SIEV X, national security, and the forthcoming Australian election – commentary by Tony Kevin, 27 September 2004

Twelve days out from Australia’s 11 October election, it’s safe to say that the question of how far the Howard Government may be criminally accountable for the killing of 353 people on SIEV X three years ago will not be an election issue. It seems that by tacit consent, all parties have agreed that this issue is simply too hot to handle for now.

More generally, Labor has not invoked the memory of the Howard Government’s cruel border protection behaviour three years ago. And the Government coalition this time round has not succeeded in running a national security scare campaign, except in the most tentative dog-whistle way – by using loaded phrases like "securing our nation’s future".

Labor’s campaign has itself been quite skilfully subliminal. The phrase "children overboard" has come to represent in code all those disturbing memories tucked away in the back of our minds, of multiple savageries and illegalities that marked the Howard Government’s treatment of helpless refugees and asylum-seekers; and also, of the Howard Government’s ruthless misuse of Australia’s professional military, police and public service institutions to service its own political ends. We may have only read recently about Mike Scrafton’s and John Howard’s phone conversations, but we actually are reminded of a lot more about the ugly context of how it was three years ago, when Howard shamed our nation’s best institutions .

Anyone who has by now read my book "A Certain Maritime Incident: the sinking of SIEV X" (Scribe), or has seen the brilliant Sydney-based play "CMI" (soon to have a repeat season in Sydney and Canberra), knows that the phrase "children overboard" embodies a larger and more distressing meaning, than its present narrow usage in formal public discourse.

"Children overboard" actually connotes the deaths by drowning at sea of a huge number of women and children, certainly in international waters where Australia had the main duty of care, and probably as a result of the murky people smuggling disruption program which the Howard Government had initiated in Indonesia two years earlier.

Australia’s mainstream political community of politicians and commentators have decided "not to go there", but most of them by now are well aware of the "there" where they have chosen not to go. And be assured that we will eventually go there.

Meanwhile, a political judgement has been made by all parties, by people whose job it is to know more about the Australian electorate than I do, that SIEV X is not part of the public political currency of this election.

 

So let’s broaden the context a little, and look at how national security – something that matters to all of us - is faring in this election ? When the chips are down, despite the shock of the Jakarta embassy street bombing and the Australian hostages in Iraq hoax., Mark Latham has not blinked once in this election campaign on national security. And for this reason, I believe Labor has already won the national security debate hands down.

Latham has faced down Howard and offered safer, saner policy alternatives on all the big issues of concern to thinking voters – US alliance diplomacy and the US FTA, regional policies, policies towards the UN global system , how to get Australian forces honourably out of Iraq, how sensibly to conduct the "war" on terror, intelligent ways to manage Australia’s border security.

Labor has been fortuitously helped by the series of unexpected public declarations in recent weeks from informed community groups seeking greater honesty and accountability in government. The Group of 43 retired diplomats and military (which I had the honour to join), now 400 academics, a group of doctors …. All of these statements have been more or less explicitly critical of Government misperformance in these important areas of national policy.

In all of these national security and foreign policy areas, Labor is now seen as offering voters more prudent, more orderly, and more compassionate alternatives than the Coalition. The Coalition by contrast is flailing around, coming across as inept, belligerent, and recklessly indifferent to human life.

Nothing better expresses this trend than the farcical history last week of the foolish Howard and Downer propositions and later clarifications over pre-emptive strikes against "terrorist bases" in our region (not on our neighbours’ governments, mind you – just on their territories). Gilbert and Sullivan could not have scripted Howard’s and Downer’s lines better. In the end, Downer’s lame final assertion, that he wouldn’t mind either if regional governments struck at what they thought might be terrorist bases on Australian soil, said it all. And Latham properly dismissed the whole thing for the nonsense that it was.

Despite all of big media’s best efforts to present the Howard Government as offering a serious and responsible case on national security and terrorism – I wonder, why do they go on doing this, when the facts to the contrary are staring them in the face ? - I believe Labor has already won the election debate on national security and associated policies.

Notice how little we are hearing now from the Government coalition about the war in Iraq? About Hicks and Habib ? About Al-Qaeda and Jamaah Islamiyah ? About the security benefits to Australia from the close Howard-Bush leadership alliance ? Because the coalition know that the electorate has had it up to here with their tawdry record on these issues.

Even aviation security, originally so potent an issue in stirring up public fear, has been blunted as a vote-winner – we’ve seen too many pictures by now of guards with sniffer dogs at airports, it’s become a commonplace. Most voters know now that the biggest risk when we fly in planes comes from our odd local nutters, not from Islamic terrorist cells. They have learned to recognise Government security beat-ups when they see them. They have declined to join Howard in his old man’s nightmares, and have sensibly got on with their lives. (I’ve spent a lot of time in Australian airports these last few weeks).

To the extent that voters do recognise that Australians face an increased risk from terrorism - and we do now, especially when we travel abroad – many of them also have worked out the truth: that it is Howard’s recklessly belligerent policies that have created this situation for us.

Just ask the independent candidate running against Alexander Downer in Mayo (SA), former magistrate Brian Deegan, what he thinks of the "gang of thugs" (his words, but I heartily concur) currently running our country’s security. Or ask the Greens candidate running against John Howard in Bennelong (NSW), former ADF officer and national security analyst Andrew Wilkie, what he thinks. Or ask former diplomat Bruce Haigh, running as an Independent against Nationals Party leader John Anderson in Gwydir (NSW).

Australians are not stupid – they know why terrorism is a bigger threat to Australians now than to New Zealanders or Canadians, countries that fully share our values. For one reason only - because of increasingly hostile international perceptions of Australia, as a result purely and simply of the Howard Government’s policies.

Most Australians understand this now, and it is the main reason why Howard has gone all quiet on national security in this election.

The main election ground now is where Latham always wanted it to be – on the economy, on health, on education, on job opportunity, on fairness in our society . Unlike the last election where Labor was forced to fight on Howard’s national security terrain, and finished up saying "Me, too" on too many of these issues, Howard is now being forced to fight on Labor’s preferred terrain – quality and decency of Australian governance.

This election is not Howard versus Howard Lite. It’s a real choice.

That is what the bidding war we are seeing these past four weeks is all about. Don’t be misled by the appearance of a competitive auction of cash bribes – we are in fact being offered different philosophies of social equity and opportunity.

The Labor platform is coherent and pro-active. The Liberal platform is opportunistic and reactive - a grab-bag of last-minute cobbled-together bribes to every sectional interest group, that the Coalition has belatedly decided they had better try to do something for.

Like offering tool-kits for apprentices. Or new school halls offered to state and independent schools, but only through local parent-school communities, not through the normal channels of state government education departments.

Think about the political implications of that latest one. The coalition is here telling voters not to trust the state governments which they have elected (as it happens, in all states) to spend public money – our taxpayer money – wisely on education. Howard is saying to voters here: you won’t see this extra money we are now offering to your local schools, unless you vote us back in. Only if you do, will this money then flow direct to your local school associations – not through your properly elected state governments.

Actually, this is more than just a bribe – it is blackmail. And think about what a fundamental attack on our federal-states system of government it is.

Why stop there? Let’s apply that same principle to health: we’ll give you new or better local hospitals but only if you vote us back in, and they will be run by local groups of our choice, not by the state governments you elected. Worried about crime? No sweat, we’ll pay to set up new local police forces for you, but they will be run by our Federal Police force, not by your local state police departments.

Forced by Latham to fight the election on domestic terrain, the Howard government is now desperately flailing around. And in the process, it is doing to our federal system of divided-tier governance responsibilities what is has done over the past six years to our national security and foreign and trade policy settings – driving trucks through it.

Just another set of reasons why this government has reached the end of its useful life. They really have to go.

 

We are off on holiday tomorrow, traveling north to the Bellingen Global Carnival. This website will resume publication after the election on 11 October, when I will progressively put up the texts of the memorable speeches that were made at my book launches in Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide by speakers Terry O’Gorman ( Chair, Australian Council for Civil Liberties), Senator Andrew Bartlett (Democrats, Queensland), Sister Veronica Brady, Senator Ruth Webber (Labor, WA) , and Brian Deegan. Also I will put up the full text of what Julian Burnside said at the launch in Melbourne in 2 August.

I hope also by that time finally to have from the BBC the text of what Senator George Brandis said about my SIEV X book on BBC World Service Radio "The World Today" on 24 August. The tape seems to be on a slow boat to China. But I have been assured by BBC that it has not been suppressed by BBC, and that I will get to hear it eventually.

 

I’ll save the best for last – Mrs. Janette Howard telling us all in last weekend’s Sunday papers that her husband John did not lie about children overboard. When all else fails in Australian politics, let’s wheel out the little wife!

 

Happy Election Day – may the best man win on 11 October. And make your Senate votes count – we need a strong Senate.

 

Tony Kevin, Canberra, 27 September 2004