABC's "proper
processes", he said.

The Greens senator, Sarah Hanson-Young, said Abbott had an obsession with secrecy and was "coming after the ABC".

"Here is a bloke who, after saying to everybody during the election campaign that it was fear mongering to suggest that he was going to come after the ABC, he's now gone to his best mates in commercial radio to launch an attack," she said.

The immigration minister, Scott Morrison, and defence and customs hierarchies rejected the claims about asylum seeker mistreatment that were aired on the ABC.

News Corp Australia on Tuesday published an email from an ABC researcher seeking navy personnel to speak on background about the burns claims, saying she was seeking further information because her “boss feels the allegations are likely to be untrue".

The foreign minister, Julie Bishop, urged the ABC to "do the right thing" by making a clear statement if it now believed the allegations were "utterly unsubstantiated". Bishop said the ABC reporting had put a cloud over people's reputations.

An ABC spokeswoman said the key point to take from the leaked email was that the broadcaster continued to seek the facts. She said the ABC did not report the allegations "as fact" or express an editorial view in support of the claims or the denials.

"In a climate where official information about asylum seekers operations is scarce and hard to come by, the ABC makes no apologies for seeking as much information as it can from as many sources as it can it either verify or disprove the allegations at the centre of the story," the spokeswoman said.

Guardian Australia sought comment from the minister responsible for the ABC, Malcolm Turnbull, as to any potential government action over the bias claims. The communications minister's spokesman said internal programming and editorial decisions were the responsibility of the ABC board and executive.

"The parliament is required to ensure the ABC adheres to its charter, which includes a statutory obligation to be accurate and impartial in its news and current affairs programmes according to the recognised standards of objective journalism," Turnbull's spokesman said.

"The minister was pleased to hear ABC chairman James Spigelman announce a series of editorial audits, focusing on particular program topics, including asylum seekers, to be carried out this year."

The employment minister, Eric Abetz, who has previously pursued the ABC at Senate estimates hearings over bias claims, praised the national broadcaster's reports on alleged union misconduct in the construction industry, which aired this week.

"Let me say that the ABC and Fairfax Media have done a great public service in exposing the corruption and illegality on Australian construction sites," Abetz told reporters on Wednesday.

In early December, after the spying story controversy, the ABC’s managing director, Mark Scott, vigorously defended the national broadcaster against criticism.

“We are an independent media organisation and of course sometimes we will publish stories that politicians won’t be happy about. We are an independent media organisation. That’s the role we have to play,” Scott said at the time

Tony Abbott attacks ABC for ‘taking everyone's side but Australia's’ | Media | theguardian.com

Daniel Hurst political correspondent

theguardian.com, Tuesday 28 January 2014

A military man whose public profile was etched by East Timor is the choice for a term that will include the Gallipoli centenary

Cosgrove's five-year term coincides with the centenary of the first world war and the Anzac Gallipoli campaign. Photograph: Alan Porritt/AAP

Australia’s incoming governor general once described his life as a “rollercoaster”.

No stranger to high office, General Peter Cosgrove is a former military man who rose to the highest roles in the defence force. He now takes on the task of serving as the Queen’s representative in Australia – not an unfamiliar role given he was aide-de-camp to the one-time governor general Sir Paul Hasluck in 1972.

Cosgrove’s lengthy military career included a prominent role commanding the international forces that oversaw East Timor’s transition to independence, leading to his promotion to chief of the army in 2000 and chief of the defence force in 2002.

He was long rumoured to be Tony Abbott’s pick as the new governor general, with his military background cited as a worthwhile attribute given his five-year term coincides with the centenary of the first world war and the Anzac Gallipoli campaign.

Last month, the deputy prime minister, Warren Truss, praised Cosgrove as an “excellent candidate” and outlined the government’s thinking.

“We want somebody who can be a representative for our country that we will feel proud of as the head of state. We want someone who has obviously a proven record of personal achievement, that's admired and accepted by all Australians as a suitable person to do the job,” Truss said.

Cosgrove was born into a military family on 28 July 1947, in Sydney. He fondly remembers growing up in Sydney's Paddington, which he described in an ABC interview as “a neighbourhood of a thousand stand-in parents” where various shop owners and community members were called aunties and uncles despite being unrelated.

His grandfather, a staunch Labor man and trade unionist, reacted angrily to a Catholic priest linking the party to communism during a sermon in the mid-1950s. “My grandfather leapt to his feet in the midst of the startled congregation and said ‘you lying bastard’ and stormed out of the church, never to be seen again,” Cosgrove said.

Cosgrove attended the Royal Military College, Duntroon and graduated in 1968 as a lieutenant. He later told how he sometimes got into trouble because he was “chronically a little bit untidy, a little bit unpunctual, sometimes a little irreverent, a little bit rebellious”.

In his 2006 book, My Life, he recalled injuring a fellow officer, the future Victorian Liberal premier Jeff Kennett, during a squash game after his graduation from Duntroon. Cosgrove accidentally hit a ball into the eye of Kennett, who remained in hospital for several weeks.

Cosgrove was posted to the 1st Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment (1RAR) in December 1968 and served in Malaysia, according to an Australian War Memorial profile. He was posted to the 9RAR and commanded an infantry platoon in the Vietnam war, later receiving the Military Cross for an assault on enemy positions. Cosgrove recounted arriving in Vietnam around the time the US was looking for a way out of the war and public support was eroding. Some of the people he was commanding were more battle-experienced and he wondered how he would perform.

Cosgrove, who returned to Australia in 1970, later said he had “no hate whatsoever” for the Viet Cong. “People would think you must hate your enemy. No no, not at all. You respect them and you are opposed to them, because you know that they are a skilful, courageous enemy who seeks to kill you and will do so using any device, and in that respect you give them no quarter unless they are surrendering or helpless, but nonetheless, I never found hatred for them,” he told the ABC.

In 2006, Cosgrove told interviewer Peter Thompson that taking a life was “every individual's dilemma and challenge, when it must be done to save your own life or that of your comrades”.

“I think one of the great moments is when you look upon a fallen enemy, dead or badly wounded, and if your feeling is one of some level of regret, that is, if you like, a token of the respect in which you hold human life and what they were doing just a few moments before,” he said.

After a short stint as aide-de-camp to the governor general in 1972, Cosgrove spent the next few years as second in command at 5RAR and then an infantry instructor. He worked his way into more senior roles and became commander of the 6th Infantry Brigade in the early 1990s and later the commander of the Australian Defence Force Warfare Centre and commandant of the Royal Military College, Duntroon.

Promoted to major general, Cosgrove was named in 1999 as commander of International Forces East Timor, overseeing the move to independence. He gained a significant public profile providing updates on the effort in East Timor and said he was proud, at the end, to be cheered by the people.

Cosgrove returned to Australia in 2000, and was later named as Australian of the Year for being a role model who displayed “strength, determination, intelligence, compassion and humour”. He was also appointed as a Companion of the Order of Australia.

In the wake of the East Timor operation, Cosgrove became a lieutenant general and chief of army in 2000. He was promoted to general and chief of the defence force two years later before retiring in 2005. During these stints, Australia joined the US-led “coalition of the willing” after the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks and then-prime minister John Howard sent forces into Afghanistan and Iraq.

In March 2013, 10 years on from the Iraq war, Cosgrove said he had “mixed feelings about the whole episode” because a “horrible dictator” was removed but he was not sure whether it had made the world a safer place. Cosgrove said he was not convinced that a “lie” about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was used to justify going to war. “A lie presupposes [that] people deliberately contrived to invent a reason for war, and that’s certainly not the Australian experience,” he told the ABC.

Around the time of his retirement as chief of the defence force, Cosgrove went with his family and immediate staff to the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, laid a wreath at the tomb of the unknown soldier, gave a salute, and said: “I did my best, mate.”

In 2006, the Labor premier of Queensland, Peter Beattie, appointed Cosgrove to oversee the rebuilding of communities devastated by cyclone Larry. Beattie said Cosgrove had agreed to take on the role “because he's a great Australian” and the right man for the job. In 2008, then premier Anna Bligh revealed that a new suburb in Townsville would be called Cosgrove in his honour.

In recent times, Cosgrove has served on a number of boards, including Qantas, and as the chancellor of the Australian Catholic University. He was installed in the ACU role at a 2010 ceremony at St Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney, presided over by Cardinal George Pell and attended by Abbott, then opposition leader. Cosgrove stressed the value of education. “For our own citizens and for many of our overseas neighbours, our universities are the key which unlocks their future,” he said.

Peter Cosgrove: from general to governor general | World news | theguardian.com

By Mungo MacCallum

Photo: Just as we don't know how the burns occurred, we don't know what happened next. (ABC TV)

Denied the facts about how asylum seekers ended up with burns on their hands, people overseas will conclude that this is just another Australian atrocity, writes Mungo MacCallum.

For once I have to agree with Tony Abbott. I do not believe that Australian Navy personnel ordered asylum seekers to hold on to hot metal pipes, thereby inflicting serious burns to their hands.

Our sailors are not perfect: various inquiries over the years have shown that they, or at least some of them, can be insensitive, undisciplined and at times downright ugly. But this is not to say that they would indulge in pointless sadism. There has to be another explanation.

We start from the premise that the burns are real: the pictorial evidence appears conclusive. And there is absolutely no reason to believe that the Indonesian police are somehow colluding in a monumental fraud to embarrass the Australian Government. Thus either the burns came about through accident, or they were deliberately inflicted.

Abbott has said that the asylum seekers obviously had a motive to try and discredit Australian policy; he seems to be implying that they may have burned themselves in order to do so. This seems almost as improbable as the accusation that they were the results of torture, and carries disturbing echoes of the 2001 "children overboard" incident in which the Howard government gave credence to rumours later proved false with the intent of demonising asylum seekers in general. So, as Sherlock Holmes would say, having eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Let us consider the circumstances. The asylum seekers are stopped and boarded by the Australian Navy, in what can only be seen as a hostile act. At first they hope, and indeed may even have been told, that they are to be escorted to Christmas Island, the first step to reaching Australia. But then they find that they are in fact being turned around and are being pushed, towed or otherwise, back whence they came.

Quite possibly some or all of them try to resist, and the Australians defend themselves; a certain amount of push and shove ensues, and in the confined space, some of the asylum seekers end up battered and bruised. This later leads to accusations that they were punched and beaten by the sailors. And the result is that they no longer have any doubt that the Australian Navy is their enemy, and a ruthless one at that, prepared to do whatever it takes to compel them to return to Indonesia.

Their logic is faultless; after all, these are precisely the orders Abbott and Morrison have given the Navy. So this is war. The asylum seekers now accept that they have lost the battle and effectively surrender; they must do whatever they are told to by the victors. And this is where it gets tricky, because we have absolutely no way of knowing what the victors told them or how well they understood it, or even if they understood it at all.

It may be that one of sailors told a group of them to pay attention to the engine, to stop it overheating - check the temperature. And this may have been misinterpreted as an order to hold the hot pipes. Or they could have been given a more general instruction to look after the engine and, not having been trained to do so, they accidentally burned themselves. But in either case they would naturally blame the Australian sailors; after all, they were the ones in charge, they were the ones who had to be obeyed.

In any case, some of the asylum seekers ended up with burns. And of course, just as we don't know how the burns occurred, we don't know what happened next. Did the asylum seekers approach the sailors asking for medical treatment? If so, was it forthcoming? Did the sailors even know about the burns, or did the asylum seekers keep quiet about them, fearing that they might be punished further if they complained?

Well, we shall probably never be told, because after all, these incidents happened on the water, and that makes them operational matters, and that makes them subject to national security, never to be revealed in case the people smugglers ever find out and use the information to their advantage. Which just shows how stupid, how mindlessly counter-productive the whole ridiculous policy of secrecy has become.

The story has by now gone around the world; the Indonesian police have referred the case to the United Nations High Commission on Refugees for investigation and it will be an ongoing issue for days, possibly even weeks, to come. Readers, listeners and viewers, denied the facts by a paranoid Government, will make up their own narratives, almost all of which will be far more damaging than any conceivable reality.

Few Australians will believe the asylum seeker version, but overseas there will be many who find it depressingly plausible: the idea of maltreatment by victorious forces is hardly an unlikely outcome to those who have been involved in real wars. And of course in Indonesia itself, where a large chunk of the population has never been happy with what it sees as the crude, bully boy attitudes of the overbearing neighbour to its south, there will be a ready acceptance of yet another Australian atrocity.

Just when you thought relations between the two countries could not get any worse, they are about to. And of course Abbott's belligerent and uncompromising rejection of all Jakarta's protests about the way his government has handled the problem since day one can only heighten the tension. Immediately after the election, our Prime Minister promised that his Government would be more about Jakarta than Geneva, and by golly has he delivered on that pledge. Lucky old Swiss.

Mungo Wentworth MacCallum is a political journalist and commentator. View his full profile here.

Official secrecy leaves our Navy exposed - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Updated Fri 24 Jan 2014, 5:34pm AEDT

Photo: Mr Abbott is incorrect to say the asylum seekers making allegations against the Navy were attempting to break Australian law. (AAP: Alan Porritt)

Related Story: Morrison correct on 'illegal entry' of people without a visa

Prime Minister Tony Abbott has tried to discredit a group of asylum seekers who allege they were mistreated by the Royal Australian Navy, by claiming they were attempting to break Australian law.

Footage obtained by the ABC shows several asylum seekers - who Indonesian police say were on a vessel forced back by the Australian Navy on January 6 - being medically assessed for burns on their hands. The asylum seekers say they were burnt and kicked when the Australian Navy forced them to touch part of their boat's engine.

The Government has denied the allegations and defended the professionalism of the Navy, with Mr Abbott asking the question: "Do you believe Australian naval personnel or do you believe people who are attempting to break Australian law? I trust Australia's naval personnel," he said.

Is Mr Abbott right to say asylum seekers who make the journey to Australia are attempting to break Australian law?

• The claim: Tony Abbott says asylum seekers who come to Australia are attempting to break Australian law.
• The verdict: Mr Abbott is incorrect. Australia recognises people's right to seek asylum and entering Australia without a valid visa is not a criminal offence.

Last year ABC Fact Check looked at the legal position of asylum seekers arriving in Australia.

Immigration Minister Scott Morrison was found to be correct when he described people who come without a valid visa as having "illegally" entered Australia. However, Fact Check also found such people did not break any law.

While Mr Morrison used correct terminology, Mr Abbott may have overstepped the mark.

Video: Watch John Barron present the facts. (ABC News)

Who is Mr Abbott talking about?

Fact Check contacted the Prime Minister's office to clarify whether his comment related to asylum seekers or crew members. People smuggling is a criminal offence under Australian law.

No response was received by the time of publication. It is therefore necessary to take a look at the context of the remarks.

It is clear from the exchange during his press conference that Mr Abbott was referring to asylum seekers seeking to enter Australia by boat without a valid visa. He was asked about the ABC report, which referred only to allegations by asylum seekers.

PRIME MINISTER: Look, I think people making allegations should be able to produce some evidence. There is no evidence whatsoever to back them up.

QUESTION: The ABC claims they have - with that video and having spoken to them.

PRIME MINISTER: Well, as I said, who do you believe? Do you believe Australian naval personnel or do you believe people who are attempting to break Australian law? I trust Australia’s naval personnel.

What Australian law are they attempting to break?

Fact Check also asked the Prime Minister's office what law he says these people were attempting to break. In the absence of any clarification or suggestion of any unrelated criminal acts by the asylum seekers, Fact Check takes him to mean that the people were attempting to break Australian migration law.

As noted in the earlier fact check relating to Mr Morrison's comments, entry into Australia is governed by the Commonwealth Migration Act 1958.

While it is accurate to describe asylum seekers who enter Australia without a valid visa as "unlawful" or even "illegal entrants", it is not a criminal offence to enter Australia without a visa. Calling someone "unlawful" or an "illegal entrant" is a description of how they entered the country and determines the way authorities process them. It does not mean they have broken any law. Arriving without a visa can only result in criminal sanctions if there is some other offence involved such as falsifying a passport or forging a document.

Professor Jane McAdam, director of the International Refugee and Migration Law Project at the University of New South Wales, told Fact Check Australia's ratification of the 1951 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees was also relevant to Mr Morrison's comments.

"By ratifying the Refugee Convention, governments agree precisely not to treat asylum seekers as illegal," Professor McAdam said.

In relation to Mr Abbott's comments, immigration law expert Professor Andreas Schloenhardt of the University of Queensland law school told Fact Check that the last time it was a criminal offence to arrive in Australia without a visa was the 1970s. Doing so today "will not result in a criminal investigation, prosecution, or criminal punishment," he said.

"'Breaking the law' is generally understood to mean committing a criminal offence; persons arriving in Australia irregularly, especially asylum seekers, do not do that."

Professor Schloenhardt suggests that a more accurate description would have been "persons seeking to enter without complying with administrative rules relating to immigration".

The verdict

Mr Abbott is incorrect when he says that the asylum seekers making allegations against the Royal Australian Navy were attempting to break Australian law. Australia recognises people's right to seek asylum and entering Australia without a valid visa is not a criminal offence.

Sources

• Tony Abbott, press conference - full transcript, January 22, 2014

• Tony Abbott, press conference - video, January 22, 2014
• Migration Act 1958
• Migration Reform Act 1992
• Migration Reform Bill 1992, Explanatory Memorandum
• United Nations, Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, 1951

• United Nations, Protocol against the Smuggling of Migrants, 2000

Tony Abbott incorrect on asylum seekers breaking Australian law - Fact Check - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

By political reporter Simon Cullen Updated Fri 24 Jan 2014

Related Story: Indonesia says Australian border policies unhelpful

The Federal Government says no asylum seeker boats have been disembarked in Australia for 36 days - the longest stretch in almost five years.

Immigration Minister Scott Morrison released the news today in his weekly statement, which has replaced his former weekly media briefings.

He says the figure is proof the Government's border protection policy is working.

"This is the longest period of no illegal boat arrivals since March of 2009, when arrivals first started to significantly escalate as a consequence of the former Labor Government's decision to abolish the strong border protection regime they inherited from the Howard Government," Mr Morrison said in his weekly statement.

"While these results were pleasing, arrivals of around 300 per month (since Operation Sovereign Borders began) do not constitute success.

"Being able to sustain a zero rate of arrivals for more than five weeks, takes us further, but these outcomes need to be sustained."

Fact Check

PM Tony Abbott was incorrect to say asylum seekers who allege they were mistreated by the Navy were trying to break Australian law, the Fact Check unit concludes.

The weekly update on boat arrivals does not include details of asylum seeker boats turned back to Indonesia, which is believed to have occurred on a number of occasions over recent months.

That aspect of the policy has caused tension in the relationship between Australia and Indonesia, along with revelations that the Australian Navy breached Indonesian waters on a number of occasions.

Over the past week, 55 asylum seekers were transferred to offshore detention centres in either Nauru or Manus Island, while a further five people voluntarily decided to return to their home countries of Sri Lanka and Iran.

The recent transfers have taken some of the pressure of the Christmas Island detention centre, where there are now 1,913 people being held.

There are now 2,288 asylum seekers being held at either the Nauru or Manus Island centres.

Government claims five-year record in stopping asylum seekers from reaching Australia - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Katharine Murphy, deputy political editor

theguardian.com, Friday 24 January 2014

He chose to take the ‘low road of playing domestic politics’, says opposition leader of PM’s speech at World Economic Forum

Abbott took a swipe at Labor's stimulus package during the global financial crisis. Photograph: Ruben Sprich/Reuters

Labor has criticised the prime minister Tony Abbott’s decision to use the international platform of the World Economic Forum to broadcast domestic political squabbles.

The federal opposition leader Bill Shorten on Friday branded Abbott’s outing in Davos, his first major economic speech as prime minister, an “embarrassing performance”.

The prime minister, Shorten said, had taken the “low road of playing domestic politics on the international stage”.

Abbott on Thursday night used a keynote address to the World Economic Forum to outline his objectives for a G20 meeting in Brisbane, lay down some broad philosophical markers for his new government on the subject of economic policy, and deliver a clip around the ears for Labor.

The domestic partisanship was only a brief foray in the speech, but the prime minister in essence blamed Labor for undoing the good work of the Howard government in returning the commonwealth budget to surplus.

Abbott used his remarks in Davos as a point of contrast.

Labor had delivered a stimulus package during the global financial crisis, and kept spending, because the then government had a philosophy of “spending its way to prosperity”, the prime minister argued. The new Coalition government in Canberra was pro-market and small government.

There is a convention in Australian politics that domestic issues stay at home when leaders embark on overseas visits, and Labor on Friday argued Abbott would be better placed to respect it.

Shadow treasurer Chris Bowen objected to Abbott’s effort to “rewrite Australia’s economic history” – and he said the prime minister had chosen the wrong audience to prosecute his case.

Bowen said Australia had attracted positive international attention for coming through the global financial crisis without a major economic contraction – one of the few developed economies in the world to have that record.

“Global political and business leaders at the World Economic Forum know and respect the record of the Australian economy coming through the global financial crisis,” Bowen said on Friday.

Tony Abbott ‘embarrassing’ in Davos, says Bill Shorten | Business | theguardian.com

By ABC's Jonathan Green

Photo: Tony Abbott blue ties represent a strange act of defiant principle. (AAP Image: Quentin Jones)

Tony Abbott's blue ties aren't just shiny swathes of silk - they are crafted and premeditated reminders of all that he replaced, writes Jonathan Green.

Call me old-fashioned, but I would like to think this of my Prime Minister: that he is a man of intelligence, independent thought and creative intellectual flexibility; a man who knows, trusts and expresses his own mind.

Call me trivial, but I'll never be able to convince myself that Tony Abbott is any of those things while he keeps wearing those blue ties.

The ones he has worn since June 2013. Without exception. Every day. With an almost obsessive discipline.

To me it marks him as a politician compulsively obsessed by the finest detail of political messaging, and more than that, a man prepared to sacrifice himself utterly to the rigor of that discipline, to surrender even something as small, simple and silly as the choice of a tie in the morning to the necessities of political craft.

And that in turn erodes confidence in almost everything else he does. What else can be trusted? What else is a genuine expression ... what is heartfelt, when even this small detail of dress is designed as a subconscious supplement to the daily message? That degree of calculation must be all pervasive.

Remember how this started, when Julia Gillard, beleaguered, losing, scratching for a last roll of the dice, that restatement of the gender politics that had played well once, and, who knows, might again, warned at that famous Women for Gillard Speech of the prospect of an incoming Abbott government:

On that day, the 14th of September, we are going to make a big decision as a nation, it's a decision about whether once again we will banish women's voices from the core of our nation's political life. I invite you to imagine it, a prime minister, a man with a blue tie, who goes on holidays to be replaced by a man in a blue tie, a treasurer who delivers a budget wearing a blue tie, to be supported by a finance minister, another man in a blue tie, women once again banished from the centre of Australia's political life.

Listen to that speech again and the whole facile horror of our recent politics comes flooding back.

Remember how, the day after, Kevin Rudd appeared in a blue tie, "chosen by Therese", how Sophie Mirabella appeared swathed like a pet shop calendar kitten in azure, how Tony Abbott would never be seen again in anything other than a slim strip of shiny blue.

And Julie Gillard was wrong, of course; with the Prime Minister in Davos for the World Economic Forum, his deputy Warren Truss fronted the media yesterday in a tie of crimson and silver stripes.

As if it mattered. Because of course the colour of a tie is nothing, is no more than, well, the colour of a tie, until of course it becomes a fixed point of some strange act of defiant principle.

Which is what it became for Tony Abbott in the immediate aftermath of the Women for Gillard speech, a permanent sign that he was resolute and confident in his principles, that he would be a blue tie guy and proud of it ... and what was the subtext? That tie colour didn't matter? That gender balance in politics didn't matter? That he, Tony Abbott, would prove that he could govern for all of us regardless of the colour of his tie or the sex of his cabinet?

All of which just sounds absurd when you set it down, when you try and rationalise that small point of Prime Ministerial detail ... absurd except that it remains that small point of insistent prime ministerial detail. That in its very dogged, daily repetition it becomes significant ... if only because it is clearly so significant to the wearer. That somehow the tie has been crafted and premeditated and discussed, possibly focus-grouped and weighed through goodness knows what other sieves of qualitative reasoning, before being determined to be an essential part of the public Abbott persona.

No longer a tie, now a permanent reminder in a swathe of silk of all that he replaced. Because that's what Tony Abbott is wearing round his neck, day in, day out, in every public appearance: a small strip of cloth that says "Julia Gillard". Trophy, albatross or just a nuanced uniform, part of a calculated suit designed to indicate stylised power?

Maybe all of that in some strange combination that all but defies analysis ... but a true leader of independent character and will might eventually have the nerve to wear navy. Or claret. Or even paisley as a precursor pattern to spots.

Because at the end of the day it's just a tie.

It's more than that at the moment; it's a strange and permanent statement, and sometimes it's hard to look beyond it and the ruthless calculation that it represents.

Jonathan Green is the presenter of Sunday Extra on Radio National and a former editor of The Drum. He is the author of The Year My Politics Broke. View his full profile here.

When is a blue tie more than just a blue tie? - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

“I’m Tony. That’s me winning a race in my red briefs.”

“And I can fight too, punch out yer lights, quick as a wink!”

Well, Friends, I caught a quick image of our illustrious P.M. boarding his plane for Davos in Switzerland. He was walking like an orangutan which does suggest  he projects rare moments of honesty.

Funded by its 1,000 member companies whose balance sheets run into the billions, the 40th World Economic Forum is a meeting of 2,500 carefully selected minds with lots of money. The political leaders from the G20 and beyond are also in attendance and it becomes a heady mix of people who matter and make decisions that affect billions of us proles who don’t count.

For five days, the creme de la creme of the planet will enjoy speeches, dinners, drinks, intimate chats and perhaps the chance of doing a deal while bragging about their wealth and importance.

Then, into this exalted gathering wanders Abbott. What exactly does the bike rider, marathon runner, surf club aficionado and member of the Bushfire Brigade say to all these heavyweights who, between them, own most of the world and run it to suit themselves. As soon as he opens his mouth, Tony shows who and what he is.

When he sits down at the table, how will Abbott know which knives and forks to use? Will he try to impress the other guests with a rundown on how he is going to slash and burn the poor people in Australia when Parliament resumes.

“Good show, Abbass,” Sir Humphrey Ponce will say in a pained voice, “Keep them in their place, I say. Don’t want them getting above their station, eh,” and then change the subject to something important like the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank or Wall Street.

I can imagine some of the billionaires in Tony’s vicinity pushing at their memory, trying to recall where Australia is and what importance it has. They might also wonder if Abbott is a retarded son or love child of Rupert, the scallywag of Murdoch fame who became an American in order to better himself (surely a huge miscalculation).

Yes, Abbott will be like a leper in rags suddenly appearing at the Vatican in the middle of High Mass. He will be tolerated by the important people should they happen across him then he will be immediately forgotten.

Never has Australia been so poorly represented. I almost feel sorry for Tony. He is clearly out of his class. Malcolm should have been sent in his place.

At least Malcolm can play the toffee-nose part and he is a multimillionaire with business experience and some charisma at least!

Poor fella, my country!

Abbott Goes To Davos! A Pawn Among The Sharks! | DANGEROUS CREATION — for savants.

Katharine Murphy, deputy political editor

theguardian.com, Thursday 23 January 2014

Thunderous outrage ensues when the only way of getting answers to important questions is to actually air the allegations

An Indonesian doctor examines an asylum seeker's injuries. Photograph: ABC TV

OK, so here’s the thing. When you sanction public policy being executed in a propaganda-rich, fact-free zone, perverse things do start happening. Every contention starts to equal every other contention, and facts? Even when they can be established, which is not all that often, they don’t seem to stick.

I’m referring here of course to the culture of secrecy and obfuscation surrounding the “Operation Sovereign Borders” policy of the Abbott government. The current furore over whether or not the Australian navy subjected would-be asylum seekers to harsh treatment gives us a helpful moment to take a breath, and reflect.

The ABC’s Indonesia correspondent, George Roberts, is taking flak for doing his job – attempting to find out what might or might not be happening on the seas to our north. This is a necessary exercise even under a regime of routine disclosure. Reporters should always, where possible, reality check “facts” they are given rather than be state-sanctioned stenographers.

It is doubly necessary in an environment where it is apparently government policy not to disclose basic facts to the voters who pay substantial amounts annually for border protection operations through their taxes. Roberts, funnily enough, also has an obligation to the taxpayer to do his job to the best of his ability – they pay his salary as well.

In any normal environment, the allegations aired by the ABC would prompt an orderly process where the claims could be put and answered. But having thrown out this most basic of public interest transactions in the quest to keep everything deemed operational under wraps, everything in this space is slightly off balance.

Reporters, declining to accept the terms of engagement for obvious public interest reasons, push harder for information. There’s often no reliable way of determining veracity. Then thunderous outrage ensues when the only way of getting answers to important questions is to actually air the allegations.

The latest round of the blame game has triggered an outburst of “team navy” from team Abbott, and a less than subtle hint to the ABC to play a political game, and keep itself nice.

Well, let’s try and cut through for a minute.

Reporters have an obligation to get things right. You would not find me arguing otherwise. I don’t know if the latest allegations are correct, or not. But fact is, right now, the government is responding to a normal accountability dynamic by projecting its crusade and conflict culture onto everyone else. Everyone is styled as a combatant whether they are, or whether they are not.

It’s unclear whether this is being done for basic damage control, or because of hard wired ideological preoccupations – but as a consequence of swaggering “us or them”, we are all wedged inside some post modern, post-truth pantomime.

And the roiling contention culture is actually hurting the government in a very basic sense. The boats are stopping. But in an environment with so much posturing, with so much “he said she said” that simple fact cannot pierce the daily clutter. Ray Hadley is doing his best, but I don’t think the government has quite got the clean run it wanted.

Scott Morrison is correct to point out that having seen some masterful agitprop from Canberra in recent years, people smugglers and would be asylum seekers are no doubt intent on giving it back to try and counter the policy step change imposed first by Labor with the PNG solution, and subsequently by Abbott with Operation Sovereign Borders.

And the reflexive outbreak of “team navy” and “how dare anyone question our fine men on the high seas”, could be perfectly fine of course if (as Michelle Grattan points out in The Conversation today) we hadn’t recently stumbled accidentally into Indonesian territorial waters despite assurances that we hadn’t, and wouldn’t ... or if we apply brain bleach to forget previous incidents where either defence or immigration or customs have made mistakes or mis-steps ... being: 1. Large organisations where sometimes the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing, and 2. Well, human.

Rear Admiral Ray Griggs for his part made the following statement on Wednesday concerning the allegations. “Based on everything I know there is no basis to these allegations – none.” Translation: more than likely, this didn’t happen, I’m almost certain it didn’t – but given the capacity for unpleasant surprise, let’s leave a little bit of grey area.

The government might be well placed – just as a point of principle, and as an investment in self-preservation over the long haul – to listen to that tiny note of caution.

Operation Sovereign Borders: flak flies, even when facts are so elusive | World news | theguardian.com