DILEMMA OVER GUANTANAMO DETAINEES
DO we really need to take some of the detainees of the US Guantanamo Bay prison camp and allow them to resettle in Australia?
This is a dilemma for Prime Minister Kevin Rudd following US President Barack Obama’s request for help to close the military prison camp.
But the Chinese government wants the 17 detainees, who are Ulighur Muslims from north-western China, repatriated to Beijing for trial. The Chinese government considers them terrorists.
Even if the US fear that the repatriation of the detainees to China may end up in their torture and execution, a matter that is obviously a great concern to the civil libertarians, is believable, it is a sensitive and difficult issue for Australia to consider because of China’s lobby and insistence that the detainees, who are of Chinese nationals, be returned to Beijing.
What is involved here is how to balance the good relationship between Australia and China and the US concerns on the fate of the 17 detainees.
If Australia ignores China’s insistence and accepts the detainees on humanitarian grounds, will it adversely affect its relationship with Beijing? What is the consequence?
There are probably two options. One is that China could take the drastic action to recall its ambassador to Canberra and cut its imports of Australian resources at a time when the economy is reeling from the effects of the world’s worst recession since the Great Depression of 1929.
The other is that it will criticise Australia as an a country it could not trust, lodge a diplomatic protest and refuse to cooperate with Canberra on various matters which are now under consideration for mutual interests?
While we admire Obama’s political and electoral success, his determination to close the Guantanamo Bay military prison and his efforts to bring about peace in the Middle-East, I believe that the best solution to the dilemma is to resettle the detainees in the US.
The US, under the George Bush administration, had captured the Ulighur Muslims in the so-called war of terror and detained them in the prison camp -- only to clear them of any terrorist activity more than six years later.
Australia, in the meantime, has had enough of those terrorist suspects, who had migrated here, enjoyed the freedom that they could not get in their own respective countries and then threatened to kill and injure thousands of people at sporting stadium and other important events in what they claim to be jihad.
The fact that they didn’t achieve their objectives is due to the excellent work of the Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation and the Federal Police. It took them years of undercover work to penetrate and collect sufficient evidence to crack the terrorist cells across the country.
Such operations are not only dangerous to the nation’s security and intelligence officers but also the most effective measures to counter the terrorist threat against innocent and peace-loving people. All the people of this country want is nothing more than to enjoy the privileges that a democratic system provides.
So, why do we look for more trouble? Why do we need to take people whose background may still be suspicious in the light of the Chinese allegations whether, on the face of it, we believe it or not?
It is true that one of the principles of democracy and justice is that a person is regarded innocent until he or she is proven guilty. But the circumstances in the Guantanamo cases, generally, are connected with suspected terrorist activities which are difficult to prove.
That is why they are held in the military prison for many years without a trial. In saying this, I do not wholeheartedly agree with their detention because they have not been convicted by a criminal court where they would have been represented by defence lawyers.
But I do believe the authorities had good reasons to capture them and fly them to Guantanamo Bay to extract information on their alleged terrorist cells and the names and movements of their leaders.
They are suspected of being part of the constant al-Queda terrorist threat not only to the Western countries but also to all other nations, including the Muslim states.
This issue of the Ulighur detainees is the US problem and it should deal with it in its own way in its own country rather than trying to pass it on elsewhere.
It is the third time that the US had urged Australia to take the detainees – perhaps not realising how sensitive the issue is for us.
Rudd must make it clear that his government cannot accept the latest request. The first two requests were made by the Bush administration and were rejected by Australia.
Australia must decide on this issue purely for its own national interest.
And that is, irrespective of the detainees’ innocence or otherwise, we simply cannot accept them because of their dubious background which should concerns us.
But we must make it clear, too, that it has nothing to do with their racial origin or religious belief.
Extraordinary assumptions or reality growth – that’s the question
JOE HOCKEY is more an entertainer than a politician. With the blessing of a gift of the gap – as the saying goes – he can be funny at times, either inside or outside the Federal Parliament. Perhaps, more important to him is his cunning way to get out of a tight corner when he is confronted with the words he uses.
In a political sense, Hockey is the bull dog in the Liberal-National Opposition and the right man – an asset – to his leader Malcolm Turnbull. Sometimes, it is difficult to know whether he really believes in what he says or it’s just politics.
His choice of words, such as “casino economics” and “plucked out in the air”, stung more people than they were meant to. They were uttered in his strong attack on the Rudd government’s Budget, knowing but not realising at that moment that the estimates were based on the calculations of the Treasury senior officials and economists.
Obviously, he also failed to take into account that the Budget’s deficit and debt by “the biggest spending government in modern Australian history” are not incurred in normal economic situation as it was in the former government’s rein.
They were caused by the overwhelming effects of the current global recession , which also hit hard on Australian exports to most of its overseas markets which are also reeling from the worst ever world economic situation since the Great Depression of 1929.
Unless Australia spent the big money which, unfortunately, put the nation in debt to the tune of $9,000 per person, more businesses will be in serious trouble or collapsed, more jobs will be lost, more people will be in poverty and, subsequently, it will be even harder to recover from the financial and economic meltdown than it would be in a normal recession cycle. And the debt of $300bil will be far greater than it is now.
Almost every nation in the Americas, Europe and Asia is in extraordinary big debts, some even bigger compared to Australia’s, to deal with the unusual circumstances in their economies.
Most of them spent billions to bail out big banks and institutions, manufacturing firms and the housing industry that threatened to collapse which, fortunately, Australia does not have to do. But the Rudd government has embarked on economic stimulus packages, including family bonuses, increased housing grants for first home-buyers and infrastructure projects, modernising school buildings and other ventures to save 200,000 jobs that are at risk of being lost.
So, of course, Hockey’s descriptions of the Budget estimates irked Treasury Secretary Ken Henry, who retaliated with detailed explanation on how they were calculated.
Grilled by ABC 7.30 Report presenter Kerry O’Brien in Sydney early this week, Hockey was quick to shift the blame on Prime Minister Kevin Rudd for the $300bil debt.
When told that the Treasury had based its estimates of a six-year consecutive growth to recover the money on the basis of a period between 1993 and 1999 when Australia’s growth averaged 4.3% per year, Hockey replied: “… you are arguing the average versus what they are specifically basing as their assumptions.”
The interesting exchanges between Hockey and O’Brien are in the following extract:
O’Brien: Well, do you acknowledge that you’re not arguing with Kevin Rudd, you’re arguing with all the economic muscle that the Treasury officials themselves can bring to bear?
Hockey: Oh, Treasury not beyond, you know, getting it wrong.
O’Brien: But doesn’t the government have to rely substantially on what Treasury is telling it?
Hockey: Well, of course, you do. Of course, you do.
O’Brien: Just as your government did?
Hockey’s reply was an example of how the Treasury had underestimated the total revenue from cigarette tax by more than $1bil since 2001. However, neither he nor O’Brien mentioned that increased cigarette tax plus the continued intensive campaign against smoking, inevitably, have great effects on smokers and, consequently, reduced the government revenue from this source.
O’Brien continued: But you also have to acknowledge that this is the best advice the government has to go with?
Hockey: Terrific. But Kevin Rudd …
O’Brien: So, if the government is basing its policies on the economic advice in the same way that your government did, then what are you criticising?
Hockey: Well, my criticism is with Kevin Rudd. Mr Rudd put his hand on his heart and said to the Australian people, “We will have the nation out of deficit within six years.” Now that was all based on extraordinary assumptions into the forward estimates. That’s our argument …
O’Brien: You’re saying they are extraordinary assumptions. Ken Henry (Treasury Secretary) was saying they’re conservative assumptions.
But, as a matter of fact, Hockey also has his own assumptions, extraordinary or not, when he said Henry had come out “so aggressively defending his assumptions today illustrates the fact that there was a consensus view among all the economists -- a consensus view that the Treasury assumptions were optimistic…”
DAYLIGHT SAVING DEFEAT MAKES NO SENSE
WITH electricity costs escalating by $750 and other taxes rising in this year’s Federal and State Budgets, doesn’t it make sense to vote for Daylight Saving Time (DST) in Western Australia?
Personally, I think it is. Although the reason may have been emphasised before about spending the DST hour after work to enjoy quality time with families in outdoor activities (even under the shade of a tree for those who do not want to be exposed to the sun), it is worth looking at how we would save one-hour of the electricity costs in a day during the summer months.
Calculate the amount of electricity we use -- watching some uninteresting programs on the television at that hour, having air-conditioners, coolers or fans on in the house and, perhaps, for some, their seemingly unstoppable habit of indulging in titbits while watching the silly box -- into dollars and cents and you will find it is quite a good saving.
In fact, the biggest saving will come from the early close up of factories, offices and retail stores, most of which use more electricity to operate machinery and brighter lights to operate their business.
Implementation of DST in these areas and the reduction in energy usage is good for the environment, too.
As DST is a "hot-potato" political issue in Western Australia due to strong oppositions, especially from farmers and grazers in rural areas, there is no official research done in the state to support its merit or otherwise.
However, according to Ryan Kellog and Hendrik Wolff of the University of California in Berkeley, some studies carried out by researchers in the US have estimated that DST could cut electricity demands from 0.6% to 3.5%. As a result, more countries are turning to daylight saving.
But Kellog and Wolff challenged this conclusion saying that their own study in Victoria and South Australia in September and October of 2000, based on detailed data of half-hourly electricity consumption prices, showed DST “failed to conserve electricity”.
To me, the conclusion of these two Americans is not applicable to Western Australia because, firstly, the state has greater sun light during the two-month period than in Victoria and South Australia where it is usually cool at that time of the year. Therefore, the electricity consumption of the two states may not change.
Secondly, taking the statistics of usage of one year cannot be generalised for the whole of Australia because of its vast territory and the fact that the weather conditions of that particular year could be much cooler or warmer than usual.
These anomalies should be taken into consideration when arguing for or against DST in Western Australia.
The long and chequered history of the controversy over DST has continued since it was first implemented in Australia in 1917 by the Federal Government, which used its wartime powers to save energy.
It was abandoned in the same year after strong protests from the public. It was not until 1967 when the country’s smallest state Tasmania implemented DST because of its merit in saving electricity.
Each state then had to decide whether it wanted DST during the summer months. Some of the states conducted their own referendum to test the wishes of the people.
In Western Australia, today’s referendum was the fourth on DST in 33 years. The first three in 1975, 1984 and 1992 resulted in no majority by just over 50% of the votes.
The outcome in each referendum was, therefore, not decisive; hence, in 2006, the Carpenter Labour Government decided to have DST on a three-year trial with a referendum at the end of it.
Unfortunately, it was officially announced at 9.30 tonight that West Australians had rejected DST by 55% after 70% of the votes had been counted. They have decided against change to move with the times.
This means that they have also brushed aside the notion that, in the national interest, WA should have DST to keep in line with the already disavantage of being two hours behind the Eastern States where the main business activities are.
The reality now is that workers in WA will go to work in the morning during the summer months while their counterparts in the Eastern States are beginning to have their lunch break. And when the WA workers go for lunch, their counterparts in the Eastern States are knocking off their work for the day.
This is not an ideal situation to do business in this country, especially when most of the major suppliers are in the Eastern States.
But the opponents of DST say that businesses have modern technology, such as Internet and mobile phones, to place their orders at any time during the 24-hour day.
It is debatable whether it is unnecessary for many firms in WA to make direct contact with the major suppliers.
The opponents also claim that the “unique” lifestyle in Western Australia will slowly be eroded if DST is implemented permanently during the summer months.
What they mean by uniqueness in the state’s lifestyle is not clear.
The dilemma of a Prime Minister
HE would be damned if he didn’t do it; he would be damned if he did it. So, what should a man do in such circumstances?
Kevin Rudd realised this and would, certainly, have given serious thought to the matter. He knew whatever action he took -- or lack of it -- was going to be engulfed in a controversy. And he damned it all and did exactly what he thought was necessary.
The result, of course, was not surprising. It caused the biggest deficit in the nation’s history – a gigantic amount of up to $70bil, which will be announced in Tuesday’s Federal Budget.
For what it’s worth, it is a decision he has to make as Prime Minister of Australia. If he didn’t take the immediate and decisive action, he would have been strongly criticised as not having the backbone of his political career or the courage to act like a national leader in time of the most serious financial and economic crisis ever known in this country.
Yet, it is not of Australia’s making to be in such a situation. Australia is simply reeling from the worst-ever global recession ever known since the Depression of 1929.
Whether the amount spent justifies the need to boost the nation’s economy, which is falling at an alarming rate due to cutback in imports by China and India of our natural resources, is debatable.
How it is being distributed in size or amount of the stimulus packages is at the discretion of the government which has been democratically elected by the people to govern Australia.
And the government certainly would have acted on the advice of experts and professionals involved with the various industries in need of government support.
Mistakes may be done in a situation that has never been experienced before. The world, including its biggest economy, the United States, has never seen such a rapid flow of retrenchments of workers in factories, banks, shops and offices.
Trillions of dollars have been lost in what can be metaphorically described as a violent cyclone that swept all over the US, Europe and Asia, injuring the wellbeing of millions of their inhabitants.
Luckily for Australia, the impact of this evil omen has not been as serious as in other countries where bankruptcies are overwhelming for even the biggest banks and the biggest companies whose gigantic losses no one has ever expected. It is even difficult to imagine such a situation.
Nonetheless, we simply could not avoid the effects of the global recession, despite the strenuous efforts of the Rudd government to buffer our economy against it.
The government has taken a bold and courageous action to slow down the inevitable decline of the economy and for that we should be grateful for its proactive initiatives.
The justification of its stimulus packages to industry and families is proven in some small ways as retailers in Australia are reporting improved business after what they feared was going to be the worst recession they would ever suffer.
How long the government will take to balance its Budget and how it would do it will be announced by Federal Treasurer Wayne Swan on Tuesday. But it is going to be painful for everyone whatever the final measures are.
Big boost for Down Under Today
JUST over a month after its launch, Down Under Today has received the biggest boost in a Malaysian newspaper, Malay Mail, which also ran the second part of the story in its website.
Published in its CyberSpot page, the story was written by journalist Sheila Rahman whose style of writing is impressive as it is refreshing.
The Malay Mail, formerly part of the New Straits Times Group, is now privately owned by a group of shareholders. It has several interesting features and has shown, in a sense, what it can do in meeting the challenges of the readers for a quality newspaper in Malaysia.
It has received Malaysia's prestigious prize Winner of the 2008 MPI Petronas Best Investigative Journalism Award.
I think the Malay Mail deserves the support of the Malaysian readers, not because it has given me much publicity, but because it is a newspaper that provides different viewpoints and different types of stories on the day-to-day reporting. And I would be pleased if my Malaysian followers would fully support the Malay Mal just as it has done for downundertoday.com
To avoid any misconstrued perception, I would like to stress that the call for this support is not the result of any barter agreement between the Malay Mail and I. It is my belief that the Malay Mail knows how to pick a good story, in this case, it happens to be my life story and what I have done in my career and still continue to do for my supporters when I could have simply retired and take things easily.
But I can't find myself doing nothing -- that's my life style.
Having said that, here's story of my life as journalist Sheila Rahman of the Malay Mail sees it in an online interview:
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World biggest problem in swine flu pandemic
EVEN if World Health Organisation declares a pandemic after closely examining the rapidly spreading swine flu throughout the five continents, it does not necessarily mean that the devastating disease is now under control.
In fact, it will create one of the biggest medical problems in world history on where they can get at least 6.5bil – yes, billion, not millions -- doses of vaccine to meet the demands of the global hospitals.
Not even the United States with all its advanced technology, combined with those of other countries, could produce such an amount in time to deal with the disastrous situation.
The best they could expect is a total production of no more than 350mil doses, which would probably take six months before they can be distributed to other countries.
This is the limitation of the current medical technology in any part of the world. It is the greatest impediment which scientists are desperately trying to overcome by using possibly other methods and biotechnologies than chicken and eggs.
Whether they could produce 6.5bil doses in time to address the rapidly growing swine flu is another matter.
The authorities are watching the situation closely in more than 20 countries in four continents around the world.
They need to know by next week how many people are actually infected by swine flu to determine how widespread it is at the moment before declaring a pandemic.
But the figures coming out of Mexico on the death toll is confused to say the least. Latest official figures put it down to between 160 and 176 while a Mexican doctor believes it is more than 200.
The actual figure could make the difference in calculating the more accurate approximate number of victims of the dreadful disease.
Reports from Mexico estimate that more than 2,500 people are currently ill with influenza, but how many are really affected by swine flu has not been confirmed yet.
Part of the problem is that the authorities do not have adequate rapid diagnostic testing systems and are simply taking quick blood test from people to find out if they might have been infected with swine flu in the past.
What is absolutely essential at this point is to find out what is the actual death toll in Mexico, says Laurie Garrett, an American expert in chronic and infectious diseases, global health systems and bioterrorism.
In an interview with ABC 7.30 Report, Garrett, who is also a Pulitzer Prize science author, points out that health authorities are not sure how virulent is the current swine flu because they do not really know the denominator or the ratio of deaths to incidents of the disease in Mexico.
The denominator issue in Mexico is important to assess the fatality rate of 1% or 2% of all victims of swine flu.
As far as the World Health Organisation (WHO) is aware is that, of the thousands of suspected swine flu victims, only 105 cases have been confirmed throughout the world.
It all began in the village of La Gloria in Mexico two months ago when a five-year-old boy suffered swine flu and survived.
The disease spread quickly over the border to the United States, Canada, Britain and various parts of Europe and finally to Asia, Australia and New Zealand.
Until a pandemic is declared, the situation is in Phase 5 alert, which means that human-to-human spread has occurred in at least two countries within the WHO region.
“The worrisome thing is that a lot of the illness and death is in young adults,” Garrett says. “They are in the age group of between 15 and 36 who normally has no trouble with influenza.”
Perhaps, one of the reasons is to do with the behavioural patterns of young adults and teenagers who hang out together in groups at schools, gyms and other places. When someone sneezes, the germs from it could easily spread to others in the group.
The virus is reported to have broken out in 15 states in the US. In Mexico City, about 35,000 public venues have been closed.
The situation is almost similar to the 1981 Spanish flu, known as “one of the world’s great historic scourges”, that killed 100 million people throughout the world.
Young people in Australia have been urged not to congregate in groups in public areas as a precaution against swine flu. The situation has caused almost a panic as householders began hoarding food and masks to avoid going to the shops regularly.
Federal Health Minister Nicola Roxon describes the panic as unnecessary and appeals to Australians not to stockpile food and antiviral drugs in their pantries.
The government has taken every precaution necessary, as advised by health professionals, to stop the disease from getting into Australia. Incoming passengers at all airports are being screened by thermal scanners and have to fill a health declaration card.
Anyone who has a high temperature will be immediately examined by a medical staff member and required to give a nose or throat swap if considered necessary.
A total of 136 people have been tested for swine flu, including those who have travelled to Mexico recently, but there has been no confirmed case. But two Australians, now in London, have been found positive with swine flu after their return from Mexico and a woman is awaiting the result of a test.
Garrett says: “What happens in the next few days will tell us whether what we’re dealing with is a garden variety flu that just happens to have gone through pigs, but is no more likely to cause death and devastation than a normal flu or whether we’re dealing with something that, indeed, is a significant killer flu.”
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