Is Australia a Christian country?

Jim Belshaw has an interesting post on this, to which I wrote an off-the-cuff response for the sake of discussion, and Jim has replied. My answer, basically, is “No”. Except in a very broad cultural sense. One could also ask the question in the past tense, as Jim has, and one would get very many answers, as indeed Jim points out. Obviously Australia is more a Christian culture than it is a Buddhist, Hindu, Taoist, Muslim, or Jewish one, yet all those are, and in all cases long have been, living traditions within Australian culture, not to mention what remains of Indigenous spirituality.

Much better heads than mine have asked the question; it disturbs me nonetheless when people like the current Prime Minister make assumptions about our being a Christian country. My argument would be that we are very much a non-religious country in very important respects, even more deeply than the fact there is not and cannot be an established religion. I would even argue that secularism has been a critical ingredient both intellectually and practically, a point I made — or tried to make — in my comment on Jim’s blog. (Didn’t Manning Clark devote a lifetime and many pages to constructing a long epic poem of a history on this theme? At least he thought it mattered, which made him a rather odd “Marxist”.)

How Downer, Howard, Nelson and company are out of the debate…

I wonder if the gentlemen above ever read the magazine on the right, or if they have taken note of such recent books as After the Neocons: America at the Crossroads (Profile Books 2006 — $6.95 at your friendly remainder shop!) It appears a substantial portion of the Right have been embracing reality while we were looking the other way. Just what the implications of this are for the American elections remains to be seen; there are implications for our elections, because there is no doubt that what I am reading in After the Neocons and in the magazine on the right is far more Kevin Rudd friendly than the current Australian government’s ongoing love affair with the failing but horribly dangerous policies of the current US regime. This is not to say all these people are born-again liberals now: far from it. But there is more of reason in what they say and publish.

Fukuyama, for his sins, had been one of the signatories of the Project for a New American Century back in the Clinton era, and we know what that led to. There is a profile of Fukuyama here, and I commend the entire IRC Right Web Program from which that comes.

From the current American Interest: After Bush leads with an article by Barry R Posen.

Bright and shining lies?

Domestic

Andrew Charlton* (right) Ozonomics (Sydney, Random House, 2007) promises to enable me to penetrate past the Australian government’s carefully crafted self-image as “a safe pair of hands”. He is certainly better looking than John Howard… Now I have read a bit of this eminently readable book I am impressed. To be honest, I am not sure if it is because Charlton tells me what I have long suspected — that the “safe pair of hands” is a deception, perhaps a self-deception if you wish to be charitable, a chimera, a myth — or because he is right. Whatever the reason, I am sucked in, impressed, convinced even. I will leave you to make up your own mind, commending the book to your attention. It is a BEST READ 2007 as far as I am concerned.

You may read Charlton in shorter form in the current issue of <a href=”http://www.themonthly.com.au/tm/node/680″ target=”_blan THE NATION REVIEWED

“Interest rates were not only central to the 2004 election. They have been a recurring theme of the past 11 years of Coalition government. Even more importantly, it is almost certain that interest rates will be a major theme, perhaps the major theme, of the next federal election campaign. The story Howard and Costello will tell the Australian people will go, roughly speaking, like this. Under Labor interest rates are always unacceptably high. Under the Coalition they have been and will remain low. They will suggest to the Australian people that interest rates are controlled by governments and directly linked to federal budget deficits and surpluses. As no part of this story is actually true, the next election campaign will be conducted on the basis of a series of seriously misleading or straightforwardly false Howard-Costello claims.”

In the Monthly Comment, Andrew Charlton identifies the myth fundamental to the government’s assertion that only it can keep interest rates low by delivering a budget in surplus. Not only do countries such as the US run enormous budget deficits while maintaining low interest rates; because Australia is a small part of a global economy and prey to its fluctuations, the budgetary actions of its government - its borrowing - can only have a small effect on the nation’s interest rates. By unravelling the central economic claim of John Howard and Peter Costello – that interest rates would necessarily be higher under a Labor government, a claim wrongly given credibility by Labor under Mark Latham during the 2004 election campaign – Charlton points to a far greater concern than interest rates alone. Australians, encouraged by the current government, have accrued record personal debt, leaving them vulnerable to even minor rate rises, and consequently to the economic spin of the Coalition.

“Economic policy has been one of the Coalition’s key electoral strengths. The great triumph of Howard and Costello has been to convince Australians of a spurious link between his government’s fiscal conservatism and low interest rates. It is a story that may play well in the marginal electorates, but is also one that doesn’t make economic sense. Interest rates have been flat since 1996, when Howard and Costello came to power. Interest rates have enjoyed consistently low inflation, and the nation has enjoyed a benign economic climate and a new monetary policy which has been implemented competently by the Reserve Bank.”

*You may download an MP3 of Andrew Charlton (and Will Elliot) from Richard Fidler’s program on ABC Queensland. There are reviews of the book here, here, and here: “Andrew Charlton is 28 years old and has one of those CVs that makes you jealous. He was a Rhodes Scholar, has worked at the OECD and United Nations, and has spent the last couple of years at the London School of Economics. He has co-written several academic papers and a book with Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz.” His LSE home page is here.

Foreign policy

Go to the American magazine of that name and study The Terrorism Index.

Americans are thinking more about the war on terror than ever before. But that doesn’t mean they’ve come to see this issue in the black-and-white terms preferred by many elected leaders. The combination of bloody wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, continued terrorist attacks from Britain to Somalia, and a presidential election in which candidates are defining themselves based on how they would stare down the threats has many seeing shades of gray. Six years after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, just 29 percent of Americans believe the United States is winning the war on terror—the lowest percentage at any point since 9/11. But Americans also consider themselves safe. Six in 10 say that they do not believe another terrorist attack is imminent. Likewise, more than 60 percent of Americans now say that the decision to invade Iraq was a mistake. Yet around half report that they would support similar military action to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

Such seemingly incompatible points of view may stem in part from the fact that we are increasingly asked to reconcile a bewildering array of threats—and a nebulous enemy that defies convention. In Iraq, for instance, the same surge in U.S. forces that is meant to help pacify Baghdad only escalates violence elsewhere in the country. In the broader Middle East and South Asia, some of the same countries that are now the United States’ most crucial allies have also been guilty of cultivating the very terrorists we look to bring to justice. Deciphering priorities from such difficult paradoxes can be hard. So, how can one determine whether the war on terror is making America safer or more dangerous?

To find out, FOREIGN POLICY and the Center for American Progress once again turned to the very people who have run the United States’ national security apparatus during the past half century. Surveying more than 100 of America’s top foreign-policy experts—Republicans and Democrats alike—the FOREIGN POLICY/Center for American Progress Terrorism Index is the only comprehensive, nonpartisan effort to mine the highest echelons of the nation’s foreign-policy establishment for its assessment of how the United States is fighting the war on terror. First released in July 2006, and again last February, the index attempts to draw definitive conclusions about the war’s priorities, policies, and progress. Its participants include people who have served as secretary of state, national security advisor, senior White House aides, top commanders in the U.S. military, seasoned intelligence professionals, and distinguished academics. Eighty percent of the experts have served in the U.S. government—including more than half in the Executive Branch, 32 percent in the military, and 21 percent in the intelligence community…

No effort of the U.S. government was more harshly criticized, however, than the war in Iraq. In fact, that conflict appears to be the root cause of the experts’ pessimism about the state of national security. Nearly all—92 percent—of the index’s experts said the war in Iraq negatively affects U.S. national security, an increase of 5 percentage points from a year ago. Negative perceptions of the war in Iraq are shared across the political spectrum, with 84 percent of those who describe themselves as conservative taking a dim view of the war’s impact. More than half of the experts now oppose the White House’s decision to “surge” additional troops into Baghdad, a remarkable 22 percentage-point increase from just six months ago. Almost 7 in 10 now support a drawdown and redeployment of U.S. forces out of Iraq…

And that is just a taste! Go and read it all very carefully and remember it whenever Howard, Nelson or Downer are “explaining” our foreign policy. Our policy???

Now I will confess…

I am a closet listener to country and western music. Mind you, not all country and western music. But there’s some that is just good honest stuff, so why pretend to look down on it? And this one contains images close to home.

Not the best of all possible worlds

Well, that’s a given of course. But there were some good examples of sleaze of one kind or another on ABC here in Sydney last night.

That is well worth your following up. The banner will take you there. You don’t have to be a wowser to smell CORRUPTION coming from the gaming and hotels industries, even if whatever they are doing is “legal”. That government is in hock to them because of the revenue streams they create, that their lobbyists are so powerful, that the destruction they cause is only too obvious, that pubs are superficially better at a possibly terrible cost… All that has to give pause for thought. Four Corners should be congratulated for raising these issues.

Then came Media Watch: Good Morning Iraq on General Petraeus, Iraq, Dennis Shanahan, Miranda Devine and Brendan Nelson. Never have so few spun so furiously with so many conflicting statistics to pull the wool over the eyes of so many.

Things my mother’s generation would say…

1. What do you think it is? Bush Week? (…Thus the expression bush week is used ironically by someone who suspects they’re being made the victim of a scam or prank…)

2. If your mates want to put their heads in a gas oven, does that mean you should?

The PM’s mother probably said both of those, but here we are, as you may see in Rocco’s cartoon from today’s Sydney Morning Herald.

Puzzled and grumpy old man…

Why don’t I rejoice as I am supposed to at the size of the government’s surpluses? Yesterday on Journalspace I posted Look, I know I’m dumb… in which I contrasted two stories from yesterday’s Herald, one about the oddities of accounting in spending on Indigenous programs, the other on the amazing billions in the federal piggy bank. I am dumb when it comes to economics, I admit it. But why do I feel there is something distinctly odd about eleven years of quite savage cuts in all manner of things and fire sales of this or that…

For example, just taken from a quick Google around:

My, my, my…

Looks as though I will have to go in later and add a note to Literacy — Why I reject Kevin Donnelly’s educational analysis. Not that all the currently prevailing voices on schooling and education have suddenly found enlightenment, but it does seem there could be a degree of hope. This past week, for example, the ABC’s right-wing Phillip Adams, Michael Duffy, had a useful interview with Jane Caro & Chris Bonner, authors of The Stupid Country: How Australia is dismantling public education. And today in The Australian we have “FORMER Liberal Party adviser and outspoken critic of the school curriculum Kevin Donnelly…” But (yes, Virginia, you may start a sentence with “but” from time to time) when he praises Labor Party education policy and slams Julie Bishop there may be cause for concern; I do hope the Big D does not get the ear of too many on the Labor side of politics where it is not after all unprecedented to find education reactionaries. Perhaps Dr D has been reading his tea-leaves about a possible electoral outcome in, they now say, October, and jobs that may open up therewith…

See Labor ‘winning’ the education debate.

More on multiculturalism etc

Consider the following information from Year Book Australia, 2005. 

There has been a significant change in the source countries of permanent arrivals, with settlers arriving from more diverse regions of the world since the mid-1990s compared with the early-1980s (table 5.32). In 1982-83, 28% of settler arrivals to Australia were born in the United Kingdom, 9% were born in Vietnam and 7% were born in New Zealand. In 2002-03 the United Kingdom and New Zealand both contributed 13% of all settler arrivals, although in 2001-02 New Zealand-born settler arrivals contributed 18% of all settler arrivals in that year whereas settler arrivals born in the United Kingdom only contributed 10%. Settler arrivals born in China (7%), India (6%) and South Africa (5%) each contributed 5% or more of all settlers in 2002-03 compared with only 1%, 2% and 3% respectively in 1982-83 (table 5.32).

Indigenous affairs

I have just had a long conversation with my Aboriginal nephew in Queensland. I had been hoping to, in view of recent events. Naturally I asked him about those events. He doesn’t know Noel Pearson personally, though he does live not far from Pearson. What he did say, and I think it is true, is that what John Howard and Minister Mal Brough have done is not what Noel Pearson proposed. In fact my nephew said recent events are pretty disgraceful, in his view, and given the systematic slashing of all manner of Indigenous programs in the term of this government, he agrees with my suspicion that the agenda does involve an ultimate land grab, and an ideological and practical unravelling of any consideration of Indigenous Australians being in any sense a special group with special needs and a special place in our history: in short, the ultimate mainstreaming agenda — which weakens Indigenous rights as there are so few Indigenous Australians. Mining companies and developers would be salivating. Now that really is a big point of difference between Noel Pearson and the government, as whatever else Noel Pearson might advocate he has always been an advocate of the specialness of Indigenous Australians.

My nephew, I should add, is very active in promoting and supporting Indigenous business ventures, and that was what the call was actually about.

At the same time, I do commend Jim Belshaw’s latest entry on this topic. I should add that my nephew, an ex-Army man himself, would no doubt be very familiar with Norforce, but we didn’t get to talk about that.

John Howard: bullying expert extraordinaire…

[WARNING: some adult content appears in the second half of this post.]

If you thought last night’s rant was over the top, check me out on the subject in 2004 here (ex-Diary-X stored on the Big Archive). Julie Bishop’s performance last night is transcribed here.

…TONY JONES: You’re not suggesting that good retention rates or higher retention rates are a bad thing, are you? Still, you haven’t explained what this means – ‘a soulless and narrow form of national economic service’. National economic service, what does that mean?

JULIE BISHOP: The focus of Labor has been very much on the numbers only and not on the individuals. I mean, we’re talking about providing choice in schooling. The Labor Party had a policy about no new non-government schools, taking away choice from parents. They were focused on a very narrow definition of education that was strictly public education and strictly on numbers. We’re looking at choice and opportunity and that’s what the Prime Minister was discussing tonight. My point about retention rates was this: you don’t set a target, you pluck a target out of the air and say, ‘That must apply across the board’, you look at what’s best for individual students. Now some students would rather leave school at 16 and then come back to education later. The point is that they ought to have the basic skills when they leave school so that they can come back to education. It’s the quality of the education they receive, not whether they were forced to stay to complete Year 12, for example.

TONY JONES: Let’s be absolutely clear on this. Does the Government think it’s a bad idea to link education to national prosperity and productivity?

JULIE BISHOP: Not at all. Of course it’s fundamental. But the point is we’re not constrained by just a narrow focus on targets and numbers. We’re looking at the individual. We’re looking at choice and opportunity for students…

What the PM actually said last night is not at this stage on his web site, but it is in The Australian.

One reaction to the Howard/Obama stoush

This letter in today’s Sydney Morning Herald interested me.

Dear Mr Howard, I have been a registered Republican since 1964 and I am not a supporter of Barack Obama. However, you have gone way over the diplomatic line in your statements about him, and you offend our core values with your comments. My father fought on Guadalcanal defending our principles and your country. I served in the Marine Corps and was willing to pay the ultimate price for our values.

I grew up believing in our strong alliance with Australia. It irks me that you are not risking Australian lives today in Iraq (directly in the fighting) yet you believe you have a right to tell me who to vote for in my country.

Who we elect is our decision and we will base it on what we believe is best for us. If you want to apply for citizenship and you are willing and acceptable to become an American, I may listen to you; if not, butt out. You have not earned the right to tell me what to do.

I still have a deep respect for Australians; I do not respect you.

Michael Harris Norco (US)

Our partisan Republican (US) Prime Minister

I have just caught up with John Howard’s Channel 9 Sunday interview. [Spelling errors are courtesy of NineMSN.]

…LAURIE OAKES: On that subject, Senator Barack Obama’s announced overnight he’s running for the Democrat Presidential nomination, and he says if he gets it he has a plan to bring troops home by March, 2008 and his direct quote is “Letting the Iraqis know we’ll not be there forever is our last, best hope to pressure the Sunies and Shiah to come to the table and find peace”. So, basically he’s agreeing with the Labor Party.

JOHN HOWARD: Yes, I think he’s wrong, I mean, he’s a long way from being President of the United States. I think he’s wrong. I think that would just encourage those who wanted completely to destabilise and destroy Iraq, and create chaos and victory for the terrorists to hang on and hope for Obama victory. If I was running Al-Qaeda in Iraq, I would put a circle around March 2008, and pray, as many times as possible, for a victory not only for Obama, but also for the Democrats.

LAURIE OAKES: If he wins, and you’re still there, bad news for the alliance.

JOHN HOWARD: Well I tell you what would be even worse news for the fight against terrorism, if America is defeated in Iraq. I mean, we have to understand what we are dealing with. We’re dealing here with a situation where if America pulls out of Iraq in March 2008. It can only be in circumstances of defeat. There’s no way by March 2008, which is a little over a year from now, everything will have been stabilised so that America can get out in March 2008. And, if America is defeated in Iraq, the hope of ever getting a Palestinian settlement will be gone. There’ll be enormous conflict between the Shi’a and the Sunnis throughout the whole of the Middle East. Saudi Arabia and Jordan will both be (destabilised), Al-Qaeda will trumpet it as the greatest victory they’ve ever had and that will have implications in our region because of the link, the ideological link at the very least, between the Al-Qaeda and JI. Proposition Three.

Considering Silencing Dissent…

In today’s Sydney Morning Herald David Marr reviews Silencing Dissent ed. Clive Hamilton and Sarah Maddison (Allen & Unwin 2007). It is of course no surprise that Marr approves of the book, which needless to say at this stage I haven’t read, but I will as soon as I can. It seems to distil so much that has disappointed and pained me during the long years of the Howard regime, so much that I have experienced in my own field of education and observed in field after field of what we might call our intellectual and moral life.

Election 2007 has broken out… Education to win or lose.

Twin interviews on last night’s 7.30 Report were virtually a formal launch of this year’s feast of political entertainment here in Australia. First we had the Prime Minister, John Howard, eleven years into reshaping Australia to a form I generally deplore, and then we had Kevin Rudd, whose chances of imploding as Mark Latham did are, I hope, minimal, because while Kevin Rudd and Labor are not offering utopia they are at least offering relief from a Quadrant-led Australian psyche. Kevin Rudd had been launching Labor’s education policy, while John Howard had, among other activities, been shafting Amanda Vanstone.

Howard, however, did respond on education which promises to be a big issue in this election, behind the consequences of John Howard’s amazingly uncritical allegiance to the floundering George W Bush.

The Poet is with his son in Boston at the moment

My former colleague John Boase normally lives in Victoria these days, but he and his wife are currently in the USA. I had asked him if he had downloaded the Iraq Commission report.

No, but have been watching C-Span etc TV and have seen extensive interviews with Baker & Hamilton including a Senate Armed Services Committee session with them. We don’t get that kind of candid TV in Oz, sadly.

Have also seen a couple of panel sessions discussing their conclusions, all sides of politics putting their view. The Right was decidedly muted. Even Fox is muted. Also watched a great session on the so-called Lancet figures from Iraq featuring the two statisticians in question + Juan Cole as expert witness on Iraq. It doesn’t come much better than that.