So excuse my cynicism when Scott Morrison took to Twitter to tell us “I thank Vic police for their efforts dealing with the ugly racial protests we saw in St Kilda yesterday. Intolerance does not make Australia stronger. Australia is the most successful migrant country in the world. This has been achieved by showing respect for each other, our laws and values and maintaining sensible immigration policies. Let’s keep it that way, it makes Australia stronger.”
Far from being strong on national security, you are jeopardising it by alienating and marginalising groups in our society.
You unleashed the hounds, Scott and you did it for cynical political advantage. And now we are reaping what you sowed.
If you care about a safe Australia, we must send this mob of shit-stirrers packing. Get back under your rock and let decent people work together for all Australians.
Australia lead the world in abandoning the Christian mission Howard and Abbott were to blame. They lead us to war and didn’t welcome peace. (ODT)
While religious communities continue to assist with resettlement of asylum-seekers through faith-based nonprofits and individual congregations, there are signs that some white Christians no longer support this mission.
By The Conversation
Almost three years after making the promise, the Coalition government has made no progress in establishing a register designed to crack down on multinational tax avoidance.
After the publication of the Panama Papers revealed how some of the world’s wealthiest companies and people were using a law firm to minimise their tax responsibilities, and following a similar move in the UK, the Australian government agreed to establish a public registry of beneficial ownership of shell companies.
The register would be designed to expose the shell companies and allow tax authorities to scrutinise who exactly owned each part of a business.
Kelly O’Dwyer confirmed the move in April 2016, saying it would “improve transparency” and would mean the public and authorities would know “who ultimately controls the company”, making it easier to “disrupt illicit financial flows” and “much, much harder to engage in tax avoidance”.
But since then, the register has stalled. Inquiries on the register’s status to O’Dwyer’s office were referred to the assistant treasurer Stuart Robert’s office, which then passed them to the treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, who sent the inquiry back to Robert’s office.
Richard Di Natale continues his criticism of Barry O’Sullivan in the Senate
Senator O’Sullivan, David Leyonhjelm and Fraser Anning walk out during his speech
It comes after Senator Di Natale called Senator O’Sullivan a “pig” while defending Sarah Hanson-Young
Australia is the only Commonwealth country never to make a treaty with its indigenous peoples. Why has it proven so difficult? Kathy Marks looks at the vast challenges in Victoria alone – a state that is working towards a national first.
Julian Assange’s sanctuary in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London has been transformed into a little shop of horrors. He has been largely cut off from communicating with the outside world for the last seven months. His Ecuadorian citizenship, granted to him as an asylum seeker, is in the process of being revoked. His health is failing. He is being denied medical care. His efforts for legal redress have been crippled by the gag rules, including Ecuadorian orders that he cannot make public his conditions inside the embassy in fighting revocation of his Ecuadorian citizenship.
In the meantime alt-Right Politics and Media like News Corp who have a fundamental disbelief in human rights and equal opportunity rail against Aid. Their stance is anti -Semetic in that didn’t the Jews simply bring to mind the notion of a fair go something alt-Conservatives Fox Sky and Murdoch’s Companies deny? (ODT)
“China is committed to friendship and common interests and we put the greater good before our own interests,” he said.
“To some people, I would say this: rather than pointing fingers at other’s contributions it is better to take the efforts to do more things that will benefit the Pacific island states.”
Mr Wang said all countries, including China and PNG, had a right to development and to “seize the opportunities” that come with it.
“If that is realised, it will make this world more harmonious and more peaceful.
“So China’s development poses no threat to anyone.”
He went on to say that “any attempts to block the development of developing countries” such as China and PNG would “represent a most severe injustice” and would leave a “disgraceful chapter in history”.
Key points:
China is investing billions of dollars of infrastructure into Papua New Guinea
China’s Foreign Minister insists the funding comes with no strings attached
He says the two countries are committed to taking bilateral relations “to a new height”
What is behind Morrison and Dutton’s refusal to show even a semblance of humanity? Sacrificing the lives of children to appeal to the racist voters in marginal seats is inexcusable. There is no moral high ground in torturing innocent people to prevent others from boarding boats. “Groupthink” is a plausible explanation for why it has taken so long for moderate Coalition party members to break ranks. The psychological theory known as “cognitive dissonance” partly explains the warped justification for ongoing detention.
But nothing explains the sheer callousness and cruelty displayed by the likes of Morrison and Dutton who have right before them the evidence that Operation Sovereign Borders secured Australian waters, and equally so, that indefinite detention is causing catastrophic harm.
There are only two conclusions to be drawn. Dutton, and Morrison alike, are so incapable of absorbing irrefutable fact, so oblivious to bluntly delivered information, and so manifestly inadequate at assessing matters of significant public interest, they are not fit to hold office.
Or they are simply the meanest politicians Australia has ever seen.
In supporting One Nation’s Senator Pauline Hanson’s toxic bilge that it’s “okay to be white”, the facile but dangerous Morrison Government deserves to lose not only today’s Wentworth by-election, but also the pending Federal election.
They are unworthy of our vote. They are unworthy of Australia. We are surely capable of better. No longer can we tolerate what is being said and done in our name by these belligerently racist and desperate buffoons, who shamelessly lie, cheat and steal from us by masquerading as a government.
These online people didn’t get my meaning, clearly. I wanted to be elsewhere because in a place like Berlin I am not an Aboriginal person living under the unique circumstance of Australian racism. I state I’m Aboriginal overseas and people don’t tend to erase my history, they don’t deny my humanity and they don’t criminalise me. They tend to be interested and respectful. I’m not on the back foot, continually having to prove that racism exists, that Indigenous people experience the brunt of it via being the displaced traditional owners and that our lives matter.
Over the last few years, the small island state has insisted on controlling the journalistic pool. A conspicuous target here has been the ABC itself, which was banned from entering the country to cover the Pacific Islands Forum in September. In a government statement posted in July, “It should be noted that no representative from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation will be granted a visa to enter Nauru under any circumstances.”
Elevated to the levels of high secrecy under the term Operation Sovereign Borders, “operational details” in dealing with boat arrivals, as they are termed, have been a matter of clandestine value. The degrees of control have also extended to covering camp conditions, a matter policed by such brutish little laws such as the Australian Border Force Act 2015 (Cth). Under that bit of legislative nastiness, those who obtain “protected information” in the course of their employment in the border force apparatus can be punished for two years for disclosing such information except to authorised personnel.
Prior to the passage of the ABFA, the Australian government made it its business to hound a number of Save the Children employees working in the Nauru Regional Processing centre. Their sin had been to disclose information on the lamentable conditions in the centre.
The levels of media management regarding reporting on the conditions in Nauru has been extreme. Amnesty International has called this a veritable “wall of secrecy”, designed to conceal “a system of deliberate abuse”. The Nauru government has periodically limited access by journalists to the island, a process made craftier by the hefty visa application fee. In 2014, the non-refundable fee of $200 jumped to $8000.
HERE’S ANOTHER BETTER IDEA TO CELEBRATE
Let’s celebrate this – that First Nations people are the world’s longest continuous culture and people. Recent dating of the earliest known archaeological sites on the Australian continent – using thermo-luminescence and other modern dating techniques – have pushed back the date for Aboriginal presence in Australia to at least 40,000 years. Some of the evidence points to dates over 60,000 years old.
But this would go against every white, western, christian principle the LNP stand for. And we have to consider our new ‘Envoy’ who’s been appointed to shape the future of this longest continuous culture. Tony said – no one was here before Cook arrived- so let’s just white wash history shall we guys? He wants to ban the schools from teaching their language and have all the Aboriginal kids ‘think in English’ … good one Tones.
Creationists don’t believe in evolution either our world was created on Invasion Day and all our children should be taught that particularly Indigenous Australians according to our envoy who says they don’t exist. (ODT)
“Australia Day is our national day. That is the day that Australia’s history changed and it should be a day to recognise all Australians, from our first to our most recent. I don’t think engaging in this sort of indulgent self-loathing…actually makes our country stronger,” the Prime Minister told the Nine Network on Tuesday.
“He said it was important to acknowledge the “deep scars” of Australian colonial history but did not want Australia Day dragged down.”
Germany doesn’t feel any remorse acknowledging the atrocities of WW2 in fact every child is taught that in primary school whether German or not and the nation feels stronger for it why doesn’t Australia feel the need to do the same? (ODT)
A 12-YEAR-OLD CHILD is gravely ill. She is self-harming and making repeated attempts to end her own life. She is being refused medical treatment.
If this was happening in Australia, there would be outrage.
But this scenario is unfolding on Nauru — the “invisible” land where people who have committed no crime, even innocent children, are sent by Australia to be imprisoned and forgotten.
“Where illegal Au Pairs are made legal and legal Asylum Seekers are made Illegal…the land of the FAIR GO” (ODT)
For the past month, Nima has been bedridden with severe depression and trauma. He has recently stopped talking and eating, communicating only with his fingers. The one-bedroom house he shares on Nauru with his partner, Ashkan, is always dark. His eyes can no longer tolerate light. “He is lying on a bed like a corpse,” Ashkan, a Kurdish refugee, told me last week. “Too sick even to go to toilet himself.”
I wrote about Ashkan and Nima a year ago, for The Monthly. The two men have been on Nauru for more than five years. Both have been recognised as refugees. Nima fled Iran, where homosexuality is punishable by death, but instead of securing asylum in Australia he found himself on Nauru, where homosexuality is also illegal. He and Ashkan, who met on Nauru, have experienced harassment and homophobic attacks. They have both attempted suicide and live virtually imprisoned within their home.
Nima was suicidal before the Australian-United States refugee deal was announced. Briefly, it pulled him out of depression. But the deal has not changed his circumstances. “When we were in Iran, we lived under [President] Ahmadinejad,” Nima has told me. “When we fled Iran to come to Australia, we encountered Tony Abbott and then – what’s his name? – Scott Morrison, and, after, Peter Dutton. They told us to send us to America and now face Donald Trump. They play like a toy with us. We are human being, like every everyone else, we have also hope but they killed our hope, they took our lives, made us gone mad, made us sick and made us mental.”
“Calls to kick her butt, expel her, send her to reducation programs along with her parents, or even remove her from her family tells us it’s Spring Time For Hitler once again. (ODT)
This week, nine-year-old Queensland school girl, Harper Nielsen, was threatened with suspension by her school for refusing to sing the Australian national anthem. The heated and at time preposterous reaction to the story adds fuel to a question that has been lingering in public debate for a while now: is Australian nationalism on the rise?
When 9 year olds show their ability to think those politicians that don’t come racing in to the media space and declare beatings need be legalized (ODT)
Politicians are roasting an Australian nine-year-old after she refused to stand for the national anthem. They are now calling for grade 4 student Harper Nielsen, who says the anthem is racist, to be kicked out of school.
Harper, who goes to Kenmore South State School in Queensland, told Nine News that she chose to sit during the national anthem. She was given detention last week over her refusal to join her classmates in standing.
In toppling Turnbull, the architects of the coup finished a project that began when Tony Abbott was deposed almost three years ago: to drag the party back to the right at any cost. But they nearly didn’t get their chance.
WE MAY LIKE TO tell ourselves we are not a racist country in Australia, but let’s face it, a lot of Australians are racist. They may not all be neo-Nazis, but they are racist nonetheless. In New Zealand, our nearest neighbour, they celebrate Maori culture with the haka at major events such as the football. In Australia, we have inquiries into black deaths in custody while booing and racially vilifying footballers who celebrate their indigenous culture from the sideline. On one hand, we celebrate cultures like Italian and Greek with food festivals and celebrate Chinese culture here with colourful festivals involving dragons and traditional dancing. But on the other hand, we celebrate Lebanese culture here with the Cronulla riots. Of course, we now look back on the Cronulla riots as a dark day in our history and we’ve come a long way since right?
Palestinians are and have been reliant on international humanitarian aid for one reason only. For 70 years Israel has denied them their rights as it systematically destroyed their economy. The cutting of humanitarian aid is yet another form of collective punishment meted out to a people long denied justice.
Living under a violent occupation or in extreme poverty in overcrowded refugee camps has left Palestinians in a weakened position to handle negotiations. Eradicating their demands and trying to force their hand before new negotiations is a cruel, calculated political manoeuvre.
What is more horrific: immigration detention centres constructed as anomalies of a liberal democracy, or systematic state torture imagined as something distinct from fascism?
The controversial speakers finished their Australian tour in front of a large Australian audience, where they mocked Aboriginal culture and launched a tirade against multiculturalism and Islam, according to an audience member.
The event was live-tweeted by Simon Copland, an SBS freelance writer who sat at the back of the crowd.
As he tweeted what was said, he apologised for the “epic racist stuff” Stefan Molyneux and Lauren Southern told the sold-out audience in Sydney.
However, it wasn’t just the speech given by both speakers that appalled him, but the way in which the Australian crowd responded.
The offensive comments painted a dehumanising depiction of Indigenous Australians, in keeping with the extreme views of these far-right, self-appointed commentators.
Mr Molyneux is known for his controversial theories that link race with IQ, denying that this is racism.
“They say that your ancestors tried to steal the land. I say they were trying to stop infanticide and mass rape… I will not honour this culture,” he told the crowd, according to Mr Copland.
Misha Ketchell, editor of The Conversation AU while fully admitting to the existence of those community fears about gang violence, “based on real experiences of violent criminal behaviour” was adamant. “What we are seeing is the most shameless opportunism dressed up as leadership.”
WARNING: this article contains graphic content that may be confronting for some readers, including descriptions of sexual abuse. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised it also contains the images of people who have died.
Up to 500 protesters gathered in emotional scenes outside the Channel Seven studio in Docklands on Saturday to condemn what they say is biased reporting about crime in Melbourne’s African community.
The protest gained traction on social media in response to a recent report on the network’s Sunday Night program about Melbourne’s so-called ‘African gangs’ .
While every community experienced crime, not every community was vilified, he said.
“We have people in our community that do the wrong thing — but every community has this problem.
“We came to Channel Seven to show our complex community … Their image is not what our community is,” he said.
It came just over four months after another massacre on 26 January 1838, at Waterloo Creek, where up to 50 Kamilaroi people were killed by 26 mounted police, under the command of Major James Nunn, whose orders were to expel Aboriginal people from the region which was being opened up for farmland.
The Waterloo Creek massacre was brought before court, but the case was dropped. Both witnesses were soldiers who had taken part in the massacre. One said three or four had been killed, the other said 40 to 50 had been “badly killed”.
Despite leaving its name on the landscape, the Slaughterhouse Creek and Waterloo Creek massacres remain a contested event in Australian colonial history.
It wasn’t the only massacre brought to trial in 1838. On 10 June, settler John Henry Fleming and 11 stockmen, armed with muskets, swords, and pistols, drove a group of 28 Wererai people into stockyards at Myall Creek, east of Slaughterhouse and Waterloo Creeks.
Malcolm Turnbull Has Turned : Racist In Desparation for a Vote (ODT)
The Project‘s Waleed Aly has launched a scathing attack on Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, writing off his recent comments about Sudanese gangs as a last-ditch votes grab before Super Saturday byelections next weekend.
Adding that while the Sudanese community is clearly over-represented in the crime stats, Aly said that what’s more interesting is that “Australian-born Victorians were responsible for 71.7 per cent of the crime committed last year”.
“According to Victoria’s Crime Statistics Agency, crime has actually dropped 9 per cent in the last year in Victoria,” he said. “Sudanese Victorians make up 0.1 per cent of the population and account for just 1 per cent of all crimes committed last year.”
“This week the Prime Minister said something interesting,” Aly started, cutting to a video of Turnbull in a 3AW interview earlier this week.
“There is real concern about Sudanese gangs,” Turnbull says in the video. “You have to be walking around with your hands over your ears in Melbourne not to hear it.”
Bolt kept quoting W.A police for quite the opposite police attitudes and admissions against the Indigenous Australians guess Bolt will remain silent on this admission. (ODT)
The Western Australian police commissioner has issued a historic apology to the state’s Indigenous people, saying he took ownership for “past wrongful actions that have caused immeasurable suffering” and fuelled a sense of mistrust towards the force.
Both the US and Australia are settler societies which were founded on white supremacy and colonial expansionism. Hence, they are intrinsically concerned with maintaining dominance over Indigenous people and asserting state sovereignty against the incursion of people deemed “other”.
But apart from rhetoric, Australia and the US are also using colonial-era and colonial-like power relations to coerce poorer nations into serving their racist immigration policy.
Papua New Guinea has hosted hundreds of male refugees and asylum seekers who tried to make it to Australia on Manus Island, while children and families have been living in limbo in the island nation of Nauru.
But amid the spending spree on militarisation and domination of poorer nations and the continuing misery and suffering of hundreds of thousands of people stranded at borders and in detention centres, there is rarely any recognition of the fact that these refugees and “migrants” have been in fact escaping wars and murderous regimes propped by the US, Australia and EU states.
And that is because these countries have never stopped behaving like colonial powers on the international stage, long after colonialism was supposed to have formally ended.
Behind closed doors, the words “war crimes” are being used. Not only specific incidents, but the entire culture and command structure of Australia’s most renowned and trusted fighting force is now under scrutiny in a manner unprecedented in Australian military history.
Australian community services ministers across the country have adopted a “permanency policy” for children in care that does not respect Aboriginal human rights but instead continues a long colonial tradition of removing Aboriginal and Torres Strait children from their families and culture.
Past removals have led to well-documented trauma, loss of family and culture and vulnerability to physical and sexual abuse. Yet much contemporary debate around permanency planning reignites racist ideas around “saving” Indigenous children from their “dysfunctional” families and culture through removal.
“I share it with the house because I believe it to be in the national interest. My duty, first and foremost, is to the Australian people and the preservation of the ideals and democratic traditions of our Commonwealth.” The Chinese Communist Party, Hastie claimed, was “working to covertly interfere with our media, our universities and also influence our political processes and public debates”.
While such revelations are delivered with a sense of heavy moral responsibility, much of it is stretched. Trade Minister Steve Ciobo was almost dismissive in claiming that the content was hardly novel. Turnbull dumped some cold water on Hastie’s fire by claiming that “the specific allegations that were made… were not new.” But getting on the China bandwagon of condemnation is all the rage. Parliament has already sought to curb that vague and immeasurable term “influence” with legislation that muddies rather than clears the water. When the National Security Legislation Amendment (Espionage and Foreign Interference) Bill 2017 was introduced, it signalled a new front in an inchoate war that, on closer inspection, merely looks like a good stab at civil liberties and an attempt to harness paranoia.
Australia has defended its role as one of only two countries – along with the United States – to reject a United Nations Human Rights Council resolution to investigate the killings of dozens of Palestinians in Gaza on the grounds it prejudged Israel.
Australia and US were the only countries to vote against the resolution to send a commission of investigators, but it passed with the backing of 29 members of the 47-nation UN human rights body. Another 14 countries including Britain, Germany and Japan, abstained.
Foreign Minister Julie Bishop told Fairfax Media the resolution prejudged the outcome and failed to acknowledge the role of the Palestinian group Hamas in inciting the protests in Gaza. Some 62 people were killed by the Israeli military’s response.
“Australia voted against the Human Rights Council resolution because of our principled opposition to resolutions that fail the test of balance and impartiality,” Ms Bishop said.
“The UNHRC resolution pre-judged the outcome of an inquiry into violations of international law in the context of large-scale civilian protests in the Palestinian Territories, including East Jerusalem.
“Nor did it refer to the role of Hamas in inciting violent protests.”
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an estimated minimum 100,000 of First Nations people having been to prison. In comparing global data, it is the highest rate of racialised incarceration in the world.
Mr Pearson said: “We’ve made progress in the last 50 years but some of the profound indicators of our problems – children alienated from parents, the most incarcerated people on the planet Earth, and youths in great numbers in detention – obviously speak to a structural problem.” [Emphasis added].
Is that right?
Australian Bureau of Statistics data show that the Indigenous incarceration rate in 1991 was 14.4 per cent. It was 27.4 per cent in 2015. It was even higher during 2016: 28 per cent.
Indigenous People still amount to 3 per cent of the population in Australia.
The South Australian premier, Steven Marshall, has “paused” treaty negotiations with Aboriginal groups, saying he has “other priorities” in Indigenous affairs.
Marshall, who holds the Aboriginal affairs portfolio, told the ABC his government would focus on “practical outcomes” over “symbolic action”.
![A group of around 20 protesters occupy PM Malcolm Turnbull's electoral office, demanding the end to the policy of offshore detention of asylum seekers, in Sydney, October 14, 2015 [Reuters]](https://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/imagecache/mbdxxlarge/mritems/Images/2018/6/25/2291ff092c2c41e3bb0cd17b7789a366_18.jpg "How colonialism shapes immigration policy in the US and Australia")
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