Australia might not be perfect, but it is a pretty good place in which to live. Most of us would regard ourselves as being fortunate. Millions of people around the world, if they had a free choice, would choose to live here.
To most people, there is no conceivable way in which Australia's political system could be compared to that of Sudan or Zimbabwe. Likewise, most would regard it as a travesty to consider our industrial relations laws as somehow being analogous to the treatment suffered by unions and their leaders in Colombia. Last year in that country 70 unionists were murdered.
Yet exactly these sorts of comparisons have been made. In the first case by Amnesty International, and in the second by the International Labour Organisation of the United Nations.
Last month Amnesty put Australia's policies on asylum seekers into the same category as the persecutions being carried out by the Sudanese and Zimbabwean governments. While Australia's treatment of refugees might be open to criticism, it has absolutely no parallel with what is occurring in these locations. In the words of Amnesty itself, in Sudan the army and its militias "kill, rape and plunder with impunity". On the ILO's list of countries with the "world's worst labour regimes", Australia will appear, but not Colombia.
The tragedy of the approach taken by Amnesty and the ILO is that if they continue on such a course they will become irrelevant. Given their past good work, such an outcome would be unfortunate. But more significant than the damage to these organisations themselves is the message being sent to those who live under conditions of genuine tyranny.
By grouping Australia with Sudan and Zimbabwe, the implication is that Amnesty believes that stopping mass murder and mass rape is no higher a priority than getting the Howard Government to change its policies on asylum seekers. Similarly, the ILO reveals that it regards the repeal of WorkChoices as being as important as preventing the assassination of trade unionists.
This demonstrates how any sense of proportion about democracy and human rights is now almost entirely absent from public discussion. And nowhere is this trend more obvious than in Australia.
The latest example comes from journalist David Marr in his new Quarterly Essay entitled "His Master's Voice -- The corruption of public debate under Howard". Marr catalogues a series of decisions by the Howard Government, ranging from the censorship of media discussion about terrorism to the prosecution of public service whistleblowers, which Marr believes has weakened our democratic system. On some issues Marr makes valid points. But in his eagerness not just to critique Howard but to condemn him, Marr oversteps the mark.
It is ridiculous to claim that because the Howard Government has not provided taxpayer funding for the arts up to a level that Marr deems appropriate that therefore democracy is imperilled. Surely a bigger challenge to democracy arises when practically all taxpayer-funded artists are of one particular political persuasion.
Contrary to what Marr might think, the Victorian police were not being "undemocratic" when they attempted to locate and arrest those who perpetrated violence at the G20 protests in Melbourne last year. In his defence of the protesters, Marr asks rhetorically "how much trouble do we allow demonstrators to cause?" The implication from this question being that demonstrators should be allowed to cause at least some trouble. What he ignores is that there is nothing democratic about terrorising shoppers in Collins Street and hurling barricades at police.
He takes the Howard Government to task for overturning the Northern Territory's euthanasia laws, arguing that to do so is "profoundly undemocratic: Australians endorse euthanasia overwhelmingly". So they might. But a majority of Australians also support the reintroduction of capital punishment.
Howard's opponents have manipulated concepts such as political freedom to such an extent that they are now meaningless. Principle has been sacrificed in favour of political point-scoring. Any decision taken by the Coalition with which those opponents disagree is interpreted as an assault on democracy. Such a strategy is clever. It is far more powerful for the PM's critics to claim that he threatens the fabric of our liberal democratic values than for them to simply say that they disagree with him.
But in the long run the strategy is self-defeating. After a while, when the public sees through the exaggeration, it will stop caring.
ADVERTISEMENT
No comments:
Post a Comment