The Northern Territory - a failed state or merely a challenged state?

For some people, all they ever get to know about the Northern Territory is the advertising campaigns to attract tourists and stories of Aboriginal disadvantage.  Some people set off up the track in caravans but don't enter into Territory life and so gain little understanding of Territory ways.  For many, including quite a slice of Territory inhabitants, it will come as a bit of a shock to hear the Territory described as a Failed State.  If you don't think that rings true, you might like to go along with Gerry Woods and his description of a challenged state

For me, I'll stick with the first because I agree with virtually everything that Nicolas Rothwell says in his article.  Many times I will read an article on a subject or a place I know well but the article leaves me feeling that I am residing on a planet of one because my own knowledge is so different from what I read.  Not with Rothwell's article.  He and I inhabit the same reality as far as a description of government and governance in the Northern Territory is concerned. And in case you think this does not concern you, think again.  If  you are a tax-paying Australian, you are propping up relaxed whitefella lifestyles and Aboriginal disadvantage and dislocation in the Northern Territory.  You too can have your tax dollars wasted in the failed Aboriginal housing program known as SIHIP.

Rothwell lays it all on the line from the cossetted and comforted middle and upper classes of Darwin's Northern Suburbs without whom, so the political wisdom goes, government in the NT cannot be won to disadvantaged Aboriginal communities who don't see all the money allocated to their needs by the Federal Government because of siphoning by the NT Government and the bureaucratic padding that is day to day employment in the NT, particularly in mainstream centres outside Darwin.

Miss Eagle's view - after most of a lifetime lived in North Queensland and the Northern Territory and a significant proportion of that lived on the Barkly Tableland, Queensland side and Territory side - is that this has to be seen in the context of historic deprivation by governments of all political persuasions at all levels of remote area communities black and white, with black communities being the worst affected.

Rothwell doesn't say this - but he is not far from saying it.

Let me be quite blunt.  Remote Australia pays a huge price

• economically, 
• environmentally, 
• socially, 
• infrastructurally, 
• educationally and in 
• housing and
• poor health 

for the governments dominated by the white tribes of the urbanised coastal fringes of Australia.

I emphasise that when I speak of remote Australia I am speaking both of  mainstream and Aboriginal Australians while recognising that the hardest hit are Aboriginal Australians.

I look forward to Rothwell's second instalment when he will outline a new way or ways of governance in the NT.  

Is Australia's military a law and power unto itself?

"The military justice system is a shambolic, dysfunctional mess and it is failing the young men and women who enlist to serve their country. This report is a damning indictment of a system that fails 21st-century standards of justice. It comes after some 20 months of evidence gathering. It details flawed prosecutions and failed investigations into suicides, accidental deaths, major illicit drug use and serious abuses of power in training schools and cadet units.

"The major recommendations call for a major overhaul of the system. This report demands action, not at the edges but at its centre. It demands military justice be taken out of the hands of the military and replaced with a transparent, independent system which ensures our service people have the same rights to justice as all other Australians - a system based on impartiality, transparency and accountability …"  From here.

This was 2005.  The Parliamentary Committee who produced this report had heard, most sadly, from parents whose children had been treated shabbily and shamefully by the Australian Department of Defence to the extent that they died - either in severe preventable accidents or, in deep distress, by their own hands.

Here is what the Military Justice section

of the Department of Defence website says

to-day, Thursday 27 August.

I wonder if it will be altered?

~~~

Welcome
A robust and dynamic military justice system underpins our discipline and command structures. It provides the appropriate balance between discipline and the rights of individuals, and ensures our personnel work in an ordered but equitable environment. It is critical to maintaining command, retaining our people, our reputation and is ultimately critical to operational effectiveness.

Defence has been working to fundamentally change almost every element of the military justice system. This follows the 2005 Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade References Committee report,  The Effectiveness of Australia’s Military Justice System. The changes being made to the military justice system are the most significant since the current Defence Force Discipline Act was introduced more than two decades ago.

~~~~

Well, Australia's military justice system has turned out to be neither robust nor dynamic.  As for underpinning, the foundation was faulty and has collapsed. The High Court unanimously declared the Australian Military Court unconstitutional yesterday, saying the legislation that created it in 2006 was flawed.

There are suggestions that the Howard Government went against its own advice and allowed Defence to have its own way when drawing up the new system of Military Justice which was the outcome of the 2005 Parliamentary Committee Report.

Which brings us back to the culture of Defence and its penchant for having its own way for a long time. Take a look, fellow Networkers, at Laura Tingle's article here. Consider the events of earlier this year when there was every appearance of Defence itself politically undermining its Minister with its own dirty tricks campaign.  

Defence should ask itself - is it the master or the servant?  My view is that Defence is the servant of the people.  It is not a department of privilege.  It is not an organisation that rises up against the realm who gives it life, breath and budgets.  Australians spend a lot of money on Defence - and a lot of it is wasted in failed and faulty procurement.  If the boys want the toys, dear Networkers, then let them pull their horns in and deliver professionally and put the politics aside.  

Clearly, Defence has got away with too much success in special pleading - as police forces frequently do.  We appreciate the service provided by Defence and Police in undergirding our security.  However, it is quite clear that justice and Defence are not easy bedfellows and no amount of special pleading can paper over the cracks.  

Clearly, the Rudd Government recognises the problems of Defence.  One wonders - did they see this problem coming, too?  At least one knows that the right person is in the right place this time: someone knowledgable; someone with Defence experience; political knowledge, clout and nous; someone who is a wake-up to Defence.  Defence has met its match in Senator John Faulkner.

One looks forward to seeing this mess, this writhing can of worms that is Military Justice, cleaned up and the Masters of Defence becoming true Servants of the Nation.

Epistemic justice: Power & the Ethics of Knowing by Miranda Fricker

Epistemic justice: 

Power & the Ethics of Knowing

Excerpts from this book are published on Google Books.

Dear Networkers,

Do you ever get enraged when you feel your views and those of your organisation are sidelined in favour of the views of the bureaucracy, certain "experts", lobbyists and their clients, political donors.  Local views, community wisdom are overlooked as though of no account, as though grassroots experience is of no consequence, eyewitness accounts count for nothing against libraries of books and ivory towers of academics.

Well, thanks to an academic I have come across a term for all this.....epistemic injustice.

To-day I was listening to Alan Saunders on The Philosopher's Zone on ABC's Radio National.  Alan was speaking to Dr Miranda Fricker who has put it all together and published a book explaining it all called Epistemic Injustice.  If you go here, you can listen to the conversation or read the transcript.  Dr Fricker has been in Australia to deliver the Simone Weil Lectures on Human Value at the Australian Catholic University. Her lectures were titled Knowledge and Prejudice.  Dr Fricker's premise stems from a famous murder case in the UK which lead to major and overdue changes in policing.

However, as I listened to Dr Fricker I became entranced with the concept and its application to governance and community.  I have been concerned at what I have seen in Victoria on water issues.  Energetic, well-resourced and intelligent community campaigns have been harshly over-ridden by government.  I ask how can this continue?  How can such lack of consultation and over-riding of sound local knowledge continue to be ignored?  In this area of grave climate impact, there will be more government-community stand-offs unless the government's way of doing things changes markedly.

I have been working along, like a voice crying in the wilderness, on the path of environmental and communal human rights and the development of mediation skills.  Then into my life comes the voice of Miranda Fricker across the air waves.  She says what I have long held - it is all about who is considered by the powers-that-be to know.  In the murder case, police - including black police - ignored the only non-involved (in a manner of speaking) eye witness.  They ignored his knowledge because of his race and ethnicity; because of behaviour which was thoughtlessly misinterpreted.  He wasn't considered to be someone capable of knowing.

How often do we see this is our society.

Consider the case of Peter Andrews.  His theories went against the conventional wisdom indoctrinating farmers.  However, many farmers ignored the conventional non-acceptance of Peter Andrews recognising the value of his knowledge.  Now Peter does not necessarily fit the bill as a conventional holder of knowledge.  While I have not met him, the stories I hear on Australian Story subtly indicate a man who can be problematic at times.  But his message persists.  And what helps his case greatly these days is that he now has a powerful patron in Gerry Harvey. No one argues about Gerry: he has money; runs a major corporation; loves racing and a bet on the gee gees; and owns some beautiful country.  So no one is going to gainsay Gerry Harvey as someone who might "know".

This is what governments and powerful corporations are doing to local communities across the nation: Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory; well-heeled landed gentry on the Liverpool Plains in New South Wales; irrigation farmers in the Goulburn Valley; and surfies on the Bass Coast in Victoria.

And who has the knowledge?  A Magic Circle.  It is quite circuitious.

If you want to be some sort of "water expert", what do you do?  You go to university.  The departments that are relevant are funded by industry, funded by government.  When people graduate as "water experts" where do they get employed? In industry, in government.  Then there are the industry associations which attract membership from...industry, government.  And there are study tours which attract people from...industry, government with some form of industry sponsorship.

But if you are a self-educated "water expert" with a wealth of on-the-ground experience, who are you?  You are discriminated against in the same way that the murder eyewitness was discriminated against.  You are completed ignored.  You are treated as an irrelevance.  How on earth, why on earth should you know anything that matters?

So I'm thinking of writing to Dr Fricker to ask for her thoughts of applying her premise of epistemic injustice on a social level.  You see, I think she is on to something of great value.

Networkers, I would like to know your thoughts, and your experiences with relevance to epistemic injustice.  If we put our heads together, we may well be able to put our joint knowledge to use to overcome the prejudice of governments against community knowledge and wisdom.

Further reading:
Simone Weil
American Weil Society
Books by Simone Weil

Ban Political Donations: start with liquor and gambling

Here is an interesting debate on political donations.*

However, it is not just the panel

who makes interesting comments.

Listen for statements/questions from

John Cane, former Victorian Premier

and

Peter Kavanagh,

the lone DLP member of Parliament in Australia.

Miss Eagle's view is that

those who are influenced

and

those who can and hope to influence

live in denial

or, more bluntly,

cloud-cuckoo land.

Disclosure is not enough.

Perhaps if names went on billboards

in relation to what is being influenced.

Otherwise, no.

Money for influence is not new.

Money for influence has not gone away.

John Cane fingers the liquor and gambling interests.

So, citizens, want safety on Melbourne's streets?

Get liquor and gambling interests

off the political donors & lobbyists roll.

* Thanks to Denis for drawing my attention to this

even though he had to wake me from a Sunday nap

For all posts "Ban Political Donations":

Go here.

John Brumby, Collingwood Football Club and the AIS: cronyism at work?

What's a little business between friends?

When its special pleading,

when its political, its cronyism.

Eddie Maguire of Collingwood Football Club

and

John Brumby, Premier of Victoria

at Federation Square after the recent Walk for Harmony.

John Brumby and the Victorian Government are strong opponents of any form of anti-corruption commission such as the Crime and Misconduct Commission in Queensland and the Independent Commission Against Corruption in New South Wales. Brumby and mates show little inclination to forego the privilege and special pleading that forms part of political fundraising.

Only Queensland and New South Wales have such anti-corruption commissions. Neither the Federal Government and the governments of the other states and of the Territories has any such body.

How wonderful! Clearly only Queensland and New South Wales have politicians, bureaucrats, and police services full of suspect people. The Federal Government, the other states and the Territories have politicians, bureaucrats, and public services who are beyond reproach. Or, if reproach is required, it is for mere peccadillos. Nothing serious. Don't you worry about that, as Joh Bjelke Peterson used to say.

I wonder what the current feelilng might be at the Australian Institute of Sport about having an independent body to which government decision making could be referred. Take notice of this example of priveleged decision making, dear Networker.