Peter Black's Freedom to Differ

Guest post: "We Should Re-Think our Stance on Fiji"

Dilan, a regular reader of this blog, has written this opinion piece on Fiji and I have agreed to post it below:

We Should Re-Think our Stance on Fiji

It seems self-evident that democracy is the most effective form of government regardless of how imperfect it may be. But what if the democracy in which you lived was a racist one. Imagine an Australia where a Pauline Hanson type individual was the Prime Minister. Imagine if within that Australia the civil rights of non-white Australians were reduced by the passage of a series of increasingly racist laws. How long would it be before civil unrest occurred? How long would it be before some members of the oppressed minority, if even only a few, sought to strike back? How would the majority react? History has taught us that when these type of things happen, the response is often violent. Would you want to live in this type of country? It would not be the sort of place that a civilized, decent person would want to live. Such a society would soon turn in on itself.

Consider then two countries within the Asia Pacific region: Sri Lanka and Fiji. The latter country, Fiji, has recently been subjected to yet another military coup. But unlike all the other military coups which Fiji has experienced, this coup by Commodore Bainimarama was designed to prevent the furtherance of racist politics within the democracy. The former country, Sri Lanka, embraced a racist democracy almost from the moment of its independence. Sri Lanka had racist laws in the 1950’s, 1960’s and 1970’s. Under Sinhalese majority rule some Tamils lost their citizenship, their property rights and all Tamils had their education and employment prospects curtailed. The Tamils were subjected to all manner of racist violence. The result was a thirty-year civil war.

That civil war might well be ending now. But Sri Lanka isn’t the type of country in which most people would want to live. You only need to go onto the Austlii database and read through a few of the refugee cases from Sri Lanka to get an idea of the type of mess that Sri Lanka has become. Parts of the Tamil society have almost completely devolved. Education and employment opportunities for ethnic Sri Lankan Tamils seem terribly limited. Crime, perpetrated by both Sinhalese and Tamils, is horrific. And that isn’t even going near the type of violence perpetrated by the military, security forces and the rebels. Violence against women seems to be entrenched. Corruption is rampant. Furthermore, even if the war ends it will be a long time before the Tamils trust the Sinhalese again.

There are three key points that should be remembered whenever you look at Sri Lanka. Firstly, Sri Lanka’s spiral into war and misery really began with one racist politician; Solomon Bandaranaike. Mr Bandaranaike himself is rumoured to have some Tamil ancestry. But he held himself out there as being a Sinhalese nationalist and he exploited the fears and prejudices of the poor Sinhalese. The results of that were catastrophic for so many people. Secondly, probably about half the people who think that they are Sinhalese have some Tamil ancestry. Tamils are Dravidians and the Dravidian race accounts for the bulk of the ethnic groups in South India and thereabouts. There was also so much inter-marriage and cross-migration for centuries. This also underscores the extent to which race really is just a social concept which is open to manipulation.

Thirdly, there was an attempted military coup in the 1950’s when Solomon Bandaranaike was starting up his race-hate politics. It is food for thought to consider what might have happened if the coup had worked and Bandaranaike had been stopped dead in his tracks. Sri Lanka had so much potential. It could have been like Singapore or Malaysia. These countries faced similar challenges to Sri Lanka, but they used different methods to put the race genie back in the bottle. They have fared so much better.

This brings us back to Fiji and General Bainimarama’s coup. This Fijian coup has taken place to stop the pursuit of a racist political agenda. It is certainly true that the coup and the subsequent suspension of democracy are highly undesirable. But we do have to consider what the implications might have been if race relations between the ethic Fijians and the Indian Fijians had deteriorated. We should give some thought to what might have happened in future years if the racist politics had got going. A violent, unstable Fiji would be a poor neighbour.

Race politics brings out the worst in human beings. We need only look at the Holocaust to see what racist politics inspires. In more recent times we have had, Bosnia, Rwanda, Chechnya, Darfur and others. If we could go back in time would we really want to preserve the rights to freedom of speech or the right to participate in a democracy of people like Adolf Hitler, Slobodan Milosevic or others of their ilk? The consequences should not always have to be so extreme before we see some curtailment of the rights of racist politicians. Ideally, strong racial vilification laws and other laws, would stop racist politics from doing serious damage. But Bainimarama may not have had those tools at his disposal.

Provided that Bainimarama is committed to bringing back democracy in the future then we should engage with him. Fijians are best placed to tell us how long it will take to remove racism from their internal politics. Perhaps Bainimarama should have had more faith in the democratic process. In an ideal world democracy would have destroyed the racist agenda. But this doesn’t always happen. Bainimarama’s underlying goal is the correct one, and on that basis, as unsatisfying as a suspension of democracy may be, we should not walk away from him or Fiji. Instead, we should continue to insist that democracy be brought back in the future. But we should also take care to insist that it is a democracy with strong safeguards and one that cannot be subverted for racist ends.

If you are looking for a forum to express your ideas (your freedom to differ, if you like), please let me know and I will happily post your thoughts.

Hidden in the Rushes

A guest post from Dilan:

The recently released film Rogue is a type of horror movie – it’s one where film-goers work during the week for their salary, and go to the movies on the weekend, only to discover a film devoid of suspense, plot or any real action. In short, Rogue is definitely not a film that audiences should flock to see. At least, movie-goers should not go to the cinema expecting to be entertained by a film as suspenseful as Wolf Creek or as funny as Lake Placid. Instead, Rogue is dull follow-up to the Greg McLean’s brilliant debut in Wolf Creek. That said, Rogue is a film with a very interesting sub-text. It may well be to read a little bit too much into what is after all less than two hours of mindless entertainment, one disgruntled film-goer said it was ‘mind-numbing.’ But, Rogue does contain a fairly interesting comment on the relationship between the United States and Australia.

It is all the more interesting in the context of how this film came to be made. Firstly, the Greg McLean’s debut in Wolf Creek heralded him as a film-maker of great talent. Secondly, the film struck a chord with Australian and overseas audiences. Wolf Creek featured the menace that lies within Australia’s vast open spaces and was inspired by the real life horrors of the disappearance of Peter Falconio and the serial murders committed by Ivan Milat. As such, the film played upon existing fears that people have about the Australian outback.

Thirdly, the success of Wolf Creek created a great deal of interest from Hollywood. Herein, lies the predictable cliché of the small Australian film-maker selling out to the big industry of Hollywood. And fair enough, that point could be made about Rogue. The partnership with big American industry has not exactly lead Greg McLean to greater artistic heights. But other film-makers have made the transition very successfully – Bruce Beresford is an outstanding example.

It is in the film itself that the Australia-United States relationship is so interestingly played out. The heroine of the film is played by Radha Mitchell. Anyone old enough to remember the Crocodile Dundee films will have a clear image of the bronzed Australian at home in the outback setting. Mitchell’s character is not out of place, but she is not in control of her environment.

Her local love-interest is played by Sam Worthington. His character is almost reminiscent of those all-Australian heroes featured in movies like Breaker Morant, Gallipoli, the Man From Snowy River and even Crocodile Dundee. Presumably, an Australian audience would expect that his character would survive until the end and save the day. And this is where the international aspect gets interesting; Rogue is a Hollywood film and so it cannot be that the American star that dies. So Worthington’s character is killed off and it is the American star, Michael Vartan, who carries the heroine to safety. This was a tiny bit surprising for an Australian audience, who fortunately were too young to remember the Riot of Brisbane in 1941.

Sexual politics aside, the worst aspect of Rogue is the amount of local talent sitting on the sidelines for the duration of the film. John Jarratt, Geoff Morrell, Steven Currie, Heather Mitchell, Sam Worthington and even Radha Mitchell have very little to do for the entire film. This is a real shame because Australian audiences, having seen films and programs like the Castle, Wog Boy, Grassroots and Changi, will know that all these actors can perform much better. Fair enough, there is a limit to the acting range that can be demonstrated in a film where the cast is being chased by a giant seven-meter crocodile. But Bill Pullman and Bridget Fonda were pretty good in Lake Placid. At the end of the day a bad film is simply that. Yet, the enormity of the wasted talent does not augur well for the relationship between the US and Australian film industries in the wake of the Free Trade Agreement.

There is much to be disturbed about in Rogue. The script is so thin that it makes the audience wonder if the Hollywood writers strike had started early. Vartan’s character is so assured, calm and worldly that he contrasts with the shallow bravado of Worthington and the clueless-ness of Mitchell. For a tour operator Mitchell’s character does not seem to be much at ease with tourists, but unfortunately given the problems in the film it is hard to be sure if that’s a deliberate ploy. What is interesting is that unlike past films the Australians are not at home in the outback and it’s the American who saves the day. He delays the crocodile whilst the others swim to safety and he stumbles into the crocodile’s lair, kills it, and rescues Mitchell. Chips Rafferty would be turning in his grave. Where’s David Williamson when you need him …. ?

Schorner on The New Political Correctness

In the first of what I hope will be many contributions to this blog from third parties (see here), Schorner writes about The New Political Correctness:

Part of the response to the tragic death of Steve Irwin brings into sharp relief one of the fundamental divisions in Australian society. That division is the split between the John Howard Australians and the “elites” that they so despise. By all accounts Steve Irwin was a generous, decent, gregarious and family-oriented man so his untimely passing was very much a tragedy. In that regard Germaine Greer’s article criticising his works was insensitive and unfortunate in its timing. But the vitriol in John Birmingham’s response and its misogyny (for which Birmingham has still not apologised) is remarkable.

I cannot claim to know Birmingham’s politics. But he seems to fit the stereotype, at least through his language, of the Aussie battler who formerly voted Labor but now votes Liberals. They can be called many things; aspirational voters, cashed-up Bogans or Aussie battlers, but there are many of them and their political clout has been crucial to John Howard’s grip on power.

John Howard has been successful because he sounds almost like the battlers in his own words yet is still polished enough to almost pass as a blue-blood Liberal. No such luck for Peter Costello or the unforgivably self-educated Paul Keating. They represent too much of the elites that the battlers despise. So too does Germaine Greer.

Greer’s offence was to criticise Irwin, who is a darling of the Aussie battlers. He looked like them and he talked liked them and the tone of Birmingham’s articles and the many comments on his blog was that anyone who didn’t and who criticised did not have the right to speak and could be called anything under the sun.

John Howard now leads a Liberal electorate that is made up of these Aussie battlers, neo-conservatives and weak-willed rusted on Liberals who have done nothing in the face of Howard’s attacks on rule of law, sensible foreign policy and his enlargement of government. The neo-conservatives are happy; they believe in regime change (however disastrous it may be), they believe in curtailing civil liberties and they believe in middle-class welfare. These beliefs should be poison to true conservatives but with the continued electoral success of John Howard they have mostly, with the exception of the doctor’s wives group, chosen to keep silent. With the growing strength of the neo-conservatives within the laughably misnamed Liberal Party the only conservative force left in Australian politics is by default the Labor Party.

The Aussie battlers have ridden along with and contributed to John Howard’s success. They will be with him until interest rates begin to bite. That time may come, but for now they are within the full pomp of Howard’s success.

The downside of the rise of the John Howard battlers is that they have come to believe that they and they alone, own this country. This was the message in John Howard’s declaration that, “we will decide who comes to this country and the manner in which they arrive.” The “we” was John Howard, the neo-conservatives, the battlers and the Pauline Hanson detritus. The “we” was not mainstream conservatives, liberals, educated elites or the ethnics.

Howard continues to dog-whistle to his battlers. He needs to because house prices are rising, interest rates are rising and Iraq has been turned into a training ground for Al-Qaeda. Howard has recently called on Muslims to integrate into Australian society and in a delicate sideswipe at them has followed that up by declaring that there is no point “pussyfooting” on the issue of Islamic radicals. Muslims are a very easy target for Howard, just as Aboriginals and Asians were a soft target for Pauline Hanson back in the mid to late nineties.

Howard and his battlers are now saying to the Muslims, the elites and anyone else that “we” will decide how you fit in and what you can say. Last year Bronwyn Bishop, dog-whistling nicely, decide to tell Muslims what they could wear. She received a luke-warm rebuke from Howard. Marise Payne, dog-whistling a bit too shrilly, decided to declare that Australia was aborting itself into becoming a Muslim country.

A line in the sand needs to be drawn and the battlers need to be told that they do not own this country. Australia is a free society. It is also a multi-ethnic society. The battlers cannot change that nor can they tell others what to wear, what to think and what to say. The John Howard battlers are inflicting on Australian society a political correctness that is every bit as irrational, childish, stifling and petty as the political correctness that they rebelled against in the early nineties. Enough is enough. Australia needs to be an inclusive society in which people’s opinions, religions and lifestyles are respected. This is what makes our nation great. When one group of Australian decides that they own the country and can tell the others what to do then they undermine that greatness. As anyone who has read Birmingham’s article and the many comments on his blog will attest, money can buy you stuff but it cannot buy you manners or common sense.

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