the interpretOr

Every community and ethnic group has its own style of idiosyncrasy. They each display some strange inexplicable, even illogical habit or belief that makes an outsider shake their head in puzzlement. The Australian idiosyncrasy is the adulation and ownership of our tall poppies. In the same manner that football supporters talk of how “we” showed that other mob, we like to transfer dreams of power and affluence from the tall poppy to ourselves. “We could do that entrepreneurship ourselves if we really wanted to couldn’t we?”
As community members each of our households is required to pay a fee for dumping our rubbish in our local tips. This fee covers the costs of management, disposal and the retention of toxic runoff on site. Likewise industries wanting to dump their waste in landfill, and in some cases the ocean, are required to pay a fee.
Why then is getting our biggest polluters to pay for dumping their waste in the atmosphere such a difficult concept for us to accept? The simple answer is the big boys and girl want all of us to pay for their waste disposal and are prepared to spend a lot of money on buying political and media influence. Both of these groups set out to bamboozle us with misleading arguments and artful sophistry that suggests that such an impost on these demigods is an injustice equivalent to the crucifixion of Jesus. In fact we should be paying them some of our taxes to help them feel better about having to deal with emissions.
They are also able to enlist or buy the support of economically illiterate union leaders who are caught up in the mantra that a dumping levee will cost jobs. In some cases a union is given preferred access on a worksite because in this and many other matters its representatives are more compliant.
All of the above is understandable, after all Australian businesses are not known to be charitable or ecologically responsible, and they and our political parties have always preferred to have the community cater to their needs rather than the reverse.
What is difficult to understand is why so many in the community are lining up to support the polluters. Are Australian voters so irrational that they are not capable of understanding what is in their own best interest or is some other cause having them putting their hands in their pockets to pay for our billionaires waste management?
Air pollution costs us a fortune as it is causes more of us to die than car accidents as well as causing many to suffer from a chronic non fatal illness. In addition it poisons our waterways and our land, dropping agriculture yields by about four percent. Of course the costs of climate change in terms of lower rainfall in the South West of Australia and floods and cyclones in the North costs billions of dollars. Given the increasing loss of bio-diversity it could also end up wiping out the human race.
So come on Aussies come on, dip your hands in your pockets for Andrew and Gina and Clive. They need your help to resist the greedy government. Wouldn’t it be sad if they had to sell one of their holiday homes in Aspen or one or two of their Picasso’s? How could they be really important and iconic celebrities with such strictures placed on their lifestyles? We would all be diminished and embarrassed by such a circumstance.

Revisionism in the Land of the Parallel Universe

After listening to or reading what is called the news, have you found yourself questioning your memory and even your sanity? Have you had a strong feeling that what you read or heard this morning is wrong and your recollection was something entirely different. Perhaps an anti-thought like Dr Edward Teller’s anti-matter has popped into your brain from the parallel universe.

I am here to tell you that you are not alone. This phenomenon is shared by me and others. In fact in recent days on hearing the leader of the Australian opposition Tony Abbott speaking about the wonderful Liberal “Pacific Solution” for refugees, memories came flooding back to me from the parallel universe in which I had previously lived.

Tony Abbott spoke of a warm friendly and pacifying solution in which the Howard Government had set up an idyllic holiday camp on Nauru where refugees could recover after fleeing from conflicts involving mass murder and mass rapes. Unfortunately my recollection is rather more dark, sinister and brutal.
My memory insists that many refugees fled from a phony and illegal war in Iraq and another war fought in the wrong country for the wrong reason. In both wars Australia was a cheerful and dutiful participant. A third war was being fought in the old communist state of Yugoslavia and of course many stateless Palestinians violently driven from homes by the Israelis were seeking a new place to live. What all these conflicts had in common was that the principal victims were Muslims.

Like the European Jews who fled from Hitler these Muslim refugees were not welcomed and were treated with suspicion by Western Governments. Ministers from the Howard Government headed by the unconscionable Peter Reith told or rather lied to the Australian people that these awful refugees had thrown their children overboard in order to force their way into Australia. In the wake of September 11, it was also suggested that some might be terrorists carrying bombs. Such was the concern of the Howard Government for the well being of these war victims that when a Norwegian ship rescued a sinking boat full of refugees, Howard sent a group of commandos to commandeer the ship to prevent it returning them to the Australian mainland. I suppose it was his way of making them feel at home.

These refugees were a blessing for a Howard Government struggling in the polls and facing an election. Following the example of World War Two Germany, the Liberals looked around for scapegoat, enemies for the mighty John Howard to protect us from. In this atmosphere the Pacific Solution was born. Howard, Ruddock and Reith had a scapegoat and it was foreign, dark skinned and Muslim, so few votes would be lost in its implementation.
Overnight refugees became “illegal immigrants”. They were “flooding into our country” and they were “clogging up the courts” with their appeals. Unlike the asylum seekers who flew in by plane these “illegal boat people” were “queue jumping” security threats. “They could be carrying bombs”. Most importantly the principle issue was not the safety of these victims of war and instead the focus went on to the wicked “people smugglers” who were both a new scapegoat and a potent salve for the right wing conscience.

So how could the refugees be prevented from telling the true story to the Australian public? They must be separated. How could we prevent them from exercising their human rights in the courts and how could they be prevented from reaching Australia? Both could be achieved by interception offshore and landing them at first on islands that had been declared to be no longer part of Australia for the purpose of the Immigration Act. This was the real reason for offshore processing. It would mean no protection for refugees under Australian law.
These asylum seekers, including women and children, who were threatening our security would be put as far away as possible. The island of Nauru was perfect. This would remove them from public view and the scrutiny of the few journalists who can still tell the truth from a bucket of detritus and importantly, who were capable of writing their own words rather than quoting the spinmeisters.
There you have it: the successful Pacific solution. It worked perfectly after all. John Howard did win the election and a blueprint had been created to win future elections.

Here’s the recipe – lie and deceive resolutely; show your strength by vilifying, silencing and crushing a defenceless minority; divert the populace from the real debate.

As for the refugees, they suffered long term imprisonment and their children were mentally damaged. In the end though almost all of them were recognised as genuine refugees and became Australian citizens. The financial cost and the damage to our national psyche has been immense.
Did this really happen and are you pacified or are you horrified? Do you have these fleeting memories of a different time when you believed your government and the press? Does the truth mean more to you than being comfortably numb?
Welcome to the underworld.