Weather
I was supposed to be in Fiji last week but I'm a victim of anthropogenic climate change. The Fiji Media Council has appointed me to head a Commission to recommend ways in which it can improve its services. They have appointed a former solicitor and the Fijian head of the NGO Transparency International to assist me in this task. I was to travel to the islands on 17 January for a week to talk to those who have made submissions to the inquiry, but torrential downpours had so disrupted Fiji that the trip has had to been postponed. I will now travel on 7 February and spend the following week in Suva, talking to the media owners, to journalists, NGOs and members of the public about how the Media Council can better respond to the needs of Fijian civil society. Look out for images of another Australian being frogmarched to Nadi International Airport for early return to Australia - as has happened recently to a couple of News Limited corporate managers sent to mind the store in Fiji. Talking to my contacts in Suva, the storms that have lashed the country are not just the normal summer storms that perennially blight the tropics. Not only is there no living memory of storms this bad, there are no records of such storms or of the level of devastation being suffered. Like the severe weather that has been seen in France and Spain this week, the Fijian storms are a product of the changes in weather patterns created by human-created greenhouse gases. The impact that climate change is having indicates that it is an economic, as well as ecological, necessity that something urgent be done ... and be done now.
Medal of Freedom
George Orwell anticipated the way in which language would be perverted. In Airship One, peace was war and freedom was slavery. The awarding of the US Medal of Freedom to former Australian Prime Minister, and erstwhile Bush ally, John Winston Howard, amongst others, demonstrated how prescient Orwell was. Former President George W Bush personally awarded the medal to Howard a few days before the end of his eight years for his support for "peace, freedom and human rights". Howard demonstrated these qualities in the following ways:
- his support of peace was shown by his being the first Prime Minister ever to lead Australia into an unjustified war of aggression, without sanction from the UN or any other similar organisation;
- his commitment to freedom was reinforced by a series of legislative changes that saw the most draconian anti-terrorism, secrecy, sedition and conspiracy laws introduced into Parliament (some were ameliorated by the Senate but all sought to take restrictions on individual liberty further than was necessary for the protection of society, seeking to sacrifice freedom in order to maintain it), which saw Australia's ratings in the annual international Free Press league tables plummet from the top ten to about fortieth place, and by the increasing use of Conclusive Certificates by Ministers to stymie freedom of information requests; and
- his application of human rights was underlined by the way in which he treated asylum seekers, locking some in isolated detention centres, or even more isolated Pacific Island camps, for up to six years, sending children clinically insane and splitting families; by winding back hard-won rights for women; by changes to industrial relations laws that took away rights from working Australians; and by his determination to ignore attempts at reconciliation with Indigenous Australians, denial of the sufferings of the Stolen Generations and imposition of paternalistic bureaucratic rules on local communities through the Intervention in the Northern Territory.
It's hard to imagine an honor that's been less aptly named or more wrongly awarded.
Inauguration
The first days of the Obama Presidency put me in mind of the glorious days of December 1972, when the Whitlam government was green in power. Daily newspapers carried fact boxes on their front pages, "What the Government did yesterday" and the boxes would be replete with bullet-point summaries of the swingeing changes being introduced. Recognition of the People's Republic of China; the end of National Service; the last servicemen removed from Vietnam; literacy tests for immigrants abolished; this bureaucratic dictate or that being reversed. After 23 years of Tory rule, the ALP couldn't wait to change things. Obama has only eight years of Bush rule to correct but such has been the intent, and action, of the Bushies to use Executive Orders to change, delay, obfuscate and hinder anything with which they disagreed, like preservation of endangered species or action to protect the environment, that urgent and necessary action has been required by the incoming administration. Reversing the universal gag rule, seeking to close Guantanamo Bay, outlawing the use of torture and setting an example of fiscal restraint have been some of the actions already taken. It is an exciting time in Washington - and very different from the way in which the Ruddites have sought to reverse a dozen years of Howardism ... by changing very little.
The inauguration itself was an interesting occasion. We rose at a little after 3 in the morning to witness it. I cannot recall a previous inauguration being shown live on free-to-air television. Originally on the national broadcaster had indicated it was going to show it; by 21 January, the three commercial channels had joined the party - such was the interest in Australia concerning Obama, the election and his oration. The ceremony itself is simple and straight-forward - and over much more quickly than you would expect. One by one the main guests were introduced until the President-elect arrived, escorted by the leaders of the legislative branch. Aretha Franklin's silly hat sang a song; Joe Biden was sworn in; and a quartet composed of a Jew, an Asian, a black and a woman performed a piece of John Williams' romantic music (including Yo-Yo Ma, of course, the celloist-in-chief to the Bartlet administration on The West Wing). A few minutes late, Chief Justice Roberts swore in the new President - and got the oath wrong - the worst display of public officiating since the Archbishop of Canterbury married Di to Prince Phillip and Bill Deane stuffed up the opening of the Sydney Olympics. At about 1205, DC time, Obama commenced his inauguration address, which, while not quite reaching JFK 1961 proportions, was an excellent speech, echoing FDR in 1933, more than it did Lincoln in 1861 or JFK. It was not a John Pappas-style speech of passion; it was an address that captured the times in which it was delivered: a time when there is a need for restraint and joint effort to correct problems at home and abroad. I particularly liked his references to the conflict between the proponents of big government and those of small government: The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works. His Rooseveltian references included:
On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.
And one of the best bits of oratory:
Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends - honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism - these things are old. These things are true. ... What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility ...
After the speech the Bushes were given the bums' rush and the Obamas took possession of the casa blanca - even if they couldn't work out how to work the computers. Exciting times.
First written: February 2009
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