Tess Lea theguardian.com, Monday 31 March 2014

Australians know the isolated and exotic city of Darwin through stories about cyclones, crocodiles and Aboriginal art, but it really is a cleverly camouflaged garrison town

The RAAF base in Darwin. Photograph: AAP Image/Australian Department of Defence

In his recent book Anzac’s Long Shadow: The Cost of our National Obsession, former ADF soldier James Brown correlates deep Australian ignorance about our contemporary military with our increasingly fantastical commemoration of the Anzac legend. Bedazzled by myths of Gallipoli, Australians neglect more pressing defence policy concerns.

It’s a compelling thesis, and one that closely parallels the situation in one of Australia’s most militarised city, Darwin.

Australians prefer to see the isolated and exotic city of Darwin through stories about cyclones, crocodiles, Aboriginal art, spicy market food and unlimited road speeds; a place that lets you go to the supermarket in bare feet and look normal. This way, we don’t have to notice the most significant militarisation effort in Australia’s post-war history, which is happening under our noses. The militarisation of the north is unknown to most of us and thanks to this ignorance, the new Cold War brewing in the Asia Pacific region, and Darwin’s place in it, is rarely being debated.

In 2012, US president Barrack Obama hailed "the next proud chapter in our alliance", announcing that up to 2,500 US Marine Corp personnel would permanently rotate through Darwin. The city is now a "lily pad" (the base America has when it doesn’t need to build a mini-city, just permanent access to a subordinate state’s geographic and strategic resources), adding to the largest empire of "not-really-bases" the world has ever known.

Darwin’s geo-strategic identity is a form of what old-school military manuals called "dazzle camouflage", where a combination of spectacle and background blending disrupts perception. Blinded by what is seen, the true dimensions of a thing escape view: Darwin is a garrison town that isn’t known as one, despite having been sculpted by defence. The first dam for drinking water was installed by the military; the Stuart Highway (Australia’s "Burma Road") was completed by soldiers. All air traffic at Darwin International Airport is controlled by the Royal Australian Air Force, for Darwin sits underneath the largest aerial defence training space in the world.

Of course, well before becoming a lily pad for the Pentagon’s pivot to Asia, Darwin became an important part of the global-technological security apparatus when, in the 1950s, mining began at Rum Jungle, 60kms to Darwin’s south, to supply uranium to the British and American nuclear weapons programs. For years, locals swam in the pit of that old mine, unaware that all biota for 15km down the Finniss River had been destroyed, and over 100 square km of surrounding floodplains contaminated.

A ceremony commemorating the Darwin bombing raid on 18 February 1942, which saw Japanese aircraft kill at least 243 people when they took the city by surprise. Photograph: AAP

During the second world war, the Top End was targeted by Japanese bombers for over 18 months. The most famous of these raids was the bombing of Darwin in February 1942, shortly after Pearl Harbour. More Americans than Australians died during the raids, many in unmarked sea graves. Today, this history of blood debt helps deflect any criticisms of what becoming a node in a US military map is drawing Australians into.

This is also how the US Marine Corps have bedazzled Darwin, not by concealing their presence but by broadcasting it. The "first long-term expansion of the American military’s presence in the Pacific since the end of the Vietnam War" has so far seen marines supporting the Aboriginal football academy, patiently fielding questions at information booths, playing with school children, and comparing their fitness coaching techniques to those of Australian soldiers.

Impressed, one forgets that Australia has sustained continual military action since 1999, from East Timor to Afghanistan and Iraq. In fact, a Roy Morgan poll before the last election listed defence issues as the second least important concern (outranked in unimportance by the needs of people outside of cities). Even for the ABC’s supposedly more politically aware constituency, less than 1% of respondents rated defence as the upmost election issue, compared with almost 13% rating asylum seekers.

The historian Regina Ganter makes the powerful point that Australian history begins in the north – not the south. Australia’s first international seafarers arrived this way, and many thousands of years later, a lucrative market in sea cucumbers made Top End Aboriginal groups veteran international traders long before British colonists arrived.

In fact, when he was circumnavigating Australia, Matthew Flinders relied on Dutch maps of Australia’s northern coastline drafted in the 1600s. The Dutch United East India Company had been sniffing around the manganese-rich Aboriginal lands in search of things to rip and ship, but had been repelled in their efforts by Australia’s original homeland security, at one time with a force of over 200 Aboriginal warriors, "in spite of our especial kindness and fair semblance," a frustrated Jan Carstensz wrote in his field reports.

Having repelled the Dutch, unimpressed by their nutmeg and beads, Aboriginal patriots fought outnumbered, out-legislated battles against the Martini-Henry military rifles and biological warfare of invading settlers. Dispossession bequeathed land the size of Cyprus to Bradshaw Station, first for cattle, and now as the Bradshaw Field Training Area, one of the largest weapons training grounds in the world.

Repulsed from expanding their empire, the Dutch returned their focus to the Straits of Malacca, the skinny stretch of water between Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. Only 2.7km at its narrowest point, the Straits are a geographical chokepoint. Controlling the Straits, the Dutch controlled their empire. As the shortest sea route between the Gulf countries and Asia, today’s Straits are China’s and Indonesia’s energy corridor. Australia’s too for that matter. If blocked, nearly half the world’s fleet would need to reroute through the Indonesian archipelago. Handy, then, for a military hegemon to have sea-air striking range from a docile little place like Darwin.

While the mustering of force in Australia’s northern reaches can be interpreted as merely strengthening defence capabilities against an attack on continental Australia (purportedly our primary security threat), the imperial intent of our main ally, and the propensity for our defence deployments to threaten our neighbours must be interrogated far more thoroughly than is now the case.

In allowing Australia’s foreign policy interests to be played out of sight, out of mind, in a town that also hides its own nature from itself, we avoid debating difficult questions. What does being a subordinate ally to a military force clinging to its global primacy commit us to? What are our liabilities and responsibilities? At what point do Australian sovereign interests diverge from America’s security objectives? And what are we prepared to do about it?

Darwin: Australia’s most militarised city, and a lily pad for the Pentagon | Tess Lea | Comment is free | theguardian.com

By Neil James

Photo: A prime minister's language can forecast political and policy success. (AAP: James Elsby)

Prime Minister Tony Abbott might have more verbal clarity than his immediate predecessors, but he too could find his language coming back to bite him if his stopping and scrapping doesn't actually deliver, writes Neil James.

A prime minister's language has always been a useful barometer of the national political weather. So six months into an Abbott Government, what does his language foretell about our future climate? If his verbs are anything to go by, there'll be plenty of negative action ahead.

From the moment he became opposition leader, there have been three hallmarks of the Abbott style: attack language, verbal blunder and strategic silence.

The first feature is the hail of negative verbs. Abbott focuses on how to stop, end, scrap, cut, and turn back Labor policy. True, there was a token attempt at the sunny verb "to build" during the last election. But in Government, the verbal weather has returned to its negative hailstones.

This is remarkably the case even when the topic is a government initiative. Here's a typical exchange from the Today show, when the Prime Minister was asked about changes to the Racial Discrimination Act:

Well Nat, let's first of all say that the main thing this Government is focussed on is making life easier for families, and that's why last week we tried to get rid of the carbon tax.

The second feature has always been Abbott's verbal blunder. The obvious examples are the ums and arrs, the meandering sentences, and the verbal slips about not being the "suppository of all wisdom".

But the more revealing slips come in those unscripted moments, where Abbott often reveals more than intended about the weather ahead. Climate change is "absolute crap" and timber workers the "ultimate conservationists"; "shit happens" when a soldier is killed; Syria is a case of "baddies versus baddies"; and we should vote for female candidates because of their "sex appeal".

It's no wonder the Prime Minister only wants us to take his "carefully prepared, scripted remarks" as the "gospel truth".

When fenced-in by media scrutiny, the Prime Minister can resort to bland assertion, such as the reasoning on why the parental leave scheme and the baby bonus are so different: "They just are." And he sprinkles his remarks with the verbal insistence of imperatives and adverbs. "Look," he demands; "obviously," he explains; "certainly," he asserts; and "you know," he insists.

The last resort is a strategic silence. This is mostly in the interviews that he doesn't do, although there was that excruciating 28-second, bobble-headed silence during a Channel Seven interview about his "shit happens" gaffe.

Since winning government, the excuse of "operational matters" is now a more common tactic to avoid a heavy-weather question. As he explained to ABC's 7.30: "I'm not interested in running a commentary on a commentary. So I'm just not going to comment on operational matters."

But if these are the hallmarks of the Abbott style, what are their implications?

Above all, a prime minister's language is important because recent experience has shown it can forecast political and policy success.

Kevin Rudd's speech, for example, had two conspicuous features: the obscure fog of policy-speak and a damp sleet of mixed metaphor. One minute he'd be explaining our relationship with China as a natural complementarity that could be developed further in the direction of some form of conceptual synthesis. Then he'd reverse engineer how the clock was ticking on climate change, and why we can't just shuffle around and hope that something falls out of the trees.

It is hardly a co-incidence that such mangled language was reflected in premature promises, thought bubbles, dysfunctional decision-making and policy on the run.

Julia Gillard showed more promise early on, with real potential for a rhetorical turn of phrase. But that was quickly inundated by a deluge of cliché, all aired in that monotone voice. The government had lost its way, Gillard intoned, so she intended to have a conversation with the Australian people in the national interest, so that we can all canvass the best ways to work together moving forwards. What did any of it mean?

It certainly didn't guarantee a policy outcome. There was to be no carbon tax, then there was one. A surplus was guaranteed, then abandoned. We scrapped the Pacific Solution, then re-opened Manus and Nauru. There would be no NDS levy, then there was one.

Clear speaking reflects clear thinking and leads to clear action. When the language is vague or obscure, there is uncertainty about the outcome and less chance a government can maintain support when an unavoidable change blows through.

So what does Tony Abbott's style forecast about his political future? Unlike his immediate predecessors, his attack verbs and even his verbal blunders at least have the virtue of clarity. His priority is clearly to attack and undo. Brace yourself for two-and-a-half years of ending, stopping, scrapping, cutting and turning back. The grammatical objects may change but the syntax is set.

Yet that's also where the challenge will lie if Abbott is to win a second term. There seems to be little alternative if all that turning and stopping and cutting and scrapping doesn't actually deliver. As his predecessors found, the language may then become the focus for electoral discontent.

As the next election approaches, the public may indeed want some more constructive verbs and less strategic silence. Yet if the past two prime ministers are anything to go by, it is unlikely Tony Abbott's language will adapt to such change in the political weather.

Dr Neil James is executive director of the Plain English Foundation and the author of Writing at Work. View his full profile here.

The revealing language of a cut-and-axe leader - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

By Mungo MacCallum

Photo: The honour of knighthoods has its roots in the aftermath of a bloody battle more than 900 years ago. (Reuters: Luke MacGregor )

It was William the Bastard who introduced the pompous idea of chivalry and titles. Have we found our modern-day imitation not in England, but in Canberra? Mungo MacCallum writes.

In using the idea of knighthoods as a grand distraction, the finely honed 11th century mind of Tony Abbott is simply following the lead given by the inventor of the concept, William of Normandy.

After invading Saxon England in 1066, William the Bastard, as he was known (an appellation some have also applied to his Australian imitator), needed something to do with his victorious army commanders, so he invented the concept of chivalry, which merely meant that those rich enough to own and maintain horses were entitled to be regarded as a kind of junior nobility. Not, of course, ranking with the big landowners, but in a class above the peasantry.

This was supposed to confer upon them responsibilities as well as rights, but of course it did not work out that way; untrammelled power seldom does. Most of those who failed to grab some land of their own became effectively men of the road - highwaymen above the law, who lived by rape and pillage, talents they brought to perfection during the crusades.

Magna Carta did more to legitimise the system than to control it. The "parfit gentil knight" somewhat ironically depicted by Geoffrey Chaucer in his Canterbury Tales, loyal to his king and dedicated to the ideal of courtly love (which in practice usually meant serial adultery), was the desired model, but it was seldom realised outside the Arthurian legends.

Over time the knights, like the rest of society, became gradually civilised since the title, unlike that of the real nobility, was not hereditary, and it could be, and was, bestowed at will to loyal followers of the king as a reward and bribe for services. Its advantage was that it gave the recipient kudos and precedence, standing him out from the mob. Its value was one of pure snobbery, and so it remains pretty much up to now in present-day England.

As the monarch's power declined, awarding honours became the plaything of the politicians, who unashamedly used them to solicit party funds. Labour governments affected to disapprove of the practice, but never seriously considered abandoning it. And inevitably, as England gained an empire, it spread to the colonies; English aristocrats were seen as natural leaders, both as administrators and also as military commanders, often with predictably disastrous results. In Australia, with few aberrations, the colonial and later state governors were drawn from their junior ranks for some half a century after Australia became nominally independent.

As the poet Hilaire Belloc put it in his evocation of one such, Lord Lundy:

We had intended you to be,

The next prime minister but three,

The stocks were sold, the press was squared,

The middle class was quite prepared.

But now ... imagination fails!

Go out and govern New South Wales.

And the idea caught on in the so-called classless society. Not only did Australian politicians gratefully accept knighthoods conferred by the mother country, with increasing independence they began to recommend their own supporters and followers for a similar honour - conferred by the palace, of course. Conservatives loved the idea; Labor premiers and prime ministers were more cautious, but they were not above using the system when it suited them.

Billy Hughes even insisted that an old political enemy, John Forrest, already a knight, should be elevated to the peerage as Lord Forrest of Bunbury in order to get him out of the country. Perhaps tragically, perhaps ironically, Forrest in fact died at sea on his way to Westminster to take his seat in the House of Lords. But generally Labor politicians eschewed imperial honours for themselves and their colleagues.

There was even an attempt to set up a particularly Australian peerage. In 1853 my own illustrious but eccentric ancestor William Charles Wentworth, who gloried in the name "The Native Son", put such a proposal to the New South Wales Legislative Council. It was laughed down by the radical Daniel Deniehy, who, after proposing that Wentworth's friend John Macarthur should be dubbed Earl of Camden with a rum keg emblazoned on a field of vert as his coat of arms, concluded that he found it was difficult to classify the mushroom order of nobility proposed by Wentworth.

"Perhaps it was only a specimen of the remarkable contrariety that existed at the antipodes. Here they all knew that the common water mole was transformed into the duck-billed platypus; and in some distant emulation of this degeneracy he supposed they were to be favoured with a bunyip aristocracy," Deniehy suggested, to prolonged laughter and applause. This, of course, is the system that Abbott is accused of reviving.

In 1975 Gough Whitlam effectively dumped imperial honours in favour of the Order of Australia, and although Malcolm Fraser briefly revived knighthoods within the new order, Bob Hawke dumped them - it was thought forever. Even the ultra-monarchist conservative John Howard recognised them as an anachronism. But now, some 30 years later, they are to be restored in all their irrelevant pomposity.

And it provided Abbott not only with a distraction, but a useful wedge; one of the first recipients is to be the mother-in-law of the leader of the opposition, Bill Shorten, who has joined the general chorus of derision emanating not only from the left, but from some of Abbott's own team, who are not happy about having this latest brainstorm being inflicted on them without warning or debate. The retiring Governor-General Quentin Bryce, fresh from proclaiming her republican sympathies, is to become a dame, and her incoming successor Peter Cosgrove a knight. According to Abbott, the ennoblement is to go with the job from now on.

Previous G-Gs, along with all the other recipients of the Companionship of the Order of Australia, for a generation the country's highest honour, are thus effectively downgraded, as are all officers and members of the order. But hey, it's a great wedge. Abbott would probably not like to be reminded of it, but here again he is following the lead of a predecessor.

In 1976 Malcolm Fraser persuaded the Queensland Labor powerbroker Jack Egerton to accept a knighthood, causing ructions throughout the party. Its leader, Gough Whitlam, commented: "This is the most inappropriate conferral of the title since Queen Elizabeth I knighted Sir Toby Belch."

Shorten is unlikely to say anything as unkind about his mother-in-law. But Abbott must be hoping.

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

The ignoble history of knighthoods - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

By ABC's Barrie Cassidy

Photo: For some, the Prime Minister has always been an old-fashioned anglophile. (AAP: Lyndon Mechielsen)

At a time when it should be laying the groundwork for the momentous budget to come, the Federal Government is instead talking about distractions of its own making, writes Barrie Cassidy.

Bigots and knights, distractions and indulgences - what a bizarre and wasted week for the Abbott Government.

The last sitting week of the autumn session is a precious opportunity to lay the groundwork for the essential task at the heart of government - framing the budget and reforming the economy.

The budget is in need of repair and the road ahead is politically difficult. At this time every year, the community needs signals. It needs massaging. Governments need to meticulously explain the context of decisions to come.

Instead, the week was awash with talk of bigotry, the right to offend and insult, and whether returning to knighthoods is a good idea.

The Attorney-General, George Brandis, might have been technically correct when he said people have a right to be bigots. But as the chief law officer of the land, he then had a responsibility to painstakingly and in considerable detail talk about basic community values, common decency and the need for Australians to tolerate and respect one another.

Instead, the Minister allowed his blunt and confronting message to sit there in isolation.

The debate around changes to the Racial Discrimination Act likewise has left the community confused. It hinges on a worthwhile but essentially academic argument that needs to be carefully nuanced and explained.

Again, the public sees a government trying to enhance freedom of speech on the one hand, but seemingly making it more acceptable to offend, insult and humiliate on the other.

In the end, the Minister's draft exposure amendment is now on hold as much broader consultations are held. Shades of Christopher Pyne's ill-judged assault on the Gonski reforms?

The overall look coming out of Canberra is further damaged when the Finance Minister, Mathias Cormann, in the same week defers decisions on financial advice reforms. Again, the community backlash was underestimated.

Even the big banks were muted when the Minister indicated he might tweak the reforms that allowed advisers to sell products for a commission. Perhaps the banks felt that if they made a fuss, then the public would really smell a rat.

But the biggest distraction, and the biggest indulgence, was the return of knighthoods.

One school of thought has it that the announcement was made in part to wedge the Opposition Leader, Bill Shorten, given that his mother-in-law was about to become the first recipient of the restored honours.

But within 24 hours a much bigger wedge emerged when former prime minister John Howard declared the move would be seen as "somewhat anachronistic" even by conservatives, and that he would be unlikely to accept a knighthood even if offered.

Politicians are used to criticism. It comes with the territory. But they hate ridicule. Wednesday became Tony Abbott's worst day in the Parliament so far when the laughter directed his way even caused the Speaker to declare it disorderly.

In any case, restoring knighthoods won't help the monarchists. That debate - republicans versus monarchists - has laid dormant for many years, a situation that the monarchists should welcome. Reviving it in such a provocative way can't help.

It doesn't help the Prime Minister either. He has always had the reputation in the minds of some of being a somewhat old-fashioned anglophile. This will reinforce that.

The problem with the honours system is consistency and credibility.

Gough Whitlam stopped naming knights and dames. Malcolm Fraser took it up again. Bob Hawke ended the practice and now Tony Abbott has brought it back.

There's a pattern here. The system is adjusted according to the politics - or the political dominance - of the day.

Honours should be above politics, given out according to a community consensus. Not only did Abbott not consult the community, he didn't even take it to his own cabinet.

Those awarded the top honour should know that the recognition of their life's work is both bipartisan and consistent with past practices.

Thursday was the Government's last chance to get Question Time back on topic: on the budget and the economy. Instead, the Speaker named an Opposition frontbencher for the most dubious of indiscretions and another day was lost.

The Abbott Government is the first majority government in almost 40 years not to have had a honeymoon in the polls. Few seem particularly perturbed by that. They seem satisfied that it is very early days in the political cycle and that in any case incumbent governments can call on a natural advantage as elections draw closer.

But what if the bruising politics of the last several years has so trashed the brand, and so trashed the reputations of governments generally, that that is no longer the case?

Surely in this new environment governments should focus even more keenly on what really matters to people. If they don't, they'll start at a disadvantage.

In those circumstances, being behind in the polls at any stage would or should be a worry. The danger is that rather than being the early days, these could be the formative days.

Barrie Cassidy is the presenter of the ABC program Insiders. View his full profile here.

Forget the budget - let's talk knights and bigots - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

By Tim Dunlop Posted Thu 27 Mar 2014

Photo: The March in March shows the widening gulf between the internet audience and the big media. (Submitted: Lindy Sparrow)

If mainstream media journalists have an issue with the rise of the audience, that's fine. But don't talk down to us because you fumbled the reporting of the March in March, writes Tim Dunlop.

The organisers and participants in the March In March demonstrations shouldn't worry too much that the mainstream media, by and large, either ignored or ridiculed their efforts. 

The fact is, the media's lame response to an estimated 100,000 citizens showing up on the streets around the country is indicative of a deeper malaise: the rules of news have changed, and increasingly legacy media companies have neither the capacity nor the wit to operate in the new environment.

The key aspect of that new environment is the rise of social media. Or to put it more accurately, the rise of the audience.

Whereas once a newspaper article, or radio show, or a story on the six o'clock news was the end of a process, it is now just the beginning.

This relegation of the mainstream from the pinnacle of the news ecosphere doesn't sit well with a lot of journalists, and I have some sympathy for their position.

I genuinely believe that we still need big, strong media companies full of trained professionals doing the hard slog of investigative reporting and fulfilling that role of national watchdog of those who directly and indirectly rule over us.

What I have no sympathy for is the defensiveness that some in the mainstream media exhibit in the face of this changing environment, especially when that defensiveness turns into snark and condescension directed at the audience itself.

That happens far more frequently than it should, and it leads to a hostility that needn't exist.

This recent article by Fairfax journalist Jacqueline Maley is emblematic. In it, she is responding to criticisms about the way the mainstream media, including her paper, covered the March In March.

What is fascinating is that she openly admits that they (and she) did a poor job:

The Herald didn't blatantly ignore the protest, it sent a reporter along to cover it, and that reporter was me. I wrote a small (and, in hindsight, rather sniffy and unkind) report about it which ran on our website.

But the editors did not include the story in Monday's paper.

So she wrote an unworthy little piece and it wasn't run in the newspaper. Once this failure is acknowledged you would think she would be keen to make amends, but instead we are treated to some classic misdirection.

Over the next few paragraphs she rehashes the usual complaints about how rude people on social media can be, ending with some unnecessary condescension and some incoherent arguments:

[T]he national convener of the rallies on Sunday ... told me more than 100,000 people had turned up to march all around Australia. He told me those numbers were ''confirmed'' and when I asked by whom, he launched into a speech about how his group was used to being overlooked by the ''MSM'' (mainstream media) and talked about the MSM being a puppet of the establishment.

It is strange that people who despise the MSM so much are so angry at being ignored by it. This week the paper received letters from people involved in the march asking why it wasn't covered, one of which was published. I was abused on Twitter for my online story, and also for the fact that it didn't run in the paper. I was criticised for comparing the protest to the infamous anti-carbon tax rallies against the Gillard government.

Like many journalists, I am used to Twitter abuse, and I find it deeply unpleasant.

I am happy to agree that such abuse is unpleasant - I've copped plenty of it myself - but it is hardly a one-way street. Twitter is full of journalists calling people names and otherwise insulting their readers, and it would be nice if journalists would acknowledge this a bit more often when they write on the topic.

Regardless, look at the substance of what Maley says. She openly admits she and her employer did a poor job in covering the marches. If that is the case, why shouldn't people be angry about it?

And why should readers have to put up with nonsense like that line about "It is strange that people who despise the MSM so much are so angry at being ignored by it".

This is obviously meant to be a clever "gotcha" but it actually indicates how badly she has missed the point. There is nothing contradictory about complaining about being overlooked by the media and then being angry about being ignored. Isn't it obvious that one flows logically from the other?

Then we get to the real insight into how "news" is understood by the mainstream:

The lack of coverage of March in March probably had something to do with the fact that, like so much left-wing protest, it was unfocused. The speakers and protesters had a grab-bag of complaints, from asylum seeker policy to gay marriage to fair trade. The only uniting theme was raw hatred of the Prime Minister, and the offensive signs/language about him were off-putting to a broader audience.

For sake of argument, let's accept the contention that the marches were unfocused (and let's let slide the even more unsubstantiated claim that "much left-wing protest" is too). 

To claim this as a reason for a lack of coverage is to simply admit that you can't handle complexity. It is to admit that your definition of news only allows for a single point of focus.

It is the timeless cry for a "hook" or an "angle" on which to hang a story and it is a legacy of traditional understandings of what constitutes news. It is a legacy of the space constraints that applied in the pre-internet world.

At best, it is a reason, not an excuse. I mean, where is the rule that says a protest has to have a single focus?

Maley is right in saying that "[c]ontemporary newsrooms have constrained resources", but that, too, is the media's problem, not the protester's. It is a reason to examine how those resources are allocated, not an excuse to mock the March In March and get angry at them because they didn't provide you with a convenient headline.

More bizarre is the concern over the idea that protesters were united in their "hatred" of Tony Abbott. "Hatred" is a loaded term for a profession that prides itself on its objectivity. But again, let that slide. 

Of course the protesters didn't like Tony Abbott. Maybe some even hated him. So what? Surely the job of a journalist is to unpick why that might be the case, to examine whether there might be some legitimacy to their concerns.

Maley admits there were a "grab bag" of things people were objecting to, so why not examine them?

To focus on the "hatred" itself by highlighting some placards that are deemed rude is shallow. To then say you couldn't report it because "the offensive signs/language about him were off-putting to a broader audience" is a poor rationalisation.

If you're frightened that such things are "off-putting" (and seriously, what does that say about your opinion of the "broader audience"?) there is an available solution: don't report the frippery of the placards. Report the substance of the protest. Delve into the grab-bag.

At the end, Maley says something with which I completely agree:

The whole thing was interesting because it demonstrated the widening gulf between what is popular on social media and the internet, and what traditional media organisations consider newsworthy.

That is exactly right. But she draws the wrong conclusion from it, and washes the whole thing down with a swig of condescension:

Sometimes the two overlap, but whether the bloggers, tweeters and other internet denizens like it or not, newspapers still get to make that call.

We will decide what news is and the manner in which it is reported!

Look, so far as their own organisations are concerned, Maley is right. Of course they get to make the call. 

But if news organisations are constantly at odds with the views of their readers - especially with their most engaged readers, those who follow politics closely - then keeping "control" over the definition of "newsworthy" is an awfully pyrrhic victory.

When Donald Horne became editor of The Bulletin in the 1960s he asked all of the cartoonists to draw a picture of an Aboriginal man that wasn't a caricature. When they couldn't, he fired them.

Maybe it's time for newsrooms to apply a similar test: if your journalists can't write about social media, and the audience more generally, without caricaturing them, maybe it's time to get new journalists.

Tim Dunlop is the author of The New Front Page: New Media and the Rise of the Audience. View his full profile here.

Rage against the mainstream - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Mark Kenny Chief political correspondent March 28, 2014

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The sitting fortnight just concluded has been anything but impressive for the Prime Minister, starting out badly and getting steadily worse. Photo: Andrew Meares

• Australian politics: full coverage
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Friday is a red-letter day for the Abbott government.

It marks 100 days since any successful people-smuggling venture has made it to Australia.

The government has not been shy about its Operation Sovereign Borders milestone nor for that matter the 30 or 40 daily increments leading up to it.

It comes ironically enough, at the fag-end of the most mistake-laden fortnight for the government since the travel entitlements debacle marred its first weeks in office.

Back then Tony Abbott had been strangely absent, his minimalist approach erroneously designed to position him as the opposite of the news cycle-obsessed Rudd-Gillard outfits.

What it actually conveyed was a government without a message and a prime minister without a firm hand on the wheel.

Opinion polls reflected this vacuum and by the close of 2013, press gallery journalists were being backgrounded to the effect that things would change in 2014.

Abbott’s performance since has been more positive and the government had looked to be settling in.

But the sitting fortnight just concluded, the last before the May budget session, has been anything but impressive, starting out badly and getting steadily worse.

And with each day, the prime minister’s normally confident body language in parliament has chronicled that slide.

First came the storm over the past business dealings of his assistant treasurer, Arthur Sinodinos.

Sinodinos stood down from his post last week pending Independent Commission Against Corruption hearings into Australian Water Holdings, but it wasn’t Abbott’s doing. He continued to enthusiastically spruik the imminent return of Sinodinos to the ministry.

In any event, the voluntary suspension has failed to defuse the issue amid new testimony at ICAC that Sinodinos was expressly warned of governance problems including the possible insolvency of AWH, when he was chairman in 2010.

Sinodinos himself will give evidence to the first of two ICAC inquiries next week, with commissioner Megan Latham pointedly leaving open the possibility on Wednesday of an actual corruption finding against Sinodinos - ostensibly the government’s chief ministerial guardian of corporate governance - if he is judged to have breached his duties as a company director. Counsel assisting the inquiry, Geoffrey Watson, SC, appears hot-to-trot on this score, arguing the ICAC Act contains a section dealing with corrupt conduct which ''seems to be capable of being applied’’ to directors’ duties ‘‘depending on the facts which emerge’’ in this case.

This has become a running sore for Abbott. Colleagues worry that Abbott’s support will make it harder to cut the minister loose if needed, but it might actually make it easier, allowing the Prime Minister to explain the dismissal as anything but a personal preference.

Either way, there is a noticeable cooling of support for Sinodinos’ return. And there is other fallout too, such as the related decision this week to suspend imminent legislation undoing Labor’s Future of Financial Advice reforms. The FoFA law had ended the lucrative practice of financial advisers taking hidden commissions associated with particular investment products. It also required advisers selling such products to act in the interests of consumers. The suspension of the rollback was a bad look if only because it felt messy and fuelled the appearance that there may have been a conflict of interest in Sinodinos’s championing of the bank-friendly change given his past role as an NAB executive.

The decision to consult further was made by Finance Minister Mathias Cormann, who assumed responsibility for FoFA from his ousted colleague following pressure from the usually conservative National Seniors. Its members stand to lose vital consumer protections under the changes.

Some Liberals are critical of the consultation work done by Sinodinos, noting that even the Financial Planning Association peak body had expressed reservations about the reintroduction of commissions for general financial advice, despite complaining of a welter of new regulations since FoFA came in.

On top of these problems came Attorney-General George Brandis' ham-fisted sales job for his changes to the Racial Discrimination Act. His legally correct yet politically insane observation, that people have a right to be bigots, was an horrendous own-goal.

Then came the Prime Minister’s stunning return to old empire via the restoration of knights and dames in the Australian awards system.

One Liberal observed that not even John Howard had wanted to turn the clock that far back and right on cue, Howard himself confirmed it, telling Fairfax Media, that even conservatives would view the move as ‘‘somewhat anachronistic".

Howard used to rail against Labor’s tendency to govern for section interests.

But this week, it was the Abbott government which turned its back on mainstream opinion to pander to a couple of mouthy conservative commentators wanting to legalise hate speech, a cloister of protected banks wanting to reintroduce skimming, and a tiny cluster of 19th century monarchists.

Little wonder the Prime Minister has been ashen-faced in parliament this week.

Mark Kenny is chief political correspondent.

Tony Abbott's pre-budget fortnight of blunders and stuff-ups

 Oliver Laughland theguardian.com, Thursday 27 March 2014

Senators critical of 'blanket public interest immunity claims' used to avoid giving details about Operation Sovereign Borders

The commander of Operation Sovereign Borders, Lieutenant General Angus Campbell, during a Senate estimates hearing. Photograph: Daniel Munoz/AAP

It may be impossible for the government to safely pursue its policy of turning back boats carrying asylum seekers without crossing into Indonesia’s territorial waters, a Senate inquiry into six Australian naval incursions has found.

On Thursday the foreign affairs, defence and trade committee released its report into the incursions, which occurred between December 2013 and January 2014 and were said to have been an inadvertent result of “miscalculations” about Indonesia’s boundaries.

The report found that operating a safe turnback operation – which the government has required the navy to do – outside the 12 nautical mile boundary might not be possible.

“Ensuring the safety of crew and asylum seekers while turning back or towing back vessels outside of 12 nautical miles from Indonesia's archipelagic baseline may not be an achievable policy goal, depending on the prevailing conditions, the seaworthiness of vessels and the possible use of lifeboats,” the report said.

The committee is also critical of what it describes as “blanket public interest immunity claims” used by the minister for immigration, Scott Morrison, to avoid providing some details about the working of the Operation Sovereign Borders (OSB) policy.

During an inquiry hearing last Friday key OSB personnel used public interest immunity claims to deflect a number of questions posed by the panel, including whether OSB naval vessels turned off their GPS during operations.

The report calls on the immigration minister to provide a justification for the use of public interest immunity.

At the hearing last Friday the OSB commander, Lieutenant General Angus Campbell ,conceded that Australia did not have the capacity to continuously monitor all its naval vessels.

A public version of the customs and navy inquiry into the six incursions ruled out any deliberate incursion into Indonesian territorial waters and said the responsibility for navigation had been “devolved” to vessel commanders.

“On each occasion the incursion was inadvertent in that each arose from incorrect calculation of the boundaries of Indonesian waters rather than as a deliberate action or navigational error,” the report states.

The committee recommended that the confidential version of the report be made public with suitable redactions.

The Greens immigration spokeswoman, Sarah Hanson-Young, who sits on the committee, expressed concern at the potential conflict of purposes found in the report, saying it made the policy of turnbacks “unworkable”.

“Cutting a leaky wooden boat adrift more than 12 miles from a coastline that you can’t see is inherently dangerous,” she said.

“The government’s refusal to explain what happened with these incursions again shows how Operation Sovereign Borders has become Operation Blame the Soldiers.”

Safe asylum boat turnbacks may not be possible, Senate committee finds | World news | theguardian.com

Jonathan Swan National political reporter March 27, 2014 - 3:15PM

Manager of opposition business Tony Burke seeks to move a no confidence motion against Madam Speaker Bronwyn Bishop. Photo: Andrew Meares

Labor has attempted to pass a motion of no confidence in the Speaker of the House of Representatives Bronwyn Bishop.

Accusations of bias, incompetence and inconsistency were levelled at Ms Bishop by manager of opposition business, Tony Burke, who launched his strongest attack yet on the Speaker in Parliament's question time on Thursday.

Mr Burke's unsuccessful motion - it was always destined to fail given the government controls the numbers in the House of Representatives - continues a campaign by Labor to strip Ms Bishop of the Speakership, with Labor ministers arguing she is the most biased Speaker in history.

Mark Dreyfus reacts as he was named by the Speaker during question time in Parliament House Canberra on Thursday. Photo: Andrew Meares

Addressing the Speaker, Mr Burke said: "As of the action that you took today, 98 people have now been thrown out of the House by you. Every one of them from the opposition. Ninety-eight-love. No Speaker in the history of federation has a record like that."

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"Everyone in Australia knows bias when they see it," Mr Burke added. "You were effective as a warrior for the Liberal Party, but that is not the job you chose to take on.

"And yet in the Speaker's chair you have continued to act as though enjoying the victory for your own side is your job.

MPs vote on a procedure division on Labor's no confidence motion against Madam Speaker Bronwyn Bishop. Photo: Andrew Meares

"The Parliament deserves more than that and the Parliament cannot have confidence in a Speaker who refuses to be impartial."

Government leader in the house Christopher Pyne, in shutting down the suspension motion, countered that Labor ministers had a problem with strong women and were bullying Ms Bishop.

After Ms Bishop ejected shadow attorney-general Mark Dreyfus from the House, Mr Burke rose to condemn her impartiality. Labor MPs said Mr Dreyfus was ejected simply for referring to Ms Bishop by her title "Madam Speaker".

Prime Minister Tony Abbott talks with Speaker Bronwyn Bishop during question time. Photo: Andrew Meares

Mr Pyne replied that Labor was engaging in "shabby" tactics and should be "congratulating" Ms Bishop for her performance and grateful that she had not treated them more harshly. Mr Pyne said that unlike Mr Burke, he did not whinge at poor treatment from the Speaker when he was in opposition.

"I am no sook," Mr Pyne said to uproarious laughter in the chamber. "I have been Manager of opposition business for five years," Mr Pyne added.

"I was manager of opposition business for three years in a hung parliament. I hold the record for being ejected from this place by Speakers in the Parliament. I never complained."

"I didn't stand up like a great big sook like the manager of opposition business did today and say like one of my four children that I have had my toy taken away from me."

Labor's transport spokesman Anthony Albanese seconded the motion of no confidence. Mr Albanese said it was "sad" that Ms Bishop had "chosen the low road of partisanship rather than the high road of independence".

"There are millions of Australians who voted for us on this side and they also deserve to be represented and not treated with contempt from the chair of the House of Representatives," Mr Albanese said.

Predictably, Labor's motion of no confidence in the Speaker failed with 83 members voting against and 51 voting for.

Labor accuses Bronwyn Bishop of being 'most biased Speaker' in history

By Ben Pobjie

Photo: With fresh titles and having taken their oath, the neo-liberal Knights are ready to do battle. (Submitted: Lord Ned)

After defeating the unholy Knights of the ALP, King Abbott took out his broadsword and bestowed titles upon the deserving. Truly peace had been returned to the Abbottlands, writes Ben Pobjie.

And so the King Abbott, warrior-priest lord of all the land, stood before his people and declared that from this day forth, all worthies of the realm would be granted titles suitable to their standing and distinction.

"Come forth!" he bellowed to his loyal courtiers. "Come forth and receive the blessings of your king."

Reaching into his royal bathers, he pulled out his mighty broadsword and prepared to grant his divine favours upon the deserving.

"I dub thee Sir Joseph of the Coffers," said the King to the first of his men, laying the blade upon his shoulders. "May you sally forth to shield the kingdom from drunken sailors and budget emergencies wherever you may find them."

"And you I grant the title Sir Christopher of the Pine," he went on, touching the sword delicately to the frail shoulders of the next. "Your sigil shall be a squawking chicken, rampant, and you shall stand ever vigilant to safeguard my people from the threat of unparliamentary language."

And so the process went on. Sir Brandis of the Lawgarden; Sir Erica of the Drone; Sir Morrisone the Boatslayer; all the way down to Dame Julie Idleshanks, who was given the most sacred task of all: to not say anything too stupid.

Once anointed, the knights of the Abbott took their oath: to forever be defenders of freedom, truth and markets; to seek out and destroy enemies of the crown, the dragons of political correctness, the serpents of organised labour, and the cockatrices of excessive regulation in the financial industry.

With one ferocious blow of his dread sword Menzies, Sir Robb of the Ledger cleft in twain the legendary Red Tape of Rudd, and a mighty cheer went up from the assembled masses, who had lived too long under the thumb of the unholy Knights Of ALP - it was said that any man who learned what the letters stood for would perish.

And so the Knights of Abbott set out to discover what honour may await them. To the north rode the bannermen of Sir Malcolm, under his flag bearing the device of the Turning Bull. There they would find many dangers, battling with sword and axe in windy mountain passes to sever the broadband cables of the warlocks and free the people from the tyranny of inefficient telecommunications projects.

To the south rode those freedom-loving knights who had pledged fealty to Sir Andrew of the Bolt, or as he was known throughout the land, "Brittlefinger". In the strange outlands of the New Racism, these brave warriors would face constant peril from the dishonourable attacks of the bizarre heathen folk who live in those parts, who are forever casting spells upon the righteous to make them ashamed of their own history, and who, although pale in hue, yet still work their dark magic upon grants committees.

The King Abbott was glad indeed when Sir Andrew rode back into the Vale of Canberra, his banner, blazoned with its much-feared crest of two crying kittens supporting a glass jaw on a field of petals, and presented his sovereign with the head of Affirmative Action, a beast many courageous men had perished attempting to slay.

Sir Morrisone, of course, rode west, and did battle with the deadly Queue Jumpers Of The Waves, who seek to entangle men in their webs of lies and are reputed to wear the taxes of their enemies as trophies. But not for nothing was Sir Morrisone dubbed Boatslayer, and he and his doughty band that day put many a boat to fire and the sword, driving the savage Queue Jumpers back into the sea and keeping the Abbottlands free from all those who would seek to improve their situation by means of flotation. On the beach, Sir Morrisone burnt a protection visa as an offering to the Gods of Orderly Processes.

And naturally to the east rode Sir Cory St Bernard, known far and wide as the holiest of all the Abbott's knights, and beside him rode his faithful friend and companion Sir Christopher of the Taser, who had won much fame at tournaments through the realm by suing his opponents' lances before they could reach his shield.

Sir Cory ventured into the lands of the Covered Coven, a band of powerful witches who entrance good Christian men with their excessive clothing. With Sir Christopher's brave assistance he did defeat those pagan wenches, and ventured even further, to the land of the puppies, where both Sir Cory and Sir Christopher did many daring deeds of which they were somewhat reluctant to be especially descriptive when they returned home.

But on that homecoming there was feasting, and carousing, and songs were sung of the many feats of this doughty band of righteous men, who through the strength of their steel, the trueness of their aim and the goodness of their hearts, had won victory over the darkness that had threatened to engulf the Abbottlands in modernity and diversity.

And the King Abbott blessed them, and counted himself lucky to have at his service such fearsome and neo-liberal knights, and he called to his daughters to join him at the feasting table, and there he did declare them to be pretty all right sorts, and there was much agreement. And Abbott and his knights sang lustily God Save the Queen, and drank deeply of the ale, and the women smiled as they did the ironing, and there was peace and light upon the land, and nevermore in all the free kingdoms was there heard the croak of the Green. Truly, the Golden Age of Chivalry had come to pass.

Ben Pobjie is a writer, comedian and poet with no journalistic qualifications whatsoever. View his full profile here.

Knights of the Abbottlands sally forth - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

By ABC's Jonathan Green

Photo: Tony Abbott stands for the idea that in government, less is more. (AAP: Julian Smith, file photo)

These culture war fights and flourishes - rights for bigots, knighthoods, etc - allow the Coalition to show its personality without increasing the footprint of government, writes Jonathan Green.

Could it be that they're really not all that sure what exactly it is that they want to do?

Getting in to government ... that's comparatively simple, a task with a clear objective and an obvious game plan: to attack, undermine and oppose. Shred the credibility of the opponent.

The emphasis in this phase need never be on what it is that you might do differently in power. The emphasis is all but entirely on how poorly your opponent is performing. All that is required as a point of both difference and electability is a succinct series of memorable propositions that both lay down a minimal framework for future action and also illuminate the deficiencies and underachievements of the other side.

"Stop the boats." "End the waste." "Axe the tax." That kind of thing.

Where this comes crashing to earth is in office. The Australian people, having elected team Coalition on the assumption that they were a group of predominantly male adults with an instinct for parsimony and a good feel for the location of our maritime borders, were confronted by a ruling reality that might have been just a little underwhelming.

For those who had bothered to take an interest, there must have been a vague sense of deflation when they realised they had elected a government led by a man who could offer no greater ambition for his term at the apex of our gathered hopes and dreams other than to be remembered as "an Infrastructure Prime Minister".

Not quite a vaulting ambition, but at least the freeways will run on time.

Winning is where it gets hard. Government makes demands; a subtle but growing pressure to be seen to be delivering on a pre-conceived and well-considered program, or at least a demonstrated capacity to deal with issues as they arise. A set of transformative ideas to enhance our Commonwealth is presumably what any government worth its salt brings to the table ... otherwise, why bother?

The Whitlam government is often reviled, but in three years managed, among other things, to:

• End conscription
• Withdraw troops from Vietnam
• Begin to work toward equal pay for women
• Establish a single department of Defence
• Grant independence to Papua New Guinea
• Abolish tertiary education fees
• Raise the age pension to 25 per cent of average male weekly earnings
• Establish Medibank
• Introduce no-fault divorce
• Pass a series of laws banning racial and sexual discrimination
• Extend maternity leave and benefits to single mothers
• Establish the Legal Aid Office
• Establish the National Film and Television School
• Launch construction of the National Gallery of Australia
• Reopen diplomatic ties with China
• Establish the Trades Practices Commission
• Establish the National Parks and Wildlife Service
• Establish the Law Reform Commission
• Establish the Australian Film Commission, the Australia Council and the Australian Heritage Commission
• Create Telecom and Australia Post from the Postmaster-Generals Department.
• Devise the Order of Australia to replace the British Honours system
• Abolish appeals to the Privy Council in the UK
• Change the national anthem to Advance Australia Fair
• Institute Aboriginal land rights

And so on. If nothing else it went into power with a sense of agenda and spent its short term in office obsessed, perhaps fatally, by its execution.

The Abbott Government will never want to create a shopping list of change, innovation and social infrastructure to rival Whitlam's ... by instinct it is an unraveller of government influence and activity, not an instigator. This week's bonfire of red tape and regulation is ample proof of that deep ideological commitment to a diminished hand for government in the broadest possible range of Australian affairs. 

But there is an inherent paradox for a government whose main ideologically-driven purpose is to work assiduously for a diminished role for ... government. This eats away at the sort of activity that traditionally would give a new government presence and a sense of itself it could sell. Instead, we have a government busying itself with the business of becoming diminished.

All of which might explain the attraction of the culture war agenda ... that series of high-profile fights and reversals that together give some cumulative sense of the administration's political personality without increasing its footprint on society or the economy.

A government committed to little more than reducing the presence of government might reasonably reintroduce a quaintly colonial honours system without adding to the mound of red tape or state interference. It might create a convincing sense of a schools policy "reform" by stamping down on perceived political correctness rather than fiddling with anything that might reek of social engineering. Media policy ... that's best left to the market, though that said a strong public broadcaster presents a distortion that ought to be diminished rather than nurtured. Freedom of speech? Why not let bigotry ring.

For a government scratching to define its personality and purpose, these culture war fights and flourishes offer both low-hanging fruit that might be eaten without adding to the bulk of government, and the irresistible temptation to finally resolve the ideological resentments of adolescence.

Senior politicians now in government whose first sense of grave political injustice was stirred by Whitlam's appetite for intervention, can at long last set the record straight and begin the long unwinding of all that was left standing in the dust of crashing idols in 1975.

Because, if they stand for anything, Tony Abbott and team stand for the idea that in government, less is more.

That's their purpose, even if, in terms of self-definition and a retail narrative, it may also be their curse. Either way, the Australia Council should be nervous.

Jonathan Green hosts Sunday Extra on Radio National and is the former editor of The Drum. View his full profile here.

Culture wars distract from the Abbott non-agenda - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

By political correspondent Emma Griffiths

Video: Government to sell Medibank Private (ABC News)

Photo: The Government has previously said it wanted to sell Medibank Private at the 'right time'.

The Federal Government and Opposition are at odds over the merits of the proposed sale of Medibank Private, including whether it will lead to a rise in insurance premiums.

Finance Minister Mathias Cormann has announced the government-owned company will be sold through an initial public offering in the next financial year, 2014-15.

The Opposition believes the insurer should stay in public hands and has raised concerns about premium increases and the future of Medibank Private employees.

Senator Cormann said the details were yet to be finalised but that an independent scoping study had found no evidence that premiums would rise as a result of the privatisation.

The Government has previously said it wanted to sell Medibank Private at the "right time" to maximise the sale price.

But Senator Cormann would not say how much he thought the insurer was worth.

"It wouldn't be appropriate for me to speculate on what sale price may or may not be achieved," he said.

"I'm not going to put a figure on it. Obviously, our objective is to maximise net proceeds from the sale."

Fact Check: Cormann on the money

Fact Check looks at whether the privatisation of Medibank Private impacts premium rises.

 

He said that no one investor would be able to buy more than a 15 per cent share in the insurer, as stipulated in the Medibank Sale Act passed by Parliament in 2006.

Medibank was valued then by the Howard government at more than $4 billion, but the price has more recently been estimated at around half that.

Whatever the proceeds, Senator Cormann said the Government wanted to spend the earnings on infrastructure.

"Our stated intention is to recycle the capital that is freed up from the sale of Medibank to invest in productivity-enhancing infrastructure," he said.

But the proposed infrastructure would be revealed only in the May 13 budget, he added.

The Minister also left open the possibility that the timing of the sale could shift, depending on the market.

"We of course need to maintain some flexibility in particular with a focus on evolving market conditions," Senator Cormann said.

"We'll make a judgment and when we're satisfied that the most appropriate window for sale is present ... then we'll move ahead."

Labor raises concerns about impact on staff, policy holders

Video: Tony Burke says Government needs to show sale won't increase premiums (7.30)

Labor's health spokeswoman Catherine King said the Opposition has concerns about the impact on the insurer's 4,000 staff members and its 3.8 million policy holders.

"It's really up to the Government to guarantee that this won't lead to an increase in private health insurance premiums," she said.

"And counter to that I would actually say it's up to them to show people that it in fact will lead to downward pressure on private health insurance premiums."

The Opposition also said the sale would increase the budget deficit, because the Government would lose Medibank's annual dividend payment of up to half a billion dollars.

It would also not, under budget rules, be able to mark the eventual sale price as a budget gain.

Long path to privatisation

ABC business editor Peter Ryan takes a look at the long path for Medibank's boss George Savvides in getting the float off the ground.

 

Medibank's chairwoman, Elizabeth Alexander, has welcomed the Government's decision.

"To our many customers, please be assured we remain focused on delivering excellent value and service," she said in a statement.

Senator Cormann said the scoping study had confirmed the Coalition's view that there was no "compelling" reason for the Government to be in the health insurance business.

He said it also would remove the "inherent conflict" posed by the Government's involvement as both market regulator and market participant.

Senator Cormann said the Government wanted to ensure that Medibank customer service and staff did not suffer as a result of the sale, emphasising that it wanted employee entitlements to be retained.

More on this story

• Government criticised for PR hire to help with Medibank Private's potential sale
• Private health priority scheme risks unequal access: AMA official
• Health Minister approves 6.2 per cent increase to health insurance
• ABC Fact Check: Cormann on the money on Medibank Private sale impact

Medibank Private: Government announces sale through IPO, subject to market conditions - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Australian Associated Press

theguardian.com, Tuesday 25 March 2014

Former federal MP was sentenced to 12 months’ jail, nine months of which are suspended

Craig Thomson: Magistrate Charlie Rozencwajg was scathing of Thomson's conduct. Photograph: David Crosling/AAPIMAGE

Former federal MP Craig Thomson will spend three months in jail for spending union funds on prostitutes and personal expenses.

Thomson was sentenced to 12 months' jail, nine months of which are suspended for two years.

Magistrate Charlie Rozencwajg was scathing of Thomson's conduct.

"The offences exhibit a brazen arrogance and a sense of entitlement in dealing with the funds of members," Rozencwajg said.

He said the fact the union funds were used to pay for sexual services did not affect the sentence, but it highlighted the selfish ends of Thomson's behaviour.

"Nothing has been put before me to suggest these offences were committed for any reason other than greed."

Craig Thomson to serve three months in jail for misuse of union funds | World news | theguardian.com

By Paula Matthewson

Photo: Opposition Leader Bill Shorten will need to ponder his next move against the Government. (AAP: Alan Porritt)

Labor can't lay a punch on the Coalition because it is hopelessly implicated in some of the Government's greatest sins and has shown no inclination to renounce that involvement, writes Paula Matthewson.

It's six months into the Abbott Government's first term and there is a growing sense the Labor Opposition just hasn't been able to lay a blow on the other side.

Apart from struggling to adjust to the uncomfortable but necessarily edifying transition from government to opposition, Labor has seemed singularly unable to capitalise on the panoply of stumbles, gaffes, backflips and dubious decisions that Abbott and his team have manifested in such a short time.

Granted, the ALP is laying claim to the shiny scalp of the sidelined Assistant Treasurer. But in reality, The Australian newspaper's call for Arthur Sinodinos to stand aside likely had more impact on the Senator's decision to do so than any of the edicts hurled at him in Parliament.

Without the intervention of Uncle Rupert's paper, there's a good chance Abbott would have attempted to ride out the controversy, just as he did when the Assistant Minister for Health, Fiona Nash, was accused of breaching the ministerial code. Abbott held tight, secure in the knowledge that Labor had enough dirt on its hands to be cautious when pointing out the Coalition's misdemeanours.

The Nash episode was a clear-cut case of whether she did or did not breach the code or mislead the Senate. The Sinodinos matter was, however, anything but straightforward for Labor, with the Opposition having to tread a very fine line when accusing the junior minister of being naïve, foolish or dodgy while chair of Australian Water Holdings.

By implication, Labor risked lapsing into the claim that Sinodinos should have known better than to be even indirectly associated with Eddie Obeid, a mover and shaker in the NSW Labor Party who was later found to be corrupt by the Independent Commission Against Corruption.

In short, saying that Sinodinos was dodgy for associating with a corrupt Labor politician is a bit like smacking oneself in the face.

Corruption in its own ranks is a significant limitation on the Labor Opposition's capacity to credibly hold the Abbott Government to account on this issue, but it's only one factor taking the edge off their attack.

Rorts in the union movement is another. The Government has a strategy to hobble the unions, cut off the flow of union funds to Labor, and reform wages and conditions, which spans across this parliamentary term and the next. Part of that strategy is to tarnish the reputation of unions and make Labor guilty by association.

Voters who pay attention to such issues would recall that PM Gillard vouched for the integrity of former Health Services Union head and Labor MP, Craig Thomson, who was subsequently found guilty of using his work credit card to pay for sexual services and make cash withdrawals.

One of the unstated aims of the Royal Commission into union corruption recently launched by the Abbott Government will be to ensure a broader range of voters associate Labor with unlawful activity within unions - regardless of whether that activity is sanctioned by the union in question.

This places Opposition Leader Bill Shorten, a former head of one the unions under investigation, in the invidious position of being seen to protect dodgy union activity whenever he defends the labour movement from what is patently a political witch-hunt. As a result, he keeps such protestations to a minimum and will be constrained in the assistance he can provide.

Similarly, Shorten limits his exhortations on the plight of asylum seekers, placed on Manus Island by way of an agreement struck by the re-ascended Labor prime minister Kevin Rudd to out-bid Abbott on "toughness" and win the anti-asylum seeker vote.

Even now the "toughness as a deterrent" tactic has devolved into terror, Labor's role in bringing about the sorry situation has left them impotent and unable to fight for a more humane approach.

The ALP's propensity to pull its punches may make sense within those politically sensitive contexts. But it makes Labor look like a weakling, particularly now that Australian voters have become accustomed to an opposition bristling with fight and negativity.

This is a particular problem for Shorten who has consciously rejected Abbott's Mr No style and adopted an opposition leader model closer to that of Labor's Kim Beazley (which itself was modeled on the Liberal, John Howard).

This model involves giving due recognition to sensible government decisions and eschews opposition for opposition's sake. Inconveniently for Shorten, this moderate stance sits uncomfortably with his union leader past and could unintentionally suggest to voters that he's not genuine. If that perception takes hold, it could create a whole new world of hurt for the opposition leader.

Labor can't lay a punch on the Coalition because it is hopelessly implicated in some of the Government's greatest sins and has shown no inclination to renounce that involvement.

This weakness is one of Abbott's greatest strengths, and it may well be the key to his Government's enduring political dominance in the foreseeable future.

Paula Matthewson is a freelance communications adviser and corporate writer. View her full profile here.

'Weakling' Labor pulls its punches - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

By political correspondent Emma Griffiths

Photo: George Brandis says section 18c of the act attempts to deal with racial vilification "in the wrong way". (AAP: Alan Porritt)

Related Story: Coalition MP prepared to cross floor over Racial Discrimination Act

Attorney-General George Brandis has defended the Government's plan to amend a key part of the nation's racial discrimination laws, saying people have "a right to be bigots".

The Abbott Government has promised to amend the Racial Discrimination Act by repealing section 18C, which makes it unlawful for someone to publicly "offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate" a person or a group of people.

In 2011, conservative media figure Andrew Bolt was found to have broken the law over two articles he wrote in 2009 about light-skinned people who identify as Aboriginal.

A Federal Court judge found Bolt's articles would have offended a reasonable member of the Aboriginal community, that he had not written them in good faith and that there were factual errors.

At the time, Bolt said it was "a terrible day for free speech in this country".

Senator Brandis says he will "very soon" bring forward an amendment to the act "which will ensure that can never happen in Australia again".

People do have a right to be bigots. In a free country people do have rights to say things that other people find offensive or insulting or bigoted.

Attorney-General George Brandis

Asked about the plan by Labor's Senator Nova Peris, the first Indigenous woman in Parliament, Senator Brandis said section 18C "goes about the problem of dealing with racial vilification in the wrong way".

He said the Government is acting in the interests of free speech.

"People do have a right to be bigots you know," he told the Senate.

"In a free country people do have rights to say things that other people find offensive or insulting or bigoted."

The Opposition is against any changes to Section 18C and says Senator Brandis has given a "green light to bigots".

"Senator Brandis has clearly revealed today he intends to give a green light to racist hate speech in Australia," his Labor counterpart Mark Dreyfus said in a statement.

But Senator Brandis said the law as it stands amounted to "political censorship".

"People like Mr Bolt should be free to express any opinion on a social or a cultural or a political question that they wish to express - just as Mr Bolt would respect your right to express your opinions on social or political or cultural issues," he told Senator Peris.

Abbott says democracy depends on free speech

Barely 20 minutes after his statements in the Senate, Labor's deputy leader Tanya Plibersek asked the Prime Minister if he agreed with the Attorney-General that people had a "right to be bigots".

Tony Abbott did not repeat the phrase but said Australia's democracy and freedom depended on free speech.

"Of course this Government is determined to try to ensure that Australia remains a free and fair and tolerant society, where bigotry and racism has no place," Mr Abbott said.

"But we also want this country to be a nation where freedom of speech is enjoyed.

"And sometimes, Madam Speaker, free speech will be speech which upsets people, which offends people."

Last week, Liberal backbencher and Indigenous MP Ken Wyatt told the Coalition party room meeting he may cross the floor over the Government's amendments.

Section 18C became law in 1995 in response to recommendations from major inquiries including the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody.

Its accompanying section 18D is seen by some as a protection for free speech, in that it allows comments or actions made in good faith and "fair comment" if it is an "expression of a genuine belief held by the person making the comment".

The Government is also reportedly considering changes to that part of the Racial Discrimination Act.

More on this story

• Coalition MP Ken Wyatt prepared to cross floor over Racial Discrimination Act
• Federal Government planning reform of Human Rights Commission
• Government not tied to new Rights Commissioner's views, Brandis says
• Andrew Bolt breached discrimination act, judge rules
• The Drum opinion: A holy war in the name of free speech

George Brandis defends 'right to be a bigot' amid Government plan to amend Racial Discrimination Act - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

By ABC's Barrie Cassidy

Photo: What changed that made Arthur Sinodinos have to stand aside? (AAP: Alan Porritt)

Clive Palmer's new demands over the mining tax repeal come at an already difficult time for Tony Abbott, who has questions to answer over his embattled Assistant Treasurer, Arthur Sinodinos, stepping down, writes Barrie Cassidy.

Clive Palmer has now put a price on his support for the repeal of the mining tax; a very small price in monetary terms, but one that will annoy and embarrass the Prime Minister just the same.

It had always been assumed that Palmer's bloc of three votes in the Senate would negate the combined Labor and Greens vote and allow the repeal of both the carbon and mining taxes with no strings attached.

But now Palmer in an interview with Fran Kelly on Radio National has put an awkward proposition to the Government.

He insists it has to backdown on the decision to end the bonus welfare payments to the children of war veterans injured or killed overseas. The payments go to 1240 recipients and cost in total just $260,000 a year. They are essentially education allowances to cover unforseen expenses.

But Tony Abbott has insisted that because the payments were to be paid for by the mining tax, and the mining tax didn't raise any revenue, then they have to go. It's the principle.

Now if the Government wants to achieve one of its major reforms, it will have to swallow its pride and give in.

Palmer told the ABC: "We think that if a person's given their life for Australia, they should be assured the government's not going to attack the children after they're gone."

The government, he said, should not "persecute" children.

Though the demand is small, it says much about Palmer. Nothing can be taken for granted, no matter what the issue. And he's going to have his own pet issues along the way.

It was a big call for him given that his support for the repeal of the mining tax would doubtless help his chances in the West Australian Senate election. But he is assuming that money for the "orphans", as some emotively describe it, will be the bigger issue in the mind of the electorate.

It was for the Government another headache it didn't need on top of the decision by the Assistant Treasurer, Senator Arthur Sinodinos, to step aside while a corruption inquiry investigates his business dealings.

Sinodinos has taken one for the team, lowering the temperature on the issue in the run-up to one of the most important budgets any government has delivered in a long time.

However, his gesture drew attention to the Prime Minister's handling of the matter. Why was it OK for Sinodinos to stay in his job on Tuesday and yet by Wednesday it was "in the best and most honourable Westminster tradition" that he stand aside? What changed?

And going back even further, why was Sinodinos made Assistant Treasurer in the first place when details of the emerging scandal were known to everybody?

ICAC's destruction hits both sides

The Liberal Party now stands besmirched and tainted alongside Labor, writes Quentin Dempster.

And then of course there were the routine questions to deal with as well. What did the Prime Minister know and when did he know it? What conversations were held between the two, and whose decision was it that he should walk?

For Sinodinos to resume his ministerial career, he will need to be exonerated by the inquiry. There cannot be any ambiguity or lasting suspicion.

Counsel assisting the inquiry, Geoffrey Watson SC, made no direct allegation against the Senator. Neither has anybody else.

However, the counsel did insist Sinodinos was hired on excessive remuneration by Australian Water Holdings to open up lines of communication with the Liberal Party, and that he stood to gain many millions if the company gained a contract with Sydney Water.

Ominously, Watson added: "He has other involvements that will come under scrutiny," an apparent reference to donations made to the Liberal Party.

Not only does Sinodinos insist he knew nothing of the Obeid connection with the company, he also denies any knowledge of the donations. At one stage, Sinodinos was chairman of the company making the donations and treasurer of the party receiving them.

The Obeid name has now taken on the poisonous connotation of the disgraced former West Australian premier Brian Burke's name back in 2007.

Then, John Howard made much of Kevin Rudd's meetings with Burke, only to find one of his own ministers, Ian Campbell, had met with Burke.

Campbell resigned.

With both Obeid and Burke, attempts by the Coalition to condemn Labor figures as guilty by association badly backfired.

Barrie Cassidy is the presenter of the ABC program Insiders. View his full profile here.

What changed? Questions for Abbott about Sinodinos - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)