Author: urbanwronski

Urban Wronski is an Australian free-lance writer whose work appears regularly in The Independent Australia, The Tasmanian Times and also in The Australian Independent Media Network. He has also been published in Guardian Australia. An acute observer and analyst Urban continues to advocate for a just, tolerant and compassionate society.

Julie Bishop dives on world stage with attack on Obama.

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The foreign minister said she had met the US secretary of the interior, Sally Jewell, in Sydney before the G20 and outlined “in considerable detail Australia’s commitment and capacity to preserve the Great Barrier Reef”.

“And I pointed out that we were working with the heritage committee and with UNESCO to ensure that the barrier reef remains as healthy and protected as is humanly possible,” Bishop told the ABC.

“I pointed out that mining and drilling and gas exploration are banned by law from the Great Barrier Reef region and that we had acted to prevent the dumping of capital dredge waste in the marine park. Indeed, [environment] Minister Greg Hunt announced that during the World Parks Congress, that we will ban that by law.”

Julie Bishop, Australia’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, has lashed out at US President Barrack Obama, reproaching his churlish ignorance, insubordination and bad form. His offence? He voiced fair and reasonable public concern for the survival of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. Weak on fact, strong on indignation, Bishop’s objection contributes more dark comedy than any light of reason. Indeed, the more she protests, the more she resembles a Catherine Tate character: ‘How dare he, how very dare he!’

Bishop’s self-parodying protest speaks volumes about herself and her government. Diving into desperate damage control as her government’s domestic standing declines and her own standing takes a hit, her intervention is only likely to make matters worse for both.

Bishop’s nose is out of joint. How dare Obama speak out? Show us up? How dare the US President ambush the Australian Prime Minister, Tony Abbott on his home turf? Then there’s the lapse of decorum: it is such poor form for a mere guest to abuse his host. Poor form, also it would seem to ignore the Australian Foreign Minister’s briefing, even if it did contradict all of the science. He did not know what he was talking about. The US President “overlooked” Australian actions in preserving the reef, she claims, as if correcting a small boy’s homework.

A spirited self-defence is evidently hard at work, at least. The Minister for Foreign Affairs cannot be faulted, at least in her own version of events. Yes and No Minister. Self-justification after the fact serves only to reveal a significant chink in your Armani. The test of performance lies in what is or what is not achieved, not who or what you might claim afterwards is really to blame. Your job is to make it work, not to point the finger when you fail.

Bishop’s over-retaliation has raised eyebrows whilst lowering her own and her country’s international standing. First, it is stretching things to accept that the President acted wrongly or badly. What else was he expected to do? Abbott, as G20 chairperson insulted world leaders as he attempted to limit the agenda, substitute his own agenda and hijack international events for domestic gain, a manipulation which conveyed at best indifference and at worst contempt for the real challenges faced by the world and its leaders. Any leader worth his salt would take a stand. Any true world leader would want to turn attention back to where it belonged.

In Brisbane, Abbott proposed, in effect, a G20 public housekeeping party; a global gathering where he would speak openly of struggling to put his own house in order whilst attempting to sweep climate change under the carpet. It was easy to appear out of order in this parochial context. Even compulsory. Virtuous. All you had to do was show a true commitment to international affairs.  Or behave like a statesman.

Obama’s timely reminder that the reef was in danger of extinction because of climate change contributed, it is true, to his upstaging the G20. Yet it was upstaging by default, simply because he cared enough to speak out on the major issue confronting the world. For this he is to be commended rather than condemned. And there are already clear signs that his words helped refocus the attention of the leaders present. He is to be admired for heeding the call of duty.

Julie Bishop, however, has a more limited perspective. How dare Obama have the temerity to exercise genuine world leadership! Shame Australia’s leaders out of their self-absorption and parochial self-interest. She wants to cut Obama down to size. Her agitation is palpable. What would he know? Whom did he talk to? Who does he think he is? Like Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth the lady doth protest too much. It will be her undoing. She is already hoist with her own petard.

Not only was Obama out of order, Bishop alleges he did not know what he was talking about. Worse, he bypassed her.

It is true Obama did not consult Bishop before he made his speech drawing world attention to the dangers faced by this part of our world heritage. Nor should he have. No-one else, it seems, could do it. Least of all his host. This part of her reasoning is also comically self-important.

She tried to tell him. But would he listen? Bishop complains she briefed US Interior Secretary Sally Jewell prior to the address, just to see Obama got his facts right. This, it seems, would have ensured that he left the reef bit out. No doubt she has explained this to her own boss who might have also raised the odd question over Julie’s less than stellar G20 contribution.

Bishop has been forced to quickly sent Obama a bromide in the form of a briefing paper pointing out the error of his ways, reefing him in for his untrammelled arrogance and stupidity. Talk to me first, next time, meathead!

Proving once again that there is less to Bishop than meets the eye, her rebuke is typically insubstantial. In fact it is pretty fact free, embarrassingly flawed. Like many of her government’s recent attempts to explain situations, it bothers little with science or logic. But it makes revealing reading. Compelling, too, not only if your taste runs to a farrago of lies, disingenuous assertion and misplaced indignation at being upstaged by someone with a real concern for the future of the world and the means to make a difference.

Bishop’s case is countered by leading scientists who point to rising temperatures and increasing carbon dioxide in the oceans. Massive bleaching and destruction of fragile ecosystems will result.     Mr Obama was “right on the money”, Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, director of the University of Queensland’s Global Change Institute, said. “He was stating a fact.

“We have one of the jewels of the planet in our possession and we should care a lot about climate and he wasn’t getting that from our leader [Prime Minister Tony Abbott],” Dr Hoegh-Guldberg said.

Seldom stooping to let facts get in the way of her argument, Bishop’s petulant remonstration sets out clearly once again for all the world the wilful ignorance of her own party, the limitless arrogance of her own personal position and the status of both as terminally endangered species.

The current Minister of Foreign Affairs, who is also deputy leader of the Liberal Party, and the only woman permitted in the Abbott government Cabinet, has greatly disappointed with her failure to acknowledge the best efforts of those who are committed to dealing with climate change as a world priority. Her recent efforts have hindered more than helped anybody.

Her performance is all the more deplorable for its wilful distraction; amounting to an almost criminal neglect of other pressing international issues such as the unequal status of women, violence against women and any practical plan towards redressing the world-wide trend away from inclusivity and towards further marginalisation and discrimination.

Starting to clean up our own backyard would be perhaps too parochial for our globe-trotting Foreign Minister but it is a sound first step for implementing wider reform.  Immigration is a bridge too far, no doubt, but the latest bill before the senate will make us the pariah of the international community. Alternatively, she could try closer to home. A ‘robust discussion’ with Colin Barnett, her home state premier, about his decision to close around 150 Aboriginal communities would be a useful place to start.

Of course, this would involve rethinking her own approval of the scheme. It’s another Federal cutback which the nation never got to vote on last election. WA has chosen to make Aboriginal people refugees in their own country because the Abbott government decided to cease funding for essential services in remote communities. As part of the cabinet discussion around that decision, she could explain how this is leadership rather than something we should all be deeply ashamed of.

Julie Bishop, you had the chutzpah to rebuke Barack Obama over the Barrier Reef when he was clearly in the right. Surely, then you have the wherewithal to stand up to your Prime Minister when he is clearly in the wrong. Begin to assert your independence where it may do some good. Tackle Abbott over all those areas of policy in which Australia is reneging on its responsibility to its own people to say nothing of its international obligations. Tell him he is wrong about climate change and that you need to conserve your energies to fight injustice, inequality and ignorance at home before you can take another single step on the world stage without making yourself and your government an even greater international laughing stock.

Abbott government announces major cuts to ABC funding; lies about election promise.

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Abbott and Turnbull collude to deny election promise.

“It is an absolute principle of democracy that governments should not and must not say one thing before an election and do the opposite afterwards.” Tony Abbott 2011

Tony Abbott is a bare-faced liar. On the eve of the Federal election he promised no cuts to the ABC or the SBS. His words were:

“… no cuts to education, no cuts to health, no change to pensions, no change to the GST and no cuts to the ABC or SBS”.

It was a catchy slogan designed to inspire trust in his government’s agreement to respect areas of the Australian economy and society vital to the national good; essential to every Australian’s quality of life. It sounded fair and reasonable. What fools we were to trust him.

Forgotten, it seems, was his very own warning against our trusting a word he said. Overlooked, it appears was his own, earlier inner truth parrot’s candid admission of his innate dishonesty. The truth parrot that so often queers his pitch by suddenly squawking the inopportune truth, told the nation that whilst Abbott might say one thing, that didn’t mean Abbott wouldn’t just do the opposite.

Or did we simply not believe him? There is every chance that he was simply disbelieved by the fair-minded and good-hearted who gave Abbott’s blathering the benefit of the doubt. No doubt many decent folk who could not believe their ears, yet kindly put it all down to another Abbott episode. Abbott’s own confession that he could be fast and loose with the truth raised only one public eyebrow.

His Liberal party already had form in this area. This sophistry. John Howard confessed to making core and non-core promises. Now under Howard’s junior successor, the distinction gets even worse. There are real promises and Abbott promises.

Helpfully, keeping a straight face for national TV, Abbott volunteered the tip that voters should get Abbott promises in writing if they intended to believe them. The rest might be tricked up to look good in the show ring but are headed straight for the abattoir afterwards.

This week, barely a year down the track, a track that is treacherous under foot; slippery, steep, strewn with hazards, litter and rough under foot, Abbott’s failing government announces a quarter of a billion dollars’ worth of cuts to ABC and SBS.

Its dishonesty is breathtaking in this area alone to say nothing of its indecent haste in trashing its record in the other areas in his election eve pledge, Health, Education, Pensions, GST.  It is not the first cut. Federal Finance Minister Matthias Cormann’s announcement of a $256 million dollar cut to the ABC and SBS is on top of a 4.6 % cut already imposed. Who believes the cuts will stop there?

Malcolm Turnbull is quickly despatched to Q&A and 7:30 Report to rescue his leader. Settle us down. Soften us up. The broken promise, it seems is all our fault. We must be disabused of our delusions. Oozing condescension and oleaginous smarm, he patronises everyone, yet all the while smiling indulgently as if dealing with a child who has become fractious over a lost toy at bedtime. His smile, however, reveals piranha teeth.

Mesmerised, horrified, we watch as he sets out to correct our defective memories. Brazenly, bizarrely, Turnbull claims we misheard Abbott.  He has shed the customary leather jacket. His own hide is no doubt, thicker, more protective. With lines worth of Yes Minister, fixer Turnbull wants to soothe things over.

He did not believe the Prime Minister intended to give the impression the national broadcaster would be exempt from any future belt tightening. The belt tightening image is a spin doctor’s clumsy softening of the reality. The belt is already tight. Tighten it any further and it is life-threatening: you risk potentially fatal constriction of the patient’s circulation.

The rest of the case is curiously presumptuous. In an interview on ABC’s 7.30 on Wednesday, Turnbull alleges he and Joe Hockey had made it clear during the election campaign that cuts to address the budget deficit had to made across the board and that “the ABC and SBS couldn’t be exempt and that we would be seeking to address waste and inefficiencies”.

What could this mean? Should we have ignored Opposition leader Abbott’s election eve promise because Hockey and Turnbull had spun a different line.  Pull the other one. So the great gods Turnbull and Hockey had more authority? More credibility? Save us.

Or is Turnbull offering a type of performance art, an absurdist stand-up routine, an homage to Abbott and Costello’s skit Who’s on First? Very funny, Malcolm. We get it. You are a crack up.

Taking the farce even further into absurdity, Liberal Party Belgian Shepherd, Matthias Cormannn simply barks “well, they’re not cuts”. What they are it seems are ‘efficiency dividends.’ Yet, curiously, his master, Abbott was to be believed after all, even if we silly voters get the c word confused with our efficiency dividends. Or vice versa. “The Prime Minister absolutely told the truth. We are not making cuts. What we are making sure happens with the ABC is what happens with every other taxpayer funded organisation across government and that is to ensure that it operates as efficiently as possible,” barked Inspector Rex.

Cormann explained that the broadcaster should not be allowed to dodge efficiency dividends hitting the rest of the public service. “The ABC has been exempted from efficiency dividends for the last 20 years …” Past cuts, it is clear are an illusion, another function of our defective collective memory.

Implied was the clear message: the efficiency dividend is not a way of constraining the ABC from its independence, an independence unique and invaluable in Australian politics and society. Since there are no cuts, there is no way that the Abbott government is paying out on an ABC which dares to tell the truth about a government which continues to tell lies and lies about its lies.

So there we have it. The explanation is Orwellian Newspeak. A cut is not a cut when it is an efficiency dividend. A dividend is not money you get but rather money that is taken away from you. The ABC is not being reduced or diminished. Instead it’s getting a tune up. Its operation has been dodgy in the past but now it will be put back on the straight and narrow. With caring, attentive, nurturing personal trainers, Cormann, Hockey, Turnbull and Abbott, the ABC will be put on a low carb, no fat diet.

In other words, our national broadcaster is under a death sentence. It will be expected to do more and more on less and less. Until it is completely gutted and it expires of malnutrition. The last word is in Wronski’s freely adapted recall of what may have been one of the tales of Nazreddin Hodja.

A mean, rich merchant boasted to his neighbour how he fed his camel less and less each day. ‘Look, neighbour,’ he said. ‘Last night only a handful of barley. Tonight half a handful.’ ‘That is amazing,’ the neighbour gasped. ‘How much money you must be saving on camel feed.’ ‘I know,’ said the merchant proudly. ‘Look at him! So lean and so healthy. He works every day from dawn to dusk. Does everything I say. No complaining.’ The next day the merchant’s camel dies. The merchant is beside himself with grief and anger. He curses and he sobs. ‘Just my luck, said the rich man. Just when I have almost taught my camel to live on nothing, suddenly death comes along to rob me of my greatest achievement.’

Alan Jones blows Abbott off on air over G20.

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Alan Jones

When Alan Jones blew off his old pal Tony Abbott on air this Monday, Sydney sat up and took notice. The relationship between the nation’s talkback shockjockracy and Australian politics is a complex and symbiotic interweaving yet it is central to understanding the contemporary climate of unreason which squats like a venomous toad on the Australian body politic.  That zeitgeist has many components. Chauvinism, parochialism, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, misogyny, fear, ignorance, cultural cringing, prejudice and superstition – to name but a few – are all constituents. And nowhere are all strands represented better than in the Prime Minister’s regular meetings with Alan Jones, the Sydney radio mouthpiece of all that festers in our national conversation.  Nowhere better seen are its dangers.

When Abbott fronted card-carrying misogynist 2GB shock jock Alan Jones, for his regular, cosy rubdown on Sydney morning talkback, the unsuspecting PM copped a bucket of abuse. Jones, the Bondi trout of Australian media, blindsided Abbott with an outburst of invective, screaming insanely at his guest. Jones’ extreme manner channelled Zimbabwean dictator, Robert Mugabe, another rabid old man, whose pathological rantings stand as a textbook caution to all other tin-pot potentates of the dangers of leaving your syphilis untreated.

‘Jonesy’ was unhappy with Tony. And he lost no time in letting him know. The customary mutual fawning foreplay was ditched in favour of a full-frontal attack. Lips puckered, eyes closed, the PM received no tenderness in return but, instead, was dealt a resounding slap in the face. Abbott’s affections were spurned, his fond hopes dashed with an ice-bucket of scorn. For any lesser mortal it would be a wake-up call, but if the PM heeded his rebuke, only time will tell.

Jones was all worked up. Mouth frothing, he unleashed his yellow-peril-spittle fury all over his studio and hapless guest, flecking the PM’s comb-over and new-look intellectual style rimless spectacles. ‘Jonesy’ ranted about RET, free trade deals with China; how everyone knows the Chinese were buying up Australia; and how, as a result, Abbott was a dead man walking. You don’t have a mandate for this type of free trade, he cautioned.

Jones let it rip. Such was the force of his animation that free trade with China became momentarily almost real, conjured somehow into being from its status as quintessential oxymoron, a contradiction in terms equivalent of a binding agreement with Vladimir Putin or an indemnity from the Iraqi government. Or perhaps a self-regulating command economy. But it was all a scam to Jones and his listeners. Or scam, scum and humbug.

Begrudgingly, Jones acknowledged that Abbott got something right. He had spruiked dirty coal to a visibly alarmed G20 meeting of world leaders many of whom were affecting a new public display of energy-cleanliness. This concession aside, the scheduled post-summit frottage session then plummeted off script, departing its typical mutual pleasuring and dog-whistling agenda.

Jones attacked the Federal Renewable Energy Target for preventing growth. He even declared that Mr Abbott was failing the “pub test” with his imminent free trade agreement with China.

“You know that wind turbines are a fake and heavily subsidised by the taxpayer. Global warming is a hoax, we’ve had nothing for 18 years,” the 2GB breakfast host waded in, massaging two noxious prejudices in the same toxic breath whilst causing mangy dogs to howl from Balmain to Bondi and, on the home front, no doubt earning himself a lifetime’s supply of briquettes from a grateful coal industry.

“People listening to you now say, well he’s talking economic growth, but hang on, the cost of energy with renewable energy targets is crippling economic growth. They’re saying to me ‘we used to have the cheapest energy in the world. Now because of all of this, we actually cannot afford to go on doing what we’re doing, and jobs are being lost here’. Doesn’t economic growth start at home?”

Ears ever attuned to things domestic, Abbott leapt at the opportunity to repeat Goebbels-like the lie that his government’s axing of the carbon tax had hugely reduced power bills across the nation. His listeners, would, however, be under no illusion. Most Australians have seen little or no reduction in their electricity bills. Nor will they. On the contrary, both power and gas are set to increase significantly in the near future.

What listeners missed most, however, was any attempt by their Prime Minister to challenge Jones’ lie.

Why? Abbott is content to collude with Jones’ arrant nonsense. It has worked for him so far. Granted, he knows it is nonsense: his government’s own research shows the opposite is true. Its hand-picked economic modeller which evaluated the impact of the Renewable Energy Target, ACIL-Allen, has found that a wind-back of the scheme’s target would end up costing electricity consumers money, to the benefit largely of fossil fuel suppliers and generators.

Similar conclusions have been reached by other major Australian energy market modelling analysts – including ROAM Consulting, Sinclair Knight Merz, Intelligent Energy Systems, Schneider Electric and Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

Abbott could have chosen to share this truth and refute Jones. Yet what listeners heard from the Prime Minister’s lips was more raw Bondi effluent:

“I still think they’re high… one of the reasons we want to scale back the Renewable Energy Target is because we want to further reduce power prices,” he said.

“I can’t work miracles Alan, there is no magic wand.”

The Abbott-Jones show is the collusion of two deceivers. One is a folksy-sounding politician who cynically trades in simple conservative slogans and sound-bytes which he hopes people want to hear. The other is a self-interested commercial demagogue who inflames prejudice while pretending to act in the public interest. Constructed on the Abbott-Jones show by the Abbott-Jones show is a two-dimensional black and white Prime Minister working to entice the primitive in the electorate, a public leader in retreat from reason, science and research. Dumbing down, on the other hand, engages all his energies and attention. A leader content to feed us lies, he prefers to buy votes where he may, however he may, at the cost of our country’s future. It is, of course, an ultimately unsustainable strategy. And it will be the end of him.

Jones raged that US President Barack Obama had upstaged Abbott with an “absolutely meaningless” climate pact with China. On rubbishing the climate pact, Jones, Hunt, Abbott, Hockey and Turnbull are on the same song sheet. It is a petty, desperate tactic unworthy of any reasonable adult, let alone a federal government. Yet there was a twist. On foreign ownership, the going was all Jones’ who argued that, of course, there would be free trade because such future trade would involve Chinese companies in Australia dealing with companies in China. Jones claimed this was one-sided. The yellow peril was advancing.

“Hang on… China are giving us nothing. The dairy farms are owned by China,” Jones cried.

In Western Victoria, Jones bellowed, 50 dairy farmers had already signed deals to sell to China.

The Van Diemen’s Land Company, a big Tasmanian dairy outfit, was also preparing to sell to China.

“By this time next week, who is going to own little Tasmania,” asked Big Alan.

“The public are very, very angry Prime Minister about this I can tell you.”

Abbott did do his best to mildly placate if not entirely rebut Jones anger but by then the show’s wilful damage had been done. Renewable energy had taken a hit amidships; the value of the world’s most significant climate change agreement had been trampled in the mire; and fear of overseas ownership had been boosted. And Abbott was in trouble with the people.

Abbott got across his own spin: including the outrageous assertion that he and Barack Obama were on good personal terms, a palpable falsehood given Obama’s address on climate change was virtually a direct personal rebuke in public of him. Yet the exchange was one-sided if not wounding and if Abbott landed the odd punch he was lucky.

He who sups with the devil must have a long spoon. Whatever he has got out of the show does not diminish its potential to continue to harm Abbott. Jones’ latest tantrum shows his hospitality is finite. Above all, Abbott will be paid back in his own coin. The lowest common denominator is a savage beast which grows in appetite by what it feeds on. A hungry beast awaits Abbott outside the studio, waiting to drag him down whenever it can. Just as he has used the beast to drag down his nation’s politics; turning ignorance, fear and falsehood to temporary advantage; his nemesis daily gathers strength, preparing, in the end, to devour its master.

Glossary:

Blow off: to get rid of something or someone.

A Bondi trout: Australian vernacular phrase meaning untreated faecal matter released into the Bondi sea water prior to the advent of sewage treatment systems.

G20 Brisbane boondoggle: all talk no action on main stage; yet some hope in voices off.

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(Growth, Growth, Growth)

(Growth, Growth, Growth)

(Growth, Growth, Growth)

There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done

Nothing you can sing that can’t be sung

Nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game

It’s easy

There’s nothing you can make that can’t be made

No one you can save that can’t be saved

Nothing you can do but you can learn to be you in time

It’s easy

All you need is Growth

All you need is Growth

All you need is Growth

Growth is all you Need

(Growth, Growth, Growth)

(Growth, Growth, Growth)

(Growth, Growth, Growth)

Adapted from All you need is love, with apologies to LENNON, JOHN / MCCARTNEY, PAUL

Preaching growth yet not explaining how to achieve it; in denial over pressing global issues and events, yet all too keenly aware of its image, the latest G20 was strong on talk, self-promotion and attention-seeking yet feeble in any useful or real capacity. Lacking any genuine economic theory or strategy, weary world leaders attempted to weather the storm under a threadbare neo-con security blanket, chanting the growth mantra for reassurance while blindly leaving the world’s future to a mythical free market to determine.

With dark storms brewing in world finance, peace, climate and health, the G20 fixedly looked the other way, its impotence symbolised by its hapless, outmanoeuvred bantam chairman, Australian Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, who fussed and scratched around his own parochial nest clucking about needing co-payments for doctor’s visits, privatising universities, not taxing carbon and in ‘growing’ GDP, leaving President Obama to set the real agenda. Having promised no talk-fest, Abbott did little but talk, leaving real problems to fester; leaving plans to others; postponed for later.

Part of its latest failure arises from the G20’s own flawed nature. It is stretched paper-thin to accommodate a diverse membership. It has no clear identity or Raison d’être, and it meanders in ever decreasing circles, from meeting to meeting, overshadowed by its own ineffectuality – its history of grand intentions undercut by un-met and broken promises.

The G20 lacks teeth; it meets to make consensus declarations which are not binding and in Russia’s case in the past, quickly broken. It dances to the tune of the IMF, an institution with a track record of toxic assistance in the form of loans predicated on domestic ‘liberalisation reforms’ – loans which can cripple the beneficiary, as in Argentina’s case in 2001, a country which only began to recover from collapse when it had repudiated its IMF loans and their conditions. The patient can be squeezed to death by the doctor.

Accordingly, the G20’s record is one of overpromised, overpriced underachievement. Last weekend’s meeting alone cost Australian taxpayers close to half a billion dollars. The money would have been better spent on the nation’s health and education. Perhaps the trend will continue making the meeting a type of self-bankrupting potlatch ceremony.

G20s are long on promises. The naïve would be forgiven for assuming that the G must stand for ‘gunna’ as in Joe Hockey’s line: ‘we are gunna grow GDP by at least 2%.’ Not a murmur from him, however, on how that growth will be achieved. Apart from cutting government spending, which is rather like feeding your pigs less while expecting them to gain weight, there was no road map, no direction given on how to achieve economic growth. This is primarily because reason in economics has been usurped by neo-con dogma. Magical thinking alone, it seems, underpins the Australian leader’s assertions that growth will create jobs, and that the G20 serves ordinary men and women, but who needs evidence when you have dogma? All, it seems, you need is a spin machine and a catchy slogan. All you need is growth; growth is the magical mantra.

The record, sadly, tells another story. The feeble growth of the world economy today is a telling reminder of G20’s failure to deliver the goods. Yet it continues to promote IMF doctrine. Rehabilitate the discredited IMF. IMF austerity programmes have yet to make any country better. Yet inherent faults aside, or because of them, the latest G20 demanded effective leadership. In a microcosm of the G20’s broader history, that call remained conspicuously unanswered in Brisbane last weekend.

Much of the Brisbane G20 meeting’s failure resulted from the narrow horizons, limited understanding and experience of Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott. Abbott seeks the international spotlight without providing the leadership needed to earn it. Adequate preparation would have been a good first step, as would deeper analysis and understanding of the issues. A broader agenda would have been another; but this would have required better judgement. For Abbott it was a political catastrophe. The PM blew his privileged opportunity to rise to the occasion; to measure up as any kind of international statesman.

Spin doctors are now peddling a sanitised version of G20 events which commends world leaders present for setting specific targets. And an agreement to share information which might lead to catching tax-evaders. That’s a lot of spin. The collective GDP growth 2% target over five years is laughably inadequate and there is no agreed plan on how it might be achieved. For practical details each country will have to rely on self-help. Each G20 country’s ministers have been set some homework. They are to bring back an action plan to a November meeting. It’s like an old trick to get everyone else to do your work: lend me your watch and I will tell you the time.

The sharing of information about tax fraud is similar. Nations already have all the information required. What is needed is the will. The risk in all this avoidance and aversion is that the world is being helped to repeat the mistakes of the past.

Indeed, concealed in the verbiage emerging, especially from domestic failure, Australian Treasurer Joe Hockey is evidence of the bad old laissez-faire thinking that had made the GFC possible. Nowhere is there a glimmer of enlightenment; nowhere is the wisdom of experience, nowhere is there a clear and coherent plan. No road-map. Just a fuzzy, non-binding agreement to pursue growth somehow. But with a lot of figures on it. A lot of lipstick on this pig.

Overshadowed by the Ebola crisis, war in the Middle East and Russian ambitions in Ukraine, this G20 was on track towards unparalleled disaster when a ray of hope emerged in the form of Air Force One bearing the United States President Barack Obama. Thank, God for Obama who emerged, deus ex machina, as G20 leader by default. The US President conferred on the G20 an impassioned call to global leadership from ‘off campus’ which its chairman Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has neither the wit to understand, nor the means to command. Abbott proved the truth of the old adage that sometimes the job is just too big for the man. Fortunately for the rest of the world, Obama was ready and willing to make up the deficit.

Effectively upstaged and sidelined by Barack Obama’s timely ultimatum delivered off site in an impassioned speech at the University of Queensland, Abbott could but listen in as the United States President told him exactly what he thought of him. It was the strongest public statement of contempt yet by a US leader to an Australian PM.

Obama captured a spotlight which had been searching for a leader. His knowledge, eloquence and his concern for others upstaged Abbott entirely. Bringing hope to what would have otherwise would have remained another mindless, directionless, turn of the G20 organ grinder’s crank-handle Obama led by reminding every leader of their responsibility to future generations to act to reduce carbon emissions and global warming,

Overshadowed if not totally eclipsed, the G20 meeting maundered on its ineffectual way into obscurity assisted greatly by the parochial duplicity of Australia’s Prime Minister Tony Abbott who feigned an interest in boosting world GDP but who proved his only real commitment was to using the meeting as a means to gain global authority to overcome his government’s signal failure to even pass its first budget.

Abbott, moreover, has made the risky gamble of pledging to support GDP growth targets by counting on unhatched chickens of budget savings measures he has so far been unable to get through the Australian parliament. Measures that look increasingly unlikely to pass in future. Nothing like honouring your commitments with a cheque that will bounce. Even if the proposed legislation is passed, it is likely to contribute to contraction not growth. Devoid of a plan, lacking any effective theoretical engine yet tracking along IMF rails, the latest G20 show is no less than a collective confidence trick in which world leaders meet to keep up appearances and boost morale while effective control of the world economy is ceded to the caprice of free-market capitalism and vested interests.

G20 Jaws of Disaster for Abbott and his government yet Obama rises magnificently to the occasion.

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Snatching victory from the jaws of disaster, whilst providing an instructive and much-needed illustration of the type of leadership a real politician can provide, US President and orator Barak Obama gave his inspiring, highly acclaimed climate change ‘off-G20’ address at Queensland University, a change of venue and strategy necessitated by Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, a self-professed climate change sceptic who, Canute-style, had issued an edict to bemused world leaders that climate change was off the ‘major’ G20 agenda. Obama’s speech pointedly personalised climate change with references to drought, increasing university fees, the decline of the Great Barrier Reef, the case for same sex marriage amongst other Abbott government pressure points.

Abbott’s backup artist, cuddly muddle-headed wombat Joe Hockey, another political Walter Mitty, and erstwhile personable, blokey, breakfast television boofhead, made a further futile attempt to rescue his leader from his own stupidity by kicking yet another own goal the following morning on national TV.

In a disturbing attempt to contextualise his perspective for TV audiences, ‘we are doing the best we can, Barry’, Hockey explained straight-faced he had not ‘caught’ Obama’s speech because of his own ‘hard work on the treadmill’. Virtuous, hard graft, it seems, prohibited any decadent indulgent frippery such as “the vision thing’. Viewers were also meant to swallow the whopper that Obama’s complete upstaging of Abbott’s show could ever conceivably have passed him by. Treadmill or no treadmill. Or his staff. Or that there would be not a transcript available. In advance.

Reprieved from talking about anything significant, Hockey then proceeded to claim that climate change was no impediment to world growth. ‘Look at China’. Indeed. Viewers were instead transfixed because Joe appeared to have gone the full Menzies eyebrow makeover in his latest personal grooming session, giving the impression of two sceptical crows disturbed by the ruckus below and about to take wing, completely upstaging the otherwise sound work the Treasurer was putting into supportive facial expressions. No impediment? One only hopes he notifies Greg Hunt. Save billions on direct action.

A shoo-in already for nomination in the highly contested Darwin award for his performance yesterday, Abbott will clearly go down in history as some type of pioneer. In future, supposing the G20 survives his concerted attack on its already shaky foundations, ‘off G20’ will become the real G20. Anything of interest, substance or anything remotely worthwhile, will take place off-G20 where real people who are also political leaders will genuinely engage with real issues before appreciative audiences. Obama’s words will live on. Abbott will be remembered, if at all, for other reasons.

‘It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to…’, Abbott, succeeded only in snatching disaster from every conceivable opportunity and even further afield, by hi-jacking his own G20 show and the attention of the world, for domestic purposes, clumsily framing his ‘leaders retreat’ as a type of DIY therapeutic AA style confessional.

Leaders were mystified, angry and embarrassed rather than edified by the PM’s descent into that most private of personal hells – his own sinkhole of self-pity. Abbott’s contribution to leadership was to initiate a tacky process of over-sharing by airing a revealing story of his own, consisting of some badly edited selected highlights chosen from the vast wealth of his own political ineptitude. If I could kick off, he began, deploying a venture into Ozzie colloquialism which, like his talk would be lost in translation.

Unabated, Abbott then went off the cuff over carbon tax, illegal boats, roads, (his government apparently has discovered them) and getting the budget under control (a lie about another lie) before talking about how hard it was to get people to pay for a doctor or pay through the nose for a degree. It was a clumsy attempt to secure a global endorsement for Joe Hockey’s second bite at the budget cherry. Other power-hungry mediocrities, narcissists and Adlerian psychopaths assembled in the room, yawned, snatched a power nap or looked away in sheer disbelief, disinterest and disgust.

‘Bury me when I need publicly to tell other leaders my first year of failure’, Putin is believed to have muttered in contempt before resuming his jottings on calibrating the range of sea-borne tactical nuclear warheads. Abbott, however, thus ensured his own special place in history as the antipodean political bantam who fell asleep in public dreaming aloud of being a rooster. He would be forever, however, reviled by world leaders as a prime time waster and flashy narcissist, the excessively matey man in the tight shiny suit with the extreme comb-over who grabs your hand, holds you to his chest and breathes down your throat while pumping your hand into submission. Not letting go until every camera battery in the room is flattened.

Abbott did set the bar high in some respects. An ‘Abbott handshake’ is guaranteed to be top of the list of diplomatic no-nos for decades to come. Indeed, such was the flesh pressing exhibited by ‘I wanna hold your hand,’ Abbott that it has attracted the attention of clinicians world-wide and may in future be used in some form of stress test to be deployed by psychologists interested in researching human responses to the sudden invasion of personal space, physical over-sharing and violation of etiquette, decorum and other social norms.

Abbott’s bizarre behaviour on the first day of the G20 earned the censure of climate change experts world-wide including no less an authority than  Nicholas Stern who lamented the Australian Prime Minister’s need to successfully put political dogma ahead of the best interests of the rest of the world.’

It was, according to Stern and countless others, ‘outrageous.’ The nation’s women, meanwhile, were astonished to learn that whilst the talk-fest was underway, leaders’ wives had been escorted safely away from the realm of ideas, the dangers of controversy and the seat of power to a more feminine environment – photo-opportunities with furry animals. This acknowledgment of women’s roles and gracious concession to the more limited proper orbit of women’s perspectives, intelligence and attention spans, can only have been engineered by the Minister for Women himself, self-proclaimed ‘feminist’ Tony Abbott who has included one token woman head-prefect Julie ‘I did it my way’ Bishop in his cabinet and who continues unabated on his own, inimitable, lumbering run to fulfilment in his chosen role as his party’s gift to women, Tone, the tone-deaf piano tuner of Australian gender politics.

G20 show exposes Abbott government as completely and utterly bereft of credibility.

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Tony Abbott at G20

Hats off to ABC TV News 24 for their fearless, recklessly endless live coverage of the death of the G20 today. Hats off also for generously including footage of the death throes of any last thread of credibility the Abbott government could pretend to. Stoic seekers of truth, the dutiful, the elderly and infirm, the perpetually confused and others who found themselves inexplicably close to a TV during Tony Abbott’s opening of the G20 show gasped as they were treated to some of the most compelling television ever made. In an excoriating, unhurried-to-the-point of-languorous expose, the ABC revealed the emperor has no clothes.

Under siege itself for preferring the truth over what politicians choose to tell them, our ABC, a publicly under-funded broadcaster mustered the courage today to make TV without fear or favour. It showed its public the shocking truth. True, there was some gesture towards timewasting twaddle, such as forms the substance of commercial TV, when drift-sock anchor Tony Eastley padded things out with his sonorous grain-fed beef basso profondo.  We were spell-bound as much by his tone as his capacity to extemporise. And improvise. And keep talking. And talk some more.

Impressively long on the waffle Eastley even ventured into boosting the event with his speculation that just getting together was an end itself for G20 leaders.  Nothing like lowering all expectations. Nothing like conveying the truth that the even the anchor is bored witless. Finally having the PM’s parliamentary secretary Joshua Anthony Frydenberg on screen was a master stroke. No doubt, Mr Frydenberg was volunteered by the Abbott machine just to keep the commentary on the rails. Having Frydenberg of Kooyong on camera to bounce ideas off proved a master stroke. Every unctuous comment Eastley made appeared objective by contrast to his master’s voice, Frydenberg.

Yet, despite the show’s all at sea anchor, and perhaps because of him, it was shockingly real, live coverage. Expect reprisals. Heads, no doubt, will roll on Monday. The ABC’s inept coverage illuminated Abbott’s idle posturing perfectly, set the stage for his government’s inevitable collapse and gave the coup de grace to the G20 itself. On this day, the ailing G20 died and was reborn, stripped naked of any pretension to substance, revealed as a bone-crushing, hand-shaking, personal space-invading almost nipple rubbing photo opportunity come TV game show. International guests had to come on down as Tony Abbott centre stage came too close, held hands too long and grimaced shamelessly at the camera. This was the point of the whole shebang. Tony the media tart pressing flesh, pulling unwary unwilling world leaders into his chest, holding that handshake for the camera.

It cannot have been easy TV to make. Evidently Aunty had to economise on adequately briefing journalists covering the event and it did lack that handy extra camera to show us the faces of international leaders hanging on every Abbottism. Or, on the other hand if anyone present was paying any attention whatsoever least of all making the risky attempt to follow along.

A random, accidental shot of Putin showed him to be completely disengaged, while appearing to occupy himself with what may have been navy ballistics calculations on a notepad. The overall effect was strangely heightened as the PM’s halting opening domestic piffle appeared to be delivered into a vacuum or a stony indifference. But then to get your guests to listen, you need first to have something to say. And the means to say it. Eastley’s smooth flowing basso profondo effortlessly utterly upstaged Abbott’s halting staccato strine baritone. And shredded any final hint of credibility.

First, as anticipated, the Prime Minister was completely unprepared. When he warned earlier that it would be no talkfest, we did not expect him to lead by example. Instead of any inspiring words, any meretricious rhetoric or, heaven forbid, any vision statement, Abbott insulted world leaders with a platitudinous and hypocritical injunction to be honest with each other followed by an insufferably irrelevant and tedious rehash of his own deceitful, stale election slogans. To cap it off, Abbott’s tone was apologetic. World leaders were treated to his frustrations as he shared his inability to impose a $7 fee on GP visits. Not all was sharing. He blamed voters who love free government programs for supporting wasteful spending. In brief, he whinged to the world how hard it was to be Prime Minister. Inspiring stuff.

Second, the ABC coverage reinforced the superficiality of proceedings. Whilst we were assured that the hard work had gone on beforehand, nowhere was that in evidence, except perhaps by the absence of physical conflict. After the Prime Minister’s ponderous wasting of everyone’s time with a recap of the highlights of his trivial and unsuccessful domestic policy over the last fourteen months, there may have been a few observers who either fell asleep or were generously prepared to give his government the benefit of the doubt. Later shots spliced into the commentary revealed that this indeed was the case. When Joe Hockey faced the cameras to smarm his way through another flatulent barrage of platitudinous hokum purporting to be the consensus of the finance ministers, the intellectual and moral poverty of the Abbott government was as they say, firmly locked in.

Abbott government crisis: G20 Show undergoes urgent revamp.

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CHINA APEC SUMMIT

Public derision from any quarter is confronting to anyone. But members of political elites are especially susceptible. When one is derided by 6 billion people, it may well hurt just that little bit more. Even case-hardened psychopaths can prove sensitive, as the contemporary case of Tony ‘Shirtfront’ Abbott superbly demonstrates. Having made a complete international laughing stock of himself with Vladimir Putin and his moronic, mindlessly self-destructive yet sycophantic atavistic ranting about coal and humanity, a pale and visibly shaken Australian PM, Abbott has been forced to ‘rush through’ a total revamp of the G20 show in BrisVegas tomorrow.

Entitled ‘Operation Panic Button’, the remodelled show is supercharged with adrenaline, testosterone and sheer terror. Upstaged from the start by his own complete inexperience, Abbott is galvanised by a terrifying reality – being relegated into perpetual irrelevance and obscurity by a series of real world events, including Ebola, ISIS, Russia’s resolute determination to annex Ukraine and the recent announcement of a deal on carbon emissions between China and the United States.

Clearly angered at being blindsided by the shock announcement from US president Barack Obama and Chinese premier Xi Jinping of new national climate change goals and the way it has trashed his own G20 agenda, Abbott appears to be struggling to maintain any semblance of forward momentum, let alone any show of composure, especially now he has the added distraction of bits of the Russian navy up his clacker.

Having successfully made a personal lifelong enemy of Putin, the world’s most powerful and dangerous psychopath, Abbott is believed to be anxiously receiving regular special naval briefings on the accuracy and range of Russian missiles, nuclear weapons and other sea-borne armaments. Advertisements for auditions for the role of Abbott body double have appeared on all social media, in the press and on selected supermarket community noticeboards in all major capital cities. A food taster has been engaged for all official banquets and refreshment stations. Abbott in the meantime, has issued a statement which has only served to further alarm mental health experts and others who remark the disunity his cabinet demonstrates under pressure.

Spin doctors have been performing emergency triage on the Abbott government. Yet the patient’s vital signs continue to provide cause for concern. Media comments by a politically phlegmatic Julie Bishop and others have provided little but unintended comic relief. When the going gets tough, the Abbott government gets spinning. Avoid the truth at all costs: ‘Of course, the Russian Navy is always doing this sort of thing. It is only to be expected. They are in international waters. We have been monitoring them for some time.’ Hardy ha ha ha!

Australians are left scratching their heads trying to recall the last time a small fleet of Russian vessels was off the coast of Queensland during any international gathering. For those who still don’t get it, Russia has personalised Putin’s gun barrel diplomacy by pointedly claiming, tongue in cheek, that a purpose of their naval voyage is to seek information about climate change.

The government has been skittled. Abbott government unity, as distinct from Peta Credlin’s iron fist, is chimerical. Liberal unity is a contradiction in germs, given its lack of any coherent ideology and the peculiar circumstances of its origin. It is called Liberal because Menzies did not want the electoral handicap of the appropriate word ‘Conservative’. Certainly, on this occasion, it was all over the shop or, giving another dimension to the term, as it is fondly and blasphemously whitewashed, a broad church.

Anti-environment Minister and work experience student, Greg Hunt hollowly applauded the US-China deal in a Monty Python moment of magnanimity and irrationality. Like the Black Knight, his own imminent mortality was not in contention. Yet again, no one paid any attention.  Smart-arse, Julie Bishop claimed she was not surprised. She knew, ‘already, she said.’ The accommodating, avuncular and ponderously inept Joe Hockey deemed it an ‘acceptable item for discussion’ within a larger topic, the world economy, typically missing the point that global warming is the larger topic.

Abbott, finally, took off like a startled hare, bolting along on yet another tack, ‘We are talking about the practical. We are talking about the real. We are not talking about what may hypothetically happen in fifteen, twenty, twenty-five, thirty years down the track. We are talking about what … what we will do and are doing right now, and that is what the Australian people expect of us. I’m focusing not on what might happen in sixteen years’ time. I’m focusing on what we’re doing now, and we’re not talking, we’re acting.’ Sheer spin, fantastically out of control from a febrile leader who is neither talking nor acting but denying. Someone needs to take his temperature.

Abbott’s dizzy spell to one side, boffins are working feverishly around the clock to pull the fat from the fire. Joe Hockey’s original Headland PowerPoint: ‘Who has the key to a bigger GDP? Is now a snappy: ‘Catch the Rats who won’t pay Tax,’ and has been creatively re-crafted into a sultry torch song come bump n grind dance bracket format entitled: ‘Screw you over, give you the bill’: Australia – open wide for business.  

Sharing centre stage, but Miss Piggy style hogging the limelight, Foreign Affairs Minister, the incomparable Julie Bishop will perform her own lap (band) dance whilst belting out a fetching rendition of ‘Hey, Big Spender, while Smoking Joe steps through a specially choreographed IMF routine assisted by ‘The Hendersons will all be there’, an IPA giant dancing puppet troupe and led by a special Australian armed forces massed brass band supported by the Jacqui Lambie backing singers.

A second provisional number, ‘I will survive’ is a less certain Hockey offering, although it is rumoured that the Foreign Affairs Minister has expressed keen interest in putting her own stamp on this classic.

Global warming is back on the agenda. Once opposed as an agenda item (and indeed as anything of significance) by the same man who could not refuse Putin’s attendance because the G20 runs on consensus, will now be fully and energetically embraced in a late night team building and bonding workshop at the Viper Room, a world-class adult entertainment centre in Brisbane’s red light district. Featuring a complimentary international smorgasbord of divertissements, refreshments will include Scots whisky, Cuban cigars, Kiwi green, Cabramatta hydro and Bendigo ice. IMF and World Bank Paramedics will be on standby with wads of money to revive the fortunes of those who may become indisposed, in return for sovereign rights to that country’s economy in perpetuity.

 

The shirt front that roared.

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When Tony Abbott threatened to ‘shirt front’ Putin, he put a lot on the line. He told journalists that he was going to shirt front the Russian president on the sidelines of G20 summit over the tragedy of the Malaysian airliner crash in the Donetsk Region of Ukraine in July.

What was he thinking? What did he hope to achieve? Who knows with Abbott? What is certain is that the gesture got him a lot of media interest. A bit of this was benign and non-intrusive. Some media types even looked up the term and explained thoughtfully on TV that it was an expression from Aussie Rules football. It was hopeful but did not really explain or excuse anything. The net effect, moreover, was to hang an albatross around Abbott’s neck.

Perhaps the shirt front was calculated to appeal to the alpha male. Perhaps it did win Abbott a flicker of attention if not admiration from macho types who believe that assertiveness equals being ready with your fists. Ironically, however, the same types would be irrevocably alienated by the lack of action. You can’t make a threat you are not prepared to carry out. Whatever modest gain in attention, the challenge is likely to have cost him further credibility. And the rest of us have probably had enough machismo to last a lifetime. Or Abbott’s political lifetime.

The shirtfront venue was first set for Brisbane at the G20 which Abbott is pretending to chair. Yet even Abbott subsequently realised that a shirt front was an unnecessary complication at a meeting which would require every ounce of his energy, just to appear to be in control. The distraction of an impending punch up out the back could be a tad distracting. Accordingly it was brought forward to APEC. (Entrepreneurs are probably hard at work as we speak creating an iPad  shirtfront booking app for that.) And there Abbott would be happy to let the matter lie. But some matters will not just lie down and die.

The shirt front is irresistible on many fronts. It conjures up an attractively incongruous image. Its inappropriateness appeals, especially given Abbott’s aspirations on the international stage. And the media would not leave it alone. Even as he stepped on to the carpet at his APEC meeting, there was a man or two chasing the PM with a microphone asking if ‘the shirt front was on’ at APEC. (APEC, by the way, is the meeting John Howard liked to talk up. APEC is the one where they all get dressed up in funny shirts for a photo opportunity. It is uncertain what else it achieves.)

In the event, there was no shirt front. Tony toned it down almost immediately. By the next day he was telling reporters that he was absolutely determined to have a very robust conversation with the Russian president.” Instead, he appears to have had a quick private whinge to Putin. No doubt he got on to the Russian leader’s complicity in the death of innocents in the shooting down of MH17. No doubt also Putin could have raised Australia’s appalling human rights record on asylum seekers and its recent indictment by the UN committee on torture.

It does not seem to have gone all that well. His promised great remonstration with the Russian leader is said to have lasted a whole fifteen minutes. He claims to have raised the issue of compensation by offering an indirect analogy. The US offered compensation when they accidentally shot down a passenger jet. Putin’s response is not known but can safely be guessed at it.

Ты меня достал! (You piss me off.)

The shirt front was more than an embarrassing gaffe. It will haunt Abbott for some time to come. It has got him the sort of attention that he would rather have done without. Naff. Limited. Testosteronic. Not flattering. Not useful. But enduring. And it even attracted the attention of the Minister for Foreign Affairs. You know you are in trouble when Julie Bishop goes into bat for you.

Putting, as usual, an impossible spin on it, Bishop claimed this week that the term has now entered the diplomatic vernacular. It’s not a gaffe but a nifty new term for a diplomatic confrontation. Abbott did not lose control after all. On the contrary we should all be grateful for his talent as a wordsmith. Quite the Shakespeare of the world stage.

If you swallow that you are in deep trouble. Next you will be believing that Tony Abbott is capable of leading the G20 through the next meeting. Or that he has prepared for the task. Or that he has the capacity to follow the discussion, let alone make a useful contribution.

What is more likely is that this lapse will prove a defining moment. When the world leaders look up at him at the podium on 16 November in Brisbane, it is likely to be through the lens of the shirtfront. They will wonder how a man who has trouble being in charge of his lip could ever be in charge of anything bigger, even if the chairmanship of the G20 will last only a year. They will not be happy with his almost complete lack of preparation; his ideological bent towards letting the market sort things out for itself when many of them have put in the hard yards intervening to prevent financial meltdown. They will see a man with anger management issues, a man who has trouble keeping his temper. They will see a parochial primitive predisposed towards a reductive approach to conflict resolution, a sort of spaghetti western hero who will invite adversaries out the back where we can settle this with our bare fists, man to man. And they will be antagonised, if not downright angry. Who knows, one of them might offer to take him out the back and sort out his attitude for him.

Abbott’s kiss of death to G20 Brisbane.

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What leadership? Abbott and Hockey in tense G20 discussion.

The good ship G20 is adrift, rudderless, on the turbulent high seas of international finance. It has been for some years. The G20 is widely held to be ‘in serious transition‘ according to Canadian academic Professor Andrew F. Cooper. Whilst it won praise for being a unique forum for global economic cooperation in the GFC, it has failed to deliver on a series of pressing international issues. Climate change, growing inequality, growing unemployment, the global decline in the value of wages to GDP are but a few of its many pressing challenges. Whilst it would be unkind to say that the G20 has achieved little so far,clearly there is much work to be done. Is it up to the job? Is Australia up to the job of providing desperately needed leadership? Are we serious? Or are we putting lipstick on a pig? The evidence so far is damning.

The G20’s role during the GFC has been embellished. No record of decisive action or intervention exists to support its glowing reputation in some quarters. Apart from a few fans who talk it up, the balance of opinion is yet to be convinced. Expert observers and analysts differ on how useful it was even as a forum.

Action by the US Federal Reserve and Treasury, together with a G20 commitment not to raise trade barriers; fiscal expansion and agreement for tripling IMF ‘firefighting’ capacity, made a vital contribution to changing expectations to arrest a potential global economic free-fall. This is a popular view. Yet others remain to be convinced.

Chris Berg dismisses as ‘a fantasy’ the idea that the G20 played any significant role in the GFC.  Certainly, he argues, it played no coordinating role; nations more or less acted on their own, with more or less success.

Yet the G20 has good intentions. Its aim of a GDP increase of 2% is a step in the right direction. But there is no action plan; no clear case that 2% is enough and no plan on how this might be achieved. No real leadership has been shown by the chairman, Tony Abbott. Indeed, so little has Abbott contributed so far that Australia’s turn to play host at a time of mounting international crises could well spell the kiss of death for the G20.

So far, Tony Abbott has conducted one brief photo opportunity and made the statement that this is the most important meeting in Australia’s history, ever. If this is the extent of his contribution, he risks appearing to treat the G20 with cavalier contempt. Cynics would reply that he needs to do less telling how important it is and do something to show that he himself recognises it. Optimists point out that there is still one week to go and we might yet see his grasp tighten.

Ironically, Abbott’s statement of the meeting’s importance echoes Tania Plibersek’s words when she expressed dismay in June that whilst visiting the USA, Abbott cancelled key meeting with the world’s top financial officials. It was as if he could not grasp the G20’s status let alone his role in it. Now he’s making a point of telling us he knows it is important.

Whatever its importance, without any leadership, without any concrete plan to match its lofty rhetoric, the G20 is like the Cheshire cat, in danger of vanishing, leaving nothing behind but its smile. Or is it a case of kiss me and wave me goodbye; the kiss of death? Tony Abbott may well have concluded that the G20 is moribund and perhaps he has resolved to hasten its demise by cynically accepting the public kudos of chairmanship without any of the responsibility.

Real leadership is critical to the G20’s continuance. Australia has a privileged opportunity to lead, a responsibility to lead and expectations to meet. Wayne Swan writes:

Leading the premier group of economies for international economic cooperation and decision making is a rare privilege. It is a coveted global leadership role. Australia needs to fully utilise it if we are to live up to our reputation as a nation that punches above its weight. It is also an opportunity to deliver on a number of reforms we have long advocated through the G20, reforms that have domestic and international upsides.

Will the G20 sail itself? It has such a motely crew that it demands a captain. Of course, the G20 has its technocrats to do the real work and Abbott’s light touch at the wheel will not have deterred G20 boffins from working on what Joe Hockey described in June as a ‘back to basics approach’.

What this means precisely is unclear but given the publicity from the prior gathering, the 16 November meeting will focus on economic growth. This is a worthy topic. Unemployment, poverty and inequality are increasing world-wide. Sustained long-term growth is vital to meet these challenges. But whilst Joe Hockey wants to set course towards 2% growth, this is not enough to fix the pressing problems. Nor is his government’s dry economic agenda likely to prove anything but a hindrance.  A fixation with ‘fiscal consolidation’ and a narrow view of infrastructure spending, his government’s signature, will not fix growing unemployment.

The Abbott government has a die-hard laissez-faire attitude to promoting economic growth. Nothing original here. And there is  plenty of evidence that it will not, cannot work. Leaving the market to create growth all by itself does not match the G20 experience in the GFC. Nor does it match today’s G20 rhetoric. It suggests a lazy retreat into ideology and the ignoring of the lessons of experience.

Abbott talks of lowering wages. He uses the weasel-word ‘flexibility’ to signify paying workers less. He talks of imported workers from China and India. It is understood that this is a cost reduction exercise. Bosses hire workers at lower wages. Reducing wages costs will make them employ more people. Yet it remains a theory.

Not only is it without evidence, it is also out of date: current developments in economic policy support raising minimum wages as a way of increasing demand for goods and services. In turn employment across the industries grows to meet the increased demand, domestically and globally. Businesses make more money. This parallels stimulus packages used during the global financial crisis to promote economic growth.

There are many other ways in which the Abbott government is totally at odds with G20 thinking. Out of touch with what leaders know has worked in the GFC. Its privatization perspective on infrastructure is but one example. Overall it is so totally at odds with current G20 thought and practice that it is difficult to see the Prime Minister as being equipped to even contribute to discussion, let alone lead the G20 on 16 November. Even if he was properly prepared. Even if he had a plan.

Blood on Scott Morrison’s hands.

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funeral of bahari

Funeral of Reza Barati.

On 17 February 2014, men armed with guns, machetes, knives, pipes, sticks and rocks, systematically and brutally attacked asylum seekers detained on Manus Island. Reinforced by PNG Police and the PNG ‘mobile squad’, who pushed down a fence to join the fray, the assailants carried out acts of violent retribution to asylum seekers who had been protesting for three months, demanding that their claims be processed.

Reza Barati, a 23-year-old Faili Kurd from Iran was murdered in the attack. At least 62 other asylum seekers were injured. One man lost his right eye, another was shot in the buttocks and another was slashed across the throat.

The attack needs to be kept in sharp focus as the Abbott government, despite many protests and appeals from the local and international community, seeks to consolidate its high handed arbitrary approach while priding itself on the efficacy of its practices.

Changes to the Migration Act currently before the house, extend Maritime Law, redefine Australia’s responsibility to refugees and effectively give unprecedented powers to Minister of Immigration, Scott Morrison. Also slated is a plan to create a new super Ministry of Homeland Security with Scott Morrison at its head.

The legal changes proposed by the Immigration Minister would re-introduce temporary protection visas to be applied to about 30,000 asylum seekers still living in Australia. Asylum seekers found to be refugees would get a three-year visa allowing them to work, but they would ultimately have to return to their country of origin. Maritime powers would be expanded, covering people detained at sea, and allow Australian law to significantly limit the country’s responsibilities under international human rights laws.

Especially draconian is the intent to raise the risk threshold for sending arrivals in Australia back to another country. Currently, people will not be returned to the country they came from if there’s a 10 per cent chance they will suffer significant harm there. The Government will now raise that risk threshold to greater than 50 per cent. Mr Morrison says the higher threshold is the Government’s interpretation of its international obligations. Greens Senator Hanson-Young says the bill will result in more asylum seekers lives being put at risk. “This is a mean, dangerous law from the Government,” she said. “If this was not so serious, if it was not about life or death, it would actually be a joke.”

Whilst Morrison’s colleagues hold him to be one of his government’s ‘top performers’ for stopping the boats, this is no commendation. Indeed, their high regard is an indictment on the rest of the cabinet. It also reflects poorly on both sides of Australian government and, indirectly, on the Australian public who have allowed themselves to accept their country’s hard-line approach.

Morrison is not the man to promote. Not remotely. Outside of the government’s joy in turning back the boats, few Australians would approve of his self-abrogating approach or his performance in his portfolio. Most of us feel a deep sense of anger and shame. Many eminent Australians in many walks of life have called for the Minister to resign.

Julian Burnside added to the calls with his public claim this week that the Minister of Immigration bribed witnesses to Reza Barati’s death to retract their testimony in return for transfer to Australia.

Burnside’s claim is, sadly no bolt out of the blue. It comes at the end of a long series of sordid reports of cover up and whitewash by the Abbott Government.

It is, nevertheless, a typically courageous challenge by a highly regarded champion of human rights and deserves to be heeded as a timely reminder of the alarming track record of this government’s cruelly punitive approach to asylum seekers. Sadly it was rejected with typical hostility by Morrison who launched a libellous attack on Burnside for his opposition, malice and lack of evidence.

“This is a false and offensive suggestion made without any basis or substantiation by advocates with proven form of political malice and opposition to the Government’s successful border protection policies. The government once again rejects these claims,” Mr Morrison said. Yet there is independent evidence that Burnside’s account is correct.

An asylum seeker at the Manus Island detention centre has alleged 3 November that he and another detainee were tortured, physically assaulted, threatened with rape and forced to sign papers withdrawing their witness accounts about the night Iranian asylum seeker Reza Barati died.

The man, aged in his 20s, has spoken publicly for the first time about what he said Wilson Security guards and Transfield staff did to him in a secret compound called Chauka. The asylum seeker making the claims said he was too scared to be named.

Ben Pynt, director of Human Rights Advocacy at Humanitarian Research Partners, a non-profit human rights and humanitarian research organization is clear that the witnesses are speaking the truth.

“The specificity of their claims is such that you couldn’t make it up. Dates, times, places, people and then the documents corroborate all of those things,” he said.

“It really makes me think there’s no doubt.

“Quite frankly, I don’t believe the Minister and neither should the Australian public. The Minister’s denial has no factual basis.

“He hasn’t responded to any of the individual claims and he hasn’t asked an independent person to find out what happened.

He has been in regular contact with the two asylum seekers and raised their allegations of mistreatment with the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and the office of United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR).

What caused the violence in February on Manus Island? It was not the suppression of a riot. The savage attack was the authorities’ response to a protest. More an armed attack than a ‘response’, the action was utterly unjustified, totally inappropriate and, in Reza Barati’s case, ultimately fatal. Detention Centre personnel were not attempting to quell any riotous assembly at the detention centre despite Immigration Minister’s version of events. Indeed, it seems, at the time of the incident, things had settled.

The previous day, 35 protestors had escaped. Yet by the day of the attack, only one individual remained protesting. The brutal, violent assault has been widely misreported as a riot in a whirlwind of spin generated by Morrison and his department in order to shift the blame from those running the camp and by extension himself.

How did Reza Bararati die? Julian Burnside QC gave this account last Wednesday. One G4S worker bashed the Iranian asylum seeker with a piece of wood which had two nails driven through it. His scalp torn open, Barati fell to the ground and was then kicked repeatedly by a dozen employees from within the detention centre including two Australians.

They kicked him in the head and stomach as he tried to protect himself with his arms, Mr Burnside recounted for the audience at his Sydney peace prize award last Wednesday. He said another employee took a rock and smashed it on Mr Barati’s head with “such ferocity, it killed him”. Other reports had stated that Mr Barati died of a head injury on the way to Lorengau hospital in PNG.

The morning after Reza Barati’s death, the story had been given a different spin. Minister for Immigration, Scott Morrison laid the blame squarely at the feet of the asylum seekers.

On 26 May, retired senior Australian Public Servant Robert Cornall’s report found Barati’s death occurred after guards entered the centre to suppress the protest. His ‘administrative review’ for the Federal Government revealed that contractors working for the Australian government were responsible for the death of one asylum seeker, the serious injury of others, and the mass trauma of dozens.

Yet Scott Morrison took the review as an exoneration. The evidence? Morrison instances the fact that Cornall found it was not possible to isolate one factor that could have mitigated injuries or damage.

Cornall’s 107-page ‘administrative review’ concluded that the ‘incidents were initiated by transferee protests’.

Its recommendations included increased security and reducing the processing time for refugee claims. It reaffirmed that no one could be resettled in Australia. By and large it said what the government wanted it to say. It sent the ‘right message’. Yet it must not remain unchallenged.

Long before Barati was killed, whistle-blowers provided sufficient information to prevent his tragic death. He did not have to die. But Morrison does have to come forward, accept the truth and his responsibility.

Former G4S former safety and security officer Martin Appleby quit because he found management ignored his concerns about the violent and volatile conditions.

“I couldn’t handle what was going on; no one wanted to listen,” he told Crikey. “I wrote many reports, and nothing was ever taken up. The lead-up started a long time ago.”

Manus Island is a hell.  The single men there face indefinite detention, without timeline, without information, without hope. Supplies are meagre. Facilities are few. It is hot and crowded.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald:

Asylum seekers have been denied adequate water and soap supplies or even urgent medical attention. They suffer “snakes inside their accommodation, malaria, lack of malaria tablets, no mosquito nets, [and] inedible food that often has cockroaches in it.

Manus Island offshore detention centre represents a flagrant disregard for human rights, justice or compassion. It is, moreover, an expensive and indefinite detention. One billion dollars has been spent to detain 2000 asylum seekers offshore on Manus and Nauru but, since 2012, only one has been processed. All up the Coalition has budgeted $2.87 billion over the next year to run Manus and Nauru. Transfield Services’ contract alone is worth $1.22 billion to run both camps for the next 14 months. The cost of holding one asylum seeker in offshore detention was found to be more than $400,000 per year by the Commission of Audit. The Refugee Council calculates this cost to be five times that of ‘processing’ in Australia.

Yet for all the money spent, the quality of care provided to detainees is substandard. The death of 24-year-old Hamid Khazaei, an Iranian on September 5 was entirely preventable. A cut on his foot led to septicemia. The tragedy resulted from a simple lack of basic first aid. Not only was it totally unnecessary, it has come to represent the ugly side of a deliberate policy of deterrence. In most civilized societies, it would be regarded as an act of criminal neglect.

Political commentator, former diplomat, Bruce Haigh believes Morrison should step down, ‘The Minister for Immigration, Scott Morrison, should resign. He is not a fit and proper person to be responsible for vulnerable lives.’

Haigh instanced the Manus Island assault and problems with our neighbor, Indonesia. ‘Without any help, Mr Morrison has taken the relationship with Indonesia to its lowest point since the mid-1980s. He appears to understand nothing and listens to no one…’

Christine Milne has similarly called for Morrison to resign. Tasmanian Independent Andrew Wilkie has formally asked the International Criminal Court prosecuting authority to investigate whether the treatment of asylum seekers contravenes international conventions.

In the meantime, immune to all criticism, the government presses on with its plans to settle 1000 asylum seekers in Cambodia. Scott Morrison is seeking to change the law to give the Abbott government even greater authority. To this end, he introduced the “Migration and Maritime Powers Legislation Amendment” in September. Morrison argued:

“The new statutory framework will enable parliament to legislate… without referring directly to the Refugee Convention and therefore not being subject to the interpretations of foreign courts or judicial bodies which seek to expand the scope of the Refugee Convention well beyond what was ever intended by this country or this parliament.”

The controversial bill is now in its third reading. It is a bizarre attempt to twist a treaty to suit the Abbott government’s own agenda. “It’s a sudden and unilateral reinterpretation of a treaty which has been signed by 145 countries around the world and has been the cornerstone of international refugee protection for over 60 years,” according to Daniel Webb, director of legal advocacy at the Human Rights Law Centre (HRLC) in Melbourne. Meanwhile, Cambodian officials are travelling to Nauru, for what Webb calls “an active selling of the refugee transfer arrangement by members of the regime that stands to profit from it”. 1,000 detainees from Nauru are slated to be transferred to Cambodia in exchange for US$35 million in aid. Cambodia has treated past asylum seekers poorly; it lacks the capacity to care for 1,000 newcomers.  Above all, details of the proposed plan have not been made sufficiently clear. The Australia-Cambodia Memorandum of Understanding does not specify how much money will be allocated for temporary accommodation and basic needs – or who will decide how the money is budgeted. It is simply one more damning move in Australia’s practice of deterrence which masks a callous indifference at best and at worst an unrepentant and calculated cruelty to innocent victims.

Under the Abbott government and its gung-ho Immigration Minister, Scott Morrison, the treatment of asylum seekers is a travesty of our international obligations and an affront to our humanity.

Moreover, as Julian Burnside reminds us this week, we have a minister whose department has not only shown gross negligence leading to accidental death, it has also been complicit in the brutal suppression of a protest on its Manus Island detention centre in February which resulted in the murder of an innocent victim. All the evasions and forced retractions in the world cannot wash away the blood on the Minister’s hands.