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The Facebook photo saga that prompted uproar from Papua New Guineans and friends all over has taken another turn – this time back at us.
It seems that the 1963 Act that covers this is outdated and the perpetrators of the racially oriented notice could not be charged. According to yesterday’s news on EMTV, the police officer said that they could not charge the two Asian store managers because the law is outdated. But does this mean that racism is outdated?
The ugly truth is that we have neglected to move with the times and thus we are now being legally exploited by expatriates like these two. They got away with it because of a technicality, a loop hole, which we failed to close. Hopefully, now that it has been identified, we can close it and send a message to the world that we will not tolerate racism.
The law might be “outdated” but racism is not.
HOWARD’S VALUES: NEW ZEALAND – A SHINING EXAMPLE TO AUSTRALIA.
With a cursory glance at New Zealand one cannot help but notice the relative strength, resilience and pride of a small country self-evident in the spirit of its people.
This has not happened overnight. It has evolved as a living testament to a deliberate and conscious social contract by the white population to integrate with the indigenous Maori culture, recognizing its unique and inherent richness and its intrinsic power to hold them, to proudly set them all apart, as New Zealanders together, from the rest of the world.
Its historical foundation, providing both the legal and moral high point is the Treaty of Waitangi, which remains to this day the beacon of racial equality to all New Zealanders irrespective of colour creed or religious persuasion. The Treaty of Waitangi forms the basis of formal legal recognition of the Maori nations that owned and inhabited the territories prior to the advance of the British.
Whilst there are continuing challenges to work out in specific aspects of the Treaty, the content of ownership and compensation rights in respect of both land and water; there is no denial as to the historical legal ownership of the lands, seas and waterways by the original Maori inhabitants. This forms the solid back drop to the formal and social acceptance of the whites by the Maori and in turn the Maori and their culture by the whites, as one people- the foundational bedrock on which a nation has been forged.
The Treaty of Waitangi marks the meeting of equals. It is the starting point from which an ongoing national conversation has evolved and continues to evolve as all New Zealanders, together, confront the legacies of the past and confidently face the challenges of the future, and build their nation together.
In sporting fields like in Rugby League, or in Rugby Union, the All Blacks wearing their predominantly black colors with either a white fern (or a kiwi), become the embodiment and the living demonstration of the spirit of New Zealand in the distinctive war cry- the Maori Haka. Every New Zealand representative player, black or white, knows the Haka of the ancient warriors, whose blood runs through their veins, from one generation of warrior men to the next. It has been whispered that the colours immortalize every All Black or Kiwi. They feel the mystical connection to the land, even as the fern that grows on it or the kiwi that inhabits under its towering limbs, both, like the players themselves, are sired by that ancient soil now known as New Zealand.
It happens each and every time they dance the ancient Haka. They feel a quiet hush come over the gallery, like that great white mist that slowly rises above the thermal pools of Rotarua on a winter’s day. The place plays before them like a black and white clip of an old silent movie, in slow motion, and they sailing one of those majestic ancient hand-carved long canoes into Kaipara Harbour. Then they see it! Behold! There gathered in the surrounding multitudes tattooed and wrinkled faces of their people past and present. The thunder of a great roar goes up and there pressing them and urging them ever upward, and ever onward, unto glory and greatness is the unmistakable deafening cry of the ancients. Today, in this place, at such a time as this, this very moment, the All Blacks know destiny has become them, the past present and future has all become one, intermeshed in them. History has it, many a team of Wallabies and all other wannabies have discovered, their spirits crushed to smithereens with uncompromising ferocity, and as each time and every time, the Haka, like a requiem mass, is stomped on the ground before them; they know within their quivering mortal frames what awaits them.
In contrast, the Australian players are usually seen simply and nonchalantly standing around, listless, fidgeting or nodding their heads, perhaps wishing they could find something primordial, something ancient, something deep within their culture and psyche to showcase their national spirit in appropriate response to the war cries of those who walk the unbroken line of warriors. Alas! That is not to be.
Maori language and culture has also come to occupy a very important place in the New Zealand academic syllabus at schools. Children in New Zealand learn both cultures and traditions as part of what it means to be a New Zealander. It is an evolving and yet consciously balanced and ever balancing society.
In further contrast, in Australia today whilst Aboriginal and Melanesian Torres Strait culture remain the only true and authentic Australian cultural experiences, they have been relegated to obscurity or granted merely ceremonial roles as curious practices of a fringe people that are out there somewhere in the never. For Howard, it seemed the culture of Indigenous Australia did not represent and could never represent anything beyond the weird mutterings and practices of fringe dwellers or curious tourism show pieces to be brought out in Olympics type gatherings to impress the world, but nothing more. Their spirit remains crushed and subjugated to an extent that their songs will never be sung in their own lands. What Australia could have become with a social contract in the way of New Zealand was not going to be achieved under Howard, and looked very likely to be buried in the sands of time by Rudd and Jenny Macklin, along with the large unfinished part of the sorry business. Certainly Julia Gillard has made no advances on Rudd’s symbolic apology.
Australia may have a flying kangaroo on the tail of Qantas aircraft, but can objects made of metal; petroleum derivatives and tufts of natural fabrics really by some strange divination become the spirit of a people, or will such forever remain the fantasy of some paisley tied, pin stripe suited marketing guru in some cold steel and glass Melbourne board room? Can the perching of young children perilously over the precipice of a cliff, singing verses of an homesick person, ever represent the true spirit of Australia, even if they still called Australia home?
The earliest manifestations of the true spirit of the vast continent and the rich heritage of continuous communion with the land, Terra Australis, belong in the dreamtime of the Aborigine nations. These nations today have the quiet knowledge of the land, like a mother embracing her new born child and the child’s instinctive knowledge of being and belonging; theirs is a world where words do not exist and if they did, they would be inadequate. Yet their pleas with successive leaders of Australia, as was with Hawke, Keating and Howard, will continue to fall on the deaf ears that possess little or no empathy, no visual ability and imagination to fathom the richness of what Australia really is, and could become.
Australia has shifted away from celebrating its convict past. The re-enactment of early convict life at the Rocks in Sydney, for example, as a regular event in the 1980s with a cast of a dozen in full period costume and draught horse drawn carts and stocks no longer happens. This may have something to do with the Japanese tourists taking to laughing at the convict story. Although it is not clear that the flood of Japanese tourists were responsible for the reenactments to cease, it was observed that as the true story of Australia unfolded of how the white man took the Aborigine lands and of the abhorrent ways early Australians treated each other and Aborigines, the Japanese would just stand agape like stunned mullets and then burst into incessant grinning and nodding at each other. What they heard of and witnessed in the floggings, hangings, firing squads shooting natives and prisoners, enchainment and locking of persons in stocks and casts, was a direct contradiction to the human rights and POW rights postulations of Australia since the last World War.
Certainly for all the grandstanding for justice and human rights that Australia promulgates internationally the Japanese are usually astonished that what they just witnessed as a re-enactment did actually take place in what is today a praetor State for democracy.
The Japanese themselves suffered silently and were even forced to suffer deeper humiliation by attending the Australian Parliament and apologizing to the Australian people for what they did in the Second World War. Against such humiliation, and to find years later, that democracies of the west like Australia who then fought, and still today fight for freedom and democracy, actually harbored diabolically contrasting dark and tyrannical foundations, shocked the sensibilities of the Japanese tourists. It certainly was not a storyline of mate-ship or someone being given a fair go in the way Howard spoke of so emotively in that 2007 Australia Day speech. This would amuse any Japanese student of history.
Australia strangely lives in perpetual denial of its criminal history or other less salubrious practices such as slavery (Black Birding) in the Pacific or repugnant racial policies toward indigenous peoples both of Australia and the Pacific. It is neither polite nor fashionable dinner party conversation to talk about the era of convicts, the era of Australian slave trade in the Pacific or of White Australia Policy; (enunciated by Barton and enthusiastically embraced by Menzies) that subsisted for most of its 200 year history. Not unlike the hidden hand of a puppeteer at work behind the scene, these eras still influence and form the core basis of Australia’s greater world view in the Pacific. Certainly the core values and tenets of its immigration policy and legislation are based on this.
Babette Smith in her book Australia’s Birthstain speaks of families who deliberately hid their convict origins and of an Australian society that has “culturalized” the fear of its own history. In her largely introspective body of work Smith skillfully seeks to expose the reasons why there has always been this… ‘[F]undamental national silence that the convicts as real life characters- whose stories abounded in success, failure, optimism and in tragedy, triumph and pathos- were forgotten? Was it the crimes they committed in Britain? Or did the source of a birthstain so terrible that it must be hidden lie in the penal colonies?’
Rather than admitting that Australians have been living a lie as to their history, she admits Australians to have suffered from mass amnesia, that Australians merely
“… suffered a major distortion of their convict history, a distortion that has been accompanied by a desire to avoid the subject altogether if possible”.
She goes on to outline a string of national events to demonstrate this distortion where convicts did not even feature a mention. The convict has been written out of the official national records, with some records of convicts permanently destroyed.
Today, the convict is conspicuously missing in Australia’s landscape of history, and narratives thereof, such as the Sydney Royal Easter Show or a parody of other national events. The role of convicts as thieves, or farm hands tending to the mighty merino sheep of John Macarthur’s fame, beside characters such as gold miners and early explorers, is no longer exemplified. They celebrate bush rangers and wood cutters, shearers, gold diggers, early explorers as heroes, albeit the gold digger and the early explorer were more likely than not out for themselves, and the bushranger may have been an outright criminal and outlaw. The convict has been deliberately edited out of the narrative and forgotten.
Smith, to her personal credit, has courageously and skillfully brought in to the light of day a great and fascinating body of convict history that is thought best forgotten by contemporary Australia, because it reveals the truth of Australia’s deep dark past. Yet the convict remains the cornerstone and pillar of Australian history, without him there is no Australia.
The early world view of the indigenous inhabitants shared by the convicts and their penal masters, forged largely by open subjugation of the original darker inhabitant of the continent, as something less than human, still noticeably permeates bi-lateral discourses with Pacific neighbors, and even the Pacific Forum. This is seen clearly in Australia’s long prevailing attitudes and perceptions that go toward shaping current Pacific policies, including but not limited to aid policy, dialogue in projects, programs and initiatives in the region, cynically disguised as partnerships.
As a case in point, one only has to look at how many years it took, how many Pacific Forum meetings and how many bi-lateral meetings it took, on the subject of seasonal labor from the Pacific, for Australia to finally entertain the idea as a possibility. In all reality Howard’s Australia was extremely reluctant to have little black or brown fellows running around and touching or picking up bits of its fruit on its farms while it is happy for the European and Japanese hands to pick up the same fruits. Perhaps it reminded Howard of the legacy of his country’s Blackbirding days, something he would rather have seen blotted out of the history books.
Australia would happily allow the sons and daughters of Germans and Japanese touch their fruit on their farms that they would put to their lips and their mouths, and feed their children with, but not the sons and daughters of the Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels- all the while they wish to enshrine Kokoda as a hallowed place in their history! What unmitigated racist hypocrisy!
Australia would have stood firm on preventing the Pacific seasonal labor push except that New Zealand, much to Australia’s chagrin, took leadership of the agenda and agreed to allow the scheme to be trialed by its farmers. Australia was highly embarrassed into capitulation by a smaller country like New Zealand that has already dealt with its racial and black and white issues. Australia was extremely incensed at the political level, but could not show it. New Zealand in this way and in expressing its difference as a people and a nation always presents a very delicate diplomatic predicament for Australia as far as the Pacific is concerned.
That certainly was not the first time New Zealand has shown up Australia. Among many incidents, two incidents of recent memory stand out.
Firstly, New Zealand single handedly successfully brokered the formal peace process in Bougainville, initially in mid-1990 by offering and holding peace talks between the leaders of the Bougainville conflict and the Papua New Guinea government aboard the HMNZS Endeavour, while Australia, Bougainville Copper Limited, [majority owned and operated by Anglo-Australian mining giant Conzinc Rio Tinto Australia (CRA)] and CRA who were initially part of creating the problem stood by and did as little as possible.
By way of background, over 75% percent of profits from the huge Bougainville mine were remitted to or through Australia, its citizens and companies who benefitted immensely through supply, sub-contracting and employment over 15 years from one of the largest copper-gold mines in the world when CRA was effectively operating the mine.
Bougainville was allowed to develop into an armed conflict that resulted in the loss of thousands of lives and destruction of hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth property and closure of the Panguna copper mine costing CRA, the State of Papua New Guinea and individual investors Billions of dollars in lost revenue and profits. It remains closed today.
The seeds of such deadly conflict lie in the manner CRA operated the mine, and both CRA and the PNG Government’s failure to meet and discuss the traditional Landowners’ grievances, again centered largely around the manner in which CRA was operating the mine through the operating company, Bougainville Copper Limited.
After experiencing over 15 years of mining, the Landowners soon saw that their natural and social environment was being destroyed beyond repair with very little corresponding wealth to them forthcoming as was promised before the open cut mine began. The social fabric of their society was destroyed, the birds were gone, the fish no longer swam in the rivers and the sea was slowly but surely being poisoned. They wanted to talk to CRA and their government to air their grievances and find solutions. Neither CRA nor their government, both as shareholders and signatories to the Bougainville arrangements, found time to meet, despite the Bougainville Agreement (and the statutory laws constituting that Agreements) called for periodic review of the landowner arrangements to address any on-going concerns.
CRA and the government let the people down. The Australian Government viewed this solely as an internal law and order problem, thereby plunging the seeds of discord further into Bougainville’s shimmering magma of malcontent, forcing the landowners to the point of germinating armed agitation.
It is a little known fact that in 1989, Sir Rabbie Namaliu, then Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea and his then Finance Minister Paul Pora, before the situation in Bougainville blew its top and became an entrenched full scale armed conflict, met with the landowners of the Panguna mine and gauged very quickly that they could avert full closure of the mine, restore order and resolve the outstanding issues with a suitable compensation package.
Namaliu and Pora, both highly buoyed by the talks with the landowner leaders on Bougainville, approached the Australian government and CRA Board to match the K45million package that the Papua New Guinea government had appropriated for the purpose. CRA refused to come to the party and the Australian government took the view that the local people of Bougainville (who owned the land on which the huge mine stood) were nothing more than common criminals that required subjugation by the strongest arm of the law.
If Sir Rabbie and Minister Pora expected a certain level of mate-ship or fair go for the land owners of Bougainville from the Australian government or CRA, they were to be bitterly disappointed. Much to the dismay of Sir Rabbie and Paul Pora, Australia conveniently preferred to view it as a Papua New Guinean internal law and order problem wherein the natives needed to be subjugated. Even John Ralph, the CRA nominated Bougainville Copper Limited Chairman at that time, who possessed intimate understanding of the issues did not even raise a finger.
The issues raised by the landowners were justifiably related to the mining activities of CRA. The Land owners objected to CRA’s environmental practices and the destruction of their way without proportionate compensation to them. There were also discrepancies with compensation packages that the colonial Australian government had negotiated with people who were not the true landowners of Panguna. As time went by the discrepancies became more and more apparent and this early mistake of the Australian colonial administration came back to haunt the government of Papua New Guinea and the company. It clearly was not a law and order issue as it was made out to be by CRA and the Australian government. It was an issue of environmental mismanagement coupled with recognition and rewarding of the wrong people, where the real landowners were womenfolk of a matrilineal society who were not given a fair go.
CRA and successive Papua New Guinea governments failed to review the Bougainville Agreements on two occasions of six year intervals in the 1980s; which would have provided the forum for landowners as original stakeholders to air their grievances on many issues including the pollution by CRA of the Jaba River and the destruction of their traditional lifestyle.
The subsequent events are now matters of history, save to say that an attempt by British interests (and the newly elected Chan/Haiveta government of Papua New Guinea) to launch the now infamous bold covert operation to carpet bomb and totally annihilate the population of Bougainville to re-take the Panguna mine in March 1997, springing the Sandline Affair, now stands as a chilling reminder to all, of the ever present darker side of humanity and of government assisted corporate greed.
The operatives of the mercenary army had strong connections to the British Government and it is doubtful that the Australian government was, again, as ignorant of the genesis of the operation as it subsequently conveniently claimed to be granted the long standing intelligence sharing arrangements between the British and Australian government intelligence arms. As a matter of fact the much celebrated foreign correspondent Sean Dorney in his book aptly titled – The Sandline Affair, reveals prior monitoring by Australian Intelligence on the ground through the various eaves dropping mechanisms they already have on the government offices of Papua New Guinea, through telephone traffic listening centers and through human spying operatives coordinated by the Australian High Commission in Port Moresby. Sean Dorney further reveals in his book that the Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer was made aware of the events surrounding the engagement by the Government of Papua New Guinea of mercenaries for Bougainville, through the spying operations in Port Moresby by Australia and through private briefing of events by the ABC’s Mary Louise O’Callaghan.
Mr Downer, on his departure after a 3 day visit to Papua New Guinea, on 21st February 1997 urged the Chan-Haivata government of Papua New Guinea not to change direction with its Bougainville Policy. He urged the government to pursue the course already set by it.
Although Downer may have been referring to the course of peace, those who know about Australia’s spying operations in the country, which would include most government Ministers and every person in the know in Port Moresby, this may well have been an open and clear endorsement of the Chan government’s planned mercenary operation on Bougainville. After all, no one else knew of what transpired in an earlier one on one meeting between Downer and Chan. Chan’s subsequent revelation in a televised news conference that Downer was certainly not ignorant and that he already knew what was going on. This seems to lend credence to the possibility of a possible tacit and secret support of the Chan government’s plans by Australia. Chan also revealed that he had earlier informed Howard by telephone of the Sandline contract while Downer was visiting at the Waigani Parliament House. It is therefore reasonable to assume that Downer’s farewell endorsement was a reference to the government’s plans in respect of the engagement of Sandline and to annihilate Bougainvilleans.
Indeed the Chan-Haiveta government took this as positive endorsement from Australia for the course of engaging Sandline, and to the Bougainvillean leadership, they also took this as a positive message for peace initiatives, except subsequent events were to reveal that they were both contemplating two separate policies. Whichever way it all played out Downer flew back to Canberra in his airforce jet to patiently await the outcome.
The stage was set for the carpet bombing and mass slaughter of Bougainvilleans, had it not been for a man of conscience, a man endowed with nerves of steel, and an indelible understanding of honor and service, called Jerry Singirok. He took an oath to protect his country, and this he did. The rest is, again, history as they say.
It was only after New Zealand’s initial intervention to secure peace and normality in Bougainville that Australia later hosted the Cairns and Townsville peace meetings. New Zealand through the tireless efforts of Hon. Jim McKinnon, initially as Member of Parliament and subsequently in serving as Secretary General of the South Pacific Forum, brought about cease fire and a Pacific Peace Keeping Force as a precursor to settlement and return to normalcy on those Islands of sorrow.
After peace was secured, the Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer ran around like a cat with its tail on fire with a cheque book in hand trying to look and sound as important as possible. Australia was quietly seen languishing in the reserves bench while New Zealand throughout the crisis took a leadership role. Howard and Downer were never in sight in the Pacific during that part of their reign, let alone in Bougainville when the people were suffering for a cause that Australia was perceived as having helped create, and could have helped avert earlier in the piece. The unobservant eye would have been very impressed by that little latterly cheque book waving dance by Downer, but thankfully in the Pacific we don’t miss much when it comes to appreciating the difference between form and substance, truth and lies.
The second occasion, in which New Zealand took leadership over indigenous Pacific Affairs, and led Australia, was in relation to Fiji. Australia had driven Fiji into the arms of China and this recently caused the US to, for the first time, directly intervene in the Pacific Forum dialogue to separately engage with Pacific countries. New Zealand had the unenviable task of saving Australia’s face over Fiji by being the first to open diplomatic relations with Fiji and ushering Fiji back into the commonwealth and the Forum. The Fiji Foreign Minister has not indicated whether it wants to accept New Zealand and Australia’s supplications, and has opted to take advice on it.
New Zealand and what it stands for understands the Pacific people better than Australia has ever been in a position to do. How New Zealand plays its hand in the Pacific in the long term will define how it is perceived, whether as Australia’s hand maiden, messenger, puppet or a separate people of a separate nation in the Pacific linking with its neighbors for parallel growth and pursuit of respective destinies.
There is always the option for New Zealand to assert an independent position as a unique people with a unique place in the region – thus rejecting the ‘me too’ tag it presently enjoys, and lead Australia in all things Pacific in so far as the ANZAC and ANZUS policy is concerned.
Certainly Pacific Islanders and Melanesians in particular, have a better rapport with New Zealanders, and New Zealanders are not as racist as Australians can sometimes come across as. In construction fields and in enterprises that require expat leaders and supervisors, most Melanesians respond well, work harder and longer hours for a Kiwi supervisor than they would do for an Australian.
This difference may have something to do with the Treaty of Waitangi.