What we haven't learned

This afternoon, I have been watching the 1985 television movie, The Dunera Boys. Now, movies based on true stories can be heavily fictionalised for dramatic impact and my guess is that this is the case with The Dunera Boys.

But the real story of the Dunera boys is cemented in Australian history and is legendary.

It is the story of Jewish men, refugees in England, who were victims of an overzealous government who forced them to endure horrors and indignities that they never should have suffered when they were rounded up by the British government and transported to Australia to be imprisoned on the stark, bare plains of western New South Wales.

The picture below, from the National Library of Australia, is a photograph by Henry Talbot taken at a re-union of the Dunera boys in 1997. Read more here.

Of those Dunera boys who, on release in 1942, opted to remain in Australia, many went onto become distinguished, even famous, citizens. We might have locked them up as we went along with Britain's error, but they generously paid Australia back many times over by their contribution to building a young nation.
Otto Marx, Fred Gruen, Felix Behrend, and Leonhard Adam provide an idea of the brilliant minds rounded up in the Dunera Affair and we thank them for becoming part of Australian life and culture with such outstanding contributions.

But, oh, how we forget.

We made a grave mistake then. We continue to do so in modern times as Phillip Adams reminds us.

Chester Porter QC reminded us again on Radio National to-day.

Chester is a proponent of continual improvement in investigative policing. Police, Chester warns, will always seek increased powers. Incompetent police are most likely to ask for increased powers. Executive government, he reminds us, can abuse these powers: in World War II, Labor rounded up right wing people, the United Australia Party rounded up communists. None of these people committed an offence.

The case of Dr Mohamed Haneef and its legal fall-out has called into question what Australia's government is doing in the name of terror. Many citizens are questioning what the limiting of democratic freedoms is doing to us, will do to us.

We have become a nation that is not afraid to use concentration camps for refugees, immigrants, and its own citizens. We have become a nation that is not afraid to use high security imprisonment and deportation - even without speedy trial - for suspicion with little real and admissible evidence.

It would be good if The Dunera Boys could hit the television screens again - particularly the tabloid type screens of Channels 9, 7 and 10.

Australians have to question who they are as a people and a nation and who are they electing to office to govern in their name.

Democratic Party the party of terrorism: the fall-out

"I would prefer that Mr Howard stay out of our domestic politics and we will stay out of his domestic politics," said Texas senator John Cornyn, a strong supporter of the war and of President George Bush.

Spot on Senator. Fortunately, it appears the current US Ambassador wants to stay out of Australia's domestic politics too. That was something that could not always be said of the previous US Ambassador.

As for John Howard, he is his usual dogged self maintaining - against all opinion - that he had to say what he said because it was right. John is never wrong. Hundreds of thousands of Australia marched against the Iraq war. Opinion polls did not approve of the Iraq invasion without UN approval and involvement. And the electorate always doubted the weapons of mass destruction farrago of lies and spin. But who was right in all this? Never the electorate - in spite of its vindication by events. No. John Howard is always right even when he is wrong.

Try humility instead of invincibility, Prime Minister.

The Dalai Lama: comment and wisdom

The Telegraph (that's the London one, not the Sydney one) is carrying a long article and interview with the Dalai Lama. In the interview the Dalai Lama said two things of particular interest.

The first is about us:

The West's big problem, he believes, is that people have become too self-absorbed. "I don't think people have become more selfish, but their lives have become easier and that has spoilt them. They have less resilience, they expect more, they constantly compare themselves to others and they have too much choice - which brings no real freedom."

The second is about handling The West's greatest external collective fear:

Terrorists, he warns, must be treated humanely. "Otherwise, the problem will escalate. If there is one Bin Laden killed today, soon there will be 10 Bin Ladens. Awesome. Ten Bin Ladens killed, the hatred is spread; 100 bombed, and 1,000 lose members of their families."

The secretive police

The secrecy of police increases day by day, particularly under the anti-terror laws. Now policing is not the most transparent activity of government or society. Understandable, Miss Eagle thinks we would all say. But there are areas when one has to ask whom is secrecy serving? This is the case of the Federal Police Disciplinary Tribunal which has no disciplinary business whatsoever because Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty, clearly a secret policeman, prefers to discipline secretively. Apparently, he sees use of the tribunal as washing dirty linen in public. Just a few questions to ask:

• Was the AFP consulted in the establishment of the tribunal?
• Did they say they wanted it.
• Did they say they would work with it?
• If this was not the case, why was it not the case?
• If this was the case, then why do the AFP appear not to want it?
• If this was the case, then why are the AFP not using it?
• Is it the case that the Tribunal was always intended, both by Government and the AFP, to be window dressing and merely a Clayton's Tribunal (the disciplinary unit you have when you're not having a disciplinary unit)?
• How much does the non-functioning Tribunal - with such a lovely website and a top QC thrown in - cost the long-suffering and kept-in-ignorance-and-mushroomed taxpayer?
• Who has accounted to Parliament and how on the non-functioning Tribunal?

Please explain

'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."