The incredibly sad case of Tyrone Sevilla

Shame on you Australia. Are you really going to let your government deport a child from the only home he has ever known just because he's autistic?  Where is your humanity, your empathy, your basic human decency?

I simply can't understand why more people are not up in arms about this, but on the assumption that the lack of discussion this case has generated is a result insufficient media attention, not of apathy or acceptance, I have to do what I can to bring attention to this travesty of justice.

Maria Sevilla brought her two and a half year old son to Australia in 2007.  Over the past 8 years she strove hard to educate herself, working part-time whilst studying and eventually qualifying as a nurse.  She now holds a senior position at a regional Queensland hospital.  From the accounts of people who know her, she is a productive and committed member of her community. 

Maria Sevilla applied for a skilled working visa (489) and was denied on the basis that her son, Tyrone, has an Autism Spectrum Disorder.  Tyrone's diagnosis lead the Department to conclude that the family did not meet the health criteria as candidates whose condition could cost the country in excess of $40,000 during their lifetime are excluded.

Ms. Sevilla appealed the Department's decision to the Migration Review Tribunal, who last week upheld the Department's original decision.  Assuming that she has the financial and legal support, which is by no means a given, she can apply to appeal that decision through the Tribunal.  In the meantime, she is also asking the Immigration Minister, Peter Dutton, to step in and exercise his discretionary power and grant her visa. 

Even if we were to be so callous as to simply focus on the economic aspects, Maria Sevilla is a tax-paying member of our community and moreover she contributes by nursing her fellow regional Queenslanders back to health so that they can also return to being tax-paying members of our community as well.  She is not sitting back expecting the people of Australia to support her and her son - she is actively supporting us.

The potential costs to a society of accepting migrants who might require additional social support during their lifetime is a valid concern, but we must be careful of putting a dollar figure on someone's worth.  How can we simply say 'nah, you're going to cost us too much'!  At the age of nine, we have effectively determined that this child will be a drain on society and told him that he is unwanted, that he'll never amount to anything, and that we're not willing to waste our time on him.  Are we really a country that has so little compassion?

In this case, we're talking about a child who moved to Australia when he was two and a half years old.  Note that this was before his diagnosis, so there can be no suggestion that his mother tried to 'rort the system' by bringing him here or any such thing - we accepted him when we thought he was healthy, but now that we find out he's not we want to send him away again.  How is that not discrimination?

Tyrone's now nine, and he knows no other life than his life in Australia.  His maternal grandmother is here, as are his maternal uncle, aunt and cousins.  His mother reports that she has no family support in The Philippines.  Tyrone does not know the language there.  The nature of his condition means that adapting to change is incredibly difficult for him.

It is completely within the realm of possibility that being ripped away from his extended family, his home, its language and the routine that he has come to know would be such a great distress to him that he would never fully recover.  Leaving aside what care, education and opportunities might be available to him to him in The Philippines, the disruption caused to him by the deportation itself should be sufficient for us to ask ourselves how we can even consider subjecting a child to that level of distress.

I want to say more about the nature of Autism Spectrum Disorders, and the potential of people with ASDs to contribute to their society, but that point is better made by those who have greater knowledge on that subject than I do.  I also don't want to unnecessarily limit this discussion to a particular type of perceived 'dis'ability, as that would focus solely on what one assumes someone cannot do, rather than focusing on what they can.

I think that's actually the crux of the argument.  We can't just look at someone and know what they might be able to achieve.  We can't take a diagnosis and assume that a human being is nothing more than the label that a doctor has placed on them.  And while we technically 'can' create legislation that places a dollar limit on how much we as as a society want to spend on the people we let live here - the question is, should we? 

If we do so, we focus only on what we assume a person can't do and discount what contributions they might be able to make.  We also dismiss the value of the contributions that the rest of their family can bring to our society simply because their family unit includes someone who we summarily judge to be unworthy.  Moreover, as this case highlights, we risk abandoning a member of our community and causing a child untold distress simply for the sake of saving a few bucks.

This is an appalling situation and this is not the Australia that I want to live in. 

Please support Maria Sevilla's petition here: https://www.change.org/p/the-hon-peter-dutton-mp-please-don-t-deport-my-9-year-old-son-to-a-land-he-doesn-t-know-because-of-his-autism

Invoking Godwin

I went to the Bolt blog today and I do have to admit to visiting it from time to time.  I'm pretty sure there's no way on earth I'll ever agree with him, but I'm always curious to hear other perspectives.  I'm not so set in my ways that I'm not open to other ideas.

What I found though was perplexing.  From Bolt himself there was the usual.  He was defending the PM in saying that Shorten was an economic Goebbels.  The line was to be expected - that Labor has also invoked Goebbels, so therefore what the PM said was ok.  Sorry Bolty, but two wrongs don't make a right. 

Bolt made no distinction between Dreyfus saying that a media campaign was Goebbelian in scope and nature, and the PM saying that Shorten was like Goebbels.  They are different things - the PM played the man and not the ball.  The PM was wrong, he knew that he was wrong and immediately withdrew his comments.

On the other hand, Bolt wasn't entirely wrong.  No, of course I don't agree with the way that Goebbels was invoked today, but I don't necessarily have a problem with the invocation itself.  This is our history, and it does us no good to sweep it under the carpet and pretend it didn't happen.  On the contrary we should be raising it repeatedly so we can learn from it and ensure that it never happens again.

I admit though that I was surprised when I read the comments on Bolt's blog - because a sentiment that was repeated was that the Labor party were Nazi-like.   It went kind of like "why would they be upset about being compared to their heroes" and "well if they didn't want to be compared to Nazi's then they should change their ways".

I can't for the life of me understand why anyone would think the Labor Party are like the Nazis.  I asked the question Bolt's blog but, unsurprisingly, my comment was not published.

Without having the benefit of a reply from those who made those accusations, I've been left to come to my own conclusions - and I can only come up with the idea that the Labor party are perceived to be Socialist, and there is some resulting confusion between Socialism and Fascism.

I actually can't expend any intellectual effort to justify that position - it's too fucking hard to engage in the mental gymnastics needed to make it work, because it doesn't, because it's just not logical.

I will say, however, that one of the things I learned during my Arts degree (which according to this government is completely useless, but that's another story!), the political spectrum does not exist on an horizon - its a sphere - when you get far enough to the right, you meet up with the far left.

So I do kind of understand how Bolt's bloggers will perceive something so far left that they see it as far right.  The Nazi's fascism is far right.  Socialism, as it exists within our political discourse, is moderately left.  We've really not seen anything since Marx that was far left - certainly nothing worthy of challenging our capitalist assumptions.  Yet the political centre has moved so far to the right that anything left of centre is seen as socialist.

I'm not here advocating communism, but surely a little more social cohesion is not a bad thing.  Apparently in this day and age anything less than advocating a complete and total free market is seen as socialist.  And that's the only way I can logically connect Bolt's bloggers assertions that the Labor Party is in any way Nazi-like - if they appear anything less than completely free-market, then they must be socialist/fascist - far enough left to seem far-right.

I could try to explain that National Socialism is not Socialism.  I could try to explain that Socialism is not Communism.  I could try to distinguish an economic philosophy from a political one, but in all honesty, I think I'd just be wasting my breath.  I would have tried if Bolt had published my comment and his bloggers had engaged with me, but it didn't serve their purpose and so I was shut out.

It's sad that dissenting voices can be so easily shut out.  I certainly don't claim to have all the answers, but it would be nice to have a robust debate.  

Are political parties the problem with our democracy?

Well, that's a stupid question - of course they are!

There's nothing inherently wrong with like-minded people banding together to achieve a common goal, but something is very, very wrong with our system of government when those people forget that they were elected by their constituents to represent our interests, not the interests of their party.

Our elected representatives seem to have forgotten it, and so has a large swathe of the voting public who seem to think its an 'us' against 'them' proposition.  I did not vote for a particular party - I voted for the person I trusted to best represent my interests, and the interests of my community.

The concept of a conscience vote should not exist - every vote should be a conscience vote.  If it was a policy you brought to the electorate at election time, then you're on stronger ground, but one would hope that our MPs would still exercise the cognitive fortitude to consider all aspects of proposed legislation and not be blind 'yes' men and women.  If they don't, then voting along 'party lines' is merely a euphemism for 'I couldn't be bothered to think for myself'.

I'm pretty sure that's what happened today, because I can't see, by any stretch of the imagination, that the data retention laws are in anyone's best interests.  And yet the chamber during the vote looked like this:

 

The authorities can already subpoena your data, they can already access your history - but they need to get a warrant first and they need to have some basis on which to investigate you that justifies the issuing of that warrant.  Under the new laws, even as amended, some government apparatchik is to decide what is an is not in the national interest, who is and who is not worthy of protection. 

Apparently our current elected representatives know better, apparently they are more than happy to throw out hundreds of years of legal and political history and to undermine our entire system of government. 

We have a separation of powers for a reason.  The executive has claimed powers previously (and rightly) allocated to the judiciary.  This is bad legislation and yet no-one, from either of the two major political parties, was willing to stand up against it. 

It doesn't take much common sense to work out that the reason for that is because these data retention laws are not designed to stop terrorism, or kiddie porn, or any of the other justifications that have been proposed - they're designed to catch illegal downloaders.

The Labor Party learned that, when they try to go against Rupert, even in the very modest way they did under Rudd/Gillard, they will be crucified.  Rupert gets what Rupert wants - cross him at your peril. 

I wonder whether perhaps some of these MPs had the wherewithal to realise that and reasoned that perhaps it was better to give a little on this issue in order to gain or retain power to make broader changes.  On the one hand I think that that reasoning was wholeheartedly wrong, on the other, I kind of hope that their thought processes did extend that far rather than simply brainlessly voting along party lines.  Make no mistake, neither of them are good choices, but at least in one scenario they applied independent thought.

Yet looking at that photo of the chamber I just can't believe that every single member of the Labor Party applied independent thought and still decided to vote to pass these laws.  Can they all really be so intellectually vapid that they actually believe that these laws are good for the people of Australia?  I'm naive enough to hope that they're not all that dumb.

They do, however, appear to be dumb enough to think that if the party chiefs tell them to vote a certain way, then they should.  That's not the way it's supposed to work.  And guess what dummies - there is no higher purpose than our freedom.  We're not going to reward you for selling us out.  Sure, you might get a few more terms on the basis that you're just slightly better than the other guy - but more and more people are starting to wake up to your game, they're starting to wake up to the bias in our media, and they're starting to realise that you are in it for yourselves. 

We're awake - are you?

Paid Trolls

Twitter users recently identified a number of identical tweets that they suspected of being placed by paid LNP trolls.  The image below shows a sample (with my notations to the right of their respective time and date stamps):

Further analysis of these tweets provides some interesting insights.

First of all, let's look at the twitter account of @Alayna_Moses.  The account was created on 14 June 2014 and for the most part "she" complains about how hungry and/or tired "she" is.  There are, however, a number of tweets which tend to indicate that the account is US-based.  In the following tweets, "she" refers to 'the mall', 'soda' and 'Mom':

If the account is US-based, and given that it demonstrates no other interest in Australian politics, what on earth could have prompted "her" to take such a sudden interest in the Australian Broadcasting Corporation? 

You might have noticed that I have placed the female pronouns in inverted commas.  That's because I'm pretty darn sure "she's" not real. 

Let's take a look at the twitter account of @Marissa_Lester.  Also created on 14 June 2014, the two "girls" seem to have exactly the same problems (not to mention the same poor grasp of the English language):

It would seem pretty clear that at least these two accounts are fake.   But what of the others?

@dramafarma01 tweets consistent conservative/libertarian messages, so the tweet was not uncharacteristic, nor was it uncharacteristic for @danORoc.  @danORoc also recently tweeted this message, which was parroted by another one of our original 'trolls' @SteveHuckstepp:

There is clearly something linking these Twitter accounts.  The tweets are identical, right down to the same capitalisation, punctuation and emphases. 

Let's take a look at @itsNinty, the most interesting of our original tweeters.  He actually admits that he was paid, though it is possible that the 'admission' was facetious.  Make of it what you will: 

Is it really possible that the LNP paid for these tweets?  And if so, are they really that organised that they make payment within one day, and over the weekend no less?  I personally suspect that @itsNinty was having a lend with his 'proof of payment', though it was a lot of trouble to go to to fake it.  On second thought, it does also equate with another reference I read that the going rate was $0.04 per follower (with @itsNinty having 430 followers as of today, it is possible he had 420 on 19 July and added a few extra since this story broke).  

Whatever way you look at it, there is definitely something funny going on. We've got six identical tweets, at least two of which came from 'fake' accounts created on the same day and containing other duplicated tweets. Why do these two accounts also contain identical tweets to the other four?  And what of @itsNinty's admission that the tweet was paid for?

The real issues are twofold.  Is public money being expended on this social media campaign?  And if not, then who is behind it? 

The answer might come from an analysis of why the original tweets contained the #lateline hashtag.

Looking at the time/date stamps of the original tweets, three of them appear to relate to the Lateline program which aired on 17 July 2014 and the other three relate to the program on 18 July 2014.  If we assume @alayna_moses is based on West Coast USA, then a tweet posted from that timezone at 6:18AM on 17 July 2014 (and the ones posted at a similar time by @marissa_lester and @stevehuckstepp) would equate to 11:18PM on the east coast of Australia, just after Lateline aired on 17 July 2014.

The program on 18 July 2014 would appear to have caused an identical reaction in the three other tweeters.  The problem is, however, that the program on 18 July 2014 was dedicated almost exclusively to the MH17 tragedy and the equally terrible situation in Gaza.  The only story of a political nature was a short (2:53 minute) segment at the end reporting on the Senate's refusal to pass the mining tax repeal bills (as this would also wipe out the school kids bonus and other low income supports). 

What is interesting is that Julie Novak, a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) was the guest tweeter for the 18 July 2014 episode of Lateline.  A coincidence?  I think not.  Any tweets with the #lateline tag were going to come up for anyone engaging in debate on the program that night, hence they had a ready audience for their anti-ABC message timed to coincide with Ms Novak's 'apperance'. 

The attempt failed, however, as the news was not dominated by talk of the mining tax, which was instead sidelined by events overseas.  Their pre-organised claims of bias fell flat because there was no partisan political story - simply tragic events that should never have been used for political advantage (though presumably by the time they realised that, it was too late to call off the dogs).  I would therefore submit that it is possible that the IPA was behind this, not the LNP.

Whilst the IPA's sources of funding are a tightly guarded secret, it has been established that much of its funding is received from the oil and mining industries, therefore, a concerted effort by them on 17 July (repeal of the Carbon Tax) and 18 July (extra sitting of the Senate to consider the Mining Tax repeal bills), makes a lot of sense.

Either way, there was very little, in fact I would argue nothing, in the 18 July 2014 episode of Lateline to justify these claims of left-wing bias at the ABC given the apolitical nature of the stories covered.  And whilst nothing could be worse than using the tragic deaths of many innocent people to promulgate a political message, the irony of attempting to use a platform given to them by the ABC, to accuse the ABC of bias, should escape no-one.

If wasn't the IPA, and indeed @itsNinty's claim that he was paid by "Media Services LNP" is truthful, then we are certainly entitled to know whether public funds were used. 

Whatever the answer, it is a very scary time for democracy in Australia.  Sneaky attempts like this to fake opinions and influence public perception via social media are the very reason we need the ABC. 

Creating a better democracy - some initial thoughts...

Is it really necessary, in a country with a population the size of Australia, to have three levels of government?  

Historically, the notion made a lot of sense.  The colonies/states were fiercely independent and struggling to find a balance of power that would allow for a federation at all.  It almost didn't happen.  Over 100 years later, Australia is a very different place, much more aware of the things that both unite and divide us.  Why should we be constrained by the priorities and concerns of long ago?  Why can't we have a discussion about the type of government that will suit modern Australia.

I'm certainly not proposing to throw the whole constitution out the window.  It has served us well.  That doesn't mean that it can't be improved.

Consider this alternative model:

1. A Federal government responsible for matters of national importance, including taxation, fiscal management, defence, national infrastructure, telecommunications, environmental matters, etc.
2. Regional governments responsible for service delivery in areas such as health, education, housing, community facilities and services, etc.

The idea is not so radical - that's kind of what we've got now, but in practice, it there is much duplication and unnecessary waste.  So let's clean it up with what we've learnt over the last 100+ years.

Obviously local governments are currently necessary - it would be impossible for a centralised state government to provide local services like garbage collection and town planning across the entire state, but regional governments on the other hand could provide the same services as local governments currently do.  This restructure could also serve to improve our democracy as each Region would elect representatives for the Federal government and it would be clear that the job of those representatives was to represent the interests of their regions on a national level.

Again, this idea is hardly radical, it's pretty much what we've got at present.  A problem with the current system is that people don't identify as members of their electorates - they identify as members of their state, socio-economic group, generation, etc.  They should elect members of parliament who represent their electorates, but they don't because their electorate is not an entity they can identify with, it is merely a geographical boundary which defines them once every 3-4 years.  By changing this focus, we could have the opportunity to develop real communities, of local people, working together for a common goal.

Without that sense of community, we struggle.  In order to engender that sense of community, we need to empower the Regional governments with a large degree of control over their own destinies.  To my mind, we do so by allowing each Region to have charge of their hospitals, schools, aged care facilities, transport, etc. so that decisions about how those communities are run are made by the communities themselves.  This addresses some of the problems with current State governments making centralised decisions for widely disparate regional areas. 

How would this work in practice?  Take, for example, education.  The Federal government could produce a national curriculum, but it would be up to the Regional governments to implement that.  Each Region would decide where the schools were placed, how to allocate resources, what teachers to hire, what funding priority to attach to sports, arts, technical education, etc.  Regular meetings of interested parties could be held to allow the community to participate fully in the education of their children. This is hardly possible on a national or state level, because the interested participants simply either live too far apart, or have so little in common to make consensus next to impossible.

We need to eliminate the multiple strands of taxation and replace them instead with one single tax.  The Federal government should administer and collection this tax, which is distributed to the Regions by head of population.  There should still be some provision for additional funds to be provided on the basis of need, hence why Regions should elect strong representatives who can put their case to the Federal parliament.   Safeguards should be put in place to protect minority groups and to ensure against stronger Regions 'ganging-up' on weaker ones (though that is also the role of the Senate).

At present, our federal government collects the great majority of taxation revenue, and then decides when and how to divide that up amongst the states, who are left with the difficult task of trying to maintain hospitals, schools, etc. with ever slimmer pieces of the financial pie.  Reviewing the taxation system and revising the constitution to provide a clear statement of responsibilities should be a priority.

Then again, after having another look myself at s.51 of the Constitution, it seems to me that the areas of responsibility are already well established, but the priority we attach to each area is not.  Maybe this is the real problem?  There is no apparent link between taxation, federal and state governments and the services they are meant to provide - they aren't working together for a common goal, they are competing.   

It all then comes back to the fact that our federal representatives aren't representing the needs or desires of their constituents, they are representing an ideology, voting along party lines.  In that case then, rethinking our electoral laws and our levels of government is essential.  Maybe we don't actually vote for our federal government separately, each Region elects representative(s) who can best promote that region's priorities.  That was always the way that it was meant to work - so what went wrong? 

Obviously this is a very broad outline of a very complex discussion - and I've raised more questions in my own mind that I have been able to answer.  At the heart of it though I am advocating improving our democracy by improving our sense of community, improving participation in our democracy, removing multiple layers of taxation and reviewing/streamlining the areas of priority/responsibility of each level of government.

At the heart of it, I suppose what I'm really saying is that our democracy could be improved by:

1. Combining State and Local governments and replacing them with Regional governments; and
2. Improving cooperation between the various levels of government so that they are working together, instead of competing against each other. 

What kind of Australia do you want to live in?

It occurs to me that I can go on and on about current events, but in order to ascribe any particular meaning to them, I must first examine my personal philosophy.

I really, really hate it when public discourse gets derailed by accusations of who is left/right, who is this or who is that.  I hate labels, and I don't subscribe to them.  I think that they limit discussion and an objective view of all the issues at play.  I want the logic of my argument to speak for itself and not to be distilled into meaningless placards.

That said, I think you could probably broadly say that I fall mostly to the left (it would be impossible for me to have such radical reform ideas and still be considered a conservative).  On the other hand, I place a high regard in the lessons that can be learnt from the history of our political system. 

I think we take too much for granted - I think we are limited by a lack of imagination, by an assumption that we can't change the things that need to be changed.  I don't believe that.  We can change anything we set our minds to - it is our right, and responsibility, as citizens, to shape the society in which we live.   

So the point of this post is to ask the question - if you could completely redesign the country, what would it look like?

For me, the list is a very long one, but it starts like this:

1. Revise the constitution to provide for two levels of government, Federal and Regional.  The regional governments would have powers somewhere in between our current State and Local governments.  The Federal government would be solely responsible for taxation, and funds would be allocated to the Regional governments by head of population.  Regional governments would oversee service delivery.
2. Revise the taxation system to provide for one single method of taxation, probably transaction or consumption based, with no deductions or loopholes. As soon as you introduce deductions then you introduce a way for clever people and companies to beat the system, and a way for corruption to flourish.  So no deductions = no loopholes.  We all pay our fair share, and we all share equally. 
3. A debate about what we want our government to achieve.  I believe that government should be involved in business, limited to the basic services that we require as a society to survive, that we should expect our government to provide to us from our taxation.  Such services would include electricity, water, roads/public transport, military/disaster relief, justice/police, education, banking/fiscal management and environmental protection. The free market can rule in any other arena, just not in the ones that we, as a society, consider essential to our survival.
4. A bill of rights. 

I guess to a free-market capitalist, some of these ideas will seem positively socialist.  Personally I see them as more in the vein of true democracy.  We have something we like to call a democracy, but it is a very poor facsimile thereof.  Why shouldn't we have a discussion about what democracy means to us?  Why shouldn't we explore and examine new ideas, perhaps even, radical ideas?  Are we really so sure we're on the right path?

I am under no illusion that any of these things can happen overnight.  On the contrary, I honestly believe that changes of this magnitude will take generations - but we at least need to start the discussion.  

I hope over coming months and years to expand upon these ideas and generate complete vision of the Australia I want to live in, and I hope, if nothing else, to generate debate.

And I ask again - where is our empathy?

Anti-homeless studs.

Apparently these are outside a block of flats in Southwark Bridge Road, London.

The photo was originally captured by Andrew Horton of Surrey and has been shared widely on Twitter.

What kind of warped mind thought this up?

How on earth did anyone think that this was acceptable?

Simply appalling.
   


Further reading: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jun/07/anti-homeless-studs-london-block-uproar