Comment

It’s an old, persistent lie: that traffic is a race issue, that failing infrastructure is the responsibility of migrants rather than the governments that build it. Said often enough, it allows politicians to blame congestion on people who look different. This is a useful trick and it’s one Scott Morrison is playing.

Whoever chose the venue for the first day of the federal parliamentary inquiry into press freedom had a sense of humour. At least, it tickled the funny bones of journalists assigned to the story when they learnt the inquiry was to be held at the New South Wales Masonic Club in Castlereagh Street, Sydney. Famous for centuries as a secret society, that organisation is not so furtive these days, and the hope of Australia’s major media organisations and human rights campaigners is that our government and its agencies will follow suit.

‘What would they know, what would they know, what would they bloody know, about being a blackfulla.’ It is a penetrating line in the documentary The Australian Dream. Gilbert McAdam – an Indigenous football hero – reminds us of an enduring truth in Australia. Too many white Australians just don’t know what it is to be Indigenous. Most Australians still admit they have never met an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person. What would they know about invasion, dispossession, stolen children, segregation? What would they know about the harsh realities of black lives in Australia?

The cruel irony in this standoff for the protection of our cultural heritage is that it occurs against a backdrop of the Andrews Labor government’s current process to negotiate a treaty with Victoria’s First Nations. The way our concerns, elders and cultural values are being dismissed gives us no confidence they will undertake the current treaty negotiations with Traditional Owners in good faith.

“Abortion re-establishes the patriarchy.” “Abortion has been a don’t ask; don’t tell issue for as long as I can remember. Why would any government want to legislate pregnancy termination?” If the arguments offered up by those opposed to the decriminalisation of abortion in New South Wales weren’t entirely circular, they were so twisted around themselves it was impossible to see the logic.

Sadly, Gadfly’s invitation to hear Minister for Minerals Matteo Canavani at Chuckles Henderson’s Institute got lost in the mail. It promised to be a spellbinding evening, with the topic “The Link Between Pope Pius XI and Bob Brown”. The theological possibilities are intriguing, especially when you consider Pius XI – formerly Achille Ratti – and the regime of Benito Mussolini had a lot in common.

The Trump presidency has been a wild ride for its ally Australia, and is becoming dangerously more bizarre by the day. Canberra is being railroaded into a confrontation with Beijing, which is clearly not in its economic or strategic interests. The Morrison government knows as much and is struggling to deal with America’s ambition in a way that assures Australia’s prosperity and security. The degree of difficulty became apparent at last weekend’s Australia–United States Ministerial Consultations in Sydney.

War is readily characterised as a failure of reason. But that’s not quite true. It is, in fact, a failure to hear reason. The recent loss of Graham Freudenberg – Australia’s greatest speechwriter – compels us once again to listen. We owe him that. With rising geopolitical instability, the value of reason – of the ilk Freudenberg championed – couldn’t be higher.

ICAC has seen monumental success and failure in New South Wales. By no stretch of the imagination has it stamped out corruption in the state, but its reputation has always been formidable. No one covets the prospect of facing an ICAC investigation. An independent watchdog, with real power, which can do its work in public, changes the mathematics of corruption. The balance tips slightly towards risk from reward.

Tasmanian independent Jacqui Lambie has returned to the senate convinced that people don’t trust politicians. That’s the message she received anywhere she went in the island state during her enforced exile from parliament over citizenship eligibility, she says. And that’s why she and other crossbenchers in both the house of representatives and the senate are calling for the urgent establishment of a national integrity commission.