I Know Nothing

In the winner takes all system of Australian politics, the opposition can exercise a moderating influence on the excesses of government policy through the annual budget estimates hearings which various Senate committees hold. On these auspicious occasions, the responsible ministers, along with the “high born” of the various departments, show up to be questioned on everything but the matters that the hearings are ostensibly held for. Star performers on the Opposition side often have the opportunity of strutting their stuff before moving into the ministerial offices when they eventually get into government. When the Liberals were last in opposition, one such ministerial aspirant, Senator Bronwyn Bishop, counted coup of the head of the Australian Taxation Office—a mighty institution in the pantheon of Australian government.

    Now that the Liberals are in government, Labor leadership aspirants are now head-hunting for coup in the lead-up to the next elections. One of these star performers is Senator John Fawkner, who has featured in past hearings by extracting embarrassing details from reluctant heads of departments and their respective underlings. His memorable performance during the hearings on “A Certain Maritime Affair”, is still the talk of the denizens of Canberra Babylon. The maritime affair in question is the “children overboard” incident. According the then Defence Minister, Mr. Peter Reith, refugees seeking asylum in Australia threw their children overboard to prevent Australian naval personnel removing them to an island which had been excised from the Australian migration zone.

    Since the Liberals got into government in 1996, they have been exercising their minds to cater to the racist impulse of many Australians, by seeking a way to prevent refugees whose skin colour is darker than lilly white, appealing against adverse immigration department and tribunal decisions. One of these has been to pass legislation, which is designed to prevent those who land on islands outside the migration zone having standing in Australian courts. This has been aided by a propaganda effort to demonise those who are fleeing persecution in the Middle East and elsewhere, as being illegal immigrants, and therefore worthy of being sent back from whence they came. And often this has resulted in the claimants being murdered by the very authorities they fled in fear of. To this end, the government endeared itself to the unsympathetic element of the Australian people, by arguing in the High Court—successfully, as it turned out—that the Australian parliament had the power to pass legislation which sanctioned crimes against humanity, if it had the effect of restricting the flight of those fleeing from oppression overseas.

    Since then, the Australian government under the sturdy leadership of the present prime minister, John Howard—who is a close confidante of the United States president, George W. Bush, and the British prime minister, Tony Blair—has shifted its attention to the children of refugee claimants. It’s policy of mandatory of imprisonment of the children of refugees, until their cases are finally determined in the courts, has rightfully earned the government condemnation from around the world. If the claimants are successful, most only get three-year protection visas, after which they have to go through the process of fighting the government in the tribunals and courts again. The Liberal government is clearly of the opinion that Australia is too good for refugees to seek a new life in. In the meantime it is conducting a propaganda war against international humanitarian and the United Nations bodies which publicly criticise the Australian government for failing to live up to its legal humanitarian obligations. Recently, when the Australian Human Rights Commission released its thousand-page damning report on the arguably illegal policy of mandatory detention of children in appalling conditions in out of the way prisons, with inadequate medical facilities, the recently promoted—or demoted, one never knows with this government—minister for immigration, Amanda Vanstone, said that the Commission didn’t know what it was talking about, in its report—despite having gone out of its way to get the facts straight.

    During the recent Senate defence estimates hearings, which has been entertaining and exercising the parliamentary media, most of the battle has surrounded the issue of when the government knew about the allegations of torture, and other abuses of inmates, of Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. An Australia army lawyer who was on secondment to the Coalition forces in Iraq last year, was asked to write a response to a Red Cross report drawing attention to the allegations of abuses and torture taking place at the prison, at the hands of American military and intelligence officials. The report was signed by the female governor of the prison, Brigadier General Janet Kapinski—now suspended from duty. That was in October of last year.

    The government’s claim was that it didn’t know of the Red Cross report and the army lawyer’s report to his Australian bosses in Canberra, until April of this year. Almost immediately, the government’s claims were falsified by documents which were leaked to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s current affairs investigatory program Four Corners. Defending the government’s position, the increasingly pompous and mendacious foreign minister, Alexander Downer, said that any suggestion that Australia was directly involved in the Abu Ghraib abuses is “preposterous”. It is now being seen as being less so.

    On another occasion, Mr. Downer underlined the government’s defence in the following words: “The Australian people know that there weren’t Australians involved in the abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison; they know that Australians weren’t party to those abuses. They know our government—or whatever sort of government that we have in Australia—would be appalled at those abuses. And I think they’re growing slightly weary at the extraordinary attempt to try to cast the Howard government as somehow being responsible for the abuses that took place at the Abu Ghraib prison.”

    Mr. Downer was, of course, raising a straw man to tilt at, because nobody was accusing Australian soldiers as being responsible for the abuses at Abu Ghraib, or that the Howard government was responsible for the abuses that took place. Rather, the issue at the time was on the responsibility that the Australian government was required to shoulder for the Iraqi soldiers which were captured by Australian forces operating in Iraq. The Australian government argued that the Iraqi soldiers in question didn’t surrender to Australian soldiers, rather, they surrendered to the American representatives in the field, operating with the Australians. The Opposition was making the point that Australia did not lose its obligations towards captured prisoners, merely because they were handed over to the Americans. The Geneva Convention makes it clear that Australia is fully responsible to and for any enemy soldiers which surrendered to its forces operating in Iraq. Since 120 Iraqis were taken prisoner by the Australian forces, the Australian government was still responsible for the good treatment for those same 120 soldiers, regardless to whom the Australian forces handed them over to.

    Over the course of two weeks, the government went through an extraordinary series of attempts to shift responsibility for the prisoners, it’s forces captured, onto the Americans. It did so by first claiming that Australian forces didn’t capture enemy combatants. Since news reports from the time reported the capture of enemy forces by the Australian personnel operating in Iraq, the government’s claim was quickly falsified. The government then argued that the Special Forces could not accept the surrender of enemy forces, because as they were operating behind enemy lines, they were not in a position to do so. But, again, news reports contradicting this claim quickly surfaced. The government then argued that Americans travelling with the Australian Special Forces took control of the prisoners. Since no Americans were operating with these forces, the government desperately sought a better argument.

    Meanwhile, in the committee room, a new document surfaced which raised questions about Australian complicitness in the Abu Ghraib abuses. It referred in detail to the letter that was written by the Australian army lawyer. It made the point that some of the prisoners would not be protected by the Geneva Convention, which reflected the contents of a letter which had recently been leaked to the American media. Mr. Downer’s response was: “Just because an Australian helped draft the document doesn’t mean that Australia is involved in a cover-up.”

    The Opposition spokesman on foreign affairs, Kevin Rudd, said in parliament: “Mr Downer is sounding increasingly desperate, and increasingly hysterical in this entire matter. Mr. Downer says that it is the ABC’s fault; it is the ALP’s fault; it is Uncle Tom Cogley’s fault. It’s everybody else’s fault, except perhaps the Australian government’s. Mr. Downer needs to get out of denial mode and start addressing what’s going on in this whole unfortunate saga.”