Sign the petition : end non-consultative intervention

Miss Eagle has to-day received information about a petition relating to the Howard/Brough Northern Territory Intervention into Aboriginal Communities. Links at the top of this blog detail the history.

This petition has come to me from Patricia Corowa who grew up in Bowen like I did. Patricia was an activist in her young days back in the campaign for and surrounding the 1967 Referedum. She has been an adviser to two Labor Ministers for Aboriginal Affairs.

The petition was initiated in Yuendemu in the NT. Patricia received the petition information from Ray Minniecon, a well known Aboriginal and Christian leader. Old Mount Isans remember his father Stirling well who, with his wife Di, was a missionary with AIM at Dajarra in north-west Queensland for many, many years.

Could you please, dear Reader, take a minute or two to go to the link here. There you will able to sign the petition. There is also a link at the top of the page. When you have done this, could you please forward this information on to your networks. That would be much appreciated.

Whichever party comes to power on Saturday 24 November 2007, the message has to be given:

Aboriginal communities have a right to be consulted

- proper two-way all-parties-concerned consultation - on matters affecting themselves, their children, their families, their communities, their land and their place in broader Australian society.

Anything less is not good enough.

Fifty years ago THE great petition began.

Fifty years later, still petitioning for basic human rights and self-determination.

The meaning of Australian citizenship: Part 1

What does Australian citizenship mean? Can it be bestowed? Can it be taken away? Can its full entitlements apply to some and not to others? Is there mutual obligation within citizenship? What is the obligation of the citizen to the state? What is obligation of the state to the citizen?

Under John Howard, there are continued attempts to promote and coerce 'Australian values'.

There was the aborted attempt to have such a preamble to the Constitution. Les Murray, perhaps our greatest living poet, was hired to right such a preamble. But that did not suit. There is now a test of sorts to be placed before applicants for citizenship.


Many years ago, under a conservative political regime, Australia refused a passport for 17 years to a controversial citizen, Wilfred Burchett.


Under John Howard, there has been an attempt to deprive those confined in prison of their right to vote. It has not succeeded but has reverted to the previous situation whereby prisoners serving beyond a certain minimum term are denied the right to vote. The High Court has not yet published its reasons.


However, the question needs to be reviewed and we need to ask again: should a citizen ever be denied the right to vote? If there is a case for denial, under what conditions should this be done? What does the limiting of citizens' rights in any regard mean? Can the State limit other rights of the citizen? But then we have to ask: as Australians how are our rights guaranteed without a specific charter, without a Bill of Rights? Are our rights to be held captive to politicized judicial appointments? But then are they to be held captive to the burden of lawyers' arguments?


On the matter of the State's obligation to citizens, Australia has seen its citizen, David Hicks, subjected to gross injustice at the hands of its powerful ally, the United States of America. We have cases in Australia where people who are convicted of crimes are deported to their country of birth. The highlighted cases are of of people who were born outside Australia but have lived here since infancy without formally taking out Australian citizenship. Australia has formed them. For good or for ill, their lives have been lived among us - in our society, under our government. Do we have no responsibility or recourse but to cast them forth to become strangers in a strange land, taking with them to a foreign land their troubles which were formed among us?


Citizenship can never be taken for granted. But the citizen must always hold the entitlement and obligation of citizenship up to the light. Unless this is done, encroachment on the liberty of any may mean encroachment on the liberty of all.

Yahoo, Channel 7 & Kevin Rudd: masters of disrespect

Miss Eagle continues to battle back to health as the flu won't give up its grip. However, life - and blogs - go on. The email address connected to Miss Eagle's blogs has been provided by Yahoo which, in Australia, is in alliance with free-to-air media corporation, Channel 7. To-day, Miss Eagle has opened an email account with a different provider for blog readers and has spent the day transferring documents and emailing contacts with the new address.

So, dear Reader, if you have the Yahoo address for Miss Eagle but haven't had an email to-day, please contact me rather quickly while the Yahoo account remains open for just a little while longer.

Then Miss Eagle will cancel the account - and there is a reason. Or, to be more correct, there are two reasons.

Firstly, and most importantly, there are the allegations which link Yahoo in China to the imprisonment and torture of bloggers. Secondly, there is the Channel 7 malpractice in which it purchased stolen medical records relating to AFL football players. It is possible that Channel 7 may face police charges in regard to the matter. AFL footballers - except for Essendon who are sponsored by Channel 7 - are boycotting Channel 7 refusing to speak to the channel's reporters. Channel 7 is reported to be in discussion with the AFL and the AFL Players Association. No sign of an apology yet. Two items about which Miss Eagle wonders:

• about Channel 7 demonstrating a conflict of interest in relation to its sponsorship of one AFL club and reporting denigration of the members of another;
• if the Howard Government will be brave enough to try to incorporate such activity under the coverage of its recent ACCC boycott legislation.

The matters facing Yahoo and Channel 7 have one thing in common: lack of respect for the individual, in the former a right to free speech and the right to be free of torture and in the latter the right to privacy and the right to patient confidentiality. In each case, a corporate body has assumed rights for itself and made them paramount to the legitimate rights of an individual. In each case, power has been wielded well beyond the power that the individual can bring to bear. In other words, the individual has no prospect of exerting countervailing power against the corporation - public or private.

Which brings me to Kevin Rudd's backbone. You will recall, dear Reader, that Miss Eagle has taken an interest in Kevin's backbone for quite a while. Miss Eagle has wondered when curvature of Kevin's spine, under pressure, would become evident. It is now there for all to see in the form of Labor's announced IR policy.

Miss Eagle asks Rudd and Gillard and Kevin's Krew:

• how do you think you got to where you are in the polls?
• is this how you show respect for working people?
• what else will you do to show your disrespect for working people?

In case you are too middle-class and dumb to figure it out, you have done it on the backs of working people and people who care about workers' rights. These people vote and you assume they will vote for a Labor government who, supposedly, can bring them change.

Will all the executives at BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto and their $100K + a year miners vote for you, Kevin? Will they give you the numbers to govern? Or have you figured out that you can take working people for granted? Are their votes in the bag, Kevin, and you don't have to give a fig for their rights and realities?

I'd like to take you for a ride too, Kevin, when Michele O'Neil and her TCFUA officials have finished with you. Through the bleak and poor western suburbs in each of the capital cities of the eastern seaboard. You know the ones Kevin: the ones that are safe Labour seats. The ones that have a Whitlam Swimming Pool and a Wran Community Hall. The ones that are bleak and treeless. The ones that are not known as salubrious, leafy suburbs. The ones where inequity is palpable. The ones where you and Therese would never want to live - and neither would a BHP Billiton or Rio Tinto executive or their $100K+ a year miners - let alone Howard who could not tolerate Lane Cove while Kirribili was on offer.

Miss Eagle was pleased to hear Michele O'Neil on Radio National's Breakfast this morning critical of the policy and challenging Rudd to do the rounds of her members of the Textile Clothing and Footwear Union. Michele spoke powerfully of the realities of life for her members and how they could not wait the projected five years of the Rudd-Gillard policy to get out from under oppressive wages and conditions.

Miss Eagle has to-day been provided with a copy of an open letter to Rudd and Gillard by a senior union official here in Victoria. This letter is also published on Unite.

The following is an open letter to the leaders of the Australian Labor Party, Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard. It was written by Michele O'Neil who is the Victorian State Secretary of the Textile Clothing and Footwear Union of Australia (TCFUA).The TCFUA, like UNITE are extremely disappointed at Labor's latest sellout in regards to their industrial relations policy. UNITE calls on all sections of the union movement to join with us and begin to seriously discuss the question of political representation of working people. Workers deserve much better than Rudd's Labor Party.

Dear Kevin and Julia,

Don't you get it?I represent some of the lowest paid workers in the country. They sweat in backyard garages, shopfronts, and factories to make the clothes on your back. Some of our members have now faced three years without a pay increase. If they are still getting the minimum rates, and many are not, they take home about $460 each week. If they work at home as outworkers they likely get $3 to $5 an hour.

Yesterday one of the union's officials described how after a call from a worker, she went to a factory and the employer made her sit for two hours in a small room. The boss said that if any worker wanted to see her they were welcome. He didn't tell the workers the union was on site. He wouldn't let the union notice advising workers that the union was coming, go up on the notice board. And he sat a supervisor at the door of the room.

No worker came to the room. A worker rang the union describing payment of $4 an hour. For us to inspect the time and wage book in the factory I have to name the worker, something she doesn't want me to do as she says she'll be bullied and sacked. She's scared and asks me, "why can't you fix this without the boss knowing that I rang the union?" Under the Right of Entry Laws you've promised to keep, I cannot.

Earlier this year, one of my members was badly injured when the company under those same Right of Entry Laws, forced him to walk outside in the dark during a nightshift to a room 10 minutes away from where he worked to speak to his union. He fell and broke both his hands and doesn't have good prospects of returning to work.

Last week we received two calls from women workers in tears because they were being forced to give up their rights by signing an AWA in order to keep their job. They signed the AWA because they were threatened. The same AWAs which you will now leave in place for five years. Under those Right of Entry laws, because all the workers are on AWAs, we have no right to enter that workplace or visit our members.

You know that television ad from the 'Business Action' coalition with 3 thuggish blokes turning off the power in a clothing factory? Did you believe it? Would you like to meet the women who work for this union trying to get into workplaces that exploit textile, clothing and footwear workers? You could listen to our stories about what really happens when we try to use 'Right of Entry.

'My experience of violence and thuggery is of a company boss pulling a large chopping knife out of his draw and placing it on the desk between us as he explained that he didn't employ any outworkers and that I should leave his factory now.

We like other unions, have spent our hard earned union members' money on the ACTU's campaign which has increased your chances of being elected. How do I keep explaining to them what a vote for you will mean? They can't wait until 2010 for justice and fairness or rights - that's like asking them to wait for another election. They need them and deserve them right now. Stand up for the members of my union or don't expect us to stand up for you.

I invite you both to take a day to spend on the road with an official of my union visiting factories and sweatshops, so you can understand and reconsider today's announcement.

In unity,

Michele O'Neil

Victorian State Secretary, National Assistant Secretary, Textile Clothing and Footwear Union of Australia (TCFUA)

http://www.tcfvic.org.au/

http://www.unite.org.au

Miss Eagle thinks that the only hope for a different Labor IR policy when Rudd is Prime Minister is another Howard copycat me-tooism.

Could it be, dear Reader, that this is Rudd's first non-core promise?

Rights at last?

Well, about time, says Miss Eagle.

The Hon. Warren Entsch MLA, Liberal Member for Leichhardt, and former Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry, Science and Resources and Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources is to introduce a private member's bill later this year to recognise same-sex interdependent relationships under all federal legislation.

Now before the religious right in the U.S. nod sagely and say what else would be expected of a liberal, Miss Eagle would advise them that a Liberal in this country is not the same as a liberal in their country. A Liberal in Australia is a member of the dominant conservative party in this country, the Liberal Party, which is in government Federally and whose leader, John Howard, is a great friend of George W. Bush. The U.S. equivalent is a Republican.

A few years ago the Howard Government hastened to introduce legislation to circumvent gay marriage or recognition of gay marriage. Heaven forbid that gay couples should pledge themselves one to another publicly!

This legislation is to remove discrimination and is well overdue. And for all those big macho types out there, Miss Eagle has no idea whether Entsch is gay or straight himself - but if, dear Reader, you are into some strange form of stereotyping then he does wear a moustache. Read his cv here.

Tell the Howard Govt to stop its nonsense

Kate Gauthier from A Just Australia has provided an update on the new bill which will provide for offshore processing of refugees in an insane way - excluding the continent of Australia from the migration zone. Here it is in full:

As you will have heard, the new Bill for offshore processing - Migration Amendment (Designated Unauthorised Arrivals) Bill 2006 - has been introduced both into the House and the Senate. You can find information about the bill here. This includes the text of the bill as well as the (not particularly) explanatory memorandum. A Just Australia is preparing some information for supporters to explain what the effects of this bill will be and we will forward this to you as soon as it is ready. In the meantime however, you can read our Brief on the Proposal.The Bill is listed for debate in the House for next Tuesday 23rd May. It's listed as the last bill of the day so it may well be passed over until later that week, or even be held back until the 2nd sitting week (starting may29). It's unusual for it to be debated next week because John Howard will still be overseas and will return for the 2nd sitting week. Please phone/email/fax to your MPs and let them know how you want them to vote. You can get the contact details from the APH website Senate Inquiry. The bill has been passed to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Committee for investigation. You can find details of the inquiry here. Submissions must be lodged by next Monday 22nd May. Its very easy to make a submission - it can be on anything you want, even just to voice your opinion as a concerned Australian. We encourage people and organisations to make their voice heard. The Inquiry will be reporting on June 13th, with the Senate probably voting on the bill in that week. Write for rights! If you haven't taken the time to contact your state's Senators, please do so over the next two weeks. Their contact details can be found at the APH website. If Parliamentarians are going to cross the floor, negotiate amendments or take other actions against this bill, they need to show proof of the community concern that drove them to take these actions. So please, if you haven't already done so, write a letter and fax or email it soon.

Kate Gauthier
for the A Just Australia team --
Kate Gauthier
National Coordinator
A Just Australia
www.ajustaustralia.com
02 9745 9727
0414 876 139
We believe that Australia's policies toward refugees and asylum seekers should at all times reflect respect, decency and traditional Australian generosity to those in need, while advancing Australia's international standing and national interests. We aim to achieve just and compassionate treatment of refugees, consistent with the human rights standards which Australia has developed and endorsed.

'Onya, Einfeld J.

Justice Marcus Einfeld has a distinguished track record. He is one of Australia's most distinguished jurists and one of our most outstanding activists in the matter of human rights. Most recently he was part of the team who dealt - with great sagacity - with the Australian Government on the matter of Vivian Alvarez Solon and her compensation and her repatriation to Australia.

Last night, at the University of Western Sydney, he said

Apparently political transparency is a democratic ideal to which we only pay lip service these days.

He was speaking with particular reference to the support of terrorism by western democracies and with direct reference to the involvement of the Australian Government in the support of the regime of Saddam Hussain by AWB . However, political transparency is an issue for democratic governance in Australia whether it is at Federal level with a Liberal-National coalition or at State level where there is an ALP hegemony across the states. "Commercial-in-Confidence" has become a modern catch cry, a wall government puts up to hide its dealings from public view. This goes hand in hand where government has "de-regulated" and put many areas which once had direct government oversight into the hands of the private sector. This allows government to be at least one remove when accountability and transparency is sought and encourages a culture of deniability. And the Howard Government has become the master of deniability. The Tampa affair and the children overboard matter are areas where the Prime Minister was able to achieve a high level of deniability and was never brought to book by the Australian electorate.

Justice Einfeld asks:

...how far we can allow ourselves to be led away from fundamental liberal and democratic tenets in the name of the fight against terrorism. The anti-terrorism bill - in particular its anti-sedition laws - was, "a Pandora's box of possible abuses if used incorrectly". He added: "This is the hallmark of a society leaning towards an autocratic framework, one in which nationalism, homogeneity and a warped and misinformed concept of 'the other' are thrown together into a heady and volatile cocktail."