Thu, Jun 23, 2005 page8

• How to talk to troubled Australia

  • By Martin Williams 馬騰
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  Virtue may beget democracy, but Australia has proven once more that a democratic state can make a mockery of virtue.

  This newspaper's readers are no doubt aware of the increasingly hostile line that Canberra has adopted toward Taipei.

  Witness the conduct of Australian Minister of Foreign Affairs Alexander Downer, who, while on a tour of China last year, pleased his audience by effectively blaming Taiwan for being threatened with invasion.

  AFP also reported this remarkable Downerism: "I got positive messages back from the Chinese leadership. They didn't say that they were embarking on some military action against Taiwan." This, despite the missiles mushrooming over the way and the perennial threats to launch them -- and Canberra's concurrent warning that it might not help Taiwan in a time of war.

  Coming from a model democratic state, Downer's comments were a bitter blow for Taiwanese democrats and a boon to China, and could only encourage Beijing to feel more confident about the result of any military initiative -- thus making it slightly more likely that one will occur.

  In damage control of sorts, Australia's deputy representative to Taiwan, Graeme Meehan, wrote to this newspaper objecting to an editorial that criticized both Australian "brown-nosing" and Taiwanese bungling ("MOFA's denials invite contempt," Oct. 4, page 8).

  Meehan argued that, "Australia has consistently urged both sides of the Taiwan Strait to avoid any provocative statements or actions that could alter the status quo and put regional security at risk."

  Fair enough. But what a pity it is that Meehan's boss seems not to understand this. Have some sympathy for Meehan and his colleagues: though it's their job to do so, Downer's long-standing, well-documented lack of discipline is impossible to defend.

  But Canberra's contempt toward Taiwan cannot begin to compare with the circus of viciousness it is running at home.

  The reason why Taiwan's struggle to defend its democracy is of little interest to Australia might just be found here, as might Australia's entrenched privileging of economic interests over its contribution to the security and dignity of established democratic nations beyond its shores.

  For years, reports of Australia's casual cruelty toward asylum seekers in detention camps have been mystifying.

  But then came the Australians who got caught up in the net. A few examples from recent weeks: the detention and probable mistreatment of a mentally ill Australian even after her nationality had been all but established; the deporting to the Philippines of at least one Australian (apparently still suffering injuries from a car accident); and the probable incarceration of at least 200 other Australians as illegal immigrants.

  Then, most recently, there was an attempt to deport a mentally ill Bangladeshi man -- without the knowledge of the immigration department's psychiatrist.

  All of this has shown up the nature of the bureaucracy that Australian Prime Minister John Howard has adapted and exploited to ensure partisan loyalty.

  Some wags will say that such unpleasantness permeates all politics. But the significance of the Australian malaise runs much deeper. Members of the Australian Liberal Party once balanced liberal and conservative perspectives quite happily, espousing human rights and the empowerment of the individual.

  Today, such voices are a belatedly brave and small minority. Those who dissent from the Howard Line, be they serving parliamentarians or even former prime ministers, are rewarded with the most withering and violent language of all.

  Thus it was that when the misanthropy of Howard and his ministers forced this endangered creature, the "Liberal Party moderate" -- not entirely purged from the party as previously reported -- to prepare alternative immigration legislation and threaten to vote with the opposition, Howard's Praetorian Guard mobilized.

  Liberal Member of Parliament (MP) Sophie Panopoulos is one of the most ambitious members of this loose bodyguard, and by necessity a Howard poodle. Last week she labeled the dissatisfied Liberal MPs -- her own colleagues -- "political terrorists" in a calculated use of hyperbole that, tellingly, was not roundly denounced by her colleagues, not even Howard. Such political infantilism is all too common in Taiwan, but it is a worrying sign for Australia that the descent into this filthiest form of politics could benefit a prime minister with a genuine terrorist threat to monitor.

  In the last few days, Howard has given some ground to avoid a defection of votes by presenting the Liberal dissidents with a compromise immigration plan and a touchy-feely rhetorical embrace of diversity in his party.

  But unlike a number of Australian commentators, I consider it far too early to trumpet the return of the liberal Liberal. The motivation for Howard's reluctant concessions remains as crucial to this situation as the short-term result it generated. It is, in other words, too early to say that this is not Howard's version of the Hundred Flowers Movement, with Howard biding his time until these troublemakers and their outed sympathizers can be gutted in preselection battles.

  Underlining the stifling of free speech in the Liberal Party, the Australian parliament's most senior Senate bureaucrat, Harry Evans, on Tuesday described Howard as, in effect, a king. He also said that parliamentary democracy had been usurped.

  "We would have to concede our government has become more like an early modern autocracy: the monarch rules from his royal court [the prime minister's office] and while he might consult his courtiers, his will is the law," he wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald. "We no longer have parliamentary government in any meaningful sense of the term."

  Predictably, public reaction to this accusation was indifferent.

  Equally predictably, Australia's aggression against its own citizens and its own political fabric has evolved into the mocking of principles of democracy and freedom further afield.

  In China's case, it started with the de-emphasis on that country's human-rights nightmare. Then came the shameless feting of former Chinese premier and Tiananmen Square Massacre protagonist Li Peng (李鵬), and lately there has been the ongoing ban on Falun Gong demonstrators from protesting outside the Chinese embassy in Canberra, a ban now subject to legal action.

  Lately, things have become markedly more disturbing.

  Canberra's reluctance to give refuge to Chinese consular officer Chen Yonglin (陳用林) and other well-placed seekers of political asylum from China is incredible enough, especially given that they claim knowledge of widespread surveillance of Australians by Beijing.

  But the revelation that immigration officials allowed Chinese officials to question Chinese asylum-seekers in detention centers has inflicted a terrible injury on Australia's credibility as a free nation.

  Australia has dismembered its authority on issues of international justice because its highest officeholders now rely on the systematic use of disingenuousness and injustice in domestic governance. The politicization of everything, the probing of electoral weakness to the very limit, results in the erosion of shared ground for communication, even on basic matters of public morality. That is to say, Australia is heading to the same place from which Taiwan is, in its own cumbersome way, trying to withdraw.

  For the Taiwanese, Australia's journey into unenlightened self-interest is not a comforting trend -- appeals for a military defense of democracy no longer have currency in Australia.

  Even in Iraq, over which Howard really did go out on a limb supporting Washington, Australian policy is now looking like the symbolic effort that it always was, denuded of the funding and manpower required to make a real difference. Something is seriously wrong when the Australian, a right-leaning newspaper, can report that Canberra's military commitment in the region is an embarrassment, and quotes a senior government source as saying, "We talk the talk but we are doing fucking nothing. We should be doing more in Iraq" ("Combat reality check ... we've already cut and run," Oct. 18, 2004).

  This wasn't always the case. The Australian dead of World War II, including members of my family, are testament to that. And even if Vietnam was a misguided and incompetently managed war, the desire to defend the idea of democracy -- as appalling as Ngo Dinh Diem's government was -- from what turned out to be a disastrous communist experiment, and the resulting Australian casualties, give cause for reflection before proceeding to condemn that war effort.

  So this is the warning, expressed in the simplest terms possible: If a conflict with China starts, Australia will not help Taiwan. It can't be relied on to even object to Chinese aggression.

  Again, this wasn't always the case. Former prime minister Bob Hawke wept publicly when condemning the carnage at Tiananmen Square, and promptly presented a rare gift to Chinese students in Australia at the time: asylum for anyone who wanted it. This was enthusiastically taken up by thousands of young Chinese -- a number of whom now support a Chinese invasion of Taiwan if required, bless their hearts.

  Long experience has shown that it is pointless discussing ideology or morality with the Australian government, so one should not waste any more time with Canberra harping on the democratic ideal.

  Instead, for what it's worth, the Taiwanese should tell Australians that cross-strait conflict will stick knives deep into the thing that Australians value above all -- their economy. They also need to tell Australians that, make no mistake, the Taiwanese are just as willing to defend their territory as Australians are prepared to defend theirs -- even if this, for the moment, isn't entirely true.

  Then there's pride. Australians need to be told that Chinese aggression against Taiwan will do something that the Iraqi theater could never do. It will show up Australia for what it is: a precocious but quite irrelevant military player, except to Indonesia and a few Pacific islands in slow decline. No self-respecting Australian radical right-winger would want that to get out.

  Thanks to this series of immigration scandals, which crystallizes the Australian public's long and complicit relationship with Howard's government, something meaningful might emerge: a clearer profile, if you will, of the troubled Australian psyche.

  For the Taiwanese, this might prove useful. Sometimes it pays to know as much about your fair-weather friends as your enemies.

  Martin Williams is an editor at the Taipei Times.
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