Category: Donald Trump

Our Obsession With U.S. Politics

US-politics-obsession
Image by Rolf Dobberstein, www.pixabay.com

For reasons attributed to the way my mind works, the 1950s children’s song ‘Nellie the Elephant’ has been in my head for months now.

If the complete domination of the airwaves by the US election is getting you down, just sing this happy refrain:

“Nellie the elephant packed her trunk and said goodbye to the circus, off she went with a trumpety trump – trump, trump, trump.”

Yes, once heard never able to be un-heard.The song (Ralph Butler/Peter Hart) was first released in October 1956 by Mandy Miller and an orchestra conducted by Phil Cardew. (There’s also a 1984 cover by punk band Toy Dolls).

On Wednesday, every TV channel had live (and ongoing) coverage of the US election vote count, interspersed with snippets of local news. The blanket coverage continued yesterday and today. At one point we switched off and went out to sow grass seed and count birds.

This short discourse on our obsession with the US election begins with the obvious observation: “Why the hell should we care?” Surely we have enough problems of our own to solve without being mired in America’s divisive political miasma.

Media coverage of the US election this week (and what seems for a long time now), quickly relegated the triumphant third term return of Queensland Labor Premier Annastacia Pałaszczuk to a lesser position. It also relegated our own (small) battles with Covid-19 from top of the news, where it should be.

Covid and the obsession with events in Trumpistan lessened the usual impact of two major Australian sporting events. On Tuesday we had the Melbourne Cup, run without the usual crowd (100,000+); no outlandish hats, frivolity or drunken behaviour. Masked strappers led the horses in to the parade ring, while anyone within coo-ee of a television camera conspicuously wore a mask. This is Victoria, after all. The 2020 Cup was run and won, the day marred by the death of the top weight horse Anthony Van Dyck, which broke a fetlock and had to be euthanased. The other scandal from Cup Day, which added fuel to the ‘Nup to the Cup’ animal rights movement was jockey Kerrin McEvoy’s $50,000 fine for over-use of the whip on second-placed Tiger Moth.

Meanwhile in Adelaide, rugby league players lined up for the first of three State of Origin matches. The matches would normally have been held in May and June but this year, Covid restrictions forced a re-organisation of the classic inter-State contest.

The games are to be staged over three consecutive weeks; next Wednesday in Sydney then the following Wednesday, November 18, 2020, when Brisbane will host the third game and possible decider, depending on whether NSW wins next week.

There were other news stories this week which were not about the US election or Covid-19. Here’s a few you may have missed.

  • Reserve Bank cuts interest rates to 0.10%;
  • China suspends Australian wine imports;
  • Australia Post CEO resigns;
  • Girl, 3, found alive under rubble after Turkey’s earthquake;
  • Parrot saves owner from house fire – “Anton, Anton, wake up”;
  • Diego Maradona is to have brain surgery;
  • Queensland wins State of Origin 1, beating NSW 18-14;
  • The Goodwills release new single after lengthy hiatus.

President Trump’s appointment of Amy Coney Barrett to the US Supreme Court is a good example of the extent to which we have become immersed in American politics. The US Supreme Court became topical when Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died after a long illness. President Trump, as is his constitutional right, (although going against convention – no surprises there. Ed) recently appointed Justice Barrett, a favourite of conservatives, to replace Justice Ginsberg. Appointments to the US Supreme Court are rare, as Justices are appointed for life.

This issue dominated traditional media and social media alike for weeks, the focus being on the likelihood of Trump appointing a conservative judge before the election (which he did).

Meanwhile in Australia

Prime Minister Scott Morrison last week announced the appointment of two new Justices to our equivalent forum (the High Court of Australia). Federal Court Judges Jacqueline Gleeson and Simon Steward will replace outgoing Justices Virginia Bell and Geoffrey Nettle. The latter are due to retire at 70. The compulsory retirement age was brought in after a referendum in 1977.

Unlike the politically charged US Supreme Court, Australia’s High Court judges are appointed by the Governor-General in Council (which means he suggests potential candidates to the Attorney- General and then the PM, who makes the appointments).

Mr Morrison thanked the outgoing justices for their work.

“Every justice appointed to the High Court carries a significant burden to uphold the laws of our land,” he said. “I congratulate Justices Steward and Gleeson and I wish them all the best.”

As this ABC report observed, our High Court process stands in stark contrast to that of the United States, where Supreme Court appointments are “fought tooth and nail in a politically charged atmosphere”.

An article in ‘The Conversation’ argued that Australians in general know very little about the workings of the High Court. The Canberra-based court and its panel of seven Justices is the last resort for civil cases which have been through at least one other legal forum.

The High Court’s independence is no better demonstrated by the recently decided case, Hocking v The Director of the National Archives. An academic, Professor Jennifer Hocking had sought access to the correspondence between former Governor-General Sir John Kerr and the Queen during Australia’s constitutional crisis in 1975.

The High Court held that Kerr’s papers were public record and not, as had been previously ruled, his personal correspondence.

The National Archives of Australia spent close to $1 million defending its position, an amount which could double after the High Court ruled that it pay Professor Hocking’s costs.

Even though a Pew Centre research report said 71% of Australians closely follow US news, it serves us better to be informed about domestic news. Start by following the High Court’s upcoming deliberations on Palmer vs State of WA over the ‘hard border’ closure.

The High Court of Australia is completely transparent (cases and judgements are available online). But as senior lecturer in law Joe McIntyre said in The Conversation article: “Whereas appointments to the US Supreme Court are a highly visible festival of political intrigue and showmanship, the process in Australia is a secretive affair occurring strictly behind closed doors.”

As I post this week’s FOMM, US news channels are proclaiming Democrat candidate Joe Biden a narrow winner of the 2020 US election. Whether or not this is confirmed in the days and weeks to come, if you are one of the people who think Trump has to go, keep your spirits up (perhaps for another four years) by humming this ear-worm of a tune:

“Nellie the elephant packed her trunk and said goodbye to the circus, off she went with a trumpety trump – trump, trump trump.”

(Wikipedia says the rhythm and tempo of this song is often used to teach people cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) (100 compressions per minute). 

When Campbell Newman lost his seat

Campbell-Newman-Pre-Polling
Up to 60% of Queensland’s eligible voters will vote early or register a postal vote in the State election.

Queensland heads to the polls tomorrow, four years and nine months after the historic defeat of Campbell Newman and the LNP Coalition. I thought it would be interesting and educational to revisit those restive times, when Campbell Newman became only the second sitting Premier since Federation to lose his seat.

Mr Newman’s seat of Ashgrove was taken by Kate Jones, who ironically is quitting politics in 2020 to pursue other interests. The Tourism Minister’s last hoorah this week was to attack Clive Palmer on national television, saying his claim about a Labor death tax is “bullshit”.

Even with Campbell Newman losing his seat in January 2015, it was a close-run thing. Incoming Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk formed government with the help of one independent, Peter Wellington. The Labor Party increased its majority by four seats in the November 2017 election, despite Mr Wellington deciding to quite politics. So tomorrow’s poll is a contest between two women – Annastacia Palaszczuk, who is attempting to win a third successive term, and Deb Frecklington, in her eighth year in politics, hoping for a promotion from her highest position in the Campbell Newman government (assistant Finance Minister). Whoever wins, we are stuck with them for four years, courtesy of Queensland’s second referendum on fixed terms, which was got a Yes vote in 2016 (after a No in 1991).

In researching this topic, I uncovered a FOMM written in early February 2015, a year which also saw Prime Minister Tony Abbott ousted by Malcolm Turnbull before the former completed his term.

My blog on the Friday after the 2015 Queensland election called for more compassion, in politics and in daily life. It was also an attempt to soothe the “bruised egos and wallets of those who backed the wrong team”.

Flashback:2015

We talked about compassion over the festive season, and how we could all try a bit harder. A few wise people wrote to me at the time and suggested that first you have to give yourself a break. But that week I felt an unlikely pang of compassion for Tony Abbott, under siege from his own party and the media. Just imagine how he might have felt going into the Press Club on the Monday after Queensland voters turned on the LNP.

The PM has a thick hide, obviously, but I imagine he might have had to do some meditation or yoga before he fronted the media pack. While it seems clear that the LNP’s narrow defeat in Queensland, with Premier Campbell Newman losing his seat, was all about that government’s arrogance and can-do-ism, inevitably Tony Abbott got the blame.

In typical style, the PM did not refer to the Queensland election in his prepared comments for the Press Club, although some of his detractors rode that particular elephant into the room. You could hear the knives being sharpened from up here in the mountains. A backbencher got a run on Radio National this week saying he had texted the PM to say he no longer had his support. Whether the inexplicable decision to bestow a knighthood on Prince Philip was the last straw or whether they’ve been keeping a list, we’ll never know. Whatever, I felt a bit sorry for the man. Being PM is an impossible 24/7 job that creates the kind of stress you and I would not want to know about.

“What did Tony Abbott ever do for us?” I hear you say. True, the Abbott government seems to care less about people who struggle financially; the ones to whom a $7 co-payment is a big deal. This (Federal) government scores low on Compassion, as did the former LNP (Queensland Government), which apparently thought it could do what it liked and no-one would take it personally, or be able to do anything about it.

The C-word I’d most like to introduce into contemporary politics is an old-fashioned one – Civility. ‘After you’, and ‘if it’s not too much trouble’, and ‘how has your day been?’. It costs nothing be civil with one another, but from my observations of political life here or in Canberra over the past 20 years or so, there is too much of the ‘us and them’ and ‘let’s get ‘em’. If you’re an Opposition Labor MP you have to vote along party lines, which means you disagree with everything the incumbent government has to say and ditto for the LNP when Labor is in power.

On that basis, the Queensland Parliament will be a shackled institution. The former Premier of Queensland would have us believe that hung parliaments are bad. But just why are they bad? Why not call it Consensus government? Imagine a Queensland parliament with 30 Labor members, 20 Libs, 10 Nats, 10 Greens, 14 independents and five ratbag parties to give us a bit of a giggle and keep the bastards honest. Select the most intelligent and fair-minded member as Speaker and we would indeed live in interesting times, when pollies would have to talk to one another to come up with policies they can all agree upon.

Meanwhile back in 2020

The other election preoccupying not only Australians, but the world in general, is the November 3 US presidential election. Sixty million Americans (about 40% of the expected turnout), have already voted – which may be portentious. Reactions to the polarising President, Donald Trump, have been extreme. Musician Bruce Springsteen, for example, says that if Trump wins, he is moving to Australia.

Bruce has any number of options to work his way through Australia’s migration red tape. As a business migrant he can just headquarter his music business here and tick all the boxes, especially the one that asks how much money he is bringing with him. He could also apply for an ‘exceptional talent’ visa. Above all. he has a very Australian name.

The numbers of American-born people living in Australia has almost doubled since 2001, when the Census identified 60,000. By the 2011 Census, this number had increased to 90,000. Five years later in 2016 it topped 106,000. On the annual growth rate, the numbers of US-born in Australia should now be around 120,000, the sixth-largest American population in the world.

As happens everywhere, people end up living somewhere they went to visit and then met someone (and stayed). But affairs of the heart and family ties is just one part of the puzzle. A 2015 investigation by the Sydney Morning Herald concluded there were economic factors at play. Australia, to a large degree, survived the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), which was an attraction for Americans looking to prosper somewhere else in the world that speaks English.

Post-covid and post-Trump, there is every reason to think Australia may again become the magnet for disenfranchised Americans that it was during the Cuban missile crisis (1962), the Vietnam war (1955-1975) and after 9/11 and the GFC.

The Trump factor is fairly obvious, as the ABC’s Lee Sales discovered when interviewing former US Secretary of State Richard Armitage (2001-2005), about next week’s election.

When the life-long Republican was asked what would happen if Donald Trump wins, he simply said: “Got any more room in Australia?”

FOMM back pages: Citizen Kang for President

 

 

 

 

We’ll need a huge crowd to stop war against Iran

Stop-Adani-rally
Image: A Stop Adani rally, courtesy of https://www.facebook.com/stopadani/

I’m not good with crowds – not since the early days of journalism in Toowoomba when I under-reported numbers at the annual Carnival of Flowers parade. “Next time check with the police,” I was told and mostly continued to do so, on occasions when crowds gathered for newsworthy events.

It is not always a given that members of the constabulary will give you an accurate-enough figure of crowds. Police under-estimated by 50% or so the size of street marches in Australia’s capital cities in 2003, protesting John Howard’s involvement in George Bush Jnr’s unjustifiable war with Iraq.

Oh, we remember that! Mr and Mrs Outraged Parents of One joined 99,998 others on February 16, 2003, marching from Roma Street, along Adelaide Street and down Edward Street to the Botanic Gardens. It was a steamy Brisbane day and there were concerns for the health and hydration of toddlers and the elderly.

On the same day, rallies in Adelaide, Darwin and Sydney attracted 200,000 people while two days earlier, 150,000 marched in Melbourne. This was part of a co-ordinated global protest on the same day, when, according to the BBC, between six and 11 million people were involved in more than 60 countries. Rome broke a world record for the biggest single-city anti-war protest, with three million participants.

It might say something about the relative futility of protest in that the ill-advised invasion of Iraq in March 2003 led to ongoing conflict until the withdrawal of 170,000 US troops in 2011. Although their tenure is uncertain, there are 5,200 US troops in Iraq as part of a security agreement with the Iraq government. Along with US-employed contractors, this brings the ‘friendly fire’ equation into any strike on neighbouring Iran.

It seems you need really big protest numbers to get governments to back off even a little bit. An estimated 2 million people thronged Hong Kong’s streets this month.

When a quarter of the population protests, you can understand city authorities putting an unpopular plan on the back-burner. Protesters feared that Hong Kong’s economy and society would be irretrievably damaged by a proposed extradition law (allowing visitors and residents to be sent for trial in China). Hong Kong chief executive Carrie Lam was forced to suspend the draft legislation. You may recall mass protests and sit-ins in Hong Kong circa 2014 as residents took part in the ‘Umbrella Movement’, to complain about China deciding who will govern the city.

Meanwhile civil disobedience (نافرمانی مدنی) is ramping up in Iran, despite a brutal crackdown by the State’s security police. Prior to 2017, years passed between bouts of people marching in Iran’s capital, Tehran. Nevertheless, people took to the streets of Tehran for three days in a row in 2017, protesting largely about economic hardship and alleged corruption within government. Protests continued in 2018 amid what Amnesty International called “a year of shame”.

Thousands were arrested as authorities sought to crush dissent, as protests continued against poverty, corruption and authoritarianism. Amnesty International said more than 7,000 people were arrested, many arbitrarily. Protestors included students, journalists, environmental activists, workers and human rights defenders.

“Hundreds were sentenced to prison terms or flogging and at least 26 protesters were killed. Nine people arrested in connection with protest died in custody under suspicious circumstances.” 

Amnesty director Philip Luther said the scale of arrests, imprisonments and flogging sentences revealed the extreme lengths the authorities have gone to in order to suppress peaceful dissent.

And while Australian journalists wax indignant about the Australian Federal Police raids on the national broadcaster, this is what can happen to scribes reporting the facts in Iran.

In Australia, attempts at repression are mostly left to conservative politicians and like-minded social media commentators. Last week, two Extinction Rebellion protestors glued themselves to a zebra crossing in Queen Street during a Stop Adani rally, prompting Federal MP Ken O’Dowd to post on Facebook. He cited a Courier-Mail article which quoted Police inspector Geoff Acreman as saying: “The stunt was a ridiculous waste of resources.”

“I’m sure we will all agree,” said O’Dowd, to which 98 people responded with comments like ‘‘make them a speed bump’’, ‘‘leave them there overnight’’, or ‘‘take away their dole money’’. Discourse cuts both ways, thankfully, and this post also attracted comments from people who see the folly of ignoring the climate crisis.

While glueing yourself to a public road does seem an extreme form of dissidence, it is important to remember that Australia does not have a national charter of rights.

While Victoria, the ACT and Queensland have each introduced a State-based charter of rights, in other States, the pendulum is swinging the other way.

Human Rights Law Centre executive director Hugh de Kretser writes that there have been attempts by State governments in Tasmania, New South Wales and Western Australia to curb the power of protests. Mooted changes to State laws include severe penalties, excessive police powers and the creation of ‘broad, vague offences’.

Mr de Kretser says protest has defined a number of key social advances and environmental saves in this country. Without protests we might not have the eight-hour day, women’s right to vote, protection of the Franklin and Daintree rivers and advancement of Aboriginal land rights. Protest also stopped our involvement in the Vietnam War and ended the criminalisation of homosexuality.

He says these issues will come into sharper focus in coming years, with increased attention on climate change, workplace disruption and the implementation of the Uluru Statement.

When, we wonder, will Americans start to push back against the hawk-like Trump administration that has taken the world too close for comfort to an armed conflict with Iran?

For now, President Trump appears to favour increased sanctions against Iran, but experts on armed conflicts say these are parlous times.

South China Morning Post opinion writer Rob York asks the question: where are the mass protests in the US about President Donald Trump first threatening North Korea and now coming close to armed conflict with Iran?

York recounts the nervous days in 2017 when Trump and North Korea leader Kim Jong-un played a high stakes game of chicken. This was thankfully hosed down by conciliatory summits in 2018. Now York asks why there are no mass demonstrations about a potential strike against Iran by the US.

“Since June 9, the world has watched Hong Kong’s protest movement closely. The mood of Americans in my social circle turned from dread to relief and then to awe as Hongkongers took to the streets, making it difficult for a government they feel no longer represents them to function.

But Americans are hesitant to do the same. So what if their country sleepwalks into a wholly unnecessary conflagration?”

As commentators have pointed out, Trump has a lot to lose if the US stumbles into a war with Iran, not the least a pre-election promise to the contrary.

As always, Trump’s habit of tweeting in the early hours of the morning comes back to haunt him. Thanks to Mr Shiraz for unearthing this.

“Don’t let Obama play the Iran card in order to start a war to get elected – be careful Republicans” – The Real Donald Trump on Twitter, October 23, 2012.

The last word goes to David Bowie’s chillingly appropriate song, used in the credits to the 2016 TV drama, Berlin Station. It’s an earworm.

 

Take me to your leader – the quest continues

leader-politics
(Leader image, old man in park taking time out from politics and spin), Bob Wilson circa 1978

Imagine a flying saucer lands in your back yard and an alien (drooling or not) alights.

“Take me to your leader,” it telepathically commands, as it is from an advanced civilisation, intent upon savings ours.

“Aw yeah, mate.” (pointing). “That’s our leader over there, the one in the striped designer shirt, mingling with the homeless folk.”

If you dig around on the Internet long enough you’ll find lists of world leaders people would rather not introduce to their granny, never mind to an alien. The lists are usually described as ‘the 10 or 20 worst world leaders’ and include despots like North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir.

Alas Malcolm Turnbull, PM of Australia; the only list I found him on was the ‘hottest heads of state’ leader ladder, languishing in 12th place behind total spunks like Canada’s Justin Trudeau, New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern, France’s Emmanuel Macron or Haiti’s Jovenal Moise.

One ought not to touch on politics when striking up conversations at Christmas parties. At one such event, I ventured that the Australian Federal Government was having an ‘Annus Horribilis’ and seemed incapable of making firm and sensible decisions.

I had voiced what I thought was a commonly-held theory, but soon found out what I should have known; on average, at least one-third of people voted for that motley group of indecisive dual citizens who went to work on just 64 days in 2017.

“So what do you think about Turnbull’s piss-weak energy policy?” I began at another Xmas do, when I probably should have said, “Strange weather for this time of year, don’t you think?”

That person moved away, but left me a clean run at the cheese platter.

From my point of view, the LNP in Canberra blundered from one disaster to another in 2017, momentarily making itself look good by introducing marriage equality laws, which in truth should have been enshrined in 1980-something. The poll was estimated to cost the taxpayer $122 million and then we endured weeks of angst while the same-sex marriage law was debated, after 61.6% of the 79.5% of people who voted had told them that’s what they wanted in the first place.

The great shame, or should I say sham, is that the Turnbull government, deliberately or not, distracted the people from more serious issues (climate change, the Adani coal mine, Manus Island), by turning the same-sex marriage debate into an expensive, non-binding referendum-style exercise. They could have used one of those 64 sitting days to have a free vote. We’d have achieved the same result and deployed the $122 million to more laudable outcomes (like finding emergency accommodation for the 6,000 or so Australians who sleep rough each night).

We’ve seen from recent State elections and Federal by-elections that the people are not happy with the mainstream parties. The drift towards the Greens on one side and One Nation on the other mimics the rise of populism the world over.

Political commentator Michelle Grattan, speaking at the launch of The Conversation Yearbook in Brisbane, said so many people in Australia are disgusted with politics they are ‘‘tuning out”

“People think (politicians) are behaving badly, because they are behaving badly. They (politicians) alienate the public – they are aware of it, but it’s beyond them to regain the people’s trust.”

Grattan said focus groups in north Queensland, ahead of the State elections, saw through Malcolm Turnbull’s ploy to cancel a week’s parliamentary sittings. This was ostensibly to allow the House and the Senate to resolve the citizenship issue and to work through the same sex marriage debate.

But here’s the thing: the NQ focus groups didn’t much like Malcolm Turnbull, but neither did they warm to Bill Shorten as an alternative leader.

The Queensland election continued a national, if not international trend: voters are fed up with mainstream parties and are casting their votes elsewhere.

In Queensland, 30.9% of first preference votes went to minority parties, while the informal vote was higher than average, at 4.58%. In the Bennelong Federal by-election, 10 minor parties grabbed 19.15% of the first preference primary vote, although that did not stop the LNP’s John Alexander (45.05%) taking the seat.

So what else happened in 2017?

While it wasn’t a party political issue, the rise of the social media hashtag #MeToo movement had its high point when Time Magazine chose #MeToo as its influential “Person of the Year”.

If you had been living under a rock, #MeToo is a movement where women who have been harassed, assaulted, bullied and otherwise vilified (primarily by men), came out and stood with their sisters.

The movement started with casting-couch revelations about Hollywood movie producer Harvey Weinstein and flushed out similarly bad behaviour all over the world. The Australia media chimed in, outing former TV gardening host Don Burke for a series of alleged indiscretions. Sydney’s Telegraph made an allegation about Australian actor Geoffrey Rush, who responded with a writ for defamation.

On a more positive note, 2017 turned up an unlikely winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. The prize went to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). The organization received the award for drawing attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons.

There were other examples of positive news in 2017, amid the political scandals, terrorist attacks, humanitarian crises and natural disasters.

A December 19 report by Katrina Sichlau, News Corp Australia Network, found that renewable energy employed 10 million people worldwide.

(Aside – that makes the Queensland Premier’s contested claim that the proposed Adani coal mine would employ 10,000 people look rather sad).

The same article said France and Britain had launched a Clean Air Plan which will make sense to people who have visited either country this year or last. In a year when Queensland’s land-clearing reached Brazil-like proportions, Pakistan planted one billion trees.

If I may add to this optimistic list, New Zealand elected a woman in her 30s as Prime Minister (Jacinda Ardern), largely at the whim of (Queen)-maker Winston Peters, a veteran politician who saw sense in forming an alliance with the savvy young Labour leader.

Probably the less we say about Donald Trump the better, as he seems to thrive on publicity, be it good or bad. Trump continues to use Twitter like a flame-thrower, this year setting diplomatic fires in North Korea, Israel, and Germany and within the US itself.

Trump reportedly plans to go ahead with a visit to the UK in 2018, despite the recent twitter row with UK PM Theresa May. If you’ll recall, Trump retweeted videos posted by radical right group Britain First, inaccurately blaming Muslims in the UK for terrorist attacks.

There has been much misreporting about Trump’s ‘working’ visit to the UK. The White House at one point thanked the Queen for her “gracious invitation” to meet with President Trump at Buckingham Palace. The Guardian Weekly reported on December 15 that a formal state visit was not envisaged. “The Queen is likely to be preoccupied with preparations for a Commonwealth summit.”

As myth-buster Snopes points out, there is a long standing tradition that the Queen does not intervene in political disputes.

We wish you all an ‘annus mirabilis’ in 2018.

 

Dawe, Morrow and Gessen – Satire and The Rise Of Populism

Dawe-satire
Satirist Bryan Dawe (left) and comedian Julian Morrow at Integrity 20. Photo by Frances Harper

Actor/satirist Bryan Dawe has such a low-key, laconic approach to ‘giving a talk’ that the journalistic instinct to take notes deserted me. Dawe is the surviving half of the satirical act Clarke & Dawe, but he is much more than that. He told the audience at Griffith University’s Integrity 20 Summit that when it came to political satire, he and John Clarke had never been short of material over 25 years of producing their weekly TV show.

Dawe introduced one of his best-known satirical characters, boozy retired judge Sir Murray Rivers QC; Dawe as interviewer/straight man to Sir Murray’s confused bigot. His presentation was funny; funny and sad, as he often referenced his late partner in satire John Clarke, who died in April this year. Dawe’s ‘talk’ would have been illuminating for the year 11 and 12 students attending Integrity 20, as Dawe summarised his unhappy days at school where he left early after being told by a careers adviser he would not amount to anything because he came from the ‘wrong postcode’.

Dawe joined Julian Morrow of The Chaser and The Checkout for a discussion on satire, comedy and how to know when you’ve gone too far. When asked that question by panel chair Rebecca Levingston, both agreed that nothing was off limits.

While agreeing that one could satirise and make jokes about anything, Morrow conceded that The Chaser’s skits post-9/11 were “too soon”. Levingston prompted Morrow to revisit the time The Chaser (a TV satire show), penetrated security at the 2007 APEC conference in Sydney with a fake motorcade transporting a ‘Mr bin laden of Canada’. As Morrow recalled “We never expected to succeed.”

Both satirists agreed that there are powerful people who always try to have good satire shut down, probably because nothing is funnier than the truth, greatly exaggerated. The trick, said Dawe, was not to engage with critics, trolls and others whose power base was being diminished by The Chaser’s sharp sketches or by John Clarke’s familiar introduction: “Thanks for having me, Bryan.”

Bryan Dawe’s presentation was the ideal tone for Integrity 20’s afternoon session, which followed serious and at times contrary debate about hate speech, free speech, censorship, the global rise of populism and how to destroy democracy.

Masha-Gessen-populism
Masha Gessen, photo by Bengt Oberger, Wikipedia CC

You may have heard Richard Fidler on Conversations interviewing Masha Gessen, an exiled Russian American journalist and author. Her speech ‘How to Destroy Democracy’ and later contribution to a panel discussion on populism was a highlight of Integrity 20.

New York-based Gessen outlined the seven lessons in ‘imagining the worse’, in which the rise of populism destroys democracy. These include destroying the sense of participation, conspiracy myth-making, and engaging in the ‘forever war’, (which in the US means a 16-year war against ‘terrorism’, an unidentifiable foe, with no end point in sight).

Gessen, an outspoken critic of Donald Trump, also referred to the way democracy could be destroyed simply by degrading language.

“Trump is a master at that. He lies and lies to convince you that something that’s not true is true. There’s no way for a journalist not to quote his lies.

“Trump says he’s the subject of a witch hunt when that’s the opposite of what he means. He creates word salad and makes it difficult to work out what it all means. It’s a direct assault on how we all live because language is the main tool we use to co-exist.”

Even while Gessen was articulating this I was thinking about former PM Tony Abbott’s ludicrous comments about goats, volcanoes and climate change. However daft the comments seemed, journalists had no option but to quote what he actually said at a climate conference in London.

As Ricky Gervais said this week in a thought-provoking tweet:

Some opinions are so stupid they hurt my feelings. But that’s my problem. It’s a person’s right to hold as stupid an opinion as they like. (@rickygervais):

A panel discussion followed on the global rise of populism. Panel chair Luke Stegemann summarised the rise of populism in countries including Italy, Poland, the UK, France and Germany. “Australia is not immune by any means,” he added, citing the resurgence of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation and how it taps into the frustrations, racism and bigotry of people who are angry about immigration and furious about globalisation and the perceived impact these issues have on their jobs.

One ought to keep in mind that populism − a movement for the people and against a privileged elite − can occur across a broad political spectrum. It is possible, as panellist Geoffrey Robertson QC observed, to have left-wing populism.

The origins of populism date back to the 1800s when rural peasants revolted against their robber baron landlords. Today it is more about polarising the electorate and pitting angry poor people against (poor and possibly angry) immigrants and asylum seekers.

The privileged elite seem to survive with wealth intact, whichever way the populist wind is blowing.

Rachel Kleinfeld of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said the common perception was that supporters of populism are racists and bigots.

“There is a racist fringe but the core of populism is about high inequality and why people don’t understand why politicians don’t listen.”

Geoffrey Robertson said young people were disenchanted about the rampant capitalism that democracy encourages. This was in response to Kleinfeld’s comment that only 52% of people aged 18 to 29 think it is preferable to live in a democracy. Robertson said the key threat imposed by populist leaders was the attempt to replace an independent judiciary with their own people.

Kleinfeld made comparisons between Donald Trump and outsider president Andrew Jackson (1828-1834), who enjoyed two terms and put his successor, Martin Van Buren, in place to ensure 12 years of a populist government.

The Atlantic made much of the Trump/Jackson similarities.

“Jackson, like Trump, won over many white working-class voters, who brushed aside critics who warned that he was unstable and a would-be dictator. He maintained their loyalty even though, like Trump, he was of the elite.”

I can’t recall who started it, but it seemed all panellists agreed that Trump, despite being widely reviled, would easily take another term in office. They didn’t say so, but it seems obvious that Trump has a like-minded and seemingly un-impeachable successor in Mike Pence sitting on the bench (wearing a Martin Van Buren t-shirt).

If you were not yet confused about populism and its multiple meanings, Cas Mudde, a professor at the University of Georgia, coined the phrase “thin ideology”. This means to merely set up a framework: pure people versus a corrupt elite. Thin ideology can be attached to all sorts of “thick” ideologies such as socialism, nationalism, anti-imperialism or racism.

I will leave it to the reader to decide what type of populism exists in Australia.

Monday I’ve got Friday on my mind

I leave you with a tribute to the late George Young, who co-wrote the song from which this essay takes its name. Young and co-writer Harry Vanda and their band The Easybeats had an international hit with Friday on My Mind in 1967. Here’s a terrific cover from Richard Thompson and band from the album 1000 Years of Popular Music. (Please don’t listen to the Bruce Springsteen version that comes up after that…Ed)

 

Great wall of Mexico

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South Australia dog fence Photo by Bob Wilson

There are precedents for President Donald Trump’s plan to build, or complete a 3,208 kilometre wall between Mexico and the US. The Australian outback features not one but two barrier fences, sprawling the length and breadth of the country.

A tour guide took us on a sunset tour out to the ‘dog fence’ near Coober Pedy in 2014. The South Australian section of the 5,531km fence which runs from the SA border to Queensland is 2,250 kms long.  Built in the 1880s, it’s the longest fence in the world and keeps wild dogs out (or in).

In Western Australia there’s also the 3,256 kms long Rabbit Proof Fence. Possibly because there’s a movie by that name, it is now known as the State Barrier Fence of Western Australia. Having done our share of outback travel, we can tell you that rabbits are still breeding away and undermining parts of Australia, despite myxomatosis, 1080 poison and vermin proof fences. Western Australia’s fence was completed in three stages in the early 1900s as an attempt to isolate the west from the national rabbit plague.

Just so you all know, dingoes and rabbits were not asked to pay for the construction of these fences.

Yes, it makes you think.

There’s no doubt that well-built vermin fences, extending a long way into the ground, have been successful at keeping rabbits and other pests from undermining Australia and also prevent dingoes from savaging livestock. So the cost is defendable, as is the ongoing expense of sending out boundary riders on weekly repair patrols. Feral camels do the most damage, so not surprisingly; there are plans for a taller (electrified) fence.

So what about President Trump’s wall between Mexico and the US? Despite the fact that a 1000 kilometre stretch was completed by George W Bush’s government, this is still going to be a $20 billion exercise. Crikey, that’s about 30% of the US education budget, right there.

And speaking of education, a Pew Research survey found that 61% of Americans think a wall between the US and Mexico is a dumb idea.

Our Albuquerque correspondent, despite living 693 kilometres from the New Mexico border at Juarez, thinks the wall is ‘insulting, a blight and really bad foreign policy.”

Thanks to Bloomberg and heavyweight sources like the Department of Homeland Security, here’s what we know about the challenges facing President Trump’s wall. The notoriously porous border between the US and Mexico is almost 3,208 kilometres long, two-thirds of it tracking the Rio Grande River. The border passes through cities including San Ysidro (California) and El Paso (Texas), rural farmland, desert, mountains and wildlife reserves. The border features 30+ patrol stations and 25 ports of entry.

Barriers already extend along a third of the border, giving President Trump’s contractors something of a head-start. Most of the California, Arizona and New Mexico borders have existing barriers. These range from 5.5m high iron and corrugated metal fences to what our Albuquerque correspondent calls “pedestrian fencing.’

Bloomberg reports that in 2015, the Customs and Border Patrol claimed an 81% strike rate for apprehending and turning back Mexicans attempting to cross illegally (or should that be irregularly).

No-one really knows how many undocumented Mexicans are living in the US but informed estimates figure around 11 million. There have been amnesties in the past, but that does not appear to be an option under a Trump administration.

A Pew Research Centre survey conducted in 2015 found that 72% of Americans (including 80% of Democrats, 76% of independents and 56% of Republicans), thought undocumented immigrants should be allowed to stay “if they meet certain requirements.”

Most of the existing border fence was built after 2006, when President George W. Bush signed the Secure Fences Act. I hate to be pedantic, but the act specifically says “Fences” not walls. When President Trump talks about his vision, most of us imagine a Great Wall of China or the 8m high sections of the West Bank edifice.

Al Jazeera reports that the West Bank security fence is the largest infrastructure project in Israel’s history. Nearly 15 years old, the 706km long fence costs Israel $260 million a year to maintain.

The ‘separation barrier” as it is coyly known, comprises mostly 2m high, electrified barbed-wire fences with vehicle-barrier trenches and a 60m exclusion zone on the Palestinian side. But in densely populated urban areas with space limitations, the Israelis built an 8m concrete wall.

Walls built between countries or within countries are always controversial, and, well, brutally divisive.

There’s no space at this time to delve into the tragedies of the Berlin Wall, which divided East and West Berlin for 27 years, for reasons which now seem specious. History shows that barrier walls built for whatever reason are destined to become decaying tourist attractions,

Visitors to Britain often schedule a visit to Hadrian’s Wall, a fascinating relic of 122AD when the emperor Hadrian demanded a wall be built east from Wallsend on the River Tyne to Bowness-on-Solway in the west. Hadrian’s Wall was the north-west frontier of the Roman Empire for nearly 300 years, built by the Roman army (to separate the barbarians from the Romans). Hadrian’s Wall was made a World Heritage Site in 1987.

In 2010 English folksingers Julie Matthews and Chris While joined a group of songwriters to write songs inspired by Hadrian’s Wall. Their song which emerged from the All Along the Wall project, Rock of Gelt, imagines a bored centurion who has been dragooned, if that is the appropriate word, into “building the Empire’s last frontier.”

There are only a handful of inscriptions to be found along the remains of the stone wall, including a piece of graffiti found in the Gelt Valley. It translates to: “Daminius didn’t want to do it,” which becomes the repeated refrain at the end of the song.

So will Donald Trump persist with a plan to build/complete a wall that 61% of Americans do not want? No doubt the 39% who want it would argue it will employ large numbers of people, through the building phase, then on maintenance and security.

Maintenance of walls and fences is an ongoing issue – just ask a fencing contractor called in to repair or replace fences wrecked or washed away in floods. The annual maintenance bill to keep the Dingo Fence in sound repair is around $10 million, according to an article in The Conversation. The authors argue for a re-think of the country’s vermin fence policies, including a plan to move a section of the fence to test whether the now endangered dingo can help restore degraded rangelands.

The humanitarian question is, if you must build a barrier wall or fence, surely you should have to justify the exclusion of a species?

As poet Elvis McGonnagal wrote, inspired by the Along the Wall project:

“Walls entomb, walls divide

Walls barricade the unknown

Berlin, Belfast, Gaza

Walls set difference in stone

 But the same sun that sets on the west bank

Rises up on the eastern wall

A man’s a man in Mesapotamia

A man’s a man in Gaul.”

*thanks to Julie Matthews for the insights

Trump vs the rest

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US Supreme Court – photo by Freeimages.com

President-elect Donald Trump is taking the oath of inauguration tomorrow (our time) burdened by a legacy of some 75 unresolved civil court cases. Trump or his businesses are involved in these cases, all at varying stages, with Trump as plaintiff or defendant. This would normally be business as usual for Trump, but for the fact that he is the President-elect.

Exhaustive research by US Today shows Trump and his businesses have been involved in more than 4,000 civil cases over the past three decades. They include branding and trademark cases, contract disputes, employment cases, personal defamation suits and about 190 government and tax cases. About half of the civil suits involve Trump’s casino businesses and a large number involve his real estate businesses.

US Today set a team of reporters and researchers on a monumental, ongoing task of tracing the litigious President-elect’s track record.

Of immediate concern are the 75 open cases in the background as Donald John Trump prepares to take office as US Commander-in-Chief.

The type of civil action which can prove difficult for an incoming President or Prime Minister is defamation. Some consider it unsporting for the leader of a country to sue someone (usually a media organisation) for defamation. As the number one public figure in a democracy, you’re supposed to roll with the punches.

This may not be the case with Donald Trump. During his presidential campaign, he threatened to sue all the women who accused him of unwanted sexual advances and also said he would sue media outlets who reported the claims. (By extension this ought to be worrisome to anyone who re-posted related remarks on Facebook or Twitter).

US Today say that although Donald Trump has frequently threatened to sue for defamation, he rarely follows through and has won only one of 14 cases since 1976.

It may well have been the case if he had not won the presidency that Trump would have pursued the women he called ‘liars’. However, it would seem a bridge too far to expect a brand-new President to deal with such distractions, which, if pursued to trial, could result in (President) Trump being called to give testimony under oath. So as his presidency begins, can we expect to see more civil cases being dropped or settled?

The BBC reported that Mr Trump faced three fraud cases related to Trump University, which closed in 2010. The first case, brought by students who claim they were deceived by Trump University’s marketing, was to have been heard 20 days after the election.

Although repeatedly saying during his campaign that he would “never settle”, in November Trump closed all three cases in a $25 million private settlement.

The issue of Trump and his legal legacy has not been greatly pursued by the media, but it is an immediate impediment and distraction to his getting on with making America great again.

The President-elect will no doubt make his own mind up whether he can afford to be distracted by these 75 legal challenges, carried over from his volatile business life and the long campaign to establish himself as a presidential contender. None of these cases can be ignored. As plaintiff he must either pursue his claim or withdraw. As defendant, he must defend or offer to settle. In just one example cited by the BBC, Trump is being sued by Republican political consultant Cheryl Jacobus. She filed a $4 million libel lawsuit claiming he “destroyed her career” by calling her a derogatory name on Twitter.

John Dean, former legal advisor to Richard Nixon, analysed similar outcomes for four other Presidents in a Newsweek article. Theodore Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton all carried civil suits into the Oval Office. Most of these cases were quickly disposed of; however Bill Clinton was not so fortunate. Clinton vs Jones went all the way to the US Supreme court, which held that a US president is not immune from civil litigation involving matters occurring before he took office. If you had forgotten or were curious, searching Clinton vs Jones will take you on a journey.

I’ve been pursued by one or two lawyers whose clients claimed I had defamed them (in my newspaper reporting days). Typically, a news outlet can make a claim for defamation go away by printing or broadcasting an apology. Since most cases of libel amount to mistakes (the mistake occurred in the production process), apologising seems the sensible option.

Or the publisher can get on his high horse and defend the charges, which can, as you may have noticed, cost millions and go on for years.

It is often the case for those mounting a defamation case, here or in the US, that the length of time it takes to come to trial and the extent of legal costs increasingly encourages the aggrieved person to settle for an apology and (sometimes) an undisclosed amount.

I worry about people who make heated comments online about politicians. There’s no doubt the people they are castigating deserve a level of criticism. But it has to be defensible.

There have already been cases in Australia where people were sued for defamation over Facebook posts with some payouts approaching six figures. So next time you’re set to post about the neighbour’s barking dogs or the idiots who party till five in the morning every day of the week, take a break, go for a walk, calm down.

Meanwhile, here’s a bit of evidence that politicians may not always be prepared to take the flak that comes with being a public figure, Crikey has compiled a list of politicians who have sued Australian media outlets for defamation. It’s a long list.

As for Donald Trump and his ongoing civil litigation caseload, the length of time it takes for a case to come to trial may be one factor influencing decisions to settle. The average time (in America) from complaint to trial is 22 months and all that time the legal system’s meters are running. According to California Labour and Law’s Eugene Lee, a US Bureau of Justice Statistics national survey revealed that only 3.5% of disputes were resolved by trial. Most are resolved by settlement.

Columnist Sadhbh Walshe writing in The Guardian claims America’s ‘litigious society’ is a myth. He cites data that shows only 10% of injured Americans ever file a claim for compensation and only 2% file lawsuits.

“So we’re really not all that litigious, yet we continue to be treated with kid gloves as though all it will take is a scraped knee for us to be on the phone to our lawyers.”

This will be no comfort at all to incoming President Trump, whose net worth of $3.7 billion makes him an obvious target. US Today also looked into presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s exposure to the courts. They found her named in 900 actions, most as defendant. More than a third of these claims were lodged by federal prisoners, activists and other citizens seeking redress from government.

The ‘pick a big target’ tactic seems at odds with the argument that the ‘litigious society’ is a myth. What do you reckon?