They have been referring to Australia as having a two-speed economy for quite some time now. 
~~~
What were we really thinking all through 2007 ...
....as Kevin Rudd topped the polls
....as his me-too-ism made him a small target for the Liberal/National Coalition
....as Kevin and Julia made promises to business about AWAs
....as Kev courted people with religious affiliations who had never voted Labor - ever
....as Bill Shorten of the AWU and Greg Combet of the ACTU trumped pre-selection processes and long standing, faithful sitting members to gain pre-selection and election in safe Labor seats and then rewarded with positions as Parliamentary Secretaries
We - the trade unionists, those who cared about wage and income equity, those who marched for justice - kept putting our views forward persistently. We did not say what we really felt when the ALP policies were watered down into a new reality and The Greens put forward an industrial relations policy we found more understandable. The ACTU did not want to ruffle feathers and merely expressed disappointment.
We were realistic. We wanted Howard and his henchmen and women gone. We knew that this would be a big ask. We understood that Kev and Krew would have to play it cool to get across the line. We were not going to rock the boat. We would stay on message - even if it meant biting the anxious tips of our tongues off.
Kevin got across the line - but, just as Miss Eagle questioned during the campaign the state of Kevin's Spine, she now questions Kevin's gratitude.
There has been much watering down of industrial relations policy in an attempt to mollify business interests. Changes will not be fully in place until 2010.
Let's get frank now, Kev.
You were elected in December 2007. How would it be if we said to you, Kev, "Congratulations, Kev. You've won the election, Kev. You've beaten Howard, Kev. But, Kev, you will not take power until 2010. Until then Howard remains in power and continues to live at Kirribilli. He'll water down his behaviour and his hubris a bit. In fact, he'll try very hard not to use the numbers he has in the Senate to really rock the boat. But, Kev, go away and stay cool until December 2010."
Makes real sense, doesn't it Kev. Highly rational.
In fact, Kev, in 2010 we are due for another election and - if you lose it (I realise it is considered unlikely) - it could be that nothing of lasting consequence will have changed on the industrial front and you will go down in history as Kould-have-been, Kould-have-done Kev.
To my mind, Kev, this seems darned ungrateful and downright rude.
You see, Kev, all those corporations, business people, and corporate councils you mollified or attempted to mollify did NOT turn out the vote for you, Kev. If any of them changed their vote from Liberal to Labor for you, it was precious few and certainly not in tide-turning numbers.
Not like us, Kev. Not like us - the trade unionists, the justice seekers, the footsloggers in march after march. We worked. Agreed - some of us were in targetted electorates with huge support from the ACTU, campaign organisers, and organisations like PolMin. It was these resources - financial, organisational, and human - who turned out the vote for you, Kev. True, some of them - like Miss Eagle - gave their No. 1 to The Greens for their industrial policy while ensuring the final vote went to you. But even so, we turned out more votes for you and made the difference for you in a way that no other sector of the population did - and we did it for at least eighteen straight months.
Your Rights At Work Campaign on Election Day 2007.
So, Kev, guess what? We don't give a fig for 2010. We want industrial change now. We want equity now. We don't give a fig about what you had to say to business because we think your first loyalty is to us and not to them and that there are more of us in the Australian polity than there are of them.
I realise, Kev, that it is a long time since you and Therese felt the need to have the Union help you achieve some sort of justice for yourselves in the workplace. But perhaps you might pause to think how much Unions have helped you to Christmas Dinner at The Lodge. We ask you to think about that Kev, you and your Krew, and you might be a bit indigenous about it. It is pay back time. Time to show recipricocity, recognition and gratitude. Time to be well-mannered and acknowledge how you got to be Prime Minister. Thanks, Kev. Over to you and Krew.
Your Rights At Work Teams Celebrating Kevin Rudd's Victory, December 2007
With no other voices, other than the media, the Community continues to be Blind.
We like to believe it’s a Just system,.
Collusion terms are there like “Collateral Damage” in War.
We talk about:
Humane containment. Duty of Care. Modern prisons.
We hide the damage done by kidding ourselves we are rehabilitating
And we euphemistically call the govt dept ‘Corrections Victoria’ – when 62% return !
You can’t bring about a change of heart when you’re holding someone under force, isolated from the community. We each need community to survive.
The Reign of God is demonstrated by the story of the Shepherd who would care for each lost one so much that he would do the irrational thing of leaving 99 to go after that one. And when he finds it, like the loving father who found his son, throw an extravagant party.
The kingdom of God is not about condemning the lost by exclusion,
but by seeking them out, costly caring and celebrating –
even when they don’t deserve it.
To Let The Oppressed Go Free
The oppressed in the Gospels are those who are captive. To Roman and Jewish Laws- which were oppressive. Served law makers – not the people.
In the Criminal Justice system “The Oppressed” are the Victims of Crime- who, because of our legal process, don’t get a fair hearing. Crimes aren’t against a victim; they are offences against the State.
Therefore the only reason for involving a Victim is to call them as a witness.
Howard Zehr:
We don’t listen to what they have suffered and need
We do not seek to give them back what they have lost
We do not help them recover
We may not even let them know what has transpired since the offence.
Consequently, Victims feel that no justice has been done which recognises their loss. There is no closure .Which leads to anger, fear, and demands for vengeance.
Consequently Victims of Crime Groups are angry –
because they are oppressed
A Restorative Justice system, focussed on healing the wounds, with compassion as seen in the tender treatment of the Good Samaritan to the victim of crime on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho would go a long way to letting these oppressed go free.
A compassionate system which gave a place for victims to be truly heard and which still held offenders accountable to restoration could result in more Victims of Crime becoming Survivors of Crime.
The Reign or Kingdom of God as shown by Jesus actions and teaching in Luke are clearly at odds with the values of the Kingdoms of this world.
The Day of the Lords Favour, which Jesus declared began with his ministry
“Today this scripture had been fulfilled”.
If God’s Reign, which commenced in Nazareth is to continue, then WE are called too - as Christ’s Body to-day -to practice what we preach.
We are to do what we can to:
In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus’ final words to another human were addressed not to his disciples but to a criminal. Most of his followers had abandoned him. They were words of inclusion to the outcast who on his own admission was guilty - but who sought Jesus’ acceptance.
Today this scripture has been fulfilled
“….Today you will be with me in paradise”
Can we be as inclusive –
so that the Kingdom may come on earth as it is in heaven.
Today?
I believe yes, we can –
as people who want to live in the Reign of God and God’s Justice.
I - as I am sure you do, dear Reader - sometimes daydream about living in another period of human history. For Miss Eagle, her daydream is about time travelling to live as an Edwardian. Not a poor Edwardian mind you - probably an upper middle class Edwardian. So many things were happening then. New ideas, a new century and clothes were s-o-o elegant. But my daydream is tempered by the quote from John Rawls: The best measure of a just society is whether you’d be willing to be thrown into it at random.So, dear Reader, next time rich, famous, and infamous Americans catch your attention and life looks great over there, please remember these ten points. Next time an American celebrity gives away lots of money and looks good doing it, remember the unfairness of those ten points.
Ask yourself, dear Reader: if you were one of those people in the statistics quoted in these ten points, would you rather have fairness and equity brought to you by public policy voted on by every citizen entitled to vote or would you rather be one of the deserving poor dependent on the selectivity of a rich person?
Now look at the Australian picture:
The last two items need to be look at more closely in relation to income, child care costs, who is looking after the kids and in what circumstances?
Our national government has neglected Aboriginal voices for more than a decade. State and Territory Governments records are not good either. And the Australian voter has not given a sufficiently high priority to Aboriginal health and well-being - instead focussing on its own income and tax-cuts - to impress politicians with a demand for urgent attention. There is a lot of goodwill out there towards Aboriginal people and their concerns but mainstream Australia is not prepared to forego its own financial well-being or do without a tax cut to bring others, black or white, into a position of equity. Please read this speech by Lieutenant General John Sanderson and have a big think.
And what evidence do I have that mainstream Australians are prepared to put themselves and their own well-being ahead of other citizens? I give you the saga of the Merseyside Hospital in Devonport, Tasmania. This is a town with a population of just over 20,000 souls which has access to two nearby hospitals within a half hour and an hour's drive yet has demanded that its own hospital be kept open to the tune of at least $45 million in spite of the difficulty of attracting highly skilled staff and maintaining their skills, in spite of the fact that the hospital itself may not be able to operate in a manner in which safety is guaranteed.
A venal Prime Minister desperate to advance his election prospects has met these demands and thus encouraged a queue of similar demands to form.
It is not only our bodies that are getting fatter and taller, our minds are becoming sloppy and unreasonable and more grandiose.
Supersize me, Prime Minister, some citizens are saying - and do it right where I live.
Business interests like to use their clout to buy individual politicians and buy governments. Newspaper interests can manage the media in their own self-interest. But in the end and on the day, each person has one vote. Corporate entities do not vote. The Australian and The Daily Telegraph and The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald don't vote. We do.
John Howard pretends that he ignores opinion polls but he doesn't. He is very attuned to them. The one that seems to have his fullest attention at the moment is the poll indicating the majority of Australians don't think much of his new IR laws and that this point of view could impact on the sensitive seats of those Liberal politicians in marginal electorates. Oooh-wah!
The point of democracy is that when the electorate is not happy, politicians get the pointy end of public opinion delivered where it can hurt the most - in their own hip pocket.
Middle-class Liberal politicians who have been in their seats forever or who are business or professional people clearly don't have a clue about the life of working people in factories, and small business, and offices and call centres. If they had the beginning of a clue, these new IR laws would not have seen light of day in their current form.
And now the Libs find that their slimey Kevin Andrews (who interfered with the affairs of the Northern Territory some years ago without any consultation with Territorians and what they wanted) can't sell their latest dogma - and it's beginning to hurt. So they have called in the jovial public face of Joe Hockey to assist the undertaker look of Kevin Andrews.
These two Liberal ministers are good Catholic lads: Andrews, from a family with a trucking business in Gippsland, was educated at St Patrick's in Sale in conservative, Irish Catholic Gippsland. Hockey's family was well heeled enough to afford the school fees at posh Jesuit school, St Aloysius' College at Kirribilli (Joe has not moved far geographically). Middle-class well-heeled Catholics moving against the social justice teachings of their church!
Just who do you wannabe?
Who'd wannabe an Aborigine? First the whitefella comes and takes your land off you - the land that provided your food, your shelter, your economy. Then, after two hundred years of being pushed around, you get some of your land back. Then along comes this mob of whitefellas and they decide that you, blackfella, have to own your house and land just like a whitefella and get into the mainstream economy of rising interest rates on housing, etc. And they have found a beaut way to get you, blackfella, to do this. You will have to buy your land, which you already own. And to enable you to do this a law will be passed in the Senate of the Parliament of Australia by Senators who haven't really bothered to talk to you, blackfella. Isn't this a great idea?
Just who do you wannabe?
A refugee? Australia locks you up, preferably in some other country that, in another context, the Australian Government refers to as a failed Pacific state. It locks you up for so long that you may never recover. In fact, you may never get out. You may become so mentally ill that you take your own life just as one refugee did in this week past. Isn't this great?
The Prime Minister of Australia is trying to instill Australian values into the population by fiat. Australia is a secular country in the Western Christian tradition. This Christian tradition has, as its central figure, a man who was a refugee. His life was threatened and he had to flee Palestine (yes, he was a Palestinian of middle eastern appearance, so he was) to that hospitable country of Egypt. You know that one - the country whose inhabitants Australians have traditionally referred to as WOPS (Wily Oriental Persons).
Now at the heart of the Christian tradition is the Bible and there are a couple of funny things in that collection of books. One of the books has outlined how people are to treat the sojourners (an old-fashioned word for refugee). Now this method does not include off-shore facilities or detention centres or temporary protection visas. In fact, the book reminds its original readers that they once were sojourners. Funny that. A bit like white Australians, the original readers of that book had to leave their own country and sojourn in another country to make a life for themselves. And in some other books, there was a useful little sentence about treating other people like you yourself would expect to be treated. Now howzat for some good Aussie values.
Miss Eagle wonders if this is what the Prime Minister of Australia expects for himself if he seeks to teach us traditional values - and the most basic tradition of all - To love your neighbour as yourself. John Howard loves himself by locking himself up in a concentration camp, oops I mean detention facility, on Nauru from whom the rapacious whitefella has stripped anything of commercial value. Yeah....well....
So who do you wannabe? And are you traditional enough to honestly want for other people, your neighbours around you, what you want and expect for yourself? Or turn it around the other way. Do white Australians wish to experience the mess they have made for other people?
To-day the Howard Government is out to tick off another one of its stick-it-to-'em agenda items - by moving amendments to the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976. They have long been critics of the Land Councils which operate under the Act. You may remember, dear Reader, that this nation's illustrious leader once appeared on the television carrying a huge map of Australia which had huge areas of black on it. He was intent on informing the nation that Australia's Aboriginal people were intent on this huge land grab. Of course, while he did not say it word for word, the implication was that the world as we know was about to come to a sticky end. Miss Eagle thinks that Howard may now regret making this television appearance as much as he came to regret his comments about Asian immigration. The latter has been the cause for statements of public regret but no public regret has ever been uttered for the former.
Sean Brennan gives well-informed and lucid comment on the proposed amendments here. As Brennan points out:
When the miners side with Land Councils against the government, it is a sure sign that government ideology about indigenous affairs is trumping workability and genuine stakeholder interest.
But the biggest rort of all is the government pretence over land and housing ownership in Aboriginal communities. It storms ahead ideologically without meaningful consultation in what appears as a land grab and government knows best attitude. This will change little. And if housing and land ownership is the issue there are other ways to do it which would be drawn out in an extensive two-way consultative process.
Australian governments, both Labor and Liberal National Party, have failed to bring active and meaningful economies into Aboriginal communities. Then there is their destruction in funding of public housing.
There are whitefella towns in this nation whose economic raison d'etre is to act as service centres for surrounding regions. This means that there are towns that exist purely on the basis of the delivery of health, education, and community services. Does it never occur to government to ensure that Aboriginal communities have some forms of economic exchange other than the community store and the - sometimes government enforced - canteen? Delivery of health, education, and community services can be developed into an economic base. This could not be done for each and every community but hubs could be developed which would fulfil this function. Regional Community Development! This - combined with private home and land ownership arrived at in an equitable way which did not impeach Aboriginal autonomy and Aboriginal ability to control their own affairs - could take things forward.
This government goes beyond white paternalism. It is dogmatic in ensuring its view of the world takes over. But does it back things up with money?
Wadeye Shared Responsibility Agreement (21 March 2003)
Take the Shared Responsibility Agreements, for instance. In that now well-known community, Wadeye (Port Keats), there is the now famous deal to eliminate truancy. Only if the kids turned up for school could they access the swimming pool. Reasonable idea, one would think. A bit of lateral thinking. And it worked. The kids turned up at school.
But....and it was a big but. There was no room for the kids who turned up. Did no-one know how many kids were to be serviced? Had governments been relying on kids not to turn up so they didn't have to expend according to the potential need? In other words, did government have a vested interested in kids not turning up and then not having to meet the need either with buildings, or staff, or employment of community skills.
The neglect of educational facilities for Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory is the stuff of legend - denial of the use of silver bullets on The Barkly, refusal to buy a water cooler for the students at Rockhampton Downs, the kids who have been educated on dirt floors, and the list goes on!
So who wears the blame for all of this? Aboriginal people of course. Now Miss Eagle is not being chauvinistic. Aboriginal people, like everyone else, have to take responsibility for their own lives and their own choices. In every circumstance, Aboriginal people have to do their level best to lift themselves up by their bootstraps. And so many are - sometimes against tremendous odds. But whitefellas won't admit to the hurdles they put in the way. In fact, sometimes - not always, but sometimes - things would be helped if whitefellas would just get out of the road.
The Howard Government, its sly and inexperienced industrial relations minister, Kevin Andrews, along with its business mates have long had a wish list to pull the teeth of trade unions and demolish rates of pay downwards to compete with Chinese and Indian workers (well - slave labour would be preferable). They have taken their opportunity with control of the Senate since July 1 2005.
The Government, with the assistance of lawyers from major law firms like Mallesons, has brought industrial relations under corporations law - an action undergirded by sheer mendacity and venality. It has sought to expose trade unions and individual employees to extreme legal sanctions - but the bite back might be coming. Individuals may try to assert their legal rights in the courts where bigger pay outs are possible - far larger payouts than under the previous industrial relations system. Now the employers who have done their best to dismantle what equity there is or was in Australia's system of of industrial are complaining. Again! Still!
Now - don't just sit there and say that's great. At least there is another avenue. If this becomes an avenue for righting wrongs for a large number of people, how long before there is legislation to close this off? The states have closed off various avenues previously available for people to mount negligence claims. The states have closed off much availability previously available for compensation for work related injuries.