Danna Valle fights back

Danna Vale is fighting back. "My comments were clumsy" she says. True, you could have said it better, Danna. But you could also have thought things through better and your fight-back piece could be thought through better too. True, you were the victim of media who want only a 30 second grab or a quippy headline. But Danna you are paid for the position you hold and - surely it is not too much to expect this from your ministerial experience - part of the skills of the job is to learn not to get yourself into situations such as this. On the other hand, what happened to you can happen to people with greater skills than you. Costello is getting similar treatment from some quarters over his multiculturalism statements.

I think, Danna, from what I see at a distance, that you have a good heart. However, your expression of your good heart is let down because the intellect does not sustain a good argument or rationale. This can be rectified. It depends on the level of advice you get either through staff or through more informal channels such as knowledgable people to give you sound advice.

I think the nub of your argument is fair comment. In modern Australia when the national birthrate among those of European descent is declining, the birthrate among some groups subscribing towards more traditional/conservative mores remains steady or is increasing. You are right to point out that this is a legitimate concern of government and therefore needs to be considered in government policy. You have also pointed out that some people in Australia are more accustomed to exerting their political and social views with violence rather than through the ballot or through other democratic institutions. Danna, leave behind excuses of political correctness. Even if accusations of 'political correctness' have some validity - which I doubt - you have to work in this situation and get your point across without having to call foul.

Can I draw your attention to a couple of areas relating to the issues you are trying to highlight? Look at the female kangaroo. She controls her fertility to a greater extent than the human female. If drought and bushfires - two constants on the driest continent on earth - leave insufficient sustenance, the kangaroo will not breed. She will defer breeding. I think it is like that with the human female. If she is insecure, she will defer breeding or fail to breed. The options she has include contraception and abortion. In some ancient societies, human females also used infanticide. So how secure are things for the female of breeding age in Australia? Relations between men and women are not good. Commitment and stability in partnerships are difficult to carry out in practice. In many relationship breakdowns, economics plays a significant part. Economic security is declining. Increasing casualisation and underemployment are not the economic foundations for raising children. Workforce discrimination with regard to age and gender has not been eliminated. The cost of higher education for job advancement is increasingly locking Australians out. Public primary and secondary education is underfunded to miserable proportions and private primary and secondary education is unaffordable for large sections of the population. Childcare is difficult and, with the assistance of government subsidies, Australia has bred a globalised corporate childcare provider of monopolistic proportions who is now in the courts trying to avoid the prospect of litigation and foist it back on to the individual employee. If all this is not difficult enough, should you be the parent of a child with special needs the difficulties are magnified. So there's a huge agenda for you, Danna: fair and equitable access for all to education from childcare and pre-school through to university; job security and fair and equitable access to jobs irrespective of age, gender and other discriminatory processes.

Then you might turn to the political processes of this nation. Surely your own experience has shown you that entry to and advancement in the political processes of our democratic institutions are easier if you are a male of European descent. If you are a university educated male, particularly with a law degree, then it is even easier. We have large groups of Australians who are not represented significantly in our national parliament - and certainly excluded from the cabinet table. Aborigines? Muslims? Muslim women? Creatives? Youth? Women are getting there but at an excruciatingly slow rate - and they hit the glass ceiling more often than not - and the men tell us to have three kids including one for Australia. How arrogant and impertinent!

So if you are serious about being taken seriously, Danna, there's your agenda. Security, real security, in daily life - not making us feel terrorised by Muslims one minute and telling us how great things are the next; and giving Australians truly representative government, not just the suits.

God go with you, Danna - and watch your step!

Mushy, misguided multiculturalism

Further to Peter Costello's rant on mushy, misguided multiculturalism, comes a timely article, The Uses and Abuses of Multiculturalism: chili and liberty, by the Nobel Prize-winning Amartya Sen. He covers the problems comprehensively.

• Lord Tebbit's cricket test - identifying belonging and assimilation with what team one cheers for.
• The distinction between multiculturalism and what may be called "plural monoculturalism".
• While religion or ethnicity may be an important identity for people (especially if they have the freedom to choose between celebrating or rejecting inherited or attributed traditions), there are other affiliations and associations that people also have reason to value.
• The growth of religion-based schools.
• Faith and reason.
• A real need to re-think the understanding of multiculturalism, so as to avoid conceptual disarray about social identity and also to resist the purposeful exploitation of the divisiveness that this conceptual disarray allows and even, to some extent, encourages.
• Gandhi's farsighted refusal to see a nation as a federation of religions and communities.

PUBLIC FORGIVENESS: possible impacts

Following my post on Public Forgiveness, I have gone on to wonder what effect the process might have on the implementation of new policies and regulations. As Andrew Metcalfe takes over as the new Secretary of the Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs (DIMIA), the question arises whether he will be seen to be part of the problem or whether he will become part of the solution. Will the changing of the guard at DIMIA amount only to a change of deckchairs on the Titanic.

If there is a dialogue of public forgiveness, surely assurances would be given and the the publicity surrounding the event would ensure that real change occurred. The reconciliation following the public forgiveness dialogue could include a more inclusive role for significant stakeholders such as refugee and asylum seeker organisations.

PUBLIC FORGIVENESS

Left: Archbishop Desmond Tutu

This topic has been stirring in mind over many years - ever since Bill Clinton made a public apology for his actions with Monica Lewinsky. Much hatred surrounded Bill Clinton and there was no doubt the Republican Party was out to get him in a big, big way and were not going to let go. But, it occurred to me, if a public figure apologises sincerely on an issue that has affected the public life of a nation then how can that figure be told he or she is forgiven. How can forgiveness be demonstrated, how can dialogue be entered into.

This is the case with Bill Farmer on his resignation from the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs (DIMIA). There are a lot of us in this nation who have been highly critical of Bill Farmer and his department. His department has been heavy handed, inhumane and unjust. This has been demonstrated beyond argument. Bill Farmer as a bureaucrat, not able to take media grabs as a Minister does, took the one opportunity he had - an appearance before a Parliamentary Committee - to apologise. He is now leaving his position and his deputy takes the leadership. We don't know yet how good he will be at his job and how well he will bring change to a department sorely in need of it. Then there is the Department of Immigration itself. Bill Farmer is one person. Clearly, there were many, many others only too willing to take a hardline, inhumane stance in implementing the policies and rules and regulations of DIMIA. Can a whole Department say sorry? Can a whole Department be forgiven? If so, what is the process? Corporate collectives such as businesses, bureaucracies, clubs and so on can take on identities and characteristics of their own just as individuals do. Because of this, my view is that responsibilities and actions demanded of the individual can, for the most part, be expected of them. So for these corporate collectives, there should be opportunities for them to apologise, take part in dialogue, and be part of a forgiveness process with those who are stakeholders.

South Africa has led the way with defining new approaches and processes with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The premise is simple - vengeful bloodletting would hinder national progress into a new era. This so often happens in national life as well. Roadblocks to a new country, a new vision.

This is the case in Australia with the ups and downs of reconciliation with the First Peoples of this land and the Prime Minister's reluctance to say sorry. What is the measure of a nation who is willing to excoriate figures and collectives in public life but has no room for a process of dialogue, forgiveness, and reconciliation?

I have no process to suggest. I just want those who read this to consider and if there is sufficient agreement perhaps the nation can begin to discuss how we bring to our public life a discourse of apology, dialogue, forgiveness and reconciliation.

BILL FARMER, HEAD OF DIMIA RESIGNS POST

The Prime Minister, John Howard to-day announced the resignation of Bill Farmer AO from his position of Secretary of the Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs. See New Senior Appointments - 10 July 2005. Ordinarily, this would be a matter for much rejoicing in those seeking reform within the Dept of Immigration. However, his departure has been suspected as being imminent for two reasons:

1. He apologised to a Parliamentary Committee
2. He received an AO at the recent Queen's Birthday awards.

Awards are not unusual prior to the resignation of a senior public servant or their transfer to a significant overseas posting. In this case, Bill Farmer will become Australia's Ambassador to Indonesia. This posting need not be seen as unusual since his service prior to DIMIA was with the Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade (DFAT). If there is anything punitive in these changes to Bill Farmer's career because of the massive failures within the operations and organization of his department, it is not evident.

As a Christian and a practising Anglican, I have been particularly disappointed in the handling of immigration matters because Bill Farmer is the spouse of an Anglican priest in the Anglican Diocese of Canberra-Goulburn and because the excesses under his leadership also occurred under the ministry of that other well-known Anglican, Philip Ruddock, now the Commonwealth Attorney-General.

All of us can be forgiven and all of us deserve the right to a clean slate and a fresh start. I hope that Bill Farmer has been able to learn from what has occurred within the Department of Immigration and understands how the Department he led has been the bureaucratic hand of gross injustice. I also hope that his new position gives him more time for biblical study - in particular, I hope he has a glance at the references in the Old Testament on how the Lord God of Israel instructs us to care for the sojourner - because you were once sojourners. The New Testament could provide material for reflection - particularly the matter of Jesus, with his parents Mary and Joseph, fleeing persecution to become asylum seekers in Egypt. There is no mention of how the Egyptians treated this little family of refugees but clearly they were not locked in interminable detention and were, at an appropriate time of their choosing, able to return. And thereby hangs a story! Now, Bill, narrative theology is a worthwhile pursuit. Listen to the stories.