Qu(ot)e?

It's time for an Australian Enlightenment, where once again reason and facts prevail over mysticism and ignorance...

An Australian Enlightenment would restore ideas to the place they have occupied over the last 5cm of the football field...

Craig Emerson, Minister for Small Business, in The National Rupert Daily.

But Would You Buy a Used Car From This Man?

A FORMER male model who ran an illegal steroid and human growth hormone business now realised he could make more money as a legitimate Gold Coast real estate agent, a court was told yesterday.

Brendan James Brophy, 28, pleaded guilty to 13 offences including importing and trafficking a variety of banned substances from his Ashmore home base from July, 2006, to March, 2007. He was sentenced to two years and six months' jail...

His defence lawyers tendered documents showing Brophy, a high achiever at school, was a promising model and keen gym goer before his arrest.

The court was told that after being caught Brophy became a successful real estate agent at Broadbeach.

Justice John Byrne ordered Brophy to serve six months of the sentence before being released.

(Gold Coast Bulletin)

Greer Nails It

Last night's Lateline included a report on Germaine Greer's latest essay on Aboriginal men, and an interview with Greer herself. Greer was on song throughout the interview - interviewer Leigh Sales wasn't, right from the start:

LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: And with me in the studio now is Professor Germaine Greer. Thank you for coming in. What I would like to do is take you through points raised in [the story we just aired] so we could hear your responses. But if I could start more generally, for people who have not read your book, what is your central objection to the Federal intervention?

PROFESSOR GERMAINE GREER, ACADEMIC AND AUTHOR: [My book] is not about the Federal intervention. It is about rage, it's an essay on rage itself. It begins with a white example of somebody who feels his people have been unfairly discriminated against by government policy... (my emphasis)

If you missed it last night because the household remote control hog couldn't bear to miss the Olympic Pole Dancing, Thai Ping-Pong Ball Target Shooting or whatever it was that Channel Seven was showing, it's worth catching up on the interview at the Lateline web-site.

A few more great moments:

LEIGH SALES: If I can look at some of the points raised in the package and have you respond to them. You write that Aboriginal women humiliated their men by seeking the white fellas help in the intervention.

PROFESSOR GERMAINE GREER: Hang on a minute. That is not how it's put...

LEIGH SALES: Alright, let's talk again about something they would like you to respond to. In that package that we [just] saw, both Des Rogers and Judy Atkinson, while they agreed with some of your views, disagreed with you that Aborigines can't overcome the trauma of history. By saying.

PROFESSOR GERMAINE GREER: I never said that I don't know why they thought I did. But I don't know who spoke to them or what they said I said...

LEIGH SALES: Well again the quote is that 'rage is the inevitable consequence of a series of devastating blows inflicted on a victim who is utterly powerless to resist'. You are suggesting that Aborigines are powerless to resist this rage that engulfs them?

PROFESSOR GERMAINE GREER: No, it's their powerless to resist us...

LEIGH SALES: But at what point do you say, yes, I have suffered victimisation but I will not allow that to make me a victim?

PROFESSOR GERMAINE GREER: Isn't it curious thing [- I] write about the pathology of rage in this situation and it's suddenly turns into a conversation about whether or not these people can get over it. What I am saying is they can't get over it and it's inhuman to ask them to get over it. It has to be recognised that they have undergone a series of the most appalling outrages and abuses...

Update: I've just sat through the whole of Tony Jones's Q & A for the first time ever. Kudos to the floor manager who seated Germaine next to Julie Bishop. Pure genius!

Sick of It

I spent a few minutes watching kiddie-pawn on Saturday night. Not on the computer - on the television in the lounge. I was a doped out on panadol and temazepam (for post-dentistry pain and agitation), surfing the free-to-air: sports news on 2, ad break on 7, ad break on 9, ad break on 10, world news on SBS, who knows what on 31, AV blue screen, sports news on 2, ad break on 7, Australia's Funniest Home Videos on 9 - just in time for the last montage of funny videos, every one of them featuring a toddler in the nuddy. Toddler in the nuddy pushes a lawnmower, toddler in the nuddy gets tipped on her arse when the wind blows her inflatable paddle pool over, toddler in the nuddy eviscerates the neighbour's cat with dad's chain saw - that sort of thing.

The producers of the show are clearly aware that images of nekked infants of are a potential turn on for some sexual deviants - a discrete blur was placed over any exposed genitalia. But there were still plenty of perky, smooth baby buttocks on parade; and the whole set up stinks of child exploitation.

Firstly, it's impossible that any of the toddlers in these videos consented to the nude filming. What toddler would have the nous to say 'no way' to being filmed naked so that later in life, when the time came to introduce her fiancé to the family, Dad could embarrass her by bringing out that DVD of the time she went arse over tit while playing Lady Godiva on her rocking horse? Only one born with a prodigious natural talent for legal negotiation.

We can be equally certain that the toddlers in these film clips didn't have any say in whether the videos would be sent to one of the Funniest Home Videos national franchises for possible broadcast. No way. When Little Leather Face's old man put the video tape in the post, he wasn't thinking of the effect that broadcasting his kid's exploits with the chain saw would have on his future, he was thinking about his chances of winning at least the weekly prize, if not the grand end of season prize.

Nonetheless, the show has redeeming social importance - it makes people laugh. At least those in the studio audience. So it's comedy and, therefore, entertainment. Definitely not art, or worse yet, 'Art'. Which is why Hetty and Kevvie and Brendon and Andy won't be getting on their high horses about 'child protection'. The kids in these videos will be left alone to get on with being kids, their parents will be left alone to get on with being the weird kind of parents who think there's something funny about nekkid toddlers giving themselves head injuries and the network execs will be left alone to get on with being network execs and broadcasting this guff.

Of course it would be an entirely different story if you put it in an art gallery and called it a video installation.

A Bed-Time Prayer

'Defending the Family' by Outing teh Sinful and teh Gay

Professor Alastair Nicholson, Former Chief Justice of the Family Court, has written to the federal Attorney General, Robert McClelland, advocating that the services of the Family Court be extended to gay couples:

On the eve of moves to end discrimination against gay couples across a range of federal laws, former Family Court chief justice Alastair Nicholson has written to federal Attorney-General Robert McClelland to urge a further shift in family law.

The reform would give gay couples access to the cheaper specialist court and its mediators — instead of being forced to spend tens of thousands of dollars to resolve disputes in the Supreme Court.

Under current laws, de facto heterosexual couples are also denied access to the Family Court. In the letter, obtained by The Age, Professor Nicholson argues the reform would ensure more cases are settled at mediation without trial. (Misha Schubert in The Age)

The Sydney Morning Herald carries a slightly different version of Schubert's report, obviously obtained from the same wire service that syndicated it to The National Rupert and other Murdoch organs:

Gay couples who are separating should be allowed access to the Family Court to settle property disputes, the court's former chief justice has urged.

In a letter to federal Attorney-General Robert McClelland, former Family Court chief justice Alastair Nicholson said Family Court protection should be extended beyond married couples, Fairfax newspapers reported on Thursday.

It seems safe to infer that Professor Nicholson isn't just calling for the extension of Family Court services to same sex couples - he wants the services extended to cover straight de facto relationships too.

Because Professor Nicholson isn't a journalist, but a former judge turned academic and hence not up to the task of producing lucid writing for the Age readership, because his proposals aren't particularly newsworthy in their own right but mostly because it's not enough to just report these things, you have to get a range of reactions for and against, Schubert has done the usual ring around, canvassing the opinions of Australian Coalition for Equality spokesman Rodney Croome, Australian Christian Lobby chief Jim Wallace and Gary Singer, the deputy Lord Mayor of Melbourne.

The reason Gary Singer was included in the ring around is that right now he's in the middle of a Supreme Court dispute after a break up with his gay partner. Apparently it's a 'high profile court battle' so now I shall have to dive into Google News to catch up on it - I've obviously been skipping some key pages of my morning paper over the past few weeks. Singer is in favour of Professor Nicholson's proposal:

"One of the problems with being under state law is that your file is open to the public so anyone can access your file and read the affidavits and material in your file," he said. "When people break up, they say nasty things about each other — that exposure doesn't happen to other people."

Whoops. I think I've just picked up a bit of a complicity problem there.

Jim Wallace, as you might expect, is against the extension of Family Court services to same-sex couples:

Australian Christian Lobby chief Jim Wallace said he had strong concerns about giving Family Court access to gay couples without children because it undermined the traditional model of family. But he said there was a case for gay couples with children to have access to the specialist court to ensure the best interests of the child were protected.

Somehow, by the time the syndicated version of Schubert's report hit The National Rupert Wallace's views had moderated a little:

But Australian Christian Lobby chief Jim Wallace said while giving Family Court access to gay couples without children undermined the traditional family model, those with children had a case for Family Court access to ensure the best interests of their children were protected.

It will be interesting to see whether Wallace moderates his position any further, or whether this was merely a temporary lapse and he'll go on to insist that far from having access to the Family Court, those who live in sinful unconsecrated unions and really sinful unions with members of their own sex will just have to go on taking their chances with washing their dirty laundry in the public forums of the Sate courts.

Another Day, Another Bleg

I've been futzing around with ABS Census data for the past week or so, trying to get together a belated submission to the Senate Inquiry into Housing Affordability. The data I've been using has come from published Census tables listed on this page at the ABS web-site.

The first question I've looked at, from data in this ABS table is the numbers of dwellings in three categories: rented, being purchased and owned outright. I've aggregated the data (ignoring whether the dwellings were separate houses, terraces and units etc) in the table below.

Total Numbers of Dwellings by Tenure Type, 1996, 2001 and 2006 censuses, Australia wide

Census Year	Tenure Type	Total Dwellings	Percent
1996	Being purchased	1,656,062	27%
	Rented	1,865,961	30%
	Total	3,522,023	57%
	Fully owned	2,657,971	43%
2001	Being purchased	1,872,132	28%
	Rented	1,953,095	29%
	Total	3,825,227	58%
	Fully owned	2,810,917	42%
2006	Rented	2,063,945	30%
	Being purchased	2,448,211	35%
	Total	4,512,156	65%
	Fully owned	2,478,265	35%

(Note: the data in each year is sorted by the total number of dwellings in each category.)

There's an interesting change between the 2001 ands 2006 censuses: the statistical minority of households in fully owned dwellings fell from 42% to 35% of all households, so that there was a roughly equal split between renters, mortgagors (home buyers if you prefer) and home owners. The issue of housing affordability of renters isn't being addressed by the Senate inquiry - its terms of reference are limited to issues affecting mortgagors and would be mortgagors and looking for ways to bag the states.

The next step I wanted to take, before disaggregating the data into dwelling types was to look at the total numbers of individuals living in rented, mortgaged and fully owned dwellings, with a later disaggregation according to household type (single individuals, families and group households). The reason for that last is to look at ways in which individuals might be accomodating themselves to what, properly described, is a housing shortage: are we seeing the formation of more group households, for example?

As usual when I take on the ABS web-site, I've found myself a bit stumped, so if anyone can point me to data series that I should be looking at, please let me know.

Strange Bedfellows

Senator Andrew Bartlett, one of the star bloggers in my Missing Link portfolio, or case-load, or whatever the hell you want to call it, has been having a little trouble with political allies lately. Twice last week he was embarrassed to find himself agreeing with long-standing opponents or adversaries. First it was Greg Sheridan, then it was Peter Slipper.

After reading this report in Saturday's The Age on Julia Gillard's latest proposals for education reform, I find myself in the unpleasant position of agreeing - at least in part - with education warrior Kevin Donnelly. I suppose it's some consolation that I don't find myself agreeing with Andrew Bolt who has endorsed Gillard's push for parents to get details on school performance. I'm agin it.

The sticking point, for me, is in this section of the story:

The [Federal] Government plans to publish the annual results of individual primary and secondary schools on national literacy and numeracy tests, which begin next month, for students in grades 3, 5, 7 and 9.

It will also talk to the states about measuring how schools "add value" to students, and is keen for a reporting system that reflects the challenges faced by each school, for instance through socioeconomic data, or trends between similar schools. (emphasis added)

Excuse me, but what planet are we on here? What sort of education policy aims to "add value" to school students? Aren't they valuable enough already, as people in their own right? That's why I'm in uncomfortable agreement with Kevin Donnelly right now - because in this piece, about the 2020 summit briefing paper Education, Skills and the Productivity Agenda he's right on the money:

The first mistake is to define education in terms of its economic and utilitarian value.

Education, instead of being dealt with in its own right, is valued for its ability to contribute to “prosperity, productivity and global competitiveness”, completely ignoring the cultural role of learning...

I suppose it's some consolation that after that point Donnelly pretty much drops the money again and by the end of the piece he's implying that the purpose of education is to preserve culture by storing it in students' brains ("And the fundamental question of the purpose of education in an age when many of the young are disengaged and culturally illiterate is not on the agenda."). But that's not that much consolation. When we have the Federal Minister for Education talking about schools "value adding" to students its pretty clear who's captured the education debate and where the debate's headed.

Who benefits when students are treated as commodities and education is about "value adding"? Not the hapless bloody students, that's for sure.

News Limited Eats One of Its Own

Robyn Wuth is a columnist at The Gold Coast Bulletin, one of News Limited's provincial papers. Today she scored a spot in the Brisbane Courier Mail, with an open letter to Queensland Premier, Anna Bligh. Headlined "Robyn appeals to the Premier" the open letter is actually a hectoring list of incoherent demands.

Before we look at the letter, it's worth taking a look at Wuth's previous form as a journalist. Our first source will be this Conference paper, "Journalists Trying to Make a Quid, Politicians Seeking Re-election and Tightrope-walking Judges: Three-ring circus or democracy in action?" by Justice Margaret McMurdo, President of the Court of Appeal of the Supreme Court of Queensland. It was presented at the ANU National Institute of Social Sciences & Law conference on confidence in the courts in February 2007.

In the paper, Justice Margaret McMurdo describes a little brou-ha-ha that resulted from a judgement made by Justice Philip McMurdo in the case of Attorney-General for the State of Queensland v Sutherland. Sutherland had served the full term of a 20 year prison sentence for crimes including manslaughter and rape. The Queensland Attorney-General wanted Sutherland kept in prison under a continuing detention order. The full 16 page judgement in is available here (PDF); it was published on September 27, 2006.

On October 6, The Gold Coast Bulletin published as its page 1 story Psycho killer next door by Robyn Wuth:

A sexually sadistic psychopath who police say is one of the most dangerous offenders ever to be released on the Gold Coast is now living in a house, pictured above, next door to a children's playground at Nerang.

... Shocked local residents have reacted with anger at the revelation the convicted killer had moved into their area without them being warned. Sutherland was convicted of the 1987 strangulation death in Bundaberg of 47 year old Paula Peters, which he said was the result of a bondage sex act gone wrong...

... A warning issued to the Gold Coast police and leaked to The Gold Coast Bulletin describes
Sutherland as a serious danger to the community (as quoted by Justice McMurdo)

Inside the paper, Wuth's report continued, under the headline "Fury at psycho killers release":

A killer diagnosed as a 'sexually sadistic psychopath' who the Government believes is so dangerous he should never be released is living at Nerang next to a children's playground.

Paul Vincent Sutherland ... is now living unsupervised in a modest three-bedroom brick home
on Nerang-Beaudesert Road.

... Shocked neighbours and nearby residents were horrified to learn a convicted killer was their new neighbour. One nearby resident who has young children burst into tears when told how close she lived to the killer. (as quoted by Justice McMurdo, emphasis added)

Right now I'm wondering who told that mother of young children about Sutherland, to elicit that tearful response. Any suggestion that it was Wuth herself would be pointless speculation - no competent tabloid journalist, whether they worked in print, radio or television, would forego the opportunity to pass on such distressing news and report the reaction.

The outcome of Wuth's report was a political controversy which drew in Acting Premier Anna Bligh. On October 7, the Gold Coast Bulletin reported, under the headline "'Terror Next Door – Nerang breathes easy after killer taken away", that Sutherland had been moved out of Nerang. In that article, Wuth and a colleague, J Gibbons, got stuck into the judge responsible for his release:

Residents were outraged Sutherland had been allowed to move into the suburb and blamed Justice Margaret McMurdo, the judge who refused the State Government appeal to keep Sutherland behind bars and granted his freedom.

Despite acknowledging Sutherland was 'more likely to reoffend', Justice McMurdo decided his release was an 'acceptable risk' to the Nerang community, while she lived safely in an exclusive inner-Brisbane suburb in her secure $2 million mansion.

The later report includes interviews with outraged local worthies: once again, routine stuff for a competent tabloid journalist in any medium. For the rest of the story, I suggest you look at Justice McMurdo's conference paper. A google search for more recent news of Sutherland turns up little dating beyond that paper - a clear case of no news is no news - good or bad. For the time being, Sutherland isn't sensation fodder.

Some of Wuth's recent op-ed columns are archived at The Gold Coast Bulletin. They make interesting reading - individually incoherent and rambling, as a whole collection capricious and inconsistent. On February 16th, Wuth had this to say about Kevin Rudd's apology to the stolen generation:

... It's insincere, it solves nothing but it was a lovely photo opportunity.

We said it to make you feel better ... did it work?

...

To be honest, I'm sick of all this namby-pamby boo-hooing about bloody saying sorry.

...

For every Aboriginal child who was stolen, another was saved, some were given a chance to change their lives.

It's a shame they refused to take it.

...

But I have to say sorry.

Sorry for giving you free medical care, for giving you money, for building you homes which you vandalised and destroyed and treated with contempt and we paid to fix.

Sorry for developing large farms and properties, which today feed your people.

Sorry for providing you with warm clothing made of fabric to replace the animal skins you used before.

Sorry for building roads and railway tracks between cities and building cars so that you no longer have to walk over harsh terrain.

The fact is, we won.

All right?

We came in and we killed lots of them and we took their land and we're not giving it back, unless the High Court makes us and then, frankly, the High Court will have to go.

Then on April 4, she had this to say about the Northern Territory intervention:

IT'S Australian apartheid. I hate to say I told you so ... who am I kidding? I love to say I told you so.

I've made up a special dance which I'm doing right now.

Remember when Kevin Rudd said 'I'm sorry'?

In a column that inspired a tirade, I said it was 'insincere'.

Well, I told you so.

While Kevin Rudd said sorry before the cameras and posed for the lovely pictures and puffed out his chest and preened like a proud little pigeon, behind the scenes it was a completely different story.

The Labor Government, in its wisdom, has wound back any attempt to open up the Aboriginal territories to all-comers and reinstated the permit system to ensure all communities remain closed. A better word? Hidden.

That means these communities can become taboo territory rife with sexual abuse, alcoholism and violence -- completely closed to normal scrutiny.

...

The bottom line is we -- all Australians -- are not allowed to go a part of our own country without permission. This is similar to the system once used in South Africa. My colleague Ken Vernon, who spent 25 years reporting on apartheid South Africa, says the same type of permit system applied to the black 'homelands' created under apartheid, with the same result.

"The black homelands became cesspools of crime, corruption and nepotism, exempt from the prying eyes of journalists, where local leaders became virtual dictators whose word was law."

Sound familiar? Is that what we want to happen here? Is that the image we want to send to the world -- Australia, the new pariah state?

As I said, incoherent and inconsistent. The only thing the two columns have in common is their ranting, self-righteous tone.

On Saturday, 29 March, Robyn Wuth's cousin, Carmel Wuth, was raped and killed by Maurizo Perini, a resident of the same aged-care facility as Ms Wuth. The Queensland Opposition is already demanding an inquiry into the killing, and how a "psycho" came to be living in an aged care facility. And that's not all they're demanding:

Opposition Leader Lawrence Springborg demanded Perini be tried in the courts rather than "disappear" into Queensland's mental health system.

Robyn Wuth is making similar demands in her open letter to Anna Bligh:

If mental illness is a defence and the accused person never faces trial, I am supposed simply to contain my rage.

I am supposed to respect his privacy. I want this man to have a fair trial, to have his day in court and for justice to be served.

I watch closely as it unfolds. A man has been charged, but what are the chances he will ever face trial? I suspect none. Already, the accused has been ordered by the courts to undergo an advanced mental health assessment in a secure facility in a Brisbane hospital.

And so it begins.

What begins is the process which might see Perini '"disappear" into Queensland's mental health system; if the courts find that Perini is unfit to plead, there obviously won't be a trial. That's a painful result for the Wuth family, but one that can't be avoided if the law is to be fair to both Carmel Wuth's family and to Maurizo Perini. Of course that's much easier for me to say from a considerable geographic distance and the position of someone who isn't personally acquainted with the Wuth family.

Human decency - of the kind Wuth and her peers expect, even demand, of their readers - dictates that we feel sorrow for Carmel Wuth and the Wuth family and outrage on their behalf. I'm having a bit of trouble with that right now, thanks to The Gold Coast Bulletin's latest article on the Carmel Wuth murder "Elderly in dark as psychos move in", by Kathleen Donaghy:

RETIREES and the elderly are moving into unregulated aged hostels and retirement villages with no idea they could be living next to somebody who is mentally ill.

The dire lack of supported accommodation on the Gold Coast has forced people with mental health problems into homes with the old and frail, sometimes with devastating consequences, according to carers and mental health advocates.

At the same time, no laws exist to prevent ordinary hostels from using 'retirement' or 'aged' in their names.

The controversy surrounding aged accommodation has come to a head after the horrific killing of Carmel Wuth, 77, who had been living in the Trinity Gardens Retirement Hostel, which is open to all ages.

What is the The Gold Coast Bulletin agitating for this time, besides a day in court for Maurizo Perini, fit to plead or not. You can get some idea from Wuth's open letter:

How can I put my faith in a system that placed a strong 36-year-old man in a retirement village, among the elderly in the first place?

A system that prefers to shove the mentally ill out the door and into the community.

A system that closed the asylums years ago.

A system that ludicrously relies on the mentally ill to self-medicate, without proper supervision and support...

Time and time again we see cases where the mentally ill are involved in horrendous crimes of violence.

This is an ignorant, fearful view of mental illness - Robyn Wuth wants all the loonies locked up in asylums where they belong, so that, in future, the aged in nursing homes and young mothers in suburbia, need never be upset by a tabloid journalist asking "How do you feel knowing that your next door neighbour is a psycho?" Never mind that in most cases of mental illness, the people who are at most risk of harm are the patients themselves, who might top themselves, or harm themselves in other ways, if unmedicated.

Towards the end of her open letter, Wuth declares:

All these years, I have interviewed so many people whose lives have been touched by tragedy.

For the first time in my life, I understand.

You'd have to have a heart of stone and a head of balsa to read that without smiling at the irony of a sensation-monger feeding herself into the sensation-mill.

Postscript: I think I'll treat myself to a hiatus now. Comments are disabled so that:

• Anyone who wants to slag me off for being callous and ghoulish has to do it elsewhere, where I don't have to read them;


• I don't have to spend a lot of time deleting defamatory comments about Robyn Wuth, The Gold Coast Bulletin or any other person or organisation mentioned in this post.

When Is a Shortage not a Shortage?

When it's an "affordability crisis" of course.

After I'd looked over my selections for Missing Link today, I made the mistake of re-reading this one, and following the link to the web page of the Senate Select Committee on Housing Affordability in Australia. Then I got really stupid and looked at the committes's terms of reference:

That a select committee, to be known as the Select Committee on Housing Affordability in Australia be established to inquire into and report upon:

The barriers to home ownership in Australia, including:
a. the taxes and levies imposed by state and territory governments;
b. the rate of release of new land by state and territory governments;
c. proposed assistance for first home owners by state, territory and the Commonwealth governments and their effectiveness in the absence of increased supply;
d. the role of all levels of government in facilitating affordable home ownership;
e. the effect on the market of government intervention in the housing sector including planning and industrial relations laws;
f. the role of financial institutions in home lending; and
g. the contribution of home ownership to retirement incomes.

After reading that, I decided that I was a lot less revved up to do write up a submission to the inquiry, because the committee is basically wasting its time and I see no good reason to sacrifice any of my time on such a pointless exercise.

Calling the current state of the housing market in Australia a " housing affordability crisis" is like calling a doubling of the price of caviar in Manhattan (caused let's imagine, by a sudden die-back in Black Sea sturgeon populations) a "caviar affordability crisis*". What we have is a housing shortage, in both rental housing and mortgaged housing.

Calling the housing shortage an "affordability crisis" is simply a way of avoiding this unpleasant fact. I have very low expectations of a committee whose terms of reference avoid the real issue with a euphemism. And when those same terms of reference refer explicitly to "barriers to home ownership" it's pretty clear that the fix is in. The committee's job is to come up with a package of "reform proposals" that will appeal to "working families" without putting any of the major corporate players in the housing market off-side.

(I'll stop there if you don't mind. Enjoyable as this recent prolific posting over a wide range of topics has been, it's not a good sign when too many ideas come too easily. There'll be plenty of time for more later.)

* I could have done a whole post riffing on that concept, but April Fool's day is over. Another opportunity missed!

The Law - not a Complete Ass After All?

The case of Thomas Towle, recently convicted of six counts of dangerous driving causing death and four of dangerous driving causing injury is back in the news, with today's Age carrying reports on the sentencing and reactions to it. The Age also provides a link to this transcript of Justice Philip Cummins' sentencing remarks.

True to previous form - when the Towle jury found him not guilty of the more serious charge of culpable driving - The Age has focussed its coverage on the grief of the families of Towles' victims, pitching the story as human interest. It's not alone - a Google News search turns up plenty of reports on the Towle case, from both our major newsprint suppliers.

I don't intend to discuss any of these reports in this post - I'll be sticking to the transcript of the sentencing. The media spin on the story is familiar - it's an obvious outrage, a scandal to society and so on and so forth. And to help convince us of that, once again, the grief of the families of Towle's victims is to be made a public spectacle. None dare call this exploitation because it's being done by the most reputable of journalists, with the consent and participation of the families themselves. It's all in the public interest, too. That's why the case is getting so much coverage; it's got nothing to do with advancing careers or boosting circulation, or audience share, and hence advertising revenue at all.

Cummins J begins his sentencing with this simple statement:

1 This is a most tragic case.

That's where you would stop if you were looking to verbal Cummins J to depict him as an unfit judge, out of touch with community standards like all too many of our judiciary, because in his next remarks he makes it very clear where he believes the responsibility - the blame if you insist - for this tragedy lies:

2 Six loving and loved children, on the threshold of adulthood and with their lives before them, have had their lives taken from them. Their grieving families have been left distraught and devastated. Four more children have been seriously injured and will always bear the trauma inflicted upon them, as will their families also. A whole cohort of good young persons have been traumatised and afflicted. All because of your criminal and dangerous driving, Mr Towle. (emphasis added)

After reviewing the facts of the case, the judge delivers a few remarks that might indicate a slight difference of opinion between judge and jury on the culpable driving charge:

12 A most serious element of your criminal driving was not physical but psychological: you knew that there were, or were likely to be, numerous children in the area of the party house. You knew that they were, or were likely to be, a couple of kilometres (1.8 kilometres in fact) along Myall Street going east from your brother’s house, because you had just traversed it going west. You knew they were, or were likely to be, not far from the two curves in Myall Street, because you had just been there. You had just been reminded of it by your younger brother. Your knowledge that there were, or were likely to be, numerous persons in the relevant area is an especially egregious element of your dangerous driving, Mr Towle.

13 This is not a case of unexpected circumstances. This is not a case of a momentary lapse of attention. This is a case of multi-faceted lack of attention at high speed at night and with knowledge of risk. And with terrible consequences.

14 The jury found you not guilty on all counts of culpable driving causing death (counts 1–6)[2] and of negligent driving causing serious injury (counts 7-10)[3], as well as the other counts, and found you guilty on the alternative counts to counts 1-10, namely dangerous driving causing death or serious injury.[4] It is for those dangerous driving offences that you are to be sentenced, Mr Towle. It is essential that the sentences, and the facts found in sentencing, are consistent with and faithful to the jury’s verdicts. The proper construction of the jury’s verdicts, in my view, is not that the jury were not satisfied of the constituent driving elements alleged of speed, inattention and knowledge, but that the jury characterised that driving – not the consequences, but the driving – not as gross criminal negligence[5], but as dangerous. I proceed on that basis. (emphasis added)

When Justice Cummins turns to the principles of sentencing that he will apply to the case (starting at section 20), he gives the impression that he's scraping around for enough bricks to make up at least a decent fraction of a ton:

23 By operation of law, those sentences are to be served concurrently unless I order otherwise. Therefore I turn to the question of cumulation of these sentences.

...

25 ...There is no principle of law or of logic which requires that in the case of multiple offences arising from the one course of conduct, the total sentence must be no more than the maximum legislative penalty for one of them. To require that the total be no more than the maximum for one would indeed reduce human victims to mere numbers; or, in the words of the illustrious President in DPP v Solomon, to a “meaningless statistic”. Neither parliament nor the courts so reduce people...

The rest of the judgement consists largely of Justice Cummins' reasons for arriving at a final sentence (with cumulation for some of the offences) of 10 years imprisonment with a minimum of 7 years before parole. The question of whether this might be overturned on appeal I leave to the law bloggers.

Word of the Day: Kirpan

The kirpan is one of five items of faith which are worn at all times by orthodox Sikhs. We'd call it a ceremonial dagger. It's worn (or carried) as a symbol and the Sikh religion prohibits its use in anger or malice.

Today's Rupertian reports that the Education and Training Committee of the Victorian Parliament has recommended...

... that schools should work with the Sikh community to allow male students to carry a kirpan - a small, curved ornamental steel dagger carried by all initiated Sikh men.

The Committee also recommends that female Muslim students should be allowed to wear the hijab at school.

Under Victoria's Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities, it's unlikely that the committee could have recommended otherwise - one of the rights protected by the Charter is "freedom of thought, conscience, religion and belief". Since, for some Sikhs, carrying the kirpan is integral to the practice of their religion, a blanket ban on kirpans in schools would be a denial of this freedom.

Brian Burgess, head of the Victorian Association of State Secondary School Principals reckons the committee got it wrong on this issue (so do a couple of bloggers, which is how I picked it up) and it may be that there are one or two school principals,m and school councils out there who share Burgess' fears of what a kirpan armed Sikh student might do in response to one playground taunt too many, or what might happen if the kirpan falls into the hands of another student.

Expect a pointless controversy over this committee reccommendation; that's what happened in Canada when a Sikh student accidentally dropped his kirpan in the playground, in 2001. The result was a dispute that dragged out until March 2006, when Canada's Supreme Court ruled 8-0 that:

a total ban of the kirpan in schools violates the Charter of Rights because it infringes on the Charter’s guarantees of religious freedom. But it does allow school boards to impose some restrictions on the carrying of kirpans to ensure public safety. (CBC News, March 2, 2006)

In fact, such a solution had been proposed, adopted, and then withdrawn earlier in the Canadian case:

Quebec Superior Court Justice Danielle Grenier rules that because the kirpan is an integral part of his religious beliefs, Gurbaj can wear a real one to school as long as he follows several conditions. The kirpan must be sheathed in a wooden case, wrapped in heavy fabric and worn under his clothes. The belt holding the kirpan must also be sewn into his clothing. The judge calls these conditions a reasonable accommodation of Gurbaj’s religious freedoms and the need for public safety. The school board, backed by Quebec PQ government at the time, appeals. (as above)

You'd think that with such stringent safety precautions, and the Supreme Court ruling that would be the end of the matter. Not for some of Canada's bureaucrats:

Quebec's biggest school board is successfully accommodating the religious and cultural differences of its diverse student population — unless a student wants to wear a ceremonial dagger or a face-covering niqab, the head of the board told the Bouchard-Taylor commission Tuesday.

These are simply not allowed, the chair of the Commission Scolaire de Montréal, Diane de Courcy, told the Quebec commission on reasonable accommodation of ethnic and religious minorities, which returned to Montreal Monday for its final hearings. ((CBC News, November 27, 2007)

It would be pleasant to think that we could avoid imitating the Canadians on this issue and following them down the same weary road to obstinate idiocy; but I'm nowhere near that much of an optimist.

(Cross-posted at Larvatus Prodeo in Exile)

Our Official Values

According to the DIAC booklet Becoming an Australian Citizen, these are the main values that matter in Australia. The ones that matter enough to be included in the Citizenship test that was introduced earlier this year by He Who Is Occasionally Giving Brendan Nelson Friendly Advice on How to Run the Liberal Party:

Values which are important in modern Australia include:

• respect for the equal worth, dignity and freedom of the individual


• freedom of speech


• freedom of religion and secular government


• freedom of association


• support for parliamentary democracy and the rule of law


• equality under the law


• equality of men and women


• equality of opportunity


• peacefulness


• tolerance, mutual respect and compassion for those in need.

It's no great mental exercise to run through the list, take a look at the previous Government's actions and a lot of the attitudes expressed in posts and comments on blogs and conclude that none of these ten values is particularly important in Australia at all. I could easily get a quick post about the rank hypocrisy of testing would-be citizens for a willingness to uphold these lofty values when the government routinely flouts them and a lot of the existing citizenry treat them with disdain.

It's more interesting - and more in the new spirit of "slow politics" to take a look at where this declaration of our official values came from. Let's start with the Australian Citizenship Act 2007, which created the citizenship test:

AUSTRALIAN CITIZENSHIP ACT 2007 - SECT 21
Application and eligibility for citizenship

...
General eligibility

(2) A person is eligible to become an Australian citizen if the Minister is satisfied that the person:

...

(d) understands the nature of an application under subsection (1); and

(e) possesses a basic knowledge of the English language; and

(f) has an adequate knowledge of Australia and of the responsibilities and privileges of Australian citizenship; and

...

(2A) Paragraphs (2)(d), (e) and (f) are taken to be satisfied if and only if the Minister is satisfied that the person has, before making the application:

(a) sat a test approved in a determination under section 23A; and

(b) successfully completed that test (worked out in accordance with that determination).

...

SECT 23A

Citizenship test

(1) The Minister must, by written determination, approve a test for the purposes of subsection 21(2A) (about general eligibility for citizenship).

Note: The test must be related to the eligibility criteria referred to in paragraphs 21(2)(d), (e) and (f).

Successful completion of the test

(2) A determination under subsection (1) must specify what amounts to successful completion of the test.

In short, it is up to the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship to decide what goes into the citizenship test, and what rates as a passing score. So DIAC's list of official Aussie values originated from the desk of Kevin Andrews. Obviously, Andrews didn't compile the list, or devise the test himself - that's what flunkies and bureaucrats are for - but it was his signed approval that made the test legally valid.

So our official Australian values are what the last Minister for Immigration and Citizenship decided they should be; but, interestingly enough, there's nothing in the Australian Citizenship Act 2007, to prevent the current Minister, Christopher Evans (no doubt at the behest of Kevin Rudd) from getting his flunkies, and the bureaucrats who devised the Andrews test, to come up with a new test, more in line with the ideology of the Australian Riff-Raff Party.

It gives a whole new meaning to the saying "when you change the government, you change the country" doesn't it? The obviously sensible solution to this problem - and if you don't think it's a problem, you've got talc between your ears - is to reform the 2007 Act. Alternatively, we could roll things back to its predecessor - the Citizenship Act 1948, while we all have a good long think about whether we want a set of official Aussie values in the first place, and how to get them expressed in law if we do.

(Cross-posted at Larvatus Prodeo in Exile)

Slow Politics - It's the New Zeitgeist

... Let me make this point, Virginia, when you have a change of government, by this stage shouldn't you have had the announcement shock horror, Budget secretly in deficit, books cooked?

You know what's amazed me? Just the quietness of this week. There's been no revelations about the Budget...

Let me tell you when I was elected, the Monday afterwards, what had supposedly been a Budget surplus was $10 billion in deficit and the thing that amazes me about Labor is you know, all the equanimity around the place.

No hidden skeletons, no hidden shocks.
(Peter Costello on Lateline)

Well, that was last week. My first serious dip into current affairs this week was the first ten minutes of last night's 7.30 Report and Kerry O'Brien's interview with Wayne Swan:

WAYNE SWAN: Well Kerry, we have had six interest rate rises on the trot and they have flowed from the inflationary pressures in our economy that have been building for a long period of time.

Now, I could go on in this interview and bag the Opposition for the fact that they didn't deal effectively with inflation. I'm not going to do that tonight, because what I'm really interested in doing is putting in place the necessary reforms that expand the productive base of this economy and put downward pressure on inflation and downward pressure on interest rates...

Swan's refusal to bag the Opposition was a bit of a personal disappointment, but it's an interesting contrast with Costello's first major act as Treasurer - the revelation of the "Beazley Black Hole". A big shocker of an announcement, clearly intended to discredit Kim Beazley in the eyes of the electorate and dismay Australian Riff-Raff Party and its supporters. Fast politics, played for maximum emotional impact.

Naive optimist that I am, I think the days of fast politics - of manufactured crises, dog-whistling and campaigns based on vacuous promises ("Interest rates will always be lower under the coalition") and fear ("70% of the Rudd front bench are former trade-union officials") are over for now. We won't be seeing any triumphalist humiliation of a defeated Opposition for a while either.

As for the hidden skeletons - well it's early days yet. There are plenty of areas outside the budget - areas of substantive policy - where they might be found. See, for example, this post by Peter Martin and this AM interview with Kevin Rudd. Rudd's response is nothing like the "OMFG, we're nowhere near meeting our agreed Kyoto target and it's all the Opposition's fault!" that we would have got from He Who Has Passed Into Political Oblivion.

Over the next few months, as Labor gets to grips with the administration of areas like national security and immigration, I expect more of these revelations. They may lack drama, but the cumulative effect on the Coalition's credibility as an alternative government will be just as damaging as Costello's dramatic announcement of the "Beazley Black Hole".

(Cross-posted at Larvatus Prodeo in Exile)