Howard's common sense
August 14, 2004 The Age
The Prime Minister is a skilled politician who did not have to resort to the low tactics of this week, writes Shaun Carney.
The political caravan moves quickly these days, especially as the election approaches, so the Howard Government's response to the joint letter by 43 former diplomats, soldiers and bureaucrats calling for more transparency in Australia's behaviour on the international stage is already old news.
The process was: criticisms are issued, Government dismisses the criticisms as wrong and the critics as irrelevant, some critics hit back, controversy ends. It took three days.
The Prime Minister's way of dealing with the letter was to say that the group of 43 had a democratic right to state their opinion but there was nothing new in the criticisms and, really, unless you actually held a position of power or influence on September 11, 2001, you cannot understand the challenges facing the world. In other words, they need not have bothered and no one should really take any notice of them.
This was more generous than the federal member for Dawson, De-Anne Kelly, who had her line already worked out when she was asked for a comment: "I think we have to ask the question, these doddering daiquiri diplomats: would they have done any different? Frankly, they should keep their opinions to themselves."
Kelly has held her seat since March 1996. Since then, if you add up her salary, allowances and superannuation, taxpayers have spent well over a million dollars on Kelly. Her view is that if Australians want to say something negative about her side of politics, they should instead just shut up. Nice.
Warren Entsch, the parliamentary secretary for industry, described the group as "disgruntled old men" with a grievance against the Government and the Prime Minister personally. This was a variation on the "Howard haters" line often run out by defenders of the Government. Under their formulation, if you voice your disapproval of the Prime Minister's way of doing his job more than once, you are a "Howard hater" and can therefore be dismissed as not legitimate.
Funny, once upon a time you would have just been an opponent.
Sometimes you have to wonder what is happening to Australian politics. Early this week the Liberal candidate for the federal seat of Wentworth, Malcolm Turnbull, appeared at a voters' forum and in response to some spirited questioning, raised the possibility that history may one day judge George Bush's military foray into Iraq last year as an error. This much at least we know.
Turnbull says that's all he said; some who were at the meeting claim that he was more definite and said the historical judgement would be of an "unadulterated error". It's also claimed that he said he would apologise to the Aboriginal people if he were prime minister.
It's an unfortunate, even sad, commentary on the way politics is conducted in this country that Turnbull's statements were - for about 24 hours - big news. Here was a high-profile Liberal doing what Liberals are allowed to do under the party's own constitution: expressing a view. Turnbull was actually being intellectually honest. History might come down against Bush's actions, with emphasis on the word "might".
Even if he did declare that history would judge the action in Iraq as a mistake, isn't this what we want from our politicians? Don't we want them to differ from each other, to question their colleagues, to acknowledge their own fallibility?
Of course, Turnbull's comments were seen as an embarrassment for Howard because the Government has been so solidly, seamlessly unified on all questions relating to national security and defence.
This sort of unity offers some clear political dividends - most of the time. But just being straight with people has its benefits, too.
It is not altogether clear that the Prime Minister has even been straight with himself on the recent developments with the Australia-US free trade agreement. Yesterday the Coalition joined with the ALP in the Senate to pass Labor's amendment to the FTA, which the Opposition says will either discourage or rule out frivolous patent claims by big drug companies that could delay the introduction of cheaper, generic drugs on to the Australian market.
It took 10 days to get there. At first, Howard ruled out supporting the amendment because it was frivolous and unnecessary. Then he said there could be problems with the amendment, that it might interfere with, or even derail, the FTA. On Thursday, he pretty much merged all his previous positions while also announcing that the Government would accept the amendment - with reservations.
He told a press conference: "The Government has decided that the commonsense thing to do is to support the amendments but warn, as I do, that the enabling legislation could be construed by the Americans as inconsistent with the free trade agreement and if that were to occur it would be entirely the fault of the Labor Party and nobody else's.
"Our greatest concern over the past few days has been their possible inconsistency with the spirit of the free trade agreement."
John Howard is a bigger and better man than this statement suggests. He has been in parliament for 30 years and has spent half of that time either as prime minister or as a minister. He is already the nation's third-longest serving prime minister.
Few men in the history of this country have had as much direct influence on the nature and direction of the society and the economy.
And yet, on this issue he used weasel words.
Howard seriously wants his fellow Australians to believe that although he has personally told his Coalition colleagues to pass into law the amendment on generic drugs he will take no responsibility for having done so.
Remember, this is the man who said on several occasions last week that the one thing you should never do in public life is to make bad policy in order to fix a political problem.
Surely what he said on Thursday was that he had decided to make what he believed might turn out to be bad policy for reasons of "common sense".
In this case, "common sense" is code for "I have a political problem that I rather desperately need to go away because Parliament rises tomorrow for two weeks and I need to keep my election options open, and frankly I'm less concerned about the policy consequences of what I'm doing as much as giving myself the ability to put the blame for my actions on my opponents".
The Prime Minister is one of the best political operators Australia has ever produced. He's right up there near the top. Sometimes that's not such a good thing.
Policy gets buried under the politicking
August 14, 2004
An uneasy spirit regularly haunts Canberra, and only fixed-term elections can exorcise it.
Far more predictably than the noise of politicking might have suggested, the Senate yesterday approved the US free trade agreement. At other times that might have been a signal to move on to other debates, ones in which the Coalition and Labor are not in broad agreement.
If Opposition Leader Mark Latham's amendments on media content and drug patents were fig leafs to save Labor's embarrassment, as the Prime Minister said last week, John Howard was clutching at the immodesty of straws in a bid to sound convincing about belatedly accepting both.
Neither change went to core concerns about new media and the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.
Canberra hosted an almost absurd series of news conferences and counter-conferences on Thursday, when Mr Howard said he would accept Labor's amendment to discourage the delaying of cheap generic drugs by bogus patent applications. He tried to argue that the amendment was trivial yet could also scuttle the deal if the US viewed the change as inconsistent with the spirit of the FTA.
As the detailed text runs to 1000 pages, the vague focus of "spirit" seemed odd. US trade officials said only that it was standard procedure for both nations to ensure legislation was "consistent with the terms of the FTA".
Observers of the political games chalked up a tactical victory for Mr Latham, but it was of passing consequence and then only because so many minds were preoccupied by election speculation. The extension of the sitting yesterday helped fuel that.
Asked to "summon the spirits and tell us when the election date will be", Mr Howard replied: "Ah, that's still 'out there'." As Prime Minister, the choice of date is his prerogative and, as he pointed out, the third anniversary of the Government's election isn't until November 10.
Many Australians are also likely to share Mr Howard's expressed preference for watching the Olympics in coming weeks.
But the effects of the speculation, prompted in the first place by political leaders who have been campaigning feverishly all year, again raise the question of why Australia does not adopt fixed terms, as some states (and the United States) have done.
Why should the whole country wait for the announcement of the date of voting at the Prime Minister's pleasure?
The FTA legislation and some of the 11 bills introduced to the House of Representatives this week will have a real bearing on the future of this country.
Even should the phoney campaign continue long enough for Parliament to resume sitting on August 30, both sides of politics will be preoccupied with immediate electoral calculations when debating important areas of difference - workplace relations and higher education bills are before the house.
When "wedge" legislation such as a ban on gay marriages vies with terrorism laws for priority, it is clear electoral politics is holding sway over good policy making.
Until the election is decided, expect more diversionary FTA-style posturing.
Howard's credibility 'on the line'
The Age August 16, 2004 - 9:07AM
The publication of a letter from former ministerial adviser Mike Scrafton regarding the 2001 "children overboard" affair had raised questions about Prime Minister John Howard's credibility, Labor said.
Labor senator John Faulkner, who was a member of the Senate committee which examined the affair in 2002, said today Mr Howard's credibility was on the line.
"What's at question here is not Mr Scrafton's credibility - surely it's Mr Howard's credibility," Senator Faulkner told ABC radio.
Senator Faulkner said while it would have been useful for Mr Scrafton to present his evidence to the inquiry, he understood many witnesses were blocked by the Howard government from presenting evidence when requested by the committee.
He said Mr Scrafton was not subpoenaed because of the cost of a legal battle against the government.
"We didn't have the resources to do so, but the real point here was Mr Scrafton, if what we now know had been public at the time and made available to the committee, the findings of the committee would have been even more dramatic than they were then," he said.
Mr Scrafton, an adviser to former Defence Minister Peter Reith, wrote a letter to The Australian newspaper to clear the air over the 2001 "children overboard" affair.
He said in the letter he had had three telephone conversations with Mr Howard on November 7, 2001, just before the prime minister said children had been thrown overboard a boat by asylum seekers.
Mr Scrafton said he told Mr Howard that a videotape of the incident did not support the proposition that children had been thrown overboard.
And he said he had advised the prime minister that no one in Defence that he had dealt with believed the allegation.
A spokesman for Mr Howard today rejected Mr Scrafton's claims.
- AAP
Last Update: Monday, August 16, 2004. 11:26am (AEST)
New advice revealed in children overboard affair.
ALP wants new children overboard probe
The Federal Opposition wants to re-open a Senate inquiry into the children overboard affair over new revelations about what Prime Minister John Howard was told in the lead-up to the 2001 election.
A former federal ministerial adviser says he told Mr Howard that no children had been thrown overboard from a boat carrying asylum seekers in Australian waters.
Mike Scrafton, an adviser to then-defence minister Peter Reith, has written a letter to The Australian newspaper saying he had three telephone conversations with Mr Howard on November 7, 2001.
Mr Scrafton says he told the Prime Minister that a tape of the incident "certainly didn't support the proposition that the event had occurred".
He says he told Mr Howard "that no-one in defence that I had dealt with on the matter still believed any children were thrown overboard".
The adviser says he also told the PM that photographs released during the debate were not of children thrown into the water.
Dramatic
Mr Scrafton says he passed on the advice in three conversations with Mr Howard on the evening of November 7.
"During the last conversation, the Prime Minister asked me how it was that he had a report from the Office of National Assessments (ONA) confirming the children overboard incident," he said.
"I replied that I had gained the impression that the report had as its source the public statements of the then minister for immigration, Philip Ruddock."
The Opposition's defence spokesman, Kim Beazley, says the claims put Mr Howard's credibility in question and must be investigated.
Mr Beazley wants a Senate inquiry to resume "so that Mr Scrafton can place his views before the Senate, have them considered and investigated and if the Prime Minister has misled, then he's in a very serious position".
Labor Senator John Faulkner says the claims are dramatic.
"What's at question here is not Mr Scrafton's credibility," Senator Faulkner said. "Surely it's Mr Howard's credibility, that's the real issue here.
"It's now time after three years have elapsed for Mr Howard to come clean just for once and tell the whole truth about this issue."
Denial
However, Mr Howard denies he was conclusively told before the 2001 election that the event did not happen.
A spokesman for Mr Howard says Mr Scrafton told him during two conversations that the video was inconclusive.
But he denies Mr Scrafton made any reference to the photographs or that no-one in defence believed the children overboard claims.
The spokesman also says Mr Scrafton made no mention of those two issues in a written statement presented to a Senate committee.
The day after Mr Scrafton says he spoke to the Prime Minister, Mr Howard told the National Press Club that his public statements on the children overboard issue were based on advice from his ministers.
He also quoted from the ONA report without revealing any advice from Mr Scrafton.
"On the 9th of October, I received an ONA report that read in part as follows: Asylum seekers wearing life-jackets jumped into the sea and children were thrown in with them," Mr Howard told the press club.
Another day later, the day before the election, Mr Howard told ABC Radio's PM program: "It seems to me that if it were definitely wrong, somebody from the Navy would have got in touch with my office or Reith's office or Ruddock's office some weeks ago and said, 'look fellas, it's up to you how you make this known but you should be aware that those original reports were wrong'."
Mr Scrafton says he did not testify to a Senate inquiry into the children overboard affair because he was not subpoenaed and because he was told cabinet had directed him not to appear.
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And the prime minister's reaction to this: Total silence.
Outrageous!
For those of you who might be interested, but aren't Australian: The "children overboard" affair turned the tide of the 2001 federal election. Prior to that incident, Labor's election prospects were looking promising. The "overboard" incident was grasped by the Liberals, who ran a scare campaign, based on the security of Australia's borders. As a result, the liberals romped into government for another term. Many commentators disputed the "overboard" allegations at the time, but to no avail. Howard's scare campaign worked. The Labor Party, to its discredit, did not strongly oppose the Liberal's position & policies.
Election 2004/ AGE POLL
If an election was held tomorrow which way would you vote?
Democrats - 1%
Greens - 24%
Labor - 53%
Liberal - 17%
Other - 2%
Total Votes: 489 <So far>
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Me?: I'm one of the 24% potential Greens voters.
I like their policies better than either of the 2 major parties.
Hey, I'm in a "safe" Labor seat, anyway!
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Here's the letter that was printed in the Australian this morning:
a Letter to the Editor
PM told no children overboard
16 August 2004
THE controversy around the issues raised by 43 signatories of the recent open letter has at its centre the vital issue of truth in government. It is perhaps timely that I add to the public record on this matter.
The report of the Senate committee inquiring into a Certain Maritime Incident - the children overboard affair - found the inquiry had been "significantly hampered" by my "refusal" to testify before it.
The salient issue for the committee was "the extent of the Prime Minister's knowledge of the false nature of the report that children were thrown overboard" and therefore "the extent to which the Government as a whole wilfully misled the Australian people on the eve of a federal election".
The report noted the committee's "inability to question Mr Scrafton on the substance of his conversations with the Prime Minister therefore leaves that question unresolved".
The reasons for my non-appearance are mixed. Prominent among them was the failure of the committee to subpoena me to appear.
It was also significant that both the then secretary of defence (Allan Hawke) and the office of the former minister for defence, Peter Reith, advised me there had been a cabinet decision directing that I not appear.
Having resumed my position in Defence as a public servant following the election, these factors naturally weighed heavily in my decision. I have since retired from the commonwealth public service.
Also, I hold the conviction that public comments on controversial matters by senior public servants should only be made with reluctance and then only in exceptional circumstances.
However, a small footnote to the history of the "children overboard affair" may now be appropriate.
For the record, I was in Peter Reith's office as a seconded public servant on the same basis that I was attached to the previous defence minister's office (John Moore).
The conditions were that I had no involvement in electoral politics and dealt only with matters of Defence policy and public administration. During the election campaign, I remained in the Canberra office managing the ongoing business of the "caretaker period" while Reith and the political staffers, except for the chief of staff, relocated to Melbourne.
I did not see the minister in person during that period. Consequently, as the Senate report demonstrates, I was involved in many conversa tions with the minister, his press secretary, the chief of staff, the Prime Minister's Office, the Department of Defence and the Australian Defence Force from the first release of the photographs purporting to be of children in the water.
What would I have told the Senate committee? On the evening of November 7, 2001, after having viewed the tape from the HMAS Adelaide at Maritime HQ in Sydney, I spoke to the Prime Minister by mobile phone on three occasions.
In the course of those calls I recounted to him that: a) the tape was at best inconclusive as to whether there were any children in the water but certainly didn't support the proposition that the event had occurred; b) that the photographs that had been released in early October were definitely of the sinking of the refugee boat on October 8 and not of any children being thrown into the water; and c) that no one in Defence that I dealt with on the matter still believed any children were thrown overboard.
During the last conversation, the Prime Minister asked me how it was that he had a report from the Office of National Assessments confirming the children overboard incident.
I replied that I had gained the impression that the report had as its source the public statements of the then minister for immigration, Philip Ruddock.
When queried by the Prime Minister as to how this could be, I suggested that question was best directed to Kim Jones, then the director-general of the Office of National Assessments.
Mike Scrafton
Melbourne, Vic
So .... What next? How does Howard wriggle out of this one?
Will the PM apologise for lying to the Australian public?: Not likely! He never says sorry. He very rarely has "regrets".
How will he explain the lies about "children overboard"?: The usual way, probably: It's some underlings fault. It always is! He knew nothing! He NEVER does!
What will be his response to Mr Scrafton's letter & the allegations contained in it?: Discredit the messenger? That's the usual method. (Like with the 43 who called for truth in government. They were dismissed as out of touch old fogies.)
God, I'm SO TIRED of this man!
Then please don't vote for the Greens. Even if you are in a safe labour seat. The Greens are a no policy party and they will mainly take votes away from Labour.
Ah, but Adrian, you know what happens to Greens preferences! :wink:
Yeah, but it makes me shudder to think how much extra funding they're going to get after this election. They have already sucked a whole heap of votes out of the Democrats and there are a few Labour seats that will suffer. The more primary votes they get, the more federal funding they get.
