-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Oh Dear, Our Colonial Cringe is Exposed...
Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2000 10:27:35 +0800
From: "Jim Duffield" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
http://www.smh.com.au/news/0003/25/pageone/pageone10.html
PAGE ONE
Sometimes it's not easy being grey
Philip Ruddock's conscience had him in hot water this
week
when he attempted to defend the Government's record on
race.
Simon Mann in Geneva and Mike Seccombe report.
The language of United Nations' deliberations, in
myriad committee
rooms and marbled corridors, can be excessively
courteous. Almost
suffocatingly so. Outsiders can sometimes miss the
subtext.
You might have expected Philip Ruddock, however, to
understand
the nuances. He is a very nuanced politician. His every
word is
chosen with care, every pronouncement carefully
qualified so he gives
nothing away. Where other politicians paint issues in
black and white,
with Ruddock it's always shades of grey. He's a grey
man, a politician
with a bureaucrat's abhorrence of confrontation and a
lawyer's
capacity for obfuscation. It has kept him out of
trouble, and the
limelight, for 27 years, and helped make him the
longest serving
member of the House of Representatives. But Ruddock's
diplomacy
let him down in Geneva this week.
Routinely, members of the Committee on the Elimination
of Racial
Discrimination thanked the minister for his attendance,
welcoming
Australia's "frank and candid" reporting on injustices.
But the
welcomes were heavily qualified by a long list of
concerns about race
discrimination issues, particularly those affecting
Aborigines such as
native title, the "stolen generation" and the mandatory
sentencing
provisions of Western Australia and the Northern
Territory.
One Geneva-based human rights observer remarked: "I
think the
committee is resolved on this matter. It's one thing
for Australia to
come here and acknowledge that injustices exist. But
the committee
concerns itself with remedies. What concrete steps is
Australia taking
to eliminate those injustices?"
It was clear towards the end of the 56th session of the
Committee on
the Elimination of Racial Discrimination that Mr
Ruddock's attempts
to placate the 18 international experts with
blandishments did not
convince anyone that the Government was doing anything
of
substance to address their various concerns.
Some privately accused him of ducking the issues. And
his delivery,
at times, was thought patronising. A casual query from
Mr Agha
Shahi about why Australia's Pakistani community was
absent from a
breakdown of the multinational population got the reply
that it was a
"top 10" list. Then Ruddock added, to audible groans in
the public
gallery: "I know many [Pakistanis] well."
"Some of his best friends are Aborigines, too,"
grumbled one
observer later.
The irony is, Ruddock would have been sincere. He is
vitally
interested in immigration and multiculturalism, a
mainstay of Amnesty
International in the Parliament. In 1988 he crossed the
floor to
reaffirm that Australia's immigration policy would take
no account of
race. In doing so he defied John Howard, whose policy
would have
taken account of racial mix.
BUT these days Ruddock often seems a liberal of the
type once
described by poet Robert Frost as "a man too
broadminded to take
his own side in a quarrel".
In the quarrel over mandatory sentencing of juveniles,
Ruddock's
personal views accord with the UN committee's. He would
see it
abolished.
But he is "broadminded" enough also to consider other
factors:
Cabinet solidarity, States' rights, the mood of the
party room, the
mood of the electorate.
Defending something he doesn't believe in, he defended
badly. He
was clumsy with protocol. He referred to the expert
committee
members as if they were country delegates. They are
not. He thanked
the US human rights lawyer serving as rapporteur, Gay
McDougall,
for her summation of key, unresolved issues, noting she
had been
"well briefed". A UN source later said: "Experts aren't
briefed. They
digest massive amounts of information, draw on vast
experience and
draw their own conclusions."
Ms McDougall, for example, was on the Independent
Electoral
Commission that organised South Africa's first
democratic, non-racial
elections in 1994, she has represented the US in human
rights forums,
and supervises more than 100 Washington-based lawyers
in human
rights litigation around the world.
She took issue with Ruddock's claim that Australia's
federalist system
made it difficult for Canberra to intervene on
mandatory sentencing.
"The issue of States' rights has been a perpetual issue
in my country,"
she said, instanced by the Civil War and slavery.
"I think I would have fought for that, too," said
Ruddock.
"Yes," said McDougall. "I would hope that you would
have been on
the same side as me."
Mr Ruddock suggested there were complexities to the
Australian
situation the experts did not understand.
A panel member suggested the committee could reach a
better
understanding by mediating in the issue, particularly
if the
Government agreed to reopen negotiations with
Aboriginal leaders on
native title.
But the offer appeared to fall on deaf ears. Mr Ruddock
gave no
formal response.
At the end of the day, Ruddock's presence seemed to
have done
nothing to help the Australian case, with Ms McDougal
asking: "How
is it that a highly developed, industrialised State
such as Australia has
been unable to bring this 2 per cent of its population
up to a
reasonable standard of living?"
The experts appeared concerned by the Australian
Government's
refusal to budge on its 1998 native title amendments,
its apparent
hostility to a just settlement with the "stolen
generation" and its
inability to simply say "sorry". Nor could they fathom
its inaction on
mandatory sentencing, legislation they consider
patently racially
discriminatory.
I've just got to read the transcript, Ms McDougall seems like such a
real
person! Wow, and we put Ruddock up against her. Typical failure of the
"L"iberal patriarchy.
tra,
|\/\/\/| Jim Duffield GMT+08 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.multiline.com.au/~anzac/
| o o|
C _) "113. His disciples said to him, "When will the kingdom come?"
| ,____| "It will not come by watching for it. It will not be said,
| / 'Look, here!' or 'Look, there!' Rather, the Father's kingdom
| / is spread out upon the earth, and people don't see it."
| |
Nag Hammadi Gospel of Thomas
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