Blogging on 'trouble in paradise' and 'the arc of instability'

The Coming Anarchy has been hosting a series on security issues in Oceania. Bloggers include Opinio Juris, The Strategist (focusing on Melanesia) and Phil at Pacific Empire. It's good to see some more coverage of issues in the South Pacific (albeit negative ones) in cyberspace.

First Interim Report of the April Riot Commission of Inquiry

The Commission of Inquiry into the 2006 April Civil Unrest in Honiara released its first interim report to the public this morning (see report here...I wish they'd PDF it or something...)

The Commission is chaired by Brian Brunton (a former PNG National Court judge). The other members of the Commission are Noel Levi (PNG), Waeta Ben Tabusasi (Solomon Islands) and Charles Levo (Solomon Islands).

I haven't yet read the entire report, but the points made in the Executive Summary include the following:
there is evidence of a degree of consensus amongst political groups present in Honiara, that in the event of a prime minister being elected by Parliament who was not of their choice, or liking, they would force a regime change; despite this, senior officers controlling Solomon Islands security had (a) inadequately assessed the risks of civil unrest associated with the election of a prime minister;(b) no detailed plan to deal with potential unrest;(c) insufficient numbers of police, insufficient trained riot-control capability and insufficient equipment to deal with the risks of civil unrest associated with the election of a prime minister.

Of considerable interest is this point:

The Commission is of the opinion that the assertions by some witnesses that the outbreak of violence at Parliament House was (a) spontaneous, (b) a reaction to pent-up anger, (c) driven by the need to get rid of corruption, (d) driven by the need to break Chinese influence on political groups, or (e) a reaction to the Participating Police Force firing either flash-grenades or tear gas are, in part, contrived, do not ring true, and conflict with other evidence (such as footage, the throwing of stones, and statements of other witnesses).

Hmmm. I'll read the report before I comment on that one!!

The Voice of Youth: child wedding stopped by school students

A reminder that we should think beyond cliches - kids are the leaders of tomorrow, but they might also be the leaders of today; and while children are frequently described as amongst the most vulnerable, this is a reminder that we shouldn't overlook their capacities and forms of resilience either.

Child wedding 'stopped by pupils' (from BBC)

Classmates of a 13-year-old Bangladeshi school girl due to enter a forced marriage have united to stop the ceremony going ahead, police say.

Around 50 pupils in the town of Satkhira took to the streets to demand that Habiba Sultana's wedding be called off, they say.

Pupils even submitted a petition to police urging them to take action.

Police summoned Habiba's father and ordered him to stop the girl's marriage, which they said was illegal.

Her father was told to sign a bond in which he promised not marry off his daughter while she is still a child, the Bangladesh Daily Star reported.

It said that the wedding was to have taken place in the south-western town of Satkhira on Friday.

Police say that Habiba, a student of Abdul Karim Girls' High School, did not agree when her poverty-stricken father arranged for her to marry a 23-year-old neighbour.

Police say that she was too frightened to protest.

When she told her friends about the impending wedding, they rallied round and urged her not to go ahead.

Parents of her friends contacted Habiba's father and tried to stop him from going ahead with the wedding.

Initially he ignored their protests, but changed his mind after the police were alerted and small protests were held outside the school.

Correspondents say that the stand of the schoolgirls has created a stir in the town.

Like many other parts of the country - young people in Satkhira are deferential to their parents and seldom question their commands.

Leading Pacific and Fiji-based Human Rights Activist banned from leaving Fiji

During the last few weeks, the Fiji military interim administration has banned several NGO workers and human rights activists from leaving Fiji in the course of their normal duties as representatives of their organisations and networks.

The latest victim of these travel bans is the Coordinator of the Fiji Women's Crisis Centre (FWCC) Shamima Ali (press release here).

The FWCC was recently appointed the deputy chair of the advisory committee to the Pacific Prevention of Domestic Violence Program, which is an initiative between NZAid and the Pacific Islands Chiefs of Police (PICP).

Details of this story can be found in the FWCC's June newsletter.

The FWCC is regarded as one of the most successful AusAID-Pacific NGO partnerships. Shamima Ali is a remarkable woman, being the founding member of the Fiji NGO Coalition on Human Rights and is the first Pacific Islander appointed by the United Nations as a member of the Expert Group on the Rights of the Girl-Child. Ms Ali was a Pacific representative on the Commonwealth Foundation Civil Society Advisory Council , and was appointed a member of the Commonwealth Observer Group for the Nigerian Elections (April 2003) and appointed Fiji Human Rights Commissioner (February 2004) with a reappointed in February 2006.

The Director of the Fiji Human Rights Commission (an independent statutory authority), Shaista Shameem, has said that she has advised the interim government to lift the travel bans (audio comments here).

On the danger of song lyrics and election shenanigans

The NSW government has refused to scrap a controversial songbook with a song apologising to Aborigines, despite complaints it's political propaganda. Hamish East, the father of a pupil at Kiama Public School, on the state's south coast, approached the school principal after learning his son Brian was being taught the Sorry Song by West Australian composer Kerry Fletcher. Mr East told News Ltd he was not opposed to reconciliation but the sorry issue was "emotive" and political, and should not be forced down the throat of a child. He is reported as saying that the song is a "political stunt" which "confused" his son.

The only lyrics I can find on the web are the following:

If we can say sorry to the people from this land,
Sing, sing loud,
Break through the silence,
sing across this land.

They Cry, they cry,
Their children were stolen,
They still wonder why.

Break through the silence
Sing sorry across this land
We cry, we cry, their children were stolen.

Mmm. I would have thought the history of that song was fairly undisputed, and was not overly politicised. Kids were taken from their parents, we still feel the ramifications of that today, and we should be sorry for that part of our history.

Kevin Rudd has disagreed with the NSW government. He's indicated that he sees the song as inappropriate for schools, saying: "I think we're starting to look at too much political correctness on those sorts of questions. We've got to watch out for political correctness going mad."

"Political correctness gone mad." That phrase always sets off alarm bells for me!

Mr Rudd says that children should be educated about the facts of Australia's history, including respecting indigenous culture, but left to make up their own minds about what's right and wrong.

With all due respect to Mr Rudd, I reckon that irrespective of whether Aussie kids are taught that indigenous kids were "stolen" or "taken", they're going to find that pretty...uh, emotive. When I was in primary school I was absolutely terrified that my parents would get divorced, because it felt like everyone else's parents would. I suspect that a lot of kids are going to find the idea that children were "taken" from their parents pretty distressing...even confusing.

I'm far from convinced that the Sorry Song is any more "emotive" or biased than the lyrics of our national anthem: . Perhaps we should cease teaching that to kids, in case it denies them the ability to make up their own minds about history.

When gallant Cook from Albion sail'd,
To trace wide oceans o'er,
True British courage bore him on,
Till he landed on our shore.
Then here he raised Old England's flag,
The standard of the brave;
With all her faults we love her still,
"Brittannia rules the wave!"
In joyful strains then let us sing
"Advance Australia fair!"

Or how about the final verse:

Shou'd foreign foe e'er sight our coast,
Or dare a foot to land,
We'll rouse to arms like sires of yore
To guard our native strand;
Brittannia then shall surely know,
Beyond wide ocean's roll,
Her sons in fair Australia's land
Still keep a British soul.
In joyful strains the let us sing
"Advance Australia fair!"

I'm not sure that singing about Aussies having a "British soul" and England ruling the waves is allowing kids much scope to "make up their own minds" about our history.

While on the surface this appears to be a relatively insignificant spat over the appropriateness of singing a song in a primary school, at a deeper level it reveals the extent to which Australian history continues to be whitewashed (and I use that term deliberately). The vulnerability and capacity of individuals and communities is rooted in their histories. History shapes our social structures, our sense of self, our emotional resilience.

I don't expect 8 year olds to fully understand this part of Australian history - it's hard for me, a young adult, to get my head around it! I don't believe that 8 year olds of Anglo descent should be plagued by guilt for what their grandparents or great-parents did. However the reality is that many 8 year olds of indigenous descent are painfully aware of this history. They might know that their father has only just met some of his siblings, or they might know that their grandmother never knew her mother because she was taken from her family and forced to work, very hard, for white people in a place very far away from her own community. Or they might know that their father doesn't know where he comes from, and that he saw very bad things in the mission he grew up on. Where do these kids fit into our education system? For how long will we continue to ignore their voices, their everyday experiences? For how long will their experiences be ignored because their stories are "too difficult" for other 8 year olds?

Land, Violent Conflict and Development

I'm currently reading the OECD Development Centre's report on Land, Violent Conflict and Development. The report reviews what has been learnt so far about the link between land and conflict (Sections II and III), and the scope for land policy to prevent violent conflict (Section IV). It also looks at what is not known, as well as ways to learn more. It concludes with making some preliminary policy-relevant recommendations on how donors may support the use of land policy to secure peace in developing countries.

The report is not new - publication date is 2004 - but it makes some observations that don't appear to have been heeded. For example, the report notes that donors' conflict-prevention programmes aiming to sustain peace in immediate post-conflict settings tend to neglect land issues. Similarly, land policy projects often neglect the conflict dimension. It suggests that donors include "Political Impact Assessment" into project cycles in order to better understand local dynamics, monitor potential land-incited conflict, and consider the impact of projects on local politics and land issues.

An observation that I found worrying, but in some respects reassuring because of my own frustration with the limited interaction between "research" and "practice" (also known as "academics" and "NGOs") was the observation that:

Although the scope of each category of development programme (e.g. rural development, education, or enterprise development) is broadening continuously to accommodate new preoccupations, those responsible for designing and implementing them, within academia or donor agencies, do not systematically exchange their views and experience.

A section that really struck me was that entitled "Decentralisation is not a Panacea" (p. 33):

Although assumed to be more transparent and closer to “ground-level realities” than national politics, local politics often exhibit no such features when looked at in detail — especially in contexts marked by the embedded domination of large landowners. In Africa, British colonial rule — often referred to as “indirect rule” — greatly weighted the balance of forces at the level of villages in favour of chiefs. This situation has not been significantly altered after decolonisation, and incited Mamdani (1996) to describe it as “decentralised despotism”. Thus, even when agrarian structures appear to be organised along “customary” rules, they do not necessarily foster “harmony” between community members. Chauveau (1998) thus argues that:

“As an element of broader social relations, and a result from history and power relations, customary tenure rules and practice do not constitute an endogenous, closed and harmonious system[…]. The process by which rights are acquired and protected is hence deeply political”.

He argues that West African small holder agriculture is subject to a variety of external and internal pressures, to which different customary systems react differently. Yet, a common feature seems to be that local dynamics tend to reinforce the most powerful members of the community (usually middle aged land owning men). When economic opportunities are rising, a process of differentiation is observed, which favours those who are able to invest in land productivit (Woodhouse 2003); when opportunities are becoming scarcer, the pressure on livelihoods puts at odds customary and other claims to land, and results either in the exclusion of the weaker or in violent conflict. As Woodhouse (ibid.) puts it:

“When competition for land intensifies, the inclusive flexibility offered by customary rights can quickly become an uncharted terrain on which the least powerful are vulnerable to exclusion as a result of the manipulation of ambiguity by the more powerful”.

Therefore, assuming “decentralised” ownership of projects to be more legitimate or efficient “by essence” may be misleading. For all their shortcomings, central states have an essential role to play in promoting peace and development in rural areas, including through a process of decentralisation. First, they can balance the influence of local authorities viz. the weaker groups (often the young, women, and strangers). Second, they can ensure induced patterns of change are consistent with overall goals of economic growth and environmental sustainability.

A good reminder that we should always interrogate our assumptions, biases and ideological leanings!! I've often been frustrated by the criticism levelled by some NGOs, practitioners and activists towards other NGOs or donor agencies that focus on reform of governance, law and justice sectors. While the shift towards grassroots development is a good one, we need to be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater - law reform is often a necessary part of development, and it is inevitably going to be more top-down than some other forms of development. Unfortunately too many NGOs neglect issues of law and governance (because these issues are seen as "top down" development), and focus instead on things like microcredit (which is seen as "grassroots" development), when law and governance systems are the very things that shape people's access to resources.

Weaving "modern" and "traditional" systems together: the kastom economy in Vanuatu

2007 is the Year of the Kastom Economy in Vanuatu, and the BBC article 'Paying in pig tusks in Vanuatu' provides an example of how ni-Vanuatu are exploring ways for the modern, cash-based economy and the customary economy might interact. I'm really only beginning to learn about Vanuatu, and I'm no economist, but I am fascinated by the creativity with which ni-Vanuatu people have sought to bring together the two economic systems so as to not only preserve the kastom economy but increase the capacity of those who have access to the kastom economy but limited access to the cash economy. Apparently school fees can often (always?) be paid with traditional currency, and this article provides an example of library fees being paid for with traditional currency.

East Gippsland floods: the aftermath

Flood victims threaten to sue (The Australian, 5/7/07, AAP)

Angry residents of waterlogged Gippsland are threatening legal action against local authorities for not warning homeowners and businesses of the impending deluge when water was released from an upstream reservoir during the flood crisis. Mr Bracks said the Southern Rural Water authority acted properly in releasing water from the Glenmaggie Weir.

Flood victims to get funding (The Age, 9/7/07, David Rood

Premier Steve Bracks has announced $1.2 million for Gippsland areas affected by recent floods, and further multi-million dollar funding announcement is expected tomorrow. Wellington acting mayor Jeff Amos told Mr Bracks and his cabinet the floods had a devastating impact and while the immediate clean-up would be long and arduous, the eventual recovery would be "a hell of a lot longer".

"The pressure on our communities has been great," Mr Amos said.

"What a lot of people haven't realised is a lot of our communities have battled a very long drought, followed then by bushfires, mudslides and now this just tops it all off.

"People in those communities ... are certainly stoic, they're resilient but at the moment things are starting to wear a little bit thin."

Insurers refuse flood claims (the Australian, 9/7/07, Catherine Best)

Flood-stricken residents in Victoria's Gippsland are facing a massive financial hit with some insurance companies refusing to pay out tens of thousands of dollars in damage bills.

Householders and business owners have been left begging as they mop up from the worst floods in decades, on top of bushfires and record drought. Insurers generally don't offer flood insurance, and most insurers do not cover homes and businesses for flood damage.

The problems with focusing on vulnerability rather than capacity

Also known as "the problems of a culturally-biased approach", or "thinking that 'we' know what 'they' need"!

In a post titled "Why do we keep failing Africa?", Dave asks, "so what's going on? Our country and others in the developed world are swimming in cash and resources. Why can't we share it with people who really need it?"

I loved this response (bold is by me...the bit about traffic lights reminded me of the underpass and overpass opposite the market in Honiara, apparently funded by AusAid - I've never seen anyone use the overpass, the underpass is full of rotting vegetables and other rubbish, and despite thousands being spent on these two "amenities", you still see women tearing across the highway with a sack of rice on their heads...)

Dear Dave and fellow-bloggers,

I do not write this from my comfortable, eastern suburbs armchair. I write instead, from a lopsided office chair in rural West Africa. I don’t for a moment suggest this makes me a great expert, but I live here and I have my eyes open. This is what I’ve seen:

I’ve seen the homes that government officials build for themselves in the rural villages from which they came. Multiple stories high, beautifully tiled, landscape and with satellite dishes sprouting from the roofs. In a paddock on the outskirts of a village where every other construction is single story, mud brick, maybe three rooms and home to a large family.

I’ve seen, and am daily frustrated by, traffic lights erected in the middle of my rural town with overseas aid money that was earmarked for road safety. Road safety is a wonderful thing, I regularly make long cross-country trips that involve frequently fearing for my life, I would like to be safer on the roads here. Traffic lights, however, are doing nothing to improve my safety on the road. Not only are they spectacularly ineffective in a town struggling to maintain reliable electric supply; they are off more often than on, but they clog up intersections that function quite effectively when they don’t function. But this money was earmarked for such measure, and so it is traffic lights that we get.

This, I think, is one of the problems with aid, at least in the part of Africa that I know well. It is earmarked, set aside, prescribed by foreign governments and organizations for what they deem to be worthy issues without a real understanding of what is needed here. Road safety is needed, but my safety, and the safety of those whose country I live in, would be much better improved if the only major highway was not so heavily pothole that driving on it is like a slalom course and if even the major roads were wide enough for two vehicles to safely pass each other. When money is earmarked like this it clearly demonstrates that those foreigners responsible for it made no effort to leave the capital city, where traffic management is a major problem, and discover what is needed in the rural areas where a lot of their money will end up. Showed no actual interest in Africa, but decided that the right thing to do was to send money and to decide we needed traffic lights.

Governments remain the bodies most able to collect and distribute aid money, whether they do so or not. The vast majority of well funded aid that I see comes from governments. It is good money that could be used to do good things. It is left, however, in the hands of government officials. There are some leaders and officials who are more than capable of distributing this money effectively, on important issues, and improving the lives of their countrymen. There are others, however, who, faced with temptation, choose to funnel it into multistory houses in their home towns or, as others have mentioned, into Swiss bank accounts, building up arms caches and even conducting ethnic cleansing. They are left, by there brother governments, with spectacular amounts of money and arms-length, phony accountability. How many of you can be certain that, if given large quantities of foreign money, our own leaders would use it wisely and not spend it on campaign ads to get themselves back into to power next time? I don’t believe that is a particularly African problem.

What is necessary, then, as far as I can see it, is for aid to continue, but to be accompanied by genuine interest and involvement into the countries it is given to. For those giving and administering those funds to be people who are dedicated to the improvement of the country it is going to. To be people who are willing to invest there time, as well as their money. To spend the time discovering what is really needed, to spend the time to understand how to create genuine accountability and partnerships with leaders who have genuine integrity, to spend time working out how to help without creating dependency.

Many of you have reference the situation with out own indigenous community, and Mr. Pearson’s idea that “hound-outs kill”, others have suggested that Africans don’t know how to maintain what is begun by aid money, or what was left by colonial administrations. I don’t believe that this is the case. I do believe, however, that poorly managed aid, and welfare, leads to a cycle of dependency, both in Africa and the indigenous community. If money spent on beginning a project in Africa, whether it be good and appropriate or otherwise, if that project is begun and managed without any true involvement and partnership with locals involved, it will be depended upon and when it is left, it will be abandoned. Indeed, neither African, nor the indigenous community want or need handouts, but partnership with people, so they can improve their own lives in a way that is appropriate, necessary and sustainable, not condescending and disinterested.

I believe that the answer is neither to throw our arms up in disgust, nor to continue wantonly throwing money at the situation, but to move from a point of arrogance and guilt and give our genuine interest and involvement along with our money, being willing to invest our time and our lives in order that we are actually investing our money, and not wasting it.

Posted by: voyageur on July 6, 2007 8:05 PM

Opinion piece: Tim Costello on doing right by our region

Hmmmm...generally a good piece, but I'd query some of the assertions..."improve agricultural techniques?" Maybe "improved logging practices" is more to the point! I'm also far from convinced that concert attendances and the wearing of fashion accessories is indicative of an interest in structural change! Finally...while I agree that aid and development assistance can reduce migration, I'm wary of linking aid and development, security, and migration too closely...it entrenches notions of "us vs them", and the idea that refugees are bad and a security threat...

Finally, I realise that there is a place for pragmatism, but I believe that there is also a place for compassion, a place for moral imperatives. While I think this is generally a great piece, and I generally argue in these terms myself, there is also another part of me that is disappointed that Tim - one of the few highly popular religious leaders this country has - would opt for arguments based on pragmatism, arguments based on "our" economic and physical security, over those based on compassion and moral imperatives. In Christian terms, part of me wishes he had be prophetic.

IT IS indisputable that many of the nations of the Pacific confront enormous challenges to overcome poverty, unrest and violence. The magnitude of
these challenges is underscored by World Vision research that shows 22 developing nations in the Pacific and South-East Asia are failing to meet one or many of the global goals set out to combat poverty through the United Nation's Millennium Development Goals.

One critical element in this failure has been the lack of properly targeted aid funding by rich nations, and a lack of predictability in the aid that has been given.

There is a global shortfall in overseas aid, causing United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to this week warn that the broken promises of developed nations were strangling efforts to eradicate poverty. And nowhere is this failure more critical for Australia than in its own neighbourhood, the Pacific and South-East Asia. In many ways Australia has dropped the ball in its handling of the challenges facing the Pacific region.

While we have helped to re-establish law and order in some of our nearest neighbours, like East Timor, the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea, if such interventions are to be successful in the long term, this must be the start of our help, not the end.

The next step is to tackle the underlying causes of the unrest — issues such as the lack of economic opportunities, the breakdown in local governance and the increasingly degraded environment. And while it is the right thing for Australia to do, it is also in our own interest. If we fail to assist in resolving these underlying issues, our troops will be back in very quick time.

This is why Australia's overseas aid is an investment in our future, not simply charity.

Well-targeted overseas aid increases people's access to basic health and education, it builds basic infrastructure that increases economic growth and creates jobs. It also builds demand in our nearest neighbours for good governance.

Therefore I welcome Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd's call for a rethink on
Australia's response to the economic and social problems of the Pacific. His commitment to boost overseas aid funding to 0.5 per cent of GNI by 2015 will double the amount of aid we give. While not the 0.7 per cent of GDP that our Government promised to the world's poor in 2000, it is the minimum amount required to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.

In the Pacific and in South-East Asia it has the potential to make a profound impact. If delivered, the extra aid could allow Australia to do all of the following: reduce child deaths by 140,000 each year, cut maternal deaths by 4200, reduce by at least 29,000 deaths from AIDS and by 31,000 deaths from tuberculosis each year. It could also provide access to safe drinking water to almost 37 million people.

Creating jobs for people in their own countries will reduce refugees. Promoting improved agricultural techniques and alternative fuel sources will reduce environmental degradation and climate change. Increasing the incomes of people in our region will create new markets for Australian businesses.

This is one of the reasons that some of Australia's largest corporations are becoming much more interested in reducing poverty in our region. A recent report by Allen Consulting warned that poverty in the Asia Pacific region would directly threaten the prosperity of corporate Australia.

The report prompted business leaders to urge the Federal Government to partner with corporate Australia in fostering more effective investment in emerging Asia Pacific markets.

In Canberra last month the Business for Poverty Relief Alliance — which includes leading companies such as the ANZ Bank, Grey Global Group, IAG and Visy Industries — said the Government had a key role to play through our overseas aid program, which could be better targeted to create an environment that allows successful and socially sustainable investment.

Globally, the importance of foreign aid has not been lost on other world leaders. The new British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, has made the fight against global poverty a key plank of his premiership.

Historically, Australia has traditionally punched above its weight in international affairs. Both sides of the political divide have contributed greatly to international action: to end apartheid in South Africa, to create the International Criminal Court, to aid successful elections in Cambodia and to press for change in Zimbabwe, as well as the critical interventions in East Timor and the Solomon Islands.

Australia's leading role in the Cairns Group, which has pressed for free trade to help poorer nations, is also laudable. Unfortunately, over the past decade we have failed to show international leadership on the critical issue of levels of overseas aid.

Australia is badly lagging other developed nations on the level of overseas aid it gives, ranking equal 15th out of 22 of the world's richest countries. And while there were some welcome initiatives in the latest federal budget, there is a greater capacity to help — at relatively little cost and with the potential to reap benefits of our own.

It is in our own interests to ensure stability and growth in the countries that surround us. It is also in our interests to do what we can to foster environmental sustainabilty and an adherence to human rights in the emerging superpowers of Asia.

No doubt Kevin Rudd's call for a rethink on the Pacific and a pledge to boost aid has been partly inspired by the massive support in Australia for the Make Poverty History campaign.

Last year, 15,000 people attended the Make Poverty History concert in Melbourne, while almost 100,000 Australians joined more than 23 million people worldwide to stand up for poverty, and more than 800,000 Australians bought white wristbands to show their support for the cause.

This is an issue Australians understand, an issue people care about. It is my hope that it will now be an issue that increasingly captures the attention of our political leaders.

Tim Costello is chief executive of World Vision Australia.

Praise the Lord, and DON'T pass the ammunition

Rudd vows lift in Pacific island aid
July 05, 2007

FEDERAL Labor leader Kevin Rudd has promised a big increase in Australian aid to Pacific island nations to end instability in the region.

Mr Rudd last onight said a “radical rethink” of the nation's role in the Pacific would focus on economic improvement to avoid costly military interventions and a flow of refugees to Australia.

He said a Labor government in its first term would undertake auditing and planning with each Pacific neighbour and, if re-elected, it would commit to a “significant” investment program over time.

Labor would seek to reach an overall overseas aid target of 0.5 per cent of GDP by 2015-16 - about twice current levels.

The Opposition Leader will detail what he's calling a Pacific partnership for development and security in a speech to the Lowy Institute in Sydney this morning.

“What I'm proposing is a radical rethink about Australia's engagement with the states which form part of our arc of instability,” Mr Rudd told ABC TV.

“If we don't act to change now, what I fear most is in the future we're going to have more costly military interventions.

“What we'll have is states fail in the region, or more of them fail ... you'll then have the risk of significant refugee outflow from the island states of the region into Australia.”

In the past decade Australia has twice sent troops to East Timor and continues to lead a Solomon Islands peacekeeping mission.

Mr Rudd said the change in policy would prioritise economic development so security problems would be come more manageable.

“Right now we're simply dealing with the military or security symptom of an underlying economic development challenge.”

In addition to one-off military interventions and refugees, Mr Rudd said he was concerned about the threat to public health in Australia.

“When you talk about the collapse of public health in Papua New Guinea, you're looking at HIV-AIDS infection rates of something about two per cent of the population and the exposure of our communities in the Torres Strait and in north Queensland.”

Mr Rudd agreed he was also concerned about other nations supplanting Australia as the principal power in the region.

“If we fail to act effectively then I think we're going to see a long-term drift in Australia's strategic standing right across this region as well.”

The Circuit: the social, cultural and political significance of great TV

I was chatting with friends the other night about the state of TV. We recalled some of the great Australian tv shows of our childhood and teenage years (Janus, Mercury, Brides of Christ, Wild Side, Seachange, MDA...) and bemoaned the way that reality tv seems to have taken over the world.

Now I'm excited about an Aussie drama for the first time in a long time. I've been watching the advertisements on SBS and thinking that The Circuit looks like it could be a cracker. The Age has a write-up today which has whet my appetite further. It not only looks like some great TV, but its production raises questions about the role and status of indigenous people in broader Australian society and culture, and the extent to which the arts can be utilised for capacity-building and empowerment:

"With a cast, crew and writing and production team comprising about 95 per cent Aboriginal people, the stories of The Circuit are bound to resonate with many of them. The non-Aboriginal actors and producers say that working on this Aboriginal driven drama, a first for Australian television, has opened their eyes.

Co-producer Ross Hutchens, whose wife is Aboriginal, says: "Just seeing this baggage that indigenous people carry for their whole community . . . There's the amount of death that the indigenous cast and crew have dealt with . . . there's been an actor friend in Melbourne who passed away; it's just constant. I'll be dealing with some on-set issue and the director's helping me and at the same time they're texting a kid in Melbourne who's chroming. You've got all these people with different backgrounds, you're part-producer, you're part-social worker. At the end of it, I can go home, whereas for some of my indigenous directors and writers, this is their life."

Most (but not all) of my friends who are indigenous are also highly educated professionals (most attended university or TAFE). They're lawyers, ministers of religion, linguists, musicians, writers, film-makers, and people working in the community-development sector and the charitable sections of big corporates. At least one has said that he thinks that indigenous men who wear suits are perhaps the most marginalised of all indigenous people:

Although magistrate Peter Lockhart (Gary Sweet) and Aboriginal Legal Services lawyer Drew Ellis (Aaron Pedersen) essentially represent those two worlds, the complexity of their characters removes any chance of cliche.

Drew, a "flash city lawyer" from Perth who never knew his Aboriginal father, is more connected to the white way of life than that of the people he hopes to help. His earnest Western demeanour prompts the locals to call him a "coconut" - brown on the outside, white on the inside. And Peter is acutely aware of having to lord white man's law over black lore, forever pushing the limits of the legal system in a despairingly fruitless effort to accommodate both.

Ahhh...the question of the extent to which "white man's law" and "traditional law" can be reconciled. It could hardly be avoided, could it?!

In the wake of Howard's announcement about a tough new approach to problems in indigenous communities, it's also nice to be reminded of reasons to be positive and hopeful about the future:

If there is one theme that runs concurrently through The Circuit and the making of the drama, it is the combination of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal storytellers weaving a story for everyone.

And finally, a reminder that so-called "indigenous issues" or "indigenous dramas" aren't just for indigenous people:

"It's great to see scripts that are quite real, especially for Broome and Aboriginal people. It's nothing like Home and Away, it's something that we can relate to. And not just us, the whole of Australia."

A different perspective

There has been plenty of talk about "them" in the last week, and finally we are beginning to hear from those who are being talked about so much:

The Age yesterday received the following letter from a 13-year-old girl, written on behalf of her grandfather, a Warlpiri man from the NT.

I COME from one of the largest remote communities in the Northern Territory. Mal Brough and his team consulted the wrong people. He talked to only a handful and some are offenders themselves. How can we come to meeting when I can't tell time?

We wanted to say things but he left so fast. Some of the things he said are not what we agree on. Traditional owners cannot speak for us.

We never heard of all this rape and constant drinking here. That stuff happens mostly in the town areas. There is some but not the same as he says. Maybe same as Sydney or Adelaide.

If we have problem we always sort it out ourself. Spears stop even the worst of them. If bad stuff happens, they wait till night. Police don't patrol at night and our night patrol can't get money. Me and my family feel safer (with) night patrol than police. Police treat us like dogs sometimes.

Most drinking here is done by whitefellas who have drinking permit and we know they touch our kids but they all stick up against us when we talk.

How can we talk when they are our boss for work? They are all drinking mates as well. Nurse drink with mechanic, store manager, police and more. We don't like our kids to enter the white housing areas in our community. They don't even want to live with us. This makes us feel less than them.

But they love us at royalty time when they sell us a cheap bomb car for thousands. Some cars don't last a month. I sell a painting for $50 and in town my painting sell for $1000.

I love my kids same as you. Kids are my future. I do everything I know to help my kids, but Howard calls me a raper and will take half our money as punishment. Is that fair? How would you like that to happen to you?

Our law is strong in communities and we have strong rules for marriage. I want my kids to learn but why should our kids get education? There are no jobs here anyway, all the big jobs are taken by whitefellas.

They won't give us a go because they want the money. We don't have a say in our own programs and the salary money goes to their mates they bring up. We don't even know some of these people who work here. Who picked them? Like we are not good enough. We have ideas too and we want to do things but no one can help us.

If we make mistake, is that OK? That's how we all learn, by mistake. In the city you get many choices, sometimes we don't get a single choice. If we report any problems here, no one listens. They call us troublemakers or radicals. They rubbish us to our own family. They say our own family is against us, they try to make us feel shame.

I can't speak good English but I want a say in things. We can stop most of these tricks and whitefellas from touching our kids and selling us porn and grog, but permit system gone now.

Maybe it's best to just keep quiet and say nothing. We never took up a gun before because fighting is wrong. But I think they want a war with us now. What did we do wrong? How can I lead when I'm scared too? I want you to come to our communities to see how things really are and hear our stories. I think you will cry when you hear them.

Source: A voice from the heartland, The Age

Update on East Gippsland floods

Hundreds of people have fled their homes and more are preparing to evacuate as rising floodwaters threaten to engulf more towns, including the regional centre of Sale. Vast areas of East Gippsland are under water, main roads and highways are closed, and numerous individuals and communities have been isolated by flooding and the effects of flooding (ie on power lines).

Damage to property is expected to run into millions of dollars, and authorities have warned that the worst flooding may be yet to come. Major flood warnings are current for the Mitchell, Avon, Macalister and Thomson rivers (I think that's 4/5 major rivers, the Tambo River being the 5th major river in East Gippsland??), with moderate warnings for 6 others.

The effects of fires in early 2007 (and perhaps 2003) can be seen in the Mitchell River, which is reportedly heavy with silt and ash from the fire-scarred mountains.

Many individuals and communities in East Gippsland and surrounding regions experience forms of vulnerability which are related to geography and infrastructure and are not experienced in other parts of the State. This is demonstrated by the story of a woman in the Monaro region, adjacent to the East Gippsland region. She made an emergency call from her isolated property at Michelago, a small settlement in the Monaro region. She was suffering an asthma attack, was cold, trapped in her house by a blizzard, and her power had been out for seven hours (something that few Melbournians would tolerate in the depths of winter!!). It took 14 firefighters and 4 ambulance officers 11 hours to reach the woman.

Residents flee rising floodwaters, There's water for miles, Breaking their banks, All stops out for snow rescue, The Age

ACCC dismisses claim against Oxfam

The Australian Consumer and Competition Commission (ACCC) has dismissed claims by the Institute of Public Affairs (an Australian rightwing think tank) that Oxfam Australia was misleading the public for claiming that Fair Trade Coffee helped lift some of the world's poorest coffee farmers out of poverty.

The background to the complaint can be found here:

Fair Trade Coffee and the Institute of Public Affairs: a bitter brew

Oxfam coffee 'harms' poor farmers, The Australian

The Institute of Public Affairs, describes itself as "Australia's Leading Free Market Think Tank". Unlike Oxfam, they haven't published a press release regarding the ACCC's decision. Aside from the article published in the Australian, linked above, they have also produced a paper entitled "Free Trade or Fair Trade?"

There is an abundance of information on Fairtrade coffee on Oxfam Australia's website here. World Vision is also pushing fairtrade coffee and chocolate (see also here and here).

The wiki for Hooked: students for trade justice also has some great information, as does the Fair Trade Association.

Another Big Flood?

Almost a decade after The Big Flood, floods hit East Gippsland again.


I've been listening the reports and interviews with SES personnel for the last few days,
I undertook my first ever extensive research project in part of East Gippsland - and my focus happened to be "The Big Flood" of 1998.

In late June 1998, the Shire of East Gippsland (which lies in the far east of the state of Victoria, Australia) was declared to be in a State of Emergency following a one-in-100 year flood event. Media coverage of the “flood mayhem” ( "Flood mayhem: Gippsland braced for worst in 40 years". Herald Sun. Melbourne Wednesday June 24) tended to blame the “natural disaster” on “a record flood on top of a…drought” ("Natural disaster and a loss of hope". The Age. Melbourne Friday 3 July).

During the course of my research, I found that a historical analysis of the conditions creating and shaping vulnerability reveals that the disaster was not the result of an unusual coincidence of abnormal events in nature, but entirely foreseeable. While torrential rain may have provided the trigger for a ‘1-in-100 year flood’, the disaster that resulted was shaped by underlying conditions and processes which had existed for well over a century. These include the physiographic features that characterise much of East Gippsland, such as the harsh climatic conditions, steep terrain and poor soils, and characteristics of local economic and social activity, including limited access to transport, restricted access to markets, a small economic base, and depopulation. What a historical analysis reveals, however, is that at the core of flood disasters in the region, there has always been the coincidence of and interaction between drought, low commodity prices, and poor land management practices. This observation is articulated by A. M. Pearson in his book, Echoes from the Mountains, and has also been noted by local Landcare groups (Gippsland Community Reference Group, 1993, 20).

A historical analysis also revealed that while the biophysical, economic and social environment has always limited the ability of many of East Gippsland's residents to respond to further shocks, many of the conditions affecting vulnerability were heightened by changes occurring since the 1970s and accelerating during the 1990s. Factors that stood out included impact of economic liberalisation on farmers, the discovery of Ovine Johnes' Disease in the area, drought, and low commodity prices - the latter two of which contributed to overstocking, over-grazing, the growth of rabbit populations, and the difficult of feeding families let alone looking after fences and pastures. By the time rain fell in June 1998, a situation of extreme vulnerability had arisen.

Flood disasters are so often blamed on "chance" and "unusual weather events", yet the floods of 2007 have arisen as they did in 1998, 1990, and many times before that...a severe weather event with an intense low pressure system built across the east-coast of Victoria, moved back in on itself and dumped rain on areas suffering from drought. Snows have fallen in alpine areas, and the great rivers of East Gippsland have flooded. Residents of East Gippsland are familiar with flooding...in many areas, rivers flood every spring, and every 2-3 years, a particularly heavy fall of rain will cause flooding that results in erosion, and fence and pasture damage. The difference between a severe weather event and a "disaster" is the extent to which social, political, economic and pre-existing environmental pressures interact to structure and compound the impacts of the severe weather event.

The statistics this year indicate that this weather could surpass that of 1998. Some parts of East Gippsland are already experiencing more severe floods than they did in 1998. At present the damage appears to be far less severe than it was in 1998, and the floods are certainly not being called "a disaster", but it remains to be seen whether this will be the case, and if so, why. Many of the residents of East Gippsland have already experienced bushfires in 2003 and 2007, and damage caused by fire will, in some instances, have compounded the ongoing economic (and social) vulnerability arising from the ongoing drought, as well as pre-existing sources of vulnerability mentioned above. In addition, the effect of bushfire on the landscape exacerbates flooding in numerous complex ways (not least of which is obviously the denundation of land caused by fire).

Quick fixes: alcohol and porn responsible for abuse of indigenous children

It seems ironic that my last post was directed at avoiding simplistic histories and the importance of understanding complexity, given that the Australian Federal Government has now determined that alcohol and porn are the causes of child sexual abuse in indigenous communities.

The Australian Federal Government has declared sexual abuse of Aboriginal children a 'national emergency' and is moving to take control of 60 Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory, ban alcohol and porn in them, increase police numbers, and make health checks for children compulsory.

Australia to ban alcohol for Aborigines - Rod McGuirk, The Associated Press

Australia bans alcohol on Aboriginal land - Bernard Lagan, Times Online

Howard announces major Indigenous overhaul for NT - National Indigenous Times

These measures are a response to the Northern Territory Government's Board of Inquiry into the Protection of Aboriginal Children from Sexual Abuse, which released their report on June 15.

I'm not sure whether I'm more upset about:

• the discrimination quite clearly based on race - these measures will affect indigenous people, and no other group...isn't this called racism? Note that the inquiry found that children are being abused by both indigenous AND non-indigenous adults!


• the idea that removing grog and porn from indigenous communities will somehow fix damaged "traditions" (all of which are uncritically represented as positive). Never mind the fact that we're talking about communities that are suffering the aftermath of what could be called conflict and genocide;


• the scrapping of the entry-permit system under which indigenous people have controlled access to THEIR land;


• the sheer paternalism of these measures - this heavy-handed, top-down response to problems in indigenous communities is completely disempowering. The Howard government doesn't even PRETEND to have any commitment to "self-determination" anymore!

Federal elections are not far off. In the lead-up to the last federal election, Howard guaranteed himself conservative support by alleging that women aboard a "suspected illegal entry vessel" had been throwing their children overboard (Wikipedia entry, The ALP's "truthoverboard", Project Safecom's "The Unthrown Kids"). During the last federal election, the Howard government engendered and took advantage of public fear about asylum seekers and the need to protect our borders against them. This time, the government appears set to engender fear and garner support by appearing to clamp down on indigenous people who are, via the machinery of political speeches, media etc, inextricably linked with drunkenness and paedophilia.

This isn't to say, of course, that indigenous communities would necessarily fare much better under an ALP government. Larissa Behrendt has warned that we should not raise Howard's opposition up as some kind of saviour.

Edit: Howard appears to have acknowledged the inherant racism of the announcements of Thursday 21 June, and today, Friday 22 June, has announced that these welfare restrictions could be extended to all Australians.

Dealing with complexity, avoiding simplistic histories

Bruce Pascoe, writing in The Age, neatly highlights the bias in Australian history.

I share his outrage, but just as he advocates for a more sophisticated approach to history, so too would I advocate for a more sophisticated approach to "laying blame". Pascoe argues for a more nuanced history, one that recognises that indigenous Australians were not "all the same", and were not merely "hapless" and "wandering aimlessly over the continent and failing to resist European invasion". In other words, he advocates an approach that acknowledges that the indigenous population of Australia was characterised by diversity, and that indigenous Australians were not merely victims but had capacities and forms of resilience in the face of the European invasion. Pascoe highlights the problems of simplistic histories, and yet provides and overly-simplistic solution. He comes close to laying all the blame at the feet of school teachers, despite having begun his argument with a tale about the ignorance of two of Australia's "best journalists".

While writing a first-year geography essay at Monash University in 1998, I came across details of the complex eel harvesting, elaborate systems of water control and stone housing that existed in Victoria’s Western District in pre-colonial times. It’s rare for me to be moved to tears while reading an academic text in a university library, but on that day, I was.

I bombarded friends and family with my new knowledge for weeks, perhaps even months. Pascoe is right to suggest that our children would be fascinated that such technology existed in their country - I was thrilled by this new information. It challenged my assumptions and I felt my worldview shift. However I was also angry, and overwhelmed by a sense of having been lied to. I had gone to school with indigenous children and I thought that I knew something of indigenous history. Both my parents are teachers with a dedication to their work and a commitment to social justice. Despite this, I had somehow managed to reach university with the belief that prior to the arrival of Europeans, indigenous Australians were a nomadic people whose technological skills were essentially confined to carving spears and boomerangs.

I share Pascoe's outrage but do not regard the gaps in my knowledge of history as the product of "poor teaching". I was taught by dedicated professionals doing the best they could with the legacy of their own educations. While I felt that I had been lied to, I wasn’t sure who was responsible. Now I believe that this is a problem that all us, including the media, bear some responsibility for. Pascoe writes that he never felt blacker than when Jon Faine and Jill Singer reacted with incredulity to his description of the technological feats of pre-colonial Australia. When I first read of these feats, I never felt whiter.

Time to meet the Aborigines you weren't taught about

Bruce Pascoe
May 31, 2007

The hapless blackfella, once a handy myth,lives on through poor teaching.

I'M NOT very black. I'm sure that in years to come the Aboriginal community will be under pressure from bureaucracies to exclude people whose heritage is from a great-grandmother who did everything she could to become white, to merge with the master class.

Plenty of blackfellas think that a separation of two generations and failure to be present at formation of the Aboriginal Advancement League, the 1967 referendum or Charlie Perkins' bus trips invalidates us; we weren't around when it mattered most. Fair enough too. We had squibbed it along with a million other cross-cultural Aboriginal refugees.

But I never felt blacker than when I looked out of the ABC studio window this week and saw that perfect autumn sky. I had to look out the window because I couldn't look Jon Faine or Jill Singer in the face.

We were discussing my new book, Convincing Ground, on Radio 774's Conversation Hour and Singer had just chastised me for giving the wrong date for the waterside workers' dispute.

Faine and I had discussed the contact history of the Western District before and he thought I was still gilding the black lily, that my claim of Aboriginal people at war with white settlers was a romanticisation of contact history, that my reference to stone houses, grain harvests and fish aquaculture was somehow a fabrication or at best a distortion of history. Here are two of Australia's best journalists who cannot believe the story I have lifted from the same pages that ABC board member Keith Windschuttle must have read.

Theirs wasn't a case of ill will or mischief-making as displayed by others in the debate — they'd just never read this stuff before.

It's a failure of education. We persist in teaching the young that Aboriginal history is no older than 40,000 years, that the people were nomads and had no "real" houses or agriculture and did not fight to protect their land.

It's a failure of education that English visitors to the Port Phillip District in 1835 reported Aboriginal towns where houses were built with basalt blocks, timber and turf, some capable of accommodating 30 people, and yet we don't advise our 12 year-olds of this fact.

It's a failure of education that we read of the aquaculture systems covering more than 100 square kilometres at Lake Condah and elsewhere and assume that a society capable of the engineering to tunnel into rock and build sophisticated structures must have been advised by an Englishman.

It's a failure of education to read that the search party for Ludwig Leichhardt observed Aboriginal people in central Australia harvesting, irrigating and sowing grain, and allow that information to disappear from our history. Grain was stored in stone silos, wooden dishes and sewn kangaroo skins, some collections weighing over a tonne. Doesn't this prick your interest? Don't you think your children would find it fascinating that this was going on in their country?

It's a failure of education to read that parties of 200 to 300 Aboriginal warriors attack white settlements and not to conceive that a war might be under way.

A cynic would say we hide behind a myth of the hapless Aborigine wandering aimlessly over the continent and failing to resist European invasion so that we might validate our occupation of the continent. But I think that, while the myth may have grown from that source, we persist in believing it because our education has failed us.

Normally intelligent people have been told they need not search the public record because it bears no evidence other than proof of the haplessness and brutishness of indigenous Australians. We advise our best minds to ignore Australian history because nothing happened. We resort to reconciliation as an expression of our compassion and understanding for a benighted race.

Young Australians, I beg you to thank your parents for their earnest response to indigenous disadvantage, but then go back to the early documents — you're in for a surprise.

None of us are going anywhere until we believe our history. Argue about it by all means, speculate on what it represents, but when you read of the warfare, the houses, the agriculture, don't fail to mention this to your own children. It's their country, and they deserve to know.

Bruce Pascoe's latest book, Convincing Ground, is published by Aboriginal Studies Press.

Australia's Aid Budget 2007

I was going to blog about this but haven't yet had a chance to really look at the budget.

Ben has a couple of good posts on this issue, one which gives this year's budget some historical context, and one on The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

Troops Out? Pros and cons of withdrawing from Iraq

Jessie has posed the following question over at 'Probably Not Interesting', and it's a question I share:

Troops out of Iraq?

This post is to glean the opinions of you clever readers out there. Recently you probably will have read about the fact that GW Bush has vetoed a number of bills which would have withdrawn all American troops from Iraq in the very near future.

Now, I have really not much of an idea about the implications of pulling all troops out of Iraq. I certainly know that that particular style of invasion was a horrible (aaaand illegal according to the UN Security Council but let’s not get bogged down in that!) idea in the first place, and that the situtation to date has been handled like the proverbial dog’s breakfast. But now that everyone’s in, i’m just not convinced that flat-out withdrawing is a good idea. It’s like crashing a party, completely wrecking the house, beating some people up, and then just before torching the place, deciding to leave in case you make a mess or get in trouble. Not a sophisticated analogy, I know, but perhaps one that rings true. What do you - clever readers - think about this question?

I’m all for education before opinionation, so please! Educate me!

Jess

Like Jess, I opposed the war in Iraq, but now that troops are there, I'm not sure that withdrawing is a good idea. In words similar to Jessie's, my feeling is that "we made the mess, now we should clean it up". However this is an instinctive reaction more than anything I've know or understand a great deal about. So - what do you think?