Politics
Confusion and mistrust in government in the name of free speech
This mobile billboard appeared in Canberra last week, just a few hundred meters from Parliament House. Following the link to savefreespeech.com.au takes one to the Spain-based CitizenGo movement, described by Lara Whyte of Open Democracy –"They are coming for your children" – the rise of CitizenGo – as a “pro-family” movement.
That’s a trope for justification of intolerance and bigotry, often using the label “Christian” not as a link to the teachings of the New Testament or to the moral exhortations of Pope Francis, but to the worst of religious-based tribalism and xenophobia. Whyte traces CitizenGo’s links to Catholic movements that have coalesced around supporters of the late Fascist dictator Francisco Franco, and a Google search reveals its activities in Russia, where it has found a ready resonance with Putin’s vision of a compliant society.
The billboard’s sponsors refer to the government’s bill to give the Australian Communications and Media Authority powers to combat misinformation and disinformation on social media, as if it is some Orwellian attempt by the Albanese government to stifle free speech. We don’t know who those sponsors are: the “about us” links on the websites reveal no names.
Like all freedoms, the right to free speech comes with responsibilities. Whether or not specified by legislation, no one has the right to shout “fire” in a crowded theatre. No one has an unfettered right to accuse another of paedophilia or other despicable behaviour. No one has a right to foment hatred of other groups. No one has the right to create deliberate offence by burning a copy of the Koran and setting off deadly riots.
The intersection of rights and responsibilities is of prime concern to the drafters of the government’s bill, and anyone with strong opinions can make submissions up to August 20. That’s a more effective way to voice concern than polluting cities with alarmist billboards.
There was a time when professional codes of journalism, and the laws of libel, provided a degree of protection against misinformation, disinformation and hate speech. That was in a different era, when the only avenues of public comment were posters on streetlamps and a soapbox in a public park.
More basically there are forces in the world with an interest in undermining democracy through spreading misinformation and undermining trust in democratic institutions. Russian agents disseminated misinformation as a way to support Trump in the 2016 US presidential election and were almost certainly active in trying to break up the EU by influencing the Brexit vote in the UK.
Here in Australia there are allegations that interests close to the Chinese government are sowing division through spreading misinformation on social media. Albert Zhang of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, writing on Open Forum, describes the ”Chinese cyber party” as a source of confusion and misinformation on social media. The Senate Committee on Foreign Interference through Social Media, established in 2019, has released its report, which expresses concern that information Australians receive on social media platforms “is being influenced by directions from foreign authoritarian governments”. It recommends that all platforms be required to operate under transparency requirements and that “social media companies that repeatedly fail to meet the minimum transparency requirements should be subject to fines and, as a last resort, may be banned by the Minister for Home Affairs”.
There is a certain amount of anti-Chinese xenophobia in the debate around foreign influence in social media. It is telling that in a Pew Research Center survey of people’s attitude to China in 24 countries, Australia shares top ranking with Japan for the most negative attitude to China, such has been the effectiveness of megaphone diplomacy and wild allegations about Covid-19.
It should be noted, however, that the Senate report, and the ASPI article, are about all social media, not just the Chinese media TikTok and WeChat. It is just as easy, and perhaps more credible, to put misinformation and provocative material on Facebook rather than on WeChat. As Wanning Sun, Professor of Media and Communications at Sydney’s University of Technology explains on Late Night Live, and in a Conversation essay, WeChat is a lifeline for many Chinese Australians keeping in touch with friends and relatives in China.
To Chinese Australians a ban on WeChat would be like a ban on WhatsApp to other Australians who have children, parents and friends overseas. While a ban on WeChat would have cruel consequences for Chinese Australians, the only effect on Chinese authorities would be relief from looking at photographs of babies making their first steps, and from scrutinizing recipes for Kung Pai Chicken to be sure they are free of code divulging state secrets.
In fact it is fruitless to point the finger at any one source of misinformation on social media – the Chinese government, Spanish Catholic Franco sympathisers, sovereign citizens. And it doesn’t matter much what the message is – presenting Uyghurs as happy workers learning the joy of assimilation into Chinese culture, asserting that the woke left is raging a war on family values, or claiming that the Voice is a plan to abolish Anzac Day. It all has the same effect of confusing readers and undermining trust in public discourse.
In this regard it is notable that the Essential poll of July 24 surveyed people on their trust in professions. Out of six professions surveyed, politicians came last, and journalists came in second-last place. Even bankers and lawyers did better than politicians and journalists.
There is a message for all politicians, particularly those in the large parties, who see the political contest as one of disparaging those in other parties, whatever it takes, rather than promoting their own policies. That’s a lose-lose game as we are seeing in declining support for the established parties.
And there is a message for journalists, particularly those in the Murdoch media. Malcolm Turnbull calls for a Royal Commission into the Sky and Fox News model, which is to “provoke division and hatred” through “spreading lies”. The specific context of Turnbull’s latest comments is the campaign by Sky News to spread misinformation about the Voice. You can hear Turnbull sound his warning in a 9-minute interview on ABC Breakfast.
Political finance reform
It’s taking a long time for the Albanese government to get around to reforming laws and regulations around finance for political parties. The Australia Institute has an open letter to the Australian Parliament calling for finance reforms that can make our politics more representative. The letter is about principles rather than details.
There was a time when one could be confident that a Labor government would pursue campaign finance reform, but the funding gap between the two main parties has narrowed over recent years. There is now less incentive for Labor to push funding reform.
As mentioned in the open letter, tax laws confer a significant financial benefit on incumbent politicians, and on candidates who are supported by an established political party. It is possible to imagine an unholy alliance of Labor, National, Liberal and Greens to thwart any proposal to smooth the path for independents.
Through the website linked above you can add your name as a signatory to the letter.
Funding the ABC
How should the ABC be funded?
The Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communication and the Arts (a portfolio grouping that says something about the Commonwealth Government’s priorities) has a public consultation paper Review of options to support the independence of the national broadcasters.
It’s about how the ABC and SBS should be funded, not the amount they should receive. These public broadcasters are presently subject to a five-year funding arrangement. They also raise some funds from co-production and commercial activities, most notably advertising on the SBS.
The consultation paper canvasses a number of possible ways the ABS and SBS funding can be made more secure, and asks for public input. Besides the options it canvasses it also asks “Are there other arrangements that could be put in place to provide greater stability to national broadcaster funding?”.
Amanda Meade, writing in The Guardian – Labor to consider ways to protect ABC and SBS from future funding threats – reminds us of the fragility of ABC funding, it having been arbitrarily cut by both the Abbott and Turnbull governments.
Besides funding, the paper also asks for comments on the processes for appointing board members to the broadcasters.
Submissions are due by Thursday August 31.
By way of background, the budget appropriates $1.7 billion to the public broadcasters: $1.2 billion to the ABC, $0.5 billion to the SBS. Public broadcasting’s detractors point out that because these services are taxpayer funded we have to pay for it, whether we use it or not.
To put that figure into perspective it’s about $180 a household.
But we also spend around $19 billion a year, or $2000 a household, on commercial media. The advertising industry shrouds its data in secrecy – it is ready to shout from the rooftops to encourage us to buy private health insurance or gas-guzzling RVs, but it doesn’t want us to realize what advertising costs us. It is possible, however, to cobble together a few figures. There is $4.3 billion for commercial TV advertising, $0.7 billion for commercial radio advertising, and $14.2 billion for online advertising.
Unless we are to lead the life of a Trappist monk, or go entirely off-grid in a self-sufficient lifestyle, we have no choice but to spend that $2000. It is collected as an impost on most things we buy – a sales tax in effect. But unlike the taxes we pay to the ATO, it is hidden, and is generally regressive in comparison with our official taxes which are mildly progressive.
A double-dissolution over housing – media hype or has Albanese forgotten his arithmetic?
Albanese isn’t the first prime minister to find it difficult to navigate legislation through the Senate. In fact, in comparison with most Labor prime ministers before him, he does not have to face a Senate dominated by the Coalition and a bloc of far-right fellow-travellers.
So why would Albanese even be hinting at a double-dissolution over the Greens and Coalition Senators’ blocking of the government’s housing bill – a fairly miserable bill designed more around accounting cosmetics than the need to attend urgently to the nation’s housing supply problems?
Double-dissolution elections may be motivated by a desire to rid the Senate of troublemakers, or at least to make them feel uncomfortable about their tenure, but they don’t always turn out well for the party in government – ask Malcolm Turnbull! Also it’s not only the Senate that faces the polls in a double-dissolution: so too does the House of Representatives, where the government holds only 78 seats in the 151-seat chamber.
In his weekly post, Crispin Hull takes us through a little arithmetic of a double-dissolution election, reminding us that the quota for a full double-dissolution Senate election (12 per state) is only 7.7 percent, compared with 14.2 percent for a normal half Senate election. Hull points out that in a double-dissolution election the Greens would find it hard to have the same representation as at present, but that lower quota provides an opening for every imaginable ratbag party in existence and yet-to-be developed. We can imagine the Anti-Daylight Saving Party, True Anarcho-Syndicalists, the Cooking with Gas Party, Nudist Libertarians, Sovereign Citizens … Call an election and they spring up like mortgage brokers.
Because Senators represent states, rather than comparatively small electorates, those quotas are unlikely to be filled by Teals and other independents who campaign largely on the basis of local recognition.
When the conditions for a double-dissolution election are met, the government can go to the polls any time it wishes. Hull mentions the possibility that the government may be tempted to call an election before the Electoral Commission completes its redistribution. Any talk about an early election, however, adds another layer of uncertainty to the political environment, and can have a chilling effect on the plans of businesses and state governments. Even though it’s small, the possibility of the Coalition being elected in its present form, with its Trumpian approach to politics and its animosity to economic re-structuring, would set Australia back economically. The government would do the nation (and itself) a service by categorically ruling out a double-dissolution election based on the housing bill.
Hull’s article – Unholy alliance on migration – is in two parts. The first is about the need for an unemotional consideration of our immigration policies and the second is about the folly of a double dissolution.
Home affairs
There are many troubles in our strangely-named “Home Affairs” department, but the media focus is on only one aspect. That aspect is the department letting contracts for services in offshore detention services to a businessperson under investigation for bribery, for which he was later convicted. Peter Dutton faced tough questioning on the ABC’s 730 Report, in which Sarah Ferguson consistently asked him why contracts went on being let even after the Commonwealth Police had warned him about the allegations while he was Home Affairs Minister. On the following evening in the same program, Laura Tingle reminded us of the department’s record of letting multi-million contracts for offshore detention without competitive tenders, a practice that’s been criticized by the Australian National Audit Office.
In response the government has announced a review of the Home Affairs Department’s purchasing arrangements, to be headed by former senior public servant Dennis Richardson.
That’s a narrowly-focussed reaction to a suite of problems in and associated with the Department of Home Affairs, a department created by Peter Dutton in 2017 to bring together all the Commonwealth’s national security, border control and law enforcement activities.
Writing in the Saturday Paper – Why we need a Home Affairs royal commission – Chris Wallace of the University of Canberra describes some of the department’s shortcomings, such as allegations that Albanian crime gangs have been able to exploit weak immigration controls, and “the dire state of its visa processing operation”. Writing in Independent Australia, former Immigration Department Deputy Secretary Abul Rizvi outlines some of the department’s serious problems identified in a report about criminal exploitation of Australia’s visa system: Nixon report challenges Home Affairs over visa system exploitation. The report, conducted by former Victoria Police Commissioner Christine Nixon, urges the Department to be more diligent in overseeing and regulating the behaviour of migration agents and of education agents who recruit students. In particular the Department is not doing enough to counter labour trafficking.
To its credit, the government has partly demolished Dutton’s vision for an Australian version of Putin’s FSB by shifting protective security and criminal law enforcement from Home Affairs to the Attorney General’s portfolio. But it has not re-established a separate, clearly-defined immigration department. Home Affairs is still responsible for counter-terrorism coordination and aspects of cyber security policy.
Our immigration departments have always had difficulty in realizing that one of their functions is to facilitate the pathway for immigrants to come to Australia, while protecting the system’s integrity. The present “Home Affairs” structure, based on the USA Department of Homeland Security established after the 9/11 attacks, tends to misdirect the department’s resources towards an obsession with asylum-seekers who arrived by boat at the expense of immigration services.
There is a strong case for a thorough review of the department, and another of the policy of offshore processing. In view of the essentially bipartisan nature of policies toward asylum-seekers, particularly the tough stance initiated by the Gillard and Rudd governments, such reviews would have some adverse findings for Labor. No doubt the Murdoch media would label them as a personal attack on Dutton and a weakening of our borders. But they may be the only way to dismantle this ungainly agency, and to re-establish a proper department of immigration.