Asia’s economic dynamism is beginning to find a parallel in the region’s diplomacy, particularly where security is concerned. Indeed, we may now be “present at the creation,” as former US Secretary of State Dean Acheson called his memoir, which described the construction of the post-World War II global security order. This time, what is being created is a security order for Asia that reflects its newfound primacy in world affairs, though what that order will ultimately look like remains to be determined.

Security has moved to the top of the regional agenda not only in response to China’s rise, but also because America and the West will be leaving a gaping hole in Asia’s security architecture when they remove their troops from Afghanistan, without first having established peace there. Perhaps of greater importance for long-term security, the US-Pakistan relationship continues to plumb new depths, while Iran’s relations with the West go from bad to worse, marred most recently by the mob invasion of the British Embassy in Tehran in November.

Bit by bit, initiative by initiative, many of the region’s powers are struggling to forge a coherent cooperative framework to enhance their security. For example, Australia’s Labour government has agreed to sell natural uranium to India, reversing a policy that had been in place ever since India developed its nuclear-weapons capacity. Almost simultaneously, US President Barack Obama announced the stationing of US Marines in northern Australia. No one has explicitly linked the two moves, but they are arguably related strategically, as Australia seeks to boost its ties with both the US and Asia’s other giant, India.

India and the US have also been strengthening their strategic relations with Japan, not only bilaterally, but also in a unique trilateral way, which US Deputy Secretary of State William Burns has suggested could “reshape the international system.” Burns, and much of the rest of America’s foreign-policy establishment, now thinks that India’s regional influence has become comprehensive; its “Look East” strategy, announced earlier this year, is being translated into “Act East” policies.

So far, India’s security relations with Japan and South Korea are somewhat understated. But that is changing. During Indian Defense Minister A. K. Antony’s recent visit to Tokyo, it was agreed that Japan and India would hold their first-ever joint naval and air force exercise in 2012. This elevates bilateral defense cooperation to the role of primary national-security tool, most importantly for Japan, which has broadened its strategic horizon beyond its immediate surroundings and the country’s longstanding alliance with the US.

Indeed, Japan and India have now agreed to cooperate on “maritime security issues, including anti-piracy measures, freedom of navigation” and on “maintaining the security of the Sea Lanes of Communication to facilitate unhindered trade, bilaterally as well as multilaterally with regional neighbors” – meaning, of course, China.

A “Japan-India Defense Policy Dialogue” will be held in Tokyo in early 2012, and staff-level talks are to take place between Japan’s Ground Self-Defense Force and the Indian Army, along with staff exchanges between the Japanese Air Self-Defense Force and the Indian Air Force. Indeed, Japan and India are beginning to build the type of comprehensive military cooperation that has long characterized Japan’s ties with the US.

This development will, undoubtedly, disturb China, which has been making ever more strident moves toward regional suzerainty. Chinese assertiveness, most of it currently focused on the country’s claims to the South China Sea, has been a wake-up call about the type of regional order that China would establish if it had the power. Fears are running so high that 15 of the 18 countries at the recent East Asian Cooperation meeting in Bali singled out China’s behavior concerning the South China Sea as a threat.

The core issue is maritime security – and not only in the South China Sea. “The Indian Ocean,” says the US author Robert Kaplan, is “where the rivalry between the United States and China in the Pacific interlocks with the regional rivalry between China and India, and also with America’s fight against Islamic terrorism in the Middle East, which includes America’s attempt to contain Iran.”

India’s and China’s rival aspirations to be acknowledged as regional Great Powers, as well as their quest for energy security, are compelling both countries to seek greater maritime security. India, however, has a clear advantage, as its recent Look East policies show that it can forge enhanced security ties not only with the US, but also with the region’s other key powers – even Indonesia.

Stephen P. Cohen, a renowned analyst of India, has argued that, since the country gained independence, its

“officials have inculcated the precepts of George Washington’s Farewell Address of 1796: that India, like the United States, inhabits its own geographical sphere, in India’s case between the Himalayas and the Wide Indian Ocean, and thus [it] is in a position of both dominance and detachment. During the Cold War, this meant non-engagement; now it means that Indians see themselves with their own separate status as a rising power.”

The problem, of course, is that China views itself the same way. So, how are Asia’s two giants to live in neighborly accord without encroaching on the other’s space? So far, the response has been to construct a regional security structure with no Chinese participation.

That need not be the case, but the current impulse behind today’s Asian security diplomacy will not change unless China rethinks its attitude towards its neighbors. Otherwise, its leaders will find themselves present at the creation of a regional order that holds little appeal for them.

Lorsque Barack Obama s’adressera au Parlement fédéral australien, le 17 novembre, son propos sera surtout destiné aux pays de l’Asie-Pacifique, inquiets de l’influence grandissante de la Chine dans la région. En faisant escale à Canberra, la capitale australienne, avant de se rendre au sommet de l’Asean, à Bali (Indonésie), le président américain devrait réaffirmer l’engagement des Etats-Unis aux côtés de ses alliés traditionnels dans la zone, à commencer par l’Australie, la plus grande île du monde.

Les liens entre ces deux pays-continents vont bien au-delà des affinités linguistiques et culturelles entre deux anciennes colonies britanniques, même si la reine d’Angleterre est toujours formellement le chef de l’Etat australien. Le sens de ce déplacement a été énoncé sans fioritures, en septembre, par Leon Panetta, secrétaire américain à la défense. Lors de la rencontre annuelle entre les dirigeants des deux pays (Ausmin), à San Francisco, le patron du Pentagone a fermement mis en garde Pékin, en des termes à peine voilés. “Nous envoyons un message très clair à la région Asie-Pacifique : les Etats-Unis et l’Australie continueront à travailler ensemble pour démontrer à ceux qui nous menaceraient que rien ne nous séparera.”

Pour enfoncer le clou, Barack Obama et Julia Gillard, première ministre travailliste de l’Australie, devraient ratifier de nouveaux accords de coopération militaires entre Washington et Canberra. Ils s’inscrivent dans la continuité de l’Anzus, le pacte de défense conclu, en 1951, entre les Etats-Unis, l’Australie et la Nouvelle-Zélande, souvent présenté comme un “mini-OTAN” régional. Au terme de ces nouvelles dispositions, les Etats-Unis, qui n’ont jamais disposé de bases militaires sur le territoire australien, vont renforcer leur présence en Asie du Sud-Est en partageant des installations avec l’Australie dans l’océan Indien, dont les détails n’ont pas encore été révélés. Ils auront aussi un plus grand accès aux ports australiens, ainsi qu’aux centres de stockage pour leur matériel. La principale nouveauté porte sur la coopération dans la lutte contre la cybercriminalité, qui passera par des échanges de données approfondis. Une mesure, là encore, qui vise la Chine, soupçonnée par Washington de se livrer à un intense espionnage électronique.

Tout cela n’est pas très surprenant au vu des liens qui unissent l’Australie et les Etats-Unis depuis la seconde guerre mondiale. Leur coopération a été scellée après la prise de Singapour par les Japonais, en 1942, qui marque le déclin de l’influence britannique en Asie. Dès ce moment, les Australiens ont jugé que seul Washington était en mesure de garantir leur sécurité.

La visite de Barack Obama marque cependant un tournant car elle illustre de façon éclatante le nouveau “dilemme chinois” de l’Australie. “Pour la première fois de notre histoire, nous nous trouvons dans la situation où notre plus grand partenaire commercial, la Chine, est en concurrence frontale avec notre allié historique, les Etats-Unis”, relève Hugh White, ancien haut fonctionnaire au ministère de la défense et professeur d’études stratégiques à l’université nationale de Canberra.

L’Australie est un cas d’école intrigant. C’est sans doute le pays qui incarne le mieux les opportunités et les défis posés par l’émergence de la Chine au monde occidental. A la différence de l’Europe et des Etats-Unis, où la montée en puissance chinoise est vécue comme une menace, elle est largement perçue comme une chance par les Australiens.

La première ministre, Julia Gillard, s’en est fait l’écho de façon évocatrice : “La nouvelle classe moyenne en Asie vit dans des appartements et voyage dans des trains construits avec nos minerais et notre charbon”, a-t-elle insisté, à la fin septembre, lors d’une intervention devant l’Asia Society, à Melbourne. Elle faisait ainsi référence à l’extraordinaire richesse du sous-sol australien, qui abrite toutes les matières premières indispensables au boom économique chinois (zinc, uranium, cuivre, etc.). Il n’y a jamais eu, a-t-elle souligné, “un tel engouement pour les ressources du pays depuis la ruée sur l’or dans les années 1850″.

Cet appétit vorace des Chinois a métamorphosé l’Australie. Les régions de l’ouest du pays, naguère délaissées, sont en pleine expansion grâce à la mise en valeur de leur potentiel minier. Au point de créer une pénurie de main-d’oeuvre dans les Etats de la côte est, historiquement les plus prospères. Les contrats mirobolants se succèdent les uns les autres. Rien que cette année, il y en a eu quatre de plusieurs milliards de dollars. En septembre, le géant américain Chevron a ainsi déboursé 29 milliards de dollars australiens (22 milliards d’euros) pour l’exploitation d’un terminal de gaz liquéfié à Wheatstone. Au total, constate Hugh White, “l’Australie exporte un million de tonnes de minerais de fer par jour”…

L’émergence de la Chine a été le moteur de l’exceptionnelle longévité de la croissance (3,75 % prévus en 2011) de l’Australie, ininterrompue depuis 1992, un record parmi les pays industrialisés ! Le chômage est limité (5,2 %) et la dette publique insignifiante (22 % du PIB). Le tournant a été atteint en 2007, lorsque la Chine est devenue le premier partenaire commercial du pays, détrônant le Japon et les Etats-Unis. Aujourd’hui, la Chine absorbe 22,6 % des exportations australiennes, contre seulement 5 % en 1995.

Cette évolution a bouleversé la donne. “Dans le siècle asiatique, nos faiblesses de jadis – notre dépendance envers les matières premières et notre situation géographique – sont devenues nos grands atouts”, a souligné Julia Gillard. Mais cette prospérité pose aussi de nouveaux défis à l’Australie. Comment peut-elle concilier sa diplomatie pro-occidentale avec un ancrage économique de plus en plus oriental ? “Pour l’instant, note Hugh White, le pays n’a pas eu à trancher car ni la Chine ni les Etats-Unis ne lui ont demandé de choisir son camp.”

Toutefois, des signes avant-coureurs de ces tensions latentes se sont déjà manifestés. En 2004, le ministre australien des affaires étrangères, Alexander Downer, a été sèchement rappelé à l’ordre par son gouvernement et par Washington, lorsqu’il a déclaré que l’Australie se tiendrait à l’écart de tout conflit entre la Chine et Taïwan. Plus récemment, les autorités de Pékin ont exprimé leur courroux, en 2009, après la publication du rapport sur la stratégie de défense de l’Australie, jugée inamicale à l’égard de la Chine, car ce rapport réaffirmait l’attachement de l’Australie à sa coopération militaire avec les Etats-Unis.

Les conséquences de ce défi chinois émergent à peine dans le débat public. “Nous sommes dans une situation inconfortable, constate Hugh White, car nous avons pris conscience de cette nouvelle réalité, mais nous n’avons pas encore trouvé de réponse à ce dilemme.” Signe de ces interrogations : le gouvernement a commandé, en septembre, un Livre blanc, intitulé “L’Australie dans le siècle asiatique”. Il devra passer au crible tous les enjeux posés par l’essor de la Chine. Ses conclusions seront rendues publiques à la mi-2012. Nul doute qu’elles seront scrutées à la loupe à Washington et à Pékin.

Theme: ‘Home-grown’ Islamist terrorism has developed in Australia in a comparable pattern to other Western countries. The Australian counter-terrorism strategy is similar to that in the UK, including the recent introduction of community-based preventive initiatives.

Summary: This ARI summarises the findings from an-depth empirical study of all publicly-confirmed cases of Islamist terrorism involving Australians. The domestic situation of Australian Muslims is briefly described, followed by an overview of Islamist terrorism cases to date, including the number and location of cases and the level of threat they have presented, both domestically and internationally. The background characteristics of offenders and details of radicalisation are discussed, followed by an examination of the national counter-terrorism (CT) strategy, with a focus upon counter-radicalisation initiatives. Current CT tactics appear to be appropriate to the nature of the threat; however, it will be important to closely monitor preventive measures in order to avoid a potential backlash similar to that in the UK, and to make sure that they are appropriately targeted.

Analysis: Although Australia has not yet suffered from an Islamist terrorist attack at home, jihadi militants have been active in the country since the 1980s and ‘home-grown’ Islamist terrorism (HGIT) has recently been recognised as a serious and likely persistent threat to national and international security.[1] In order to assess the nature of the threat it is important to have an appreciation of the Australian context, the number and location of Islamist terrorism cases, the level of threat these individuals have presented so far (including links to foreign terrorist organisations), background characteristics of offenders and their pathways of radicalisation, and current CT tactics.

The Australian Context

While Islamist terrorists represent only a tiny minority of the wider Muslim population in any country, the domestic situation of Muslims has the potential to fuel grievances and therefore contribute to an element of pre-disposing risk for some individuals. The Australian Muslim population is diverse, is located mainly in Sydney and Melbourne, and accounts for approximately 2% of the overall population.[2] Research has shown that they are affected by poor social and economic conditions,[3] suggesting that there is potential reason for frustration directed against the home-country. More significantly, Australia participated in the invasion of Iraq and maintains combat troops in Afghanistan. It has also been repeatedly named as a legitimate target for attack by bin Laden and others, and more than 100 Australians have died in Islamist terrorist attacks overseas, primarily in Indonesia. It is also relevant that the Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir (HuT) is active in Australia, although it has not had the same impact as similar groups in the UK.

Number and Location of Cases

From September 2000 until mid-2011 there have been 16 publicly-confirmed cases (36 individuals) actively participating in, planning or promoting violent jihad at home or abroad. Twenty-seven of these individuals have been convicted in Australia, primarily under terrorism statutes; one person has been convicted of terrorism offences in Kazakhstan; another has been convicted in Kuwait; one person has been charged in Lebanon and one person was killed fighting in Somalia; Willie Brigitte was convicted in France for planning attacks whilst in Australia; another four individuals have not been charged, or had charges dropped, although their involvement in violent jihad has been publicly documented. In addition to these figures there have been a number of unconfirmed cases, as well as 40 Australians who have had their passports revoked or denied for ‘reasons relating to terrorism’.[4]

In the 11-year period from 2000 up until 2010 there has been at least one publicly confirmed Islamist terrorism case involving Australian citizens each year, with the exceptions of 2008 and 2010 (and none so far in 2011). This translates into a rate of 1.45 cases, or 3.27 individuals per year (see Table 1 below). In comparison to countries such as the US and the UK, Australia has clearly experienced a lower number of Islamist terrorism cases. However, it is worth noting that Australia has a comparatively small Muslim population and for this reason, the rate of Australian cases relative to Muslim population size is higher than for the US and for the UK even, for the period 2001-08.[5] Although this says more about the potentially misleading nature of statistics (since Australia remains geographically peripheral and is a secondary target for violent Islamists), it is important to comprehend the scale of the problem.

Table 1. Australian Islamist terrorism cases, 2000-10 (numbers in brackets refer to individuals; figures per population are multiplied by 1,000 for presentation purposes)

In terms of geographic distribution within Australia, 10 Islamist terrorism cases so far have involved individuals based in Sydney (two of whom relocated to Perth); four have involved individuals based in Melbourne; and two cases involved individuals from Adelaide. Six cases (16 individuals) have involved a focus on carrying out domestic attacks, although only three of these have presented a credible threat (see below). Thus, more cases have involved attempts to go overseas for violent jihad, but more individuals have been involved in domestic terrorist activity since these have involved larger groups.

Threat Level so Far

To date, there have been no successful Islamist terrorist attacks within Australia, nor have domestically-focused groups managed to come close to success. The most credible domestic threats occurred in 2003 (Willie Brigitte and Faheem Lodhi), 2005 (the Sydney ‘Operation Pendennis’ group) and 2009 (the ‘Operation Neath’ plotters). None of these groups had constructed working explosive devices and they were not ready to launch an assault at the time of their arrests. With the possible exception of the Neath group, who were planning a Mumbai-style attack on Holsworthy army barracks in Sydney, no definite targets had been decided.

There are fewer precise details about the overseas activities of Australian jihadists, although they have involved collaboration with foreign terrorist organisations (FTOs) in terms of training, planning attacks and participating in armed combat. For example, Omar Hadba from Sydney stands accused of having killed civilian and military personnel in Lebanon in 2006 as part of the Islamist militant group Fatah al-Islam.[6]

Links to FTOs among Australian Islamist terrorism cases have been present in 14 of 16 cases (88%). The comparative percentages for cases in the US and the UK are 50% and 43%, respectively, between 2001 and 2008[7] and although it is surprising that the Australian rate is higher, it is a matter of the low numbers involved. Australians have been linked to the following FTOs: Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), the Taliban, al-Qaeda, Lashkar e-Taiba (LeT), Jaish e-Mohammed (JeM), the Peninsula Lions in Kuwait, Fatah al-Islam in Lebanon, and al-Shabab in Somalia.

Despite the prevalence of such links, fewer individuals have established contact with FTOs over time, and –similar to other Western countries– the nature of that contact has diminished among domestically-based groups. Earlier cases involved more significant levels of organisational support, including logistic advice and financial backing for conducting attacks. More recent ties to FTOs for domestic groups have either been limited to previous training with no additional support (individuals in the Sydney and Melbourne Pendennis groups), or primarily involved telephone contact and small-scale fundraising for al-Shabab (Operation Neath). There is no evidence that FTOs have actively supported or had knowledge of terrorist plots in Australia since Jack Roche (in 2000) and Willie Brigitte and Faheem Lodhi (in 2003). This lack of organisational support for attacks within Australia helps to explain the limited capacity of domestic groups to date.

Offender Characteristics and Radicalisation

The available data indicates that Australian jihadis are broadly similar to Islamist terrorists from Europe and North America in that they are male, mostly below the age of 30 and are citizens or long-term residents of the country in question.[8] Although more than half of the sample was born in Australia, most are dual nationals and close to 60% are of Lebanese heritage. Educational attainment is generally quite low, with at least seven individuals having left high school before the age of 18, and only three confirmed as having completed university.[9]

In accordance with their level of education (and comparable to a study of European jihadis by Bakker)[10] most were in unskilled or semi-skilled occupations such as driving taxis or manual labour. Around 70% of the sample was married, most with children, at the time of involvement in terrorist activity; only a handful appear to have had previous unrelated criminal records (for generally minor offences); and although several individuals exhibited psychiatric disorder as a result of incarceration, available information indicates that only one or two people in the sample were suffering from serious mental health issues at the time of offending and none were legally exculpated on these grounds.[11]

Overall, there is nothing remarkable about the backgrounds of Australian jihadis that distinguishes them from the rest of the population that would be useful for investigative profiling. Nor is there much that marks them out as vastly different from studies of their contemporaries in other Western countries (the Australians have a slightly lower socioeconomic standing, a slightly higher average age –but are still most in their 20s– and a slightly higher marriage rate, but these characteristics are hardly discerning).

The unique feature of Australian jihadis (aside from their geographic base in the Antipodes) is the aforementioned prevalence of Lebanese among them, which is not easily explained. People of Lebanese origin represent about 9% of the Australian Muslim population[12] and are therefore over-represented in Islamist terrorism cases. Moreover, Lebanon has not featured heavily in the ‘global’ jihad and few Lebanese people have been convicted for terrorism offences in other Western countries. At face value it seems as if there is something unique in the experience of the Australian-Lebanese that might help to explain the radicalisation of individuals in the sample. Lingering racial tensions (which flared up in the Cronulla riots south of Sydney in 2005) are potentially relevant in this regard. However, it is important to bear in mind the small sample size, meaning that relative percentages are easily skewed. Moreover the bottom-line, or necessary, conditions for involvement in Islamist terrorism within the West appear to be a mixture of social and ideological exposure.[13] In other words, it is more productive to examine localised, pro-jihadi subcultures (direct motivators) rather than broad socioeconomic conditions (pre-disposing risk) in trying to explain how and why individuals become involved in terrorism.

Geographically, the distribution of Islamist terrorism cases in Australia over time reflects the initial distribution of influential Islamist militants and ideologues dating back to the 1980s. These factors are likely to have contributed to lasting pro-jihadi subcultures, maintained via a process of social transmission of ideas. Within supportive environments, jihadi entrepreneurs such as Abdul Nacer Benbrika (‘spiritual leader’ in the Melbourne Pendennis group) have gradually become more extreme in their beliefs and have managed to attract limited numbers of like-minded others.

Retrospectively tracing processes of radicalisation is fraught with hindsight bias –the tendency to interpret information as meaningful and in support of the current hypothesis–. It is also an exercise which is frequently plagued by the lack of information on which to base judgements, especially for less well-known cases. With these limitations in mind, available information suggests that Australian jihadis have radicalised in a similar fashion to ‘home-grown’ Islamist terrorists in other Western countries.[14] Many do not appear to have been particularly religious prior to becoming involved in radical Islamism (at least five were converts) and they seem to have adopted increasingly militant identities by way of intensifying group-socialisation.[15] Very few in the Australian sample have acted independently of an immediate group or at least a wider, supportive network, and although leaders are not always readily identifiable, there does appear to have been top-down influence in various forms, ranging from informal social influence to organisational direction.[16] Radicalisation thus appears to have taken place by way of more or less informal social interaction and mutual influence within groups.[17] Beyond these social (process) motivations, individuals expressed a predictable mixture of religious and political justifications for violent jihad (ideological motivations), including outrage at Australian support for military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.[18] There is also evidence that individuals accessed online jihadi propaganda, which seems to have contributed to their radicalisation, and that the Internet was also used to distribute jihadi materials and to research potential targets for attack.[19]

Australian Counter-Terrorism

Having examined the threat, it is equally important to examine the response. The revised Australian CT strategy was unveiled in a 2010 White Paper which officially acknowledged the threat from home-grown Islamist terrorists for the first time.[20] The 2010 White Paper outlines the overarching national strategy for countering terrorism, which is modelled after the UK CONTEST strategy (see Table 2 below). This involves a comprehensive approach to mitigating the terrorist threat by incorporating both international and domestic CT measures.

Table 2. British and Australian CT strategies

It is beyond the scope of this ARI to give an in-depth account of every aspect of Australian CT, although it is worth noting that Australian authorities are working to overcome similar barriers to more effective investigation as experienced in other Western countries (relating to interagency information sharing and cooperation).[21] The focus here will be upon the ‘Resilience’ strand of CT and related counter-radicalisation initiatives, which are aimed at preventing further radicalisation of Australian residents.

In accordance with general trends, the Australian approach to CT in the post-9/11 era has emphasised prevention and there has been an increasing interest in counter-radicalisation programmes, both for the rehabilitation of convicted terrorism offenders and in a preventive capacity within communities (under the heading of ‘Resilience’). To date, little has been publicised about either sort of programme, due to the fact that both are in their infancy and have yet to be systematically evaluated. In particular, there is a dearth of information about rehabilitative ‘de-radicalisation’ efforts with Australia’s convicted Islamist terrorists. The few details released so far indicate that ‘specialist staff and psychologists’ are engaging with prisoners on a one-to-one basis to discuss and challenge radical beliefs in an effort to supplant them with more moderate tendencies.[22] Although it is unclear how structured these interventions are, they clearly build upon existing programmes around the world and are likely to face many of the same challenges.[23]

Preventive counter-radicalisation in Australia is an even more recent endeavour and involves at least three overlapping layers. At the highest, and most indirect level, broad government policies aim to ‘build social cohesion, harmony and security’,[24] including efforts to provide socioeconomic opportunities, to reduce inter-communal conflict and to explain Australian CT law and foreign policy to ‘at-risk’ communities.[25] The Australian Federal Police (AFP) engages with newly arrived immigrants to explain Australian law and policing and is reported to be increasing community outreach, including taking part in sporting activities for ‘at-risk’ youth.[26] Below the Federal level, State Police are more closely engaged with communities and have expanded these activities as part of their CT remit. This includes arranging community meetings to explain CT laws and who they are aimed at as part of broader efforts aimed at building trust; however, as a senior New South Wales Police officer remarked, ‘We have no ability to counter-radicalise anybody, [so] we have to rely on people who have that capacity’.[27] The Federal and State levels are thus aimed at reducing elements of pre-disposing risk, enhancing community engagement for the purposes of improved cooperation and identifying ‘at-risk’ individuals who may be targeted for intervention.

The third and most direct level of preventive counter-radicalisation in Australia is orchestrated by the Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) Taskforce within the Attorney General’s Department but (as in the UK) is to be primarily implemented by community partners. It is the AGD’s view that ‘Communities are best placed to develop solutions to local problems and for that reason, consultation will be occurring with a wide variety of community groups and stakeholders’.[28] In May 2010, AUS$9.7 million of funding was announced for the CVE to be spent over four years.[29] In February 2011 it was announced that AUS$1.1 million of that funding was being used for the ‘Building Community Resilience: Youth Mentoring Grants Program’.[30] Over 100 community groups applied for between AUS$5,000 and AUS$200,000 for the programme, although only seven groups have been confirmed as being successful.[31] Details of these seven groups and how they will contribute to counter-radicalisation are so far fairly sparse but on the whole they appear to focus more on developing mentoring skills (including modelling appropriate behaviours and communication skills) and promoting participation in Australian democratic society among youths, rather than focusing explicitly on violent Islamist ideology.[32]

The present situation does not permit a detailed evaluation of CVE programmes, given their recent development and lacking information. However, there are important parallels between the Australian ‘Resilience’ and the UK ‘Prevent’ approaches which may be informative. The ‘Prevent’ strategy was implemented on a much larger scale than in Australia, but involved a similar mixture of broad and indirect measures aimed at improving social cohesion, and a policy of financing a wide variety of community groups to conduct the actual leg-work of counter-radicalisation.[33] This strategy came under a significant amount of criticism for being ineffective but also apparently for providing funds to anti-democratic and extremist groups who were in fact promoting many of the same beliefs that were supposed to countered.[34] The fundamental reasons for this occurring were that there was an emphasis on preventing violent behaviour without too much concern for related beliefs, and there was a lack of clear criteria from central government that might assist local governments and police in choosing who to engage with.[35] At the same time, ‘Prevent’ initiatives are believed to have further singled out Muslims in British society, to have securitised their relationship with the state, and to have increased rather than decreased alienation, leading to recent reforms.[36]

Looking at the Australian ‘Resilience’ and CVE measures, it is far too early to condemn them, but there are lessons to be learnt. The emphasis on countering violent extremism runs the risk of leaving the door open to engaging with inappropriate community partners who may exacerbate the problem. It would thus be sensible for the Australian authorities to reappraise the limits of their aims (although this delves deeper into the Pandora’s Box of how exactly a Western secular government should address religious beliefs, which are also combined with distinctly non-Western political perspectives). In any case, it is vital to devise clear criteria for engagement with community partners using democratic values and commitment to Australia and civil rights as a yardstick.[37] Equally, there must be criteria for assessing community partnerships over time and for severing relationships in the event that they are deemed inappropriate or counter-productive. On a positive note, the modest scale of CVE in Australia is indicative of a cautious approach. It is also important to note that the aim in Australia is to target all forms of violent extremism (not just radical Islamism), therefore theoretically limiting further potential alienation of Muslims in society.

Conclusion; Home-grown Islamist terrorism has become a fact in Australian society much as it has throughout the West and it is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. The Australian government has developed a comprehensive CT strategy, which is appropriate to the nature of the threat. However, initiatives developed under the ‘Resilience’ strand of the overall strategy in particular are still very new and face some daunting challenges. Whether or not these efforts are successful is going to be very difficult to assess, even with a great deal more information.

Based on the analysis of the threat (see above), a key factor that will at least partially determine the efficacy of preventative community interventions will be whether they are appropriately targeted. This means that service provision should be geographically and socially targeted to intervene within genuinely ‘at-risk’ communities, ie, where social and ideological exposure to violent Islamist ideology is occurring. It also means that the right individuals must be targeted. Granted, the whole point of prevention is to intervene before a problem develops; however, given that Australian jihadis have generally been in their mid-to-late 20s and married, and did not radicalise until this point in their lives, it is unclear whether targeting youths can inoculate them from future radicalisation. At the very least it seems that some form of intervention for young men in their 20s (presumably overlooked by youth-mentoring schemes) should also be considered.

The future is, of course, uncertain and there is no magic bullet for countering Islamist terrorism in the West. The real challenge for Australia will be to maintain a measured response and to contain the backlash in society should a successful domestic attack take place.

********************

[1] Australian Government (2010), Counter-Terrorism White Paper: Securing Australia, Protecting Our Community, Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Canberra, accessed 29/V/2010.

[2] Muslims in Australia: A Snap Shot (undated), Department of Immigration and Citizenship, Canberra, accessed 29/V/2010.

[3] Amanda Wise & Jan Ali (2008), Muslim Australians and Local Government: Grassroots Strategies to Improve Relations between Muslim and Non-Muslim-Australians, Centrefor Research on Social Cohesion, Sydney, accessed 20/IV/2011.

[4] Australian Government (2010), Counter-Terrorism White Paper.

[5] This author has currently analysed 47 publicly-confirmed Islamist terrorism cases (92 individuals) in the US from 2001 to 2008, and 56 cases (112 individuals) in the UK for the same period. See Sam Mullins (2010), ‘A Systematic Analysis of Islamist Terrorism in the USA and UK: 2001-2008’, unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Wollongong. This data set is currently being updated to include 2009 onwards.

[6] See Mullins (2011), ‘Islamist Terrorism and Australia’, p. 275

[7] Mullins (2010), ‘A Systematic Analysis of Islamist Terrorism in the USA and UK: 2001-2008’,  p. 338.

[8] Mullins (2011), ‘Islamist Terrorism and Australia’, p. 259-262.

[9] Ibid; Louise Porter & Mark Kebbell (2010), ‘Radicalization in Australia: Examining Australia’s Convicted Terrorists’, Psychiatry, Psychology and Law, 11/VI/2010.

[10] Edwin Bakker (2006), Jihadi Terrorists in Europe: Their Characteristics and the Circumstances in Which They Joined the Jihad: An Exploratory Study, Clingendael Institute, The Hague.

[11] Mullins (2011), ‘Islamist Terrorism and Australia’, p. 261-262; Porter & Kebbell (2010), ‘Radicalization in Australia’, p. 8.

[12] About Australia: Muslims in Australia (2009), Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Canberra, 30/V/2010.

[13] Sam Mullins (2010), ‘Iraq Versus Lack of Integration: Understanding the Motivations of Contemporary Islamist Terrorists in the West’, Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression, 19/X/2010.

[14] Marc Sageman (2008), Leaderless Jihad: Terror Networks in the Twenty-First Century, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia; Marc Sageman (2004), Understanding Terror Networks, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia; Mitchell Silber & Arvin Bhatt (2007), Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat, New York City Police Department, New York.

[15] Porter & Kebbell (2010), ‘Radicalization in Australia’, p. 9-10.

[16] Mullins (2011), ‘Islamist Terrorism and Australia’, p. 262-263.

[17] See Clark McCauley & Sophia Moskalenko (2008), ‘Mechanisms of Political Radicalization: Pathways Toward Terrorism’, Terrorism and Political Violence, vol. 20, nr. 3, p. 415–433.

[18] Porter & Kebbell (2010), ‘Radicalization in Australia’, p. 11-12.

[19] Mullins (2011), ‘Islamist Terrorism and Australia’, p. 269; Porter & Kebbell (2010), ‘Radicalization in Australia’, p. 13-14.

[20] Australian Government (2010), Counter-Terrorism White Paper.

[21] See, for example, Kelly O’Hara & Anthony Bergin (2009), ‘Information Sharing in Australia’s National Security Community’, Australian Strategic Policy Institute, November, accessed 26/II/2011.

[22] ‘Terrorists to be “De-Radicalised” in NSW Supermax’, ABC News, 25/II/2010, accessed 27/II/2010.

[23] See Sam Mullins (2010), ‘Rehabilitation of Islamist terrorists: Lessons from criminology’, Dynamics of Asymmetric Conflict, vol. 3, nr. 3, p. 162-193.

[24] Australian Government (2010), Counter-Terrorism White Paper, p.67.

[25] Ibid, p. 63-68; Attorney-General’s Department (2010), ‘Countering Violent Extremism in Our Community’, Attorney-General’s Department, 11/V/2010, accessed 17/II/2011.

[26] Sally Neighbour (2010), ‘Battle of Ideas to Curb Terror’, The Australian, 2/XI/2010, accessed 26/II/2011.

[27] Ibid.

[28] Attorney General’s Department (2010), ‘Countering Violent Extremism’, Attorney-General’s Department, 17/II/2010, accessed 26/II/26, 2011.

[29] Attorney-General’s Department (2010), ‘Countering Violent Extremism in Our Community’.

[30] Attorney General’s Department (2011), ‘Youth Mentoring Grants to Help Tackle Violent Extremism’, Attorney General’s Department, 22/II/2011, accessed 26/II/2011.

[31] Ibid; Attorney-General’s Department (2010), ‘Countering Violent Extremism in Our Community’.

[32] See Attorney General’s Department (2011), ‘Youth Mentoring Grants to Help Tackle Violent Extremism’.

[33] See Shiraz Maher & Martyn Frampton (2009), Choosing Our Friends Wisely: Criteria for Engagement with Muslim Groups, Policy Exchange, London, accessed 12/I/2011; Patrick Roberts (2010), ‘Preventative Medicine – The UK’s Changing Approach to Radicalism’, Jane’s Intelligence Review, 29/X/2010.

[34] Duncan Gardham (2011), ‘Counter-Terrorism Projects Worth £1.2m Face Axe as Part of End to Multiculturalism’, The Telegraph, 11/II/2011, accessed 12/II/2011.

[35] Maher & Frampton (2009), Choosing Our Friends Wisely.

[36] Ibid; Roberts, (2010), ‘Preventative Medicine – The UK’s Changing Approach to Radicalism’.

[37] See Maher & Frampton (2009), Choosing Our Friends Wisely.

When the Commonwealth heads of government meet in Australia later this month, one prominent leader is almost certain to be conspicuously absent: India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. India is a strong backer of the association of former British colonies (and some new entrants without that shared heritage, notably Mozambique and Rwanda), so no displeasure with the Commonwealth is implied. Instead, rumors in New Delhi suggest that the decision to send a delegation led by India’s ceremonial vice-president, albeit an able former diplomat, might be a not-so-subtle rebuke to the summit’s host, Australia.

On the face of it, it is hard to imagine two countries with less cause for conflict. United by the English language, similar democratic political institutions, and a shared passion for cricket, and divided by no significant issues of contention, India and Australia seem obvious candidates for the sort of benign relationship of which most diplomats dream.

Two years ago, a sensitive area did emerge, when reports of Indian students being brutally attacked in “hate crime” incidents in Melbourne and Sydney inflamed India’s excitable media and threatened to derail the relationship. But this has been dealt with successfully, mainly through adroit diplomacy on both sides and effective preventive policing by Australia. The Commonwealth summit might well have provided an opportunity to celebrate the restoration of bonhomie.

Instead, relations have been strained by the continuing refusal of Australia’s Labour Party government to sell uranium to energy-starved India for its civilian nuclear program. A regular supplier of uranium for China’s extensive nuclear-weapons program (while overlooking its record of facilitating Pakistan’s clandestine weapons development), Australia nonetheless justifies its stance on the grounds of India’s refusal to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

India’s stance was based on principle: the NPT is the last vestige of apartheid in the international system, granting as it does to five countries the right to be nuclear-weapons states while denying the same right to others. If nuclear weapons are evil – and India agrees with Australia that they are – then no one should have them. What is the moral, ethical, or legal basis for suggesting that some can and others cannot? What virtue do the “official” nuclear powers possess that democratic India lacks?

A long-time advocate of global nuclear disarmament, India’s position on the NPT enjoys near-consensus backing within the country. If everyone disarms, India will gladly do so, too. The issue is, above all, one of strategic common sense: China, which went to war with India in 1962, has nuclear weapons pointed at it, making it irresponsible to sign a treaty that would disarm India unilaterally.

Moreover, unlike Iran and North Korea, which signed the NPT and then violated its provisions through clandestine nuclear-weapons programs, India has breached no international obligation, openly pursued its own nuclear development, and has a clean record on proliferation: it has never exported its technology or leaked a nuclear secret. Its nuclear program is strictly in civilian hands. And its nuclear doctrine rests on deterrence, backed by a credible retaliatory threat, rather than a destabilizing first-strike capacity, which India has not developed even against a superior potential adversary like China.

India does not dispute that the risk of nuclear conflict over the next 20 years has increased with the potential emergence of new nuclear-weapon states and the threat that terrorist groups could acquire nuclear materials. Pakistan’s willingness to allow its territory to be used for attacks against India, like the assault on Mumbai in November 2008, inevitably carries the risk of sparking a larger conflagration, and its refusal to sign a “no first-strike” agreement with India is a serious cause for concern. There are also genuine questions regarding the ability of a state like Pakistan to control and secure its nuclear arsenal in the event of internal disruption.

This helps explain why Singh has made such an extraordinary effort to sustain dialogue with Pakistan – and why India remains a strong proponent of universal nuclear disarmament. India’s approach is based on the belief that non-proliferation cannot be an end in itself; rather, it must be linked to nuclear disarmament in a mutually reinforcing process. Effective disarmament must enhance the security of all states – not, as the NPT ensures, merely that of a few.

India set out its goals regarding nuclear disarmament as far back as June 1988, when then-Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi presented to the United Nations an Action Plan for ushering in a nuclear-weapons-free world. He argued that the “alternative to co-existence is co-destruction.” Even today, India is perhaps the only nuclear-weapons state ready and willing to negotiate a treaty leading to global, non-discriminatory, and verifiable elimination of these deadly armaments.

So Australia’s refusal to emulate the United States in recognizing that India merits an exception on nuclear supplies rankles Indians. In fact, India has all the uranium it currently needs from other suppliers; the issue is one of principle. Just four years ago, India, Australia, and the US participated in joint military and naval exercises, together with Japan and Singapore. It is safe to assume that Australia will need to rethink its position on uranium exports before anything like that happens again.

En un momento en el que los espantosos sucesos de Noruega nos recuerdan cuánta intolerancia asesina hay aún en el mundo, tal vez una historia de signo contrario pueda devolvernos un poco de optimismo, en el sentido de que se están produciendo algunos cambios de actitud positivos e históricamente importantes.

El mes pasado, un jugador de fútbol de la primera división de Australia fue multado y suspendido y, a consecuencia del cúmulo de informaciones negativas aparecidas en la prensa, sufrió una profunda humillación pública. Lo que tuvo de inhabitual ese caso –y la magnitud de la respuesta– fue su delito. No fue una entrada brutal; no insultó al árbitro ni facilitó información privilegiada a los jugadores. Fue simplemente un comentario injurioso que sólo oyó su oponente, pero éste había nacido en Nigeria y el comentario fue un insulto racista.

Pocos días antes, en un incidente al que los medios de comunicación dedicaron mucha atención y que condenaron, un espectador que profirió insultos racistas contra un jugador nacido en el Sudán fue expulsado del estadio y se le prohibió asistir a los partidos futuros, a no ser que se sometiera a un curso de concienciación sobre el racismo.

Hace pocos años, en Australia, como en la mayor parte del mundo, esa clase de incidentes habría pasado inadvertida y no se habría exigido reparación por ellos. No eran graves, sino que formaban parte simplemente del juego, se pronunciaban con el acaloramiento de una contienda propia de gladiadores en el terreno de juego y los apasionados gritos de ánimo de los partidarios en los graderíos.

Un jugador famoso del decenio de 1990 dijo por aquella época: “Si creyera que sería de ayuda en el partido, haría un comentario racista todas las semanas”. Y los espectadores no eran diferentes: “Naturalmente, grito ‘negro cabrón’, pero no lo digo en serio. Sólo es una forma de manifestar a las claras los sentimientos”. A nadie parecía ocurrírsele que los jugadores negros víctimas de esos insultos pudieran tener sentimientos bastante diferentes al respecto.

Y todo ello sucedía en un país que parecía haber dejado atrás, al menos institucionalmente, su pasado racista. En el decenio de 1960 se abandonó la tristemente famosa política de inmigración de la “Australia blanca” y en el de 1970 se promulgó una sólida legislación antidiscriminación y se adoptaron innumerables medidas para remediar, mediante derechos territoriales y programas de justicia social, las injusticias padecidas durante muchos decenios por los indígenas aborígenes y el pueblo isleño del estrecho de Torres.

En el decenio de 1990, las muestras de racismo despreocupado –comentarios despreciativos sobre grupos nacionales y étnicos en el lugar de trabajo o en el bar o en la comida en familia (como recuerdo perfectamente por haberme criado en el decenio de 1950)– habían llegado a ser menos frecuentes en la vida privada australiana y, desde luego, totalmente ausentes de la vida pública, pero el deporte era en cierto modo algo distinto. En él, eran simples formas de desahogarse, no diferentes de las aclamaciones o los abucheos, o una táctica “legítima”, parecida a la de provocar a un contrario poniendo en duda su virilidad.

Ese talante y comportamiento empezó a cambiar con un gesto de un as aborigen de la Liga de Fútbol Australiana, Nicky Winmar, uno de los pocos que entonces jugaban en la primera división profesional. En 1993, se hartó. Después de haber sido el jugador más destacado en un partido, durante el cual había sido objeto constante de burlas raciales, se dirigió a los animadores del equipo contrario, se levantó la camiseta con una mano y señaló espectacularmente su pecho con la otra.

La declaración fue inequívoca: “Soy negro y me siento orgulloso de serlo”. La exigencia de que se adoptaran medidas, inspirada por  aquel incidente y por los insultos sufridos en el campo –y muy comentados en la prensa– por otro jugador aborigen y gran figura del deporte, Michael Long, dos años después, movieron a la Liga Australiana de Fútbol a introducir en 1995 un código de conducta sobre “denigración religiosa y racial” que combina un sólido proceso de conciliación con medidas punitivas apropiadas y un enérgico programa educativo.

Dicho código ha dado un resultado abrumadoramente positivo, al liberar el fútbol australiano del racismo en el terreno de juego, que amargaba la vida de la mayoría de los jugadores indígenas, gracias a lo cual a lo largo del último decenio se duplicó el número de éstos en el nivel más selecto. Desde entonces se ha aplicado en todas las competiciones futbolísticas de Australia y ha demostrado ser un modelo influyente para otros deportes en ese país y en el mundo entero. Por ejemplo, las reformas de Australia se han reflejado en las políticas antirracistas adoptadas en el último decenio por los órganos rectores del fútbol internacional, la FIFA y la UEFA (si bien en muchos casos la plasmación en el nivel nacional de esa política en forma de acciones eficaces y cuyo cumplimiento se pueda imponer ha dejado mucho que desear).

Sin embargo, durante mucho tiempo ha habido dudas en Australia sobre hasta qué punto era y estaba generalizado el compromiso, con el mensaje subyacente de que la denigración racial dondequiera que sea, por parte de quien sea y en las circunstancias que sean es, sencillamente, inaceptable. Hubo considerables muestras de afecto para con los deportistas masculinos y femeninos aborígenes  y, de hecho, para con el pueblo aborigen de Australia en general, como quedó patente en la manifestación de emoción, advertida a escala mundial, que acompañó a las emocionantes “Disculpas para con la generación robada” del Primer Ministro Kevin Rudd en 2008, pero, ¿se haría extensivo ese sentimiento a las personas de origen africano y a los miembros de otras etnias que estaban resultando cada vez más visibles en la vida australiana?

Lo sucedido en las últimas semanas demuestra que por fin ha habido un avance histórico de verdad. La revelación de los insultos padecidos por jugadores de origen sudanés y nigeriano provocó una oleada de repugnancia pública auténtica, visible y tangible: una sensación muy real de que los perpetradores habían dejado en mal lugar no sólo a sí mismos, sino también a su país. Para un australiano de mi generación, se trata de una experiencia muy novedosa y enormemente digna de beneplácito. Y hay toda clase de razones para esperar –y creer– que nuestra experiencia esté llegando a ser gradualmente universal.

I forgive you if you have never heard of my country.

At just 8 square miles, about a third of the size of Manhattan, and located in the southern Pacific Ocean, Nauru appears as merely a pinpoint on most maps — if it is not missing entirely in a vast expanse of blue.

But make no mistake; we are a sovereign nation, with our own language, customs and history dating back 3,000 years. Nauru is worth a quick Internet search, I assure you, for not only will you discover a fascinating country that is often overlooked, you will find an indispensible cautionary tale about life in a place with hard ecological limits.

Phosphate mining, first by foreign companies and later our own, cleared the lush tropical rainforest that once covered our island’s interior, scarring the land and leaving only a thin strip of coastline for us to live on. The legacy of exploitation left us with few economic alternatives and one of the highest unemployment rates in the world, and led previous governments to make unwise investments that ultimately squandered our country’s savings.

I am not looking for sympathy, but rather warning you what can happen when a country runs out of options. The world is headed down a similar path with the relentless burning of coal and oil, which is altering the planet’s climate, melting ice caps, making oceans more acidic and edging us ever closer to a day when no one will be able to take clean water, fertile soil or abundant food for granted.

Climate change also threatens the very existence of many countries in the Pacific, where the sea level is projected to rise three feet or more by the end of the century. Already, Nauru’s coast, the only habitable area, is steadily eroding, and communities in Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands have been forced to flee their homes to escape record tides. The low-lying nations of Tuvalu, Kiribati and the Marshall Islands may vanish entirely within our grandchildren’s lifetimes.

Similar climate stories are playing out on nearly every continent, where a steady onslaught of droughts, floods and heat waves, which are expected to become even more frequent and intense with climate change, have displaced millions of people and led to widespread food shortages.

The changes have already heightened competition over scarce resources, and could foreshadow life in a world where conflicts are increasingly driven by environmental catastrophes.

Yet the international community has not begun to prepare for the strain they will put on humanitarian organizations or their implications for political stability around the world.

In 2009, an initiative by the Pacific Small Island Developing States, of which I am chairman, prompted the United Nations General Assembly to recognize the link between climate change and security. But two years later, no concrete action has been taken.

So I was pleased to learn that the United Nations Security Council will take up the issue tomorrow in an open debate, in which I will have the opportunity to address the body and reiterate my organization’s proposals.

First, the Security Council should join the General Assembly in recognizing climate change as a threat to international peace and security. It is a threat as great as nuclear proliferation or global terrorism. Second, a special representative on climate and security should be appointed. Third, we must assess whether the United Nations system is itself capable of responding to a crisis of this magnitude.

The stakes are too high to implement these measures only after a disaster is already upon us. Negotiations to reduce emissions should remain the primary forum for reaching an international agreement. We are not asking for blue helmets to intervene; we are simply asking the international community to plan for the biggest environmental and humanitarian challenge of our time.

Nauru has begun an intensive program to restore the damage done by mining, and my administration has put environmental sustainability at the center of our policymaking. Making our island whole again will be a long and difficult process, but it is our home and we cannot leave it for another one.

I forgive you if you have never heard of Nauru — but you will not forgive yourselves if you ignore our story.

Rising sea levels could threaten the existence of small island states such as Tuvalu, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands and the Maldives. If the international community cannot or will not slow global warming, the least it can do is help those states prepare for life after land by recognizing a new category of state — the deterritorialized state.

If we do nothing and these nations become uninhabitable, their citizens will not only become displaced persons seeking refuge in other countries; they will also lose control of their vast maritime zones, including valuable fisheries and mineral deposits, which will likely become the property of neighboring states or the global commons.

A few solutions have already been offered. Disappearing states could try to acquire territory from another state. However, no other government is likely to give up some of its land, no matter the price. The construction of artificial islands has also been proposed, but the financial, engineering, cultural and legal challenges may be insurmountable. The best scenario under current international law appears to be for disappearing states to enter into some form of federation with another state. However, a merger would threaten their cultural identities and likely oblige them to relinquish control over their resources.

Simply continuing to recognize deterritorialized states as full states is a better solution. A deterritorialized state would consist of a government entity that would continue to represent the rights of its citizens at the international level and vis-à-vis their new host state or states. It would manage the state’s maritime zones and other assets for the benefit of its citizens wherever they might be located. This way, displaced populations would be able to finance their future in a new country, instead of depending on goodwill alone.

Traditionally, international law requires a state to have a permanent population, a defined territory, a government and the capacity to deal with other states. However international law is not static, and there is precedent for deterritorialized states. The Holy See was recognized as sovereign despite losing its territory, Vatican City, for a few decades following the unification of Italy in the 19th century. The Order of St. John, or the Knights of Malta, was considered sovereign despite having lost its territory in 1798. Functional, or nonterritorial, sovereignty has also been recognized for governments-in-exile and, to a certain extent, for populations like the Palestinians, the Inuit and the Maori that have been displaced or colonized, while nonstate entities like Taiwan and the European Union have exercised aspects of sovereignty, like the signing of treaties.

The United Nations should affirm that if an island nation loses its permanent population and territory to rising seawater, the world will continue to recognize its sovereignty as a nation.

Relocation is unpalatable no matter how you look at it. We can hope that the citizens of island nations never have to flee their homes. However, in the event that happens, there is no reason that they should have to lose their rights and sovereignty just because they have lost their land.

In recent weeks visitors to Christchurch described the mood as optimistic, energised since the earthquake of 4 September, determined to rebuild. We were used to hearing about aftershocks; Cantabrians were used to toughing them out. And then this – shattering the fantasy that surviving one tragedy somehow exempts you from another.

It feels like much longer than a few days. There is, in general, what a friend calls a belief shortfall. For those of us not in Christchurch, not experiencing aftershocks day and night, not bereaved or homeless or without electricity and water, there’s the weirdness of the mornings, waking to realise it’s still happened. Every conversation begins or ends with the earthquake, an inquiry after families and friends. The other business of life shrinks in scale. The earth looks different: not benign.

Everyone knows someone there. The first thing you do is check them. Twitter hums with names: has anyone heard from … ? Yes, they’re alive. Even better: “Here I am.” There are so many survivors, as some point out, and we should be grateful for that.

But God, there are so many dead. This is a small country. Our major disasters are encoded in the national memory. The Napier earthquake of 1931, the Tangiwai railway disaster in ’53, the 1968 Wahine shipwreck, the 1979 Mount Erebus air crash: people still tell these stories, and the names hold a stony, grave power. After Erebus it was said that every New Zealander knew someone who knew someone who was on that plane. Now, as then, we wait for names to be released.

When the Pike River Mine exploded last year, killing 29, some media were accused of exploiting people’s grief. Maybe that’s not remarkable; but here, where car accidents and domestic incidents routinely make the front page, there’s often the uncomfortable sense that drama is being amped. Now the media have to make on-the-spot decisions in the most harrowing conditions. Even on National Radio, the thorough, sober public broadcaster, there’s painfully intimate questioning of people in shock or grief. You can hear the reluctance in the anchors’ voices. Those being interviewed sound bewildered, as though within moments they won’t remember having had the conversation.

And yet even as we monitor how much television news we can stomach, or question the sensationalist habits of print editors, some media provide our sense of community. Maybe it feels too personal because, here, it is personal. Being glued to the radio or internet is a poor stand-in for doing something, but perhaps it’s why we tune in. We send money and offer beds, but still feel helpless. So we repeat to each other the human voices, stories both terrible and hopeful, for no reason other than to be with them.

On Twitter, three notable photos do the rounds. In one, taken from the hills above Christchurch, a white dust cloud rises from the city moments after the quake like a sandstorm. In another, a boy on a BMX uses a torn-up strip of road as an improvised bike ramp, his jump captured midair. And there are hollow laughs to be had at the image of a broken house, roof ripped away to reveal a couple of large, healthy cannabis plants sprouting like buddleia through the wreckage.

Days after the quake, a friend returns home to the eeriness of a place that’s undergone incredible violence. Everything is upended, on its side, fallen all over floor, drawers open as though a poltergeist has torn through it. The atmosphere of that force remains, yet the air is absolutely still. The birds are chirping. A vase of fresh roses stands on a coffee table, not a petal dropped.

There are so many mysteries. Some people survived because they got under their desks. Others thank God they were thrown across the room as their desks were crushed. New stories emerge constantly, and at the centre of each is the randomness of this deadly rupture, the contingency of life. The state of buildings can’t be blamed any more than someone’s inability to brace himself in a doorframe. It happened, and how people fared had nothing to do with human action.

Now people are calmest when they’re doing something. Fundraisers are planned up and down the country. Everyone’s out with a spade or truck, and the volunteer groups are amazing. “There is absolutely no difference,” says Mayor Bob Parker in one of his frequent and lucid updates, “between those with uniforms and hard hats and those without. This is happening to us all.”

In these early days people talk about despair, disbelief, fear, gentleness and still, somewhere, that sense of positivity, the will to restore Christchurch and prevail. Architectural opportunities, a national tax – these things are discussed even as people wonder where and how the money will come, and others plan to leave the city for good. A friend tells me about a huge tattooed guy she saw sitting in the orthopaedic trauma ward, spending hours trying to fix his cellphone with a tiny screwdriver. “You see people right in the centre of their lives just trying to make one thing work,” she says, “so that they can move on to the next thing.”

There was cricket in Sydney last week. The crowd wore pink fluorescent wigs and hats cut from watermelons. Shirts were optional. Australians are fun-loving when there is fun to be had. It’s part of our national character. So is our disregard for authority, which we celebrate, while at the same time being one of the most law-abiding nations on earth.

That’s what the rest of the world sees, and it’s all true. But we want to see something more in ourselves, a hard-working stoicism — and right now it’s the northeast state of Queensland, where once-in-a-century flooding has devastated countless communities, that shows it most clearly.

All maps of Queensland are deceptive. They show inland plains crossed by rivers, always colored blue. It’s tempting to imagine riverboats hauling freight, green fields stretching out from either bank, industrial towns and cities drawing water for their factories.

What the maps don’t reveal is that the rivers are often only possibilities. Many are dry for years, their waters long since soaked up by the parched ground and left as a chain of water holes.

The maps also don’t say that, every few years, the rivers flood. Once in a generation, they cover the land. And sometimes, like now, they tear the state apart.

To the north and west of Brisbane, the state capital and my hometown, Queensland faces a flood affecting an area the size of Texas and Oklahoma combined. The mines that supply one-third of the world’s coking coal are shut down. Crops have been destroyed and the soil that grew them has been carried away. Mercifully few lives have been lost so far, but the economic impact has been estimated at $5 billion. Some 200,000 people have been affected, many of them forced from their homes by water and mud.

Nevertheless, there is none of the clamor of disaster, none of the chaos one might expect. Crisis management plans have been activated. Townships, towns and cities are hard at work, not only as governments but as communities. Neighbors are helping neighbors, and then helping people they have never met. When the hard-hit coastal city of Rockhampton put a call out over the radio for people to fill sandbags, 70 volunteers turned up within minutes.

There’s a calm resilience too. Rockhampton’s Fitzroy Hotel, surrounded by floodwaters that have risen to an inch or so below its floorboards, has rebranded itself as the Fitzroy Float-El. Its customers now arrive by boat. Inside, on the widescreen TVs normally tuned to sports, the Fitzroy is showing footage of the last inundation, 19 years ago. Veterans of that flood are turning up to watch themselves filling sandbags, back when they were thinner and had more hair.

Even after the rain stops, we’re told, it will be weeks before all the water is gone. As the less-fortunate evacuees return home, they will find mud everywhere: in their filing cabinets, their kitchen cupboards, their photo albums. As I learned in the aftermath of the Brisbane flood of 1974, the smell will remain for years — a swampy stench that comes out of the walls and down from the ceiling on hot days.

Those people will need room for grief and anger. Most of them, though, when interviewed standing in the wreckage, talk about how life goes on.

Events like this flood not only show our stoicism, but create it. It’s important to Queenslanders, like all Australians, that we see ourselves as people who look adversity in the eye, stare it down and band together to overcome it.

Houses will be repaired, and new ones will be built. Businesses will get back to work. In ground that was baked dry but is now soaked deep, eggs will hatch, seeds will germinate and hidden species will reveal themselves and make the most of this change in their luck before the next drought sets in. Life will go on and, for farmers and those dependent on the land, the next crop should be a good one, if the weather holds.

Le 21 août 2010 devait avoir lieu le renouvellement de la Chambre des représentants et de la moitié du Sénat fédéral australiens. Ces élections devaient s’inscrire dans le cycle électoral prévu par la constitution australienne, les dernières ayant eu lieu en 2007. Alors qu’en 2007 l’enjeu portait sur la reconduite ou non de John Howard dans ses fonctions, les élections de 2010 revêtent un caractère inédit. Pour la première fois depuis la tenue d’élections dans le pays, le chef du gouvernement, s’il dispose d’une majorité partisane au parlement, n’a pas été explicitement choisi par le corps électoral.

En juin 2010, Kevin Rudd, premier ministre travailliste, avait été évincé par son propre parti suite à la campagne menée contre lui par les entreprises de l’industrie minière. Le premier ministre avait en effet promis d’appliquer à cette industrie le même taux d’imposition qu’à tout autre type d’entreprise dans le pays. Cela devait se traduire par une augmentation du taux de 15 % à 30 %, coûtant aux entreprises concernées l’équivalent de 30 milliards de dollars (environ 20 milliards d’euro). Au prix d’une campagne de communication de 4 milliards de dollars (environ 1,8 milliards d’euro), les géants de l’industrie ont obtenu que le parti travailliste révoque son chef et nomme à sa place sa ministre de l’éducation.

ENJEUX ET THÈMES DE CAMPAGNE

Julia Gillard était ainsi nommée premier ministre du pays qui pour la première fois était dirigé par une femme. Peu après sa prise de fonction devait se dessiner la campagne électorale. Le parti travailliste désormais dirigé par la chef du gouvernement présentait un bilan politique, économique et social encourageant. La réglementation bancaire plus stricte qu’en Europe ou aux Etats-Unis avait permis d’éviter la crise financière. Fort d’un excédent budgétaire sans précédent, et afin de soutenir la consommation dans un contexte de crise économique mondiale, le gouvernement avait offert à chaque ménage 1 000 dollars (environ 660 euro). En parallèle, des fonds supplémentaires devaient être alloués à l’amélioration des services publics.

Julia Gillard proposait dans sa campagne de maintenir son soutien à la croissance et aux services publics. Une nouvelle réglementation sociale plus favorable aux salariés était également promise aux Australiens. Le premier ministre promettait également de renforcer les conditions d’accès des réfugiés et demandeurs d’asile afin de lutter contre les réseaux criminels internationaux.

Tony Abott, candidat du Parti libéral, axait pour sa part sa campagne sur le caractère dispendieux de la politique menée par le Parti travailliste depuis 2007. Le chef de l’opposition dénonçait la réduction des excédents budgétaires et les hausses d’impôts que cela risquerait d’engendrer. A aucun moment de la campagne le candidat ne formulait de programme explicite.

LE 21 AOÛT 2010, SANCTION PAR LES URNES

Au soir du scrutin, les Australiens se trouvent confrontés à une situation inédite : aucune majorité ne se dégage, ni à la Chambre des représentants ni au Sénat. Ceci n’était encore jamais arrivé depuis la tenue des premières élections législatives en 1901. A la chambre basse, le Parti travailliste remporterait 73 sièges et la coalition libérale également. Des négociations avec les quatre élus indépendants de Tasmanie et l’unique représentant écologiste seront nécessaires pour former une majorité de 76 élus.

Dans l’ensemble, le parti travailliste a perdu des circonscriptions phares dans les Etats de Nouvelle Galles du Sud (Sydney) et Victoria (Melbourne), qui lui sont traditionnellement favorables. Pour autant, le parti de Julia Gillard se maintient en Australie du Sud (Adelaide), Etat également traditionnellement favorable. Dans les Etats votant habituellement pour la coalition libérale, cette dernière a sans surprise remporté les sièges.

En perdant une dizaine de circonscriptions, le parti travailliste sort affaibli de ce scrutin au profit des candidats indépendants et écologistes. Combiné à l’absence de majorité, cet état de fait semble sanctionner les deux grands partis et leurs leaders. Il semblerait que les Australiens ont sanctionné un parti travailliste qui avait démis un premier ministre populaire et compétent. Ce dernier ressort plébiscité par les électeurs de sa circonscription de Woolloongabba (Queensland) et les médias. Julia Gillard est en revanche présentée comme l’incarnation d’un parti qui a trahi son chef et le peuple australien. Dans le même temps, l’absence de programme et les attaques personnelles à l’encontre de Julia Gillard menées par Tony Abott et la coalition libérale n’ont pas non plus convaincu les électeurs.

TROIS SCÉNARII DE SORTIE DE CRISE

Au lendemain du scrutin, trois scénarii se dessinent afin de constituer un gouvernement. Une première possibilité reviendrait à constituer une alliance avec les élus indépendants. Ces derniers ayant remporté des circonscriptions en Tasmanie, traditionnellement conservatrices, on peut s’attendre à ce qu’ils s’associent au parti dirigé par Tony Abott. Un deuxième scénario consiste en une alliance artificielle des élus indépendants avec le parti travailliste. Si l’offre de Tony Abott ne satisfait pas à leurs exigences, ils peuvent en réaction accepter celle de Julia Gillard. Dans ce cas, la majorité serait instable et une crise gouvernementale envisageable à moyen terme. Enfin, compte tenu du plébiscite en faveur de Kevin Rudd évincé par son parti en juin dernier, on pourrait imaginer qu’il soit de nouveau appelé à représenter le Parti travailliste et proposer les termes d’une alliance convaincante aux cinq élus indépendants.

Alors que la campagne voyait s’affronter deux candidats relativement jeunes en politique, le scrutin remet en scène un troisième candidat que son parti avait évincé. Aujourd’hui, en absence de majorité, le parlement australien devra choisir entre trois candidats dont deux au sein du Parti travailliste.

One is a whip-cracking, larrikin cowboy, another a surfer with a social conscience, the third a hard-nosed farmer. Throw in a defence department whistleblower, add a tyro Greens MP for good measure and there you have the cast of characters who will decide the shape of Australia’s new government.

While the acting prime minister, Julia Gillard, and her conservative nemesis, Tony Abbott, begin the vexed task of trying to pull together a workable minority government, the spotlight has narrowed to the blokes from the bush who hold the keys to the Aussie prime ministerial residence, known affectionately as The Lodge.

This gang of three – Bob Katter, Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor – are veteran anti-politicians, mavericks with big electoral majorities who have entrenched their support by snubbing the big parties. They are truly independent independents, ferocious about the political mainstream’s failure to deliver for their rural constituencies and impatient for a time when they could join forces to exert some real political muscle.

All three, in fact, hail from the National party, the rural arm of the Australian conservatives. A done deal for the aspiring rightwing PM, Abbott? Not a chance.

Hatred of their political alma maters is their only real common bond – and the feeling is mutual. Katter, whose electorate covers almost one third of the enormous state of Queensland, dumped the National party on the eve of the 2001 election, launching a scathing attack on economic rationalism and the conservative government’s failure to support the tobacco farmers of his constituency. (His re-election advertisement during this campaign became something of a YouTube hit – a mini western starring the MP as “the force from the north“.)

Windsor, too, began his career as a Nationals candidate but abandoned the party pre poll, winning a seat in State parliament where he held a massive majority for a decade and the balance of power for a controversial term. He also switched to the national stage by wresting a key blue-ribbon seat from his former conservative colleagues.

On election night last Saturday, Windsor, never one to mince words, dismissed a National party MP as a “fool” on live television. Katter, too, struck terror into the hearts of the conservatives outlining his antipathy for the Nationals’ leader, Warren Truss in public and forcing Abbott to ban the aspiring deputy PM from negotiations with the kingmakers.

Rob Oakeshott is the youngest of the three renegades. At 40, he is a fit and passionate surf kayaker and triathlete – and, probably, the least problematic character for both parties. Something of a David Cameron-style Tory, economically dry but with a strong commitment to social issues, he has shown initial signs of a gentler pragmatism.

Managing the trio’s individual – and collective – demands will be difficult enough without the other revolution that swept through the Senate last Saturday. Disappointment with both parties’ failure to address the deadlock over climate change and a proposed carbon emissions tax saw a massive increase in electoral support for the Greens – so big that the environmental movement, for the first time, will now hold the balance of power in the upper house, Australia’s influential house of review.

Gillard and Abbott are right to hold their breath in the vain hope that the final count will deliver the magic 76 seats needed to form a majority government outright. The former faces becoming the nation’s first female PM – held to account by three conservative, veteran male MPs – while the latter risks going down in history as the conservative prime minister who described global warming as “crap”, and had to stare down a Senate in the hands of the Greens.

The irony is breathtaking. And of course, quite delicious.

There are few certainties left in Australian politics. Two months ago, the Labor party moved to terminate its leader, Kevin Rudd – the first time a prime minister had been toppled by his own party before facing re-election. On Saturday, it was the turn of voters to overturn one of the general laws of electoral behaviour. It has been a long time since it last happened – namely, with the Scullin Labor government in 1931 – but a government has failed to secure a second term in its own right.

The result is disastrous for Labor. To be sure, a hung parliament means that Prime Minister Julia Gillard may yet form a minority government with the support of independent and Green MPs. But it is just as plausible that Liberal-conservative leader Tony Abbott may broker a minority government of his own. It may take several days, even a week, before either transpires. All this is unfamiliar territory, governed by nebulous convention. Australia hasn’t had a minority government since 1940.

Labor should never have faced this prospect. Under Rudd’s leadership, a Labor government had steered the Australian economy through the global financial crisis. Australia was the only OECD economy that didn’t experience a recession; unemployment peaked at 5%. It is remarkable that an Australian electorate would repudiate a government in such circumstances. Those who haven’t been following events in Canberra in recent months are entitled to be puzzled.

It was always a risk for Gillard to call an election last month after barely four weeks as PM. But after signalling from the outset that she would be seeking a mandate from the people before year’s end, Gillard gave herself little room to manoeuvre.

This created two problems for Labor. In the first place, Labor relinquished the advantages of incumbency. Gillard fought this campaign not as the PM but as an applicant for the office. Second, there was no time for the wounds inflicted by the June putsch to heal. Damaging leaks about Gillard’s opposition to an increase in pensions and to a paid parental leave scheme, which many believe were made by an embittered Rudd (or an agent of Rudd’s), undermined Labor’s campaign. For almost two weeks, Labor had to defend itself against the charge that a party that can’t govern itself can’t govern a nation.

Abbott, an enfant terrible of Australian rightwing conservatism, ran a disciplined campaign. He has dispelled doubts about his capacity to be prime minister. It has been a remarkable transformation, built on a series of shrewd strategic moves. Since deposing Malcolm Turnbull as Liberal leader, Abbott successfully cast Labor’s emissions trading scheme as “a great big new tax”, triggering a fall in popular support for climate change mitigation. His hardline stance on asylum seekers and attacks on rising government debt were linchpins of a relentlessly negative campaign effort.

However, Labor’s cannibalism and self-destruction represent the real story of this election. The palace coup against Rudd, engineered by factional powerbrokers, reflected a party increasingly dominated by a nihilistic, all-consuming party machine. In political terms, it deprived Labor of its most potent narrative. How could Labor run on the record of Rudd’s economic management when it had deposed him? This was a question Labor strategists were never able to answer convincingly.

This hung parliament brings to an end three years of Labor government characterised by gulfs between rhetoric and policy delivery. Nowhere was this more clearly demonstrated than with climate change. Rudd may have famously described climate change as “the greatest moral challenge of our time”, but when confronted with Senate opposition he chose to abandon his emissions trading scheme legislation (rather than dissolve parliament).

Labor might still manage to form a minority government. If it does, it will have had a near-death experience. If it doesn’t, a return to opposition would be punishment for a term of wasted opportunities and political incompetence.

It might be a hotly contested campaign in serious economic and environmental times, but Australia’s federal election has never strayed far from the absurd.

In the red corner it’s Labor leader and brand new prime minister, Julia Gillard – the flame-haired, childless, former lawyer and self-declared atheist. In the blue corner is coalition leader, Tony Abbott – the exercise-obsessed family man and former trainee priest.

Both leaders are far from political rookies and yet neither entered the campaign with the authority of incumbency. By her own admission, Gillard has struggled to find her feet and appear “real” on the hustings, while Abbott (who isn’t called the Mad Monk for nothing) has been under 24-hour watch from his minders. The guy hasn’t been able to burp without talking points from campaign headquarters.

It has been a monumentally risk-averse campaign as both sides avoided taking a policy stand for fear it might differentiate them and turn voters away.

Both parties have remained distinctly squeamish about hot-button topics like climate change and gay marriage. Neither mentioned the war in Afghanistan or indigenous affairs. And both are determined to present the paltry number of Australia’s boat people as a major problem to sure up votes in marginal seats.

Indeed, it’s only been in the last stages that (some) differences between the two have surfaced. Labor has a larger financial commitment to education, a continued (though deferred) desire to develop a carbon trading scheme and a pledge to roll out high-speed broadband. The coalition, for its part, seeks to stop Labor reforms in health, internet policy and school buildings, while offering a more generous paid parental leave scheme.

But who needs policy when you have a debate about debates? The past week has been consumed by a slanging match between the leaders about if, when and how they will debate each other. In a similarly post-modern twist, much of the rest of the media coverage has focused on how rubbish the coverage has been.

The campaign has been made all the more surreal by the ghost of Kevin Rudd. Much to Labor’s horror, the ex-PM has dominated headlines over the past five weeks, thanks to his insistence on recontesting his seat, emergency gall bladder surgery and mystery leaks suggesting Gillard reneged on a leadership deal between the two.

To add to the weirdness, this week his 26-year-old daughter, Jessica, launched her debut novel in which an Australian PM is toppled by his female deputy – who then calls an election.

But farce and fluff aside, there is much at stake in this campaign. Despite garnering almost zero buzz, the Greens look set to gain the balance of power in the Senate. For the major players, legacies are also on the line.

Just three years ago, John Howard and the coalition were unceremoniously booted out of government after 11-and-a-half years of domination. A coalition win would take the sting out of Howard’s humiliating defeat and reinstall the Liberals as the “natural ruling party” of Australia. For Rudd, an Abbott victory would also mean a much more comfortable and forgiving place in history.

For Labor, the stakes are higher again. Just two months ago, Rudd was sacked because party insiders became convinced he would lose the election. Having gone through the trauma of a hastily cobbled-together coup – and then spending the last nine weeks justifying it – Labor will have an emu-sized egg on its face if it falls short on Saturday.

Gillard, long seen as the woman most likely in Australian politics, would not only go down as its first female PM but one of its biggest anticlimaxes.

With only 24 hours before Australians head to the polls, the opinion surveys, betting markets and a psychic crocodile give the election (just) to Labor. But the coalition is finishing strong and no one is really game to call it either way.

In this campaign about nothing, anything goes.

In easygoing Australia, the overwhelming focus on pedestrian domestic issues at election time is excusable. But the absence of genuine debate on foreign policy, trade or regional security has been alarming. With less than two weeks before election day, the Labor leader Julia Gillard, who became prime minister in June, and the conservative opposition leader, Tony Abbott, have set Australia on course for the foreign policy doldrums.

Over the past 20 years, Australia has capitalized enormously on economic ties with China while simultaneously strengthening its security ties with the United States. But during the last two years under Ms. Gillard’s predecessor, Kevin Rudd, the country has stalled.

Mr. Rudd launched the idea of a security-focused Asian community forum and pledged Australia to a tough climate-change regime. But these initiatives were quickly wrecked by an unseemly media outburst of criticism against China, gratuitous trampling of relations with Tokyo, and Mr. Rudd’s infamous reneging on a carbon emissions scheme.

Mr. Rudd inflated Australia’s international profile, then left it hollow. Either Ms. Gillard or Mr. Abbott will inherit this foreign policy vacuum. But they do not have the expertise in Parliament to make up for the deficit. Indeed, at no point in the last 30 years or more have two would-be leaders appeared so ill-experienced. Both are ill-equipped for the job of cultivating regional relationships to further the national interest.

The dangers are mostly subtle ones — ranging from undermining Australian business in some of the region’s most exciting emerging markets to allowing an erosion of influence on regional security. As an Anglo-European oddity in the Asia-Pacific region, Australia has no shortage of detractors who exclude it from regional forums on account of its perceived incompatibility due to its “Western values,” or because of its close military ties to the United States.

Despite ample opportunity, neither Ms. Gillard nor Mr. Abbott has outlined their diplomatic credentials or their view of where Australia fits in the regional mosaic. Debate has focused on the emotionally charged domestic issue of processing illegal boat arrivals from East Timor and Nauru.

Both candidates have projected the issue through the distorting prism of an immigration debate, which presumes Australia’s capacity to absorb new migrants should also be the problem of the region’s weakest states. At the same time both parties have dodged questions about Afghanistan: Neither has had the courage to argue for either a troop withdrawal or an increased deployment of forces.

Perhaps most astounding is that neither has articulated how they see the all-important U.S. alliance in relation to the country’s still evolving, economically-driven relationship with China. Ms. Gillard is bargaining on being able to fall back on the expertise of her predecessor, with Mr. Rudd likely moving into the foreign affairs portfolio. Mr. Abbott, meanwhile, asserts in his recent book “Battlelines” that even if China becomes stronger “this may not mean much for Australia’s international relationships or foreign policy priorities.”

How would Japan, India and Australia’s other important allies in Asia interpret such a comment? Washington’s policymakers must be baffled. How the relationships of these countries with China will change in the years to come will be crucial to Australia. The deficit of insight is astounding. Yet it comes as the U.S. seeks to reaffirm its security role in Northeast Asia, while offering to engage as broker between China and Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines in their disputed claims in the South China Sea.

At least since the 1970s, candidates for prime minister have been able to articulate how Australia will manage its Western alliances. John Howard, for instance, came to power in 1996 seeing Australia as an outsider in Asia, but famously recanted that view in 2006. While such statements of intent won’t win votes, they help anchor the significant business and people-to-people ties forged through trade deals and the flow of migration since the 1960s.

It is owing to such ties that Australia has become able to leverage influence in the region, whether on human rights or in efforts to fight international crime.

Australia’s subtle influence as a middle-strength power relies on maintaining key relationships that are dutifully cultivated. But already becalmed and without a guiding star, Australia under Ms. Gillard or Mr. Abbott will simply be left by its neighbors to drift.

Despite the surprise ditching of Kevin Rudd as Australia’s 26th prime minister last month, a large proportion of Australians heaved a sigh of relief when he walked the plank. True, he once enjoyed record levels of public support, but people had become heartily fed up by the time he was “assassinated”. Despite his tough talk about pulling Australia up by its bootstraps, there was a distinct lack of progress to show for it. Policy around issues such as climate change, asylum seekers and healthcare seemed confused and shambolic. Plus, Rudd proved to be a truly incomprehensible communicator.

So quite apart from the cheers that went up when Australia (belatedly) got its first female PM, there was a real sense of hope at Julia Gillard’s self-appointment. Here was a heavy-hitting woman, known for her straight-talking ways and sense of humour. Indeed, with former PM Bob Hawke – Australia’s beer-loving reformist – as her political idol, we assumed we’d be in for some conviction and some fun.

But just over a month since Gillard was sworn in, the buzz of the honeymoon has most definitely worn off. Call it Groundhog Day, but in Gillard, it feels like Australia didn’t just get another PM, it got another Kevin Rudd. In her first address as Labor party leader – speaking about the importance of “hard work” and setting your alarm clock “early” – Gillard was eerily reminiscent of Rudd’s 2007 vow that he would celebrate his election victory with a cup of tea and a biscuit. No partying people, there’s work to do!

The straight-talking Gillard has gone with the wind. Since the start of the federal election campaign, she has been driving Australians to distraction with meaningless catchphrases. As former prime ministerial speechwriter Don Watson observed, she used the phrase “moving forward” 24 times in five minutes when calling the election two weeks ago.

Despite the pleas of journalists and online mockery, she has no intention of stopping: “I believe it captures a spirit about Australia. We are a confident, optimistic, forward-looking people”. In the much-anticipated (insufferably boring) leaders’ debate earlier this week, it took less than 10 seconds before “moving forward” was mentioned.

Even more alarmingly, Gillard is not offering any new solutions to the issues dominating Australia’s public agenda. On climate change, Gillard has responded to public frustration at Rudd’s inaction by reaffirming that the government will do nothing until 2013. In the meantime, she has countered the stalemate with more talk, announcing a “Citizens Assembly” to thrash out the issues and build “consensus”.

The bungling of her government’s response to the increased number of asylum seekers has all the hallmarks of Rudd, who was famous for rushing policy decisions and dismissing consultation. After announcing that Australian-bound boats of asylum seekers may be diverted to East Timor for processing, it emerged Gillard had failed to get East Timor completely on board before doing so.

In healthcare, things look no rosier. Earlier this year, Rudd government adviser John Mendoza quit in protest over inaction on mental health. This week, Gillard bumped mental health from the election agenda, announcing it would be a “second-term” priority for her government – prompting outrage from mental heath experts, including 2010 Australian of the Year, Professor Patrick McGorry.

To be fair, Gillard has only been in the top job for a month and is trying to negotiate the perils of an election campaign, complete with damaging cabinet leaks and bizarre jokes about the size of her earlobes. But as the fresh new face of the Australian government, it seems counterintuitive, ridiculous even, that she is trying to win votes by doing her best impression of the man she deposed.

“Kevin07, Gone by 11″, was the taunt in Canberra when I was there last month – and so it proved. Kevin Rudd, who returned Labor to power in Australia after 12 years in opposition, and who achieved some of this highest approval ratings in Australian history, was unceremoniously dumped by his party today. What does this mean for the direction of the Australian government?

In broad political terms, probably not much. Though Julia Gillard is, in Labor factional terms, from the left, she was put there by the right. They made the same calculation as James Purnell did over Gordon Brown last year – that the party would go down to electoral defeat with its current leader. However, as Martin Kettle notes, the Australian Labor party has none of the sentimentality that dogs British Labour and it acted.

What went so badly wrong? Rudd was at his best when making big political stands – signing Kyoto and making the apology to the indigenous people of Australia, and in particular the Stolen Generations. He was at his worst when he lost his populist touch and started to speak as a technocrat.

Ultimately, though, he lost his way over climate change. He called it the “greatest moral challenge of our time”, but when facing parliamentary defeat deferred his legislation. His thoughtfulness became his undoing. A more populist leader would never have embarked on an emissions trading scheme in advance of other countries, a more Machiavellian one would have manoeuvred his legislation to defeat in the Senate at the joint hands of the Greens and the Liberals. Kevin Rudd chose to delay. That caused a catastrophic rupture with voters. Young urban voters split to the Greens and middle Australians to the Liberals. This left Labor facing a wipeout.

Can Gillard turn it round? Almost certainly. She has grown in stature as deputy prime minister and was responsible for education – a central pillar of the domestic reform agenda – and the difficult industrial relations portfolio. She is a robust parliamentary performer, more than able to hold her own in what is a far more rowdy chamber than the House of Commons. In opposition, she was named by the Speaker and excluded for 24 hours for calling Tony Abbott “a snivelling grub“. (I was in the opposition box that day: it was a towering performance.)

And she is a very effective communicator who more than has the measure of the Liberal leader, Tony Abbott – with whom she has often sparred in good-nature when appearing on television together. Abbott’s populism rattled Rudd who couldn’t find a voice to deal effectively with it. But Abbott’s appeal to the Liberal base is more than balanced by his difficulty with women voters. He is a devout Catholic who is on the record as saying that women should not give away their virginity lightly. Gillard led the attack.

Women are probably the key swing group in the forthcoming election. If she can draw a line under Rudd’s errors, get a grip and establish competence quickly, Julia Gillard is likely to get Labor back on track for re-election. After all, there’s been no one-term Australian government since the 1930s.

It is a bitter irony that as the scientific evidence for action on climate change mounts, the political consensus supporting that action is retreating — at least in Australia.

Australians have more reason than most to be alert to the dangers of global warming. Living on the Earth’s driest and hottest continent, we are already seeing the harsh impact of climate change with devastating droughts, heat waves and bush fires.

And until recently there was bipartisan support for the establishment of an emissions trading scheme (ETS) that would enable the transition from a high emission economy to a low emission one by putting a price on carbon. Because of Australia’s abundant and cheap reserves of coal we have enjoyed cheap electricity, but at the price of very high emissions per head. Cutting emissions will always come at a cost. The saying “It’s easy to be green” is right up there with “Your cheque is in the post”.

But this debate is not just about cost. It is turning into an ideological, perhaps theological, issue where faith replaces reason and prejudice pragmatism. And many in the northern hemisphere will wonder, that if the consensus for climate change action is retreating in Australia, the land of droughts and flooding rains, what are the prospects of staying the course in countries where the impact of climate change is, as yet, much less apparent?

Climate change has been a very difficult issue for the Liberal Party — our equivalent of the Tories — for many years. While in government we were able to achieve some considerable, even revolutionary environmental reforms. Indeed, the first legislation to establish an ETS was introduced by me, as John Howard’s Environment Minister, in 2007. However, there was always a strong thread of climate change scepticism, even denial, among the ranks of Australia’s centre right.

As Prime Minister, John Howard was sceptical about climate change science and refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. Australia had no good reason not to ratify Kyoto, as it was one of the few developed countries that could readily meet its target. However, we paid a political price: the failure to ratify Kyoto was one of the critical issues that led to the Howard Government’s defeat in 2007.

However, the establishment of an ETS was not an election issue, because both parties were proposing a scheme. As Liberal leader, the objections I had to the legislation introduced by the new Labor Government were essentially issues of design.We were anxious to ensure that the transition to a low-emission economy did not result in us simply sending industries offshore to countries without a carbon price; exporting the emissions and the jobs.

You cannot achieve a massive reduction in emissions of the kind the world needs without putting a price on carbon. There has been until recently a broad consensus that the most efficient way of doing this is by a market-based mechanism such as an emissions trading scheme. That bipartisan consensus is now gone. Earlier this month I lost the leadership of the Liberal Party because of my support for ETS. The election of Tony Abbott led to a dramatic change in policy. Opposition senators, or most of them, ensured the Bill was voted down.

Most leadership ballots are driven by personalities; this one, however, was driven by some of my colleagues’ relentless determination to change the party’s policy on climate change and, above all, to vote down the ETS. A colourfully self-confessed climate sceptic, Mr Abbott became leader with the support of a group of vocal climate change deniers, the most significant of whom was Nick Minchin, the leader of the Opposition in the Senate. He has said that the planet is cooling not warming, that the majority of the Liberal Party does not believe that human beings are causing global warming and that the climate change issue is being used by what he described as “the extreme Left” to “do what they’ve always wanted to do: to sort of de-industrialise the Western world.”

I was much more disappointed by the change in policy direction than by the change in leadership.If Mr Abbott were a leftist you could understand his reluctance for market-based mechanisms for putting a price on carbon. After all, the whole point of emissions trading is that it allows industries to choose the best means of abating their emissions. The challenge of climate change is so great that no party can credibly or responsibly fail to take effective measures to address it.

I recognise that many people are sceptical about the science. But as Margaret Thatcher pointed out 20 years ago, this is an exercise in risk management. Given that the consequences of unchecked global warming would be catastrophic, responsible leaders should give the planet the benefit of the doubt. Few of us imagine our house is going to burn down tonight, but most of us will have taken out insurance.

So the political or indeed moral issue is not whether you are totally convinced by the climate change thesis, but what you propose to do about it. Being sceptical about climate change is not unreasonable; doing nothing about it is reckless.

So given the basic common sense of taking out insurance for the sake of all humanity, why is it that we are seeing this surge in climate change denial?

To some extent the explanation is psychological. It is human to deny that bad things are happening. Britons turned a blind eye to the reality of Hitler’s rearmament in the Thirties; smokers still deny their habit can kill them; all of us are reluctant to acknowledge inconvenient truths.

A curious feature of climate change denial is that it seems to be found overwhelmingly in the ranks of the old. I have never known a contentious issue where one side of the debate is so old. While I cannot explain this phenomenon, it does have a political significance. The membership of Australia’s Liberal Party is much older than the population at large.

We can see the growing influence of climate sceptics in the ranks of the US Republican Party, and even stirrings in David Cameron’s Tories — an extraordinary thing when you consider how successful his “Vote Blue, Go Green” approach has been in repositioning the Conservatives.

I should note that when I was in London earlier this year and spoke at the Policy Exchange, a centre-right think tank, I was stunned that the audience was so young. Mr Cameron’s Tories have started to reconnect with younger Britons, and his environmental credentials and commitment to action on climate change have been a key part of that.

We should listen to the young — their passion for action on climate change and their concern for the environment reflects the fact that they have the most future at stake. 2050 is often cited as the target date for big cuts in emissions, and for many of us that is a date so far beyond our lifetimes it may as well be 2500. But for our children and their children, 2050 is not so far away. A 14-year-old will be my age in 2050.

Our responsibility as leaders, as voters and as citizens is to ensure that our planet is kept safe for our children and their children. We must not fail them.

I have always been ambitious and adventurous, someone with a zest for life who more than anything wants to see the world. And because I hold an Australian passport, I’ve been able to do just that, because I can travel on Working Holiday visas — a benefit that young Americans should envy.

Australia has reciprocal agreements with 26 governments that allow its young citizens (usually those under the age of 30) to work temporarily in each other’s countries, almost always without having to arrange employment sponsorship in advance. I’ve traveled from Asia to Europe to the Americas with these visas, and applying for one for Canada, where I’m now working, took me only a few minutes.

Working Holiday programs were created to foster youth mobility, but they also encourage the exchange of cultural values. Participants serve as ambassadors for their home country and gain a greater appreciation for their host. And participants, like any tourists, contribute to the economy; Working Holiday travelers spend about $1.2 billion annually in Australia.

The United States, to its detriment, has no similarly accessible working holiday program for its citizens, except some small pilot exchanges with Australia, New Zealand and South Korea that have onerous application processes. Why doesn’t it follow Australia’s lead, and expand the program?

Immigration issues stir strong emotions in the United States, and further opening American borders to temporary labor, especially during a recession, would understandably be met with resistance. But although participants overwhelmingly enjoy their time abroad — and recommend the experience to family, friends and anyone with time to listen to their adventures — few seek permanent residency. Most also take jobs in restaurants or hotels, in positions that tend to be occupied by young workers. Since the visas are reciprocal, these Americans are the very people who would be able to travel and land jobs abroad with similar ease.

I owe a great many adventures to this program and I’ve gained an appreciation for the differences that make us human. When I hear the French stereotyped as snobby, for example, I know better. When I worked in France, the people I met were warm and welcoming, despite my mediocre language skills.

The United States could gain some similar good will by making it easier for Americans to work abroad, and by opening its doors to the world’s young

La littérature australienne est-elle menacée d’extinction ? Et les libraires ne vendront-ils bientôt que des titres américains ou britanniques ? La question secoue depuis quelques semaines le monde des lettres, de Melbourne à Sydney.

Pourtant, le secteur se porte bien. Les Australiens seraient parmi les plus gros acheteurs de livres des pays occidentaux. Les ventes atteignent 1,12 milliard de dollars par an, pour 21 millions de lecteurs potentiels. Et les écrivains des antipodes parviennent, régulièrement, à se faire connaître à travers le monde.

Mais éditeurs et auteurs craignent que cet âge d’or ne prenne fin. Il y a quelques semaines, la commission de la productivité – un organisme gouvernemental – a publié un rapport visant à réformer l’édition. Dans ses conclusions, la commission soutient que le prix des livres est trop élevé en Australie, et pointe du doigt le copyright territorial. Elle suggère donc d’abandonner la “restriction sur les importations parallèles”, accusée d’empêcher les libraires de faire venir, pour moins cher, des ouvrages publiés ailleurs.

Ce serait une révolution. Aujourd’hui, la législation sur les importations de livres est relativement stricte. Après publication d’un titre à l’étranger, les éditeurs australiens ont trente jours pour le publier à leur tour sur le territoire national. S’ils le font dans ce délai, les librairies du pays sont obligées d’acheter la copie australienne. “Initialement, c’était dans l’intérêt du consommateur, pour qu’il ait accès rapidement aux livres publiés à l’étranger”, explique Jeremy Fisher, directeur de l’association des auteurs australiens. Surtout, le système permet de lutter contre les livres vendus à bas prix par les Britanniques et les Américains, qui bénéficient d’un marché beaucoup plus large. Ainsi, les éditeurs australiens peuvent publier des best-sellers internationaux, et dégager des revenus importants pour investir dans les auteurs nationaux. La fin du système les priverait de ressources importantes.

Désormais, deux camps s’affrontent. Des chaînes de librairies et de gros distributeurs ont créé la “Coalition pour les livres moins chers”, laquelle affirme, sur son site Internet, que “les Australiens paient trop pour leurs livres”. Elle réclame un marché ouvert pour des livres meilleur marché, et affirme que la politique en cours ne peut être justifiée à l’heure du “e-business”. Sur leurs blogs, des lecteurs expliquent qu’ils préfèrent déjà acheter leurs livres, moins cher, via le site Amazon.

Face à eux, une très grande majorité des auteurs et éditeurs s’indignent. “C’est une question d’équilibre entre les risques et les revenus. L’éditeur d’Harry Potter ici jouit d’une certaine sécurité pour publier des auteurs australiens inconnus, commente Michael Moynahan, directeur de HarperCollins Australie. Cela veut dire qu’on peut prendre des risques pour développer la littérature australienne. Sinon, les auteurs n’auraient aucune chance de se faire publier ailleurs. Les Britanniques continuent de les regarder de haut, de les marginaliser.”

Les écrivains les plus populaires ont pris la tête de la bataille. Richard Flanagan, auteur entre autres du roman Dispersés par le vent, ne cesse de critiquer la recommandation de la commission. “Ce qui est proposé est un retour à l’époque coloniale, pas si lointaine qu’on le croit, pendant laquelle les entreprises australiennes se contentaient de vendre des livres d’autres pays, et où l’on achetait des récits qui n’avaient aucune ressemblance avec notre réalité”, s’est-il emporté dans le Sydney Morning Herald.

Tim Winton, romancier traduit à travers le monde, a lui aussi dénoncé une aberration. “Quelle ignoble capitulation ! Quelle perte de capital culturel cela provoquerait !”, a-t-il déclaré lors de la remise de son quatrième prix Miles-Franklin (l’équivalent australien du Goncourt). Quant aux imprimeurs, ils s’inquiètent pour la perte d’emplois que la réforme entraînerait, dans un secteur qui fait vivre 5 000 personnes.

Enfin, l’argument du prix avancé par la commission ne convainc pas tout le monde. Car rien ne dit que les gros libraires répercuteront effectivement la baisse des prix auprès des consommateurs. “Surtout, il n’a pas été prouvé que les prix australiens sont plus élevés : la commission ne les a pas comparés avec des marchés de taille identique, de 20 millions d’habitants seulement, avance Jeremy Fisher. Tous les pays imposent des limites aux importations. Pourquoi pas nous ? Seule la Nouvelle-Zélande a mis fin aux restrictions, et depuis son industrie du livre ne va pas fort.”

Les défenseurs des restrictions à l’importation ne s’avouent pas vaincus. Le gouvernement travailliste a pour l’instant repoussé toute décision, en affirmant vouloir privilégier la survie de la littérature nationale.

When Chinese police detained four Rio Tinto employees – including an Australian national – for allegedly stealing state secrets, a chill ran down the spines of many foreign investors.

Given its timing shortly after Rio aborted plans to take a £12bn investment from Chinalco, the state-owned metals producer, many initially suspected it was retribution for that debacle. Australia was quick to suggest it could affect the international business community’s perceptions of the world’s third largest economy.

Today the latest round of a war of words between the two governments over the spying allegations deepened as it emerged that China has told the Australian government that it has “sufficient evidence” to support the accusations.

He Yafei, China’s vice-minister of foreign affairs, said: “I stressed that we have sufficient evidence showing that the individuals involved obtained China’s state secrets using illegal means. The case has entered the judicial process and I requested the Australian side to respect China’s judicial sovereignty.”

Rio has denied the claims that its employees have been involved in any kind of spying or bribery in China.

Canberra said that it would “take some time” to resolve the crisis, which has seen Rio’s top iron ore executive in China, Australian Stern Hu, held for 18 days along with three colleagues. Stephen Smith, the Australian foreign minister, said he still hoped to meet his Chinese counterpart to discuss the matter.

China is Australia’s biggest trade partner, with trade worth $53bn (£32.3bn) last year. Last week Simon Crean, its trade minister, warned that the case was “important as a signal to all people seeking to do business in China” and called for the matter to be handled quickly.

With the case still under investigation, no one can be sure of the precise details of the allegations; still less of whether they have foundation. Rio Tinto has stressed that it believes its staff “acted at all times with integrity and in accordance with Rio Tinto’s strict and publicly stated code of ethical behaviour” and denied claims that they bribed steel companies.

But most now believe the issue is in effect an inquiry into the operations of a complicated and often shady steel industry rather than any espionage or national security matters. The problem is that in China, the distinction is not so clear. The case centres on negotiations between Chinese steelmakers and iron ore producers, led by Rio Tinto, and the information used in those talks. Because so many Chinese companies are partly government-backed, and because steel is a strategic industry, it has become far more than a purely commercial matter.

“This case illustrates some of the uncertainty of getting involved in business in China,” said John Frankenstein, assistant professor of economics at the City University of New York. “A Chinese lawyer once told me ‘basically, the state can legitimately intervene in any deal at any time under any pretext’.”

“There are a lot of multinationals who came to China and have a fact-finding, commercial information arm. For those people it’s certainly worrying,” added Tom Miller, of the Beijing-based economic consultancy Dragonomics.

“If you are in the kind of business where you think there might be an overlap between commercial information and state secrets, you would be concerned. The problem is that Chinese law on this is very, very oblique and frankly no one knows what a state secret is.”

The worst fears of foreign investors appear to have been mitigated by the emerging details of the Rio case.

“I don’t think it’s as alarming as it looked on day one,” said one business adviser who asked not to be identified; several people were reluctant to speak on the record, or had been instructed not to do so by their companies, in a sign of the case’s sensitivity.

“There is obviously a degree of political motivation; it’s impossible to say it’s pure coincidence.”

But he pointed out that the inquiry had expanded with the investigation of executives from steel firms, suggesting that the authorities were not simply targeting Rio Tinto and that they were concerned about the “notoriously corrupt” industry and its possible skewing of development. “Using legal means to intimidate or pressurise companies in business negotiations at lower levels is not at all surprising; it happens quite a lot. But to happen on that sort of stage would be unusual,” he added.

The case is so sensitive that it was reported that president Hu Jintao personally approved the decision to press ahead. But Steve Dickinson, a partner at the law firm Harris & Moure in Qingdao, believes the issues it raises are not new.

“The old notion used to be that foreigners got a free pass – the worst that would happen was that you would be told to go home. That is not the rule now,” he said. “People who conduct industrial espionage and bribe people and obtain information illegally should not set foot in China.

“One guy said to me ‘everyone does that in China’. But people also go to jail and get executed for doing this in China. People do it and think ‘see, nothing happened’. The only time things happen in China is when things go sideways.”

Many complain that the market for illicit information has been created by China’s failure to establish legally compliant information agencies. “Government and enterprises should realise that by [providing] publicly available information, they can to a large extent satisfy the demand for commercial intelligence … and reduce the space available for corruption and espionage,” the Beijing-based economic consultancy Anbound said.

Dickinson acknowledges many clients chafe at obeying laws that they can see competitors flouting. “Foreigners have pressure to get information through improper means … [But] If you can’t do things any other way – go home. It’s not worth being arrested for,” he added.

Whether companies take his advice remains to be seen. “I doubt this will put them off coming. Most of the world economy is still in the doldrums; China is one of the bright spots,” said Miller, speaking days after new figures showed that GDP growth rose to an unexpectedly high 7.9% in the second quarter.

Experts also play down suggestions that an increasingly mighty China is brushing aside the firms it used to woo. “There’s anxiety that China is not interested in foreign investment any more,” pointed out Professor Li Wei, of the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business in Beijing and the University of Virginia.

“I would discount that. It doesn’t care much about financial resources foreign companies can bring, but access to foreign markets remains important. I don’t expect major changes.”

The day after the great fire burned through central Victoria, I drove from Sydney to Melbourne. Smoke obscured the horizon, entering my air-conditioned car and carrying with it that distinctive scent so strongly signifying death, or, to Aboriginal people, cleansing.

It was as if a great cremation had taken place. I didn’t know then how many people had died in their cars and homes, or while fleeing, but by the time I reached the scorched ground just north of Melbourne, the dreadful news was trickling in. Australia has suffered its worst recorded peacetime loss of life. And the trauma will be with us for ever.

I was born in Victoria, and over five decades I’ve watched as the state has changed. The long, wet and cold winters that seemed insufferable to me as a boy vanished decades ago, and for the last 12 years a new, drier climate has established itself. I could measure its progress whenever I flew in to Melbourne. Over the years the farm dams filled less frequently while the suburbs crept further into the countryside, their swimming pools oblivious to the great drying.

Climate modelling suggests the decline of southern Australia’s winter rainfall is caused by a build-up of greenhouse gas, much of it from coal burning. Victoria has the most polluting coal power plant on earth, and another plant was threatened by the fire. There’s evidence that global pollution caused a significant change in climate after the huge El Niño event of 1998. Along with the dwindling rainfall has come a desiccation of the soil, and more extreme summer temperatures.

This February, at the zenith of a record-breaking heatwave, Melbourne recorded its hottest day ever – a suffocating 46.1C, with even higher temperatures in rural Victoria. This extreme coincided with exceptionally strong northerly winds, followed by an abrupt change to southerly. This brought a cooling, but it was the shift in wind direction that caught so many in a deadly trap. Such conditions have occurred before. In 1939 and 1983 they led to dangerous fires. But this time the conditions were more extreme than they had ever been, and the 12-year “drought” meant plant tissues were bone dry.

Despite narrowly missing the 1983 Victorian fires and then losing a house to the 1994 Sydney bushfires, I had not previously appreciated the difference a degree or two of additional heat and a dry soil can make to the ferocity of a fire. This fire was quantitatively different from anything seen before.

My country is still in shock at the loss of so many lives. But inevitably we will look for lessons from this natural tragedy. The first, I fear, is that we must anticipate more such terrible blazes, for the world’s addiction to burning fossil fuels goes on unabated. And there is now no doubt that emissions pollution is laying the preconditions necessary for more such blazes.

When he ratified the Kyoto protocol, Australia’s prime minister, Kevin Rudd, described climate change as the greatest threat facing humanity. Shaken, and clearly having seen things none of us should see, he has now had the eyewitness proof of his words. We can only hope Australia’s climate policy, which is weak, is now significantly strengthened.

Rudd has said the arsonists suspected of lighting some fires are guilty of mass murder, and the police are pursuing the malefactors. But there’s an old saying among Australian firefighters: “Whoever owns the fuel owns the fire.” Let’s hope Australians ponder the deeper causes of this horrible event, and change their polluting ways before it’s too late.

Fire is an essential element in the life cycle of Australian forests. Season by season sclerophyll or “hard-leaved” woodlands build up huge amounts of detritus, shed leaves, bark and twiggery, which must burn if there is to be new growth. Many Australian species, including most of the eucalypts, need fire if they are to complete their reproductive cycle. Seeds encased in woody receptacles need their capsules to be split by fire before they can be released to germinate.

For 40 or maybe 60 millennia, Aboriginal peoples managed fire proactively, setting alight woodland, scrubland and grassland, so that they could pass freely, so that game was driven towards them, so that fresh green herbage was available. Aboriginal languages have dozens of words for fire. As the Endeavour sailed up the eastern coast, Captain Cook noted that the skies were darkened with smoke by day and lit up by fire at night.

In the national parks of Australia, the importance of regular burning is well understood. Elsewhere the emphasis has been on prevention. Attempting to prevent fire in most of Australia is simply postponing the inevitable. Bushland that is not burnt regularly turns into a powder keg, as the fuel load inexorably increases. When dry eucalypt woodland goes up, it explodes, turning into a veritable firestorm. If no wind is blowing, it creates its own wind.

The Australian governments, state and federal, are well aware of the cost of fire to the economy. People who want to build houses in sclerophyll woodland will be told that any space between the floor of the house and the ground must be sealed, and even that they have to clear the native vegetation for a radius of as much as 50 metres from the house walls. At the same time people in the most desirable seaside suburbs will be prevented by law from clearing native vegetation. Some of the most valuable real estate in Victoria is bordered by beachfront reserves that are an endless succession of thickets choked with tinder-dry dead wood.

The most disheartening aspect of the Kinglake disaster is that since its foundation in the 1880s the township has suffered regular bushfires, in 1926, in 1939, in the 1960s, in the Ash Wednesday fires of 1983; two years ago almost to the day 1,500 hectares were destroyed by fire, but nothing was learnt. The cause of these disasters is not global warming; still less is it arson. It is the failure to recognise that fire is an intrinsic feature of eucalypt bushland. It cannot be prevented but it can and should be managed. Unless there is a fundamental change of policy across all levels of government in Australia, there will be more and worse fires and more deaths.

The end of an era came this week when the millionaire merchant banker John Key was sworn in as New Zealand’s 38th prime minister. His centre-right National party had won a resounding victory over the longstanding Labour government. That also sadly meant the end to the reign of one of the country’s most successful leaders, Helen Clark, who then resigned as head of the party.

With all that is going on in the world, it is easy to think that peaceful regime change in a country with a population the size of the East Midlands, in the middle of an ocean 12,000 miles from here, isn’t exactly vital. (Which may explain why the election hardly got a mention in the British press.) But Helen Clark was a different kind of politician from any New Zealand had seen before – and as an expatriate I know I am not alone in feeling unusually proud of her achievements and sad to see her go.

During her nine years in power, Helen (as the 58-year-old was called by those who loved or reviled her) was a “third way” social democrat, aiming to flatten some of the more glaring inequalities in the country’s so-called egalatarian society by introducing a 39% top-tax rate and family tax credits, taking interest off student loans and increasing subsidised healthcare. She revived ailing services like Air New Zealand and the railways by returning them to state ownership, and she made waves in the US when she insisted that New Zealand waters remain free of nuclear-powered vessels.

Like Tony Blair (whose Labour party preceded Helen’s to power by two years) she was tasked with bringing together a party with deep ideological divisions. On top of that, in 1996 New Zealand had changed from first past the post to mixed member proportional voting so in each of her governments she had to negotiate constantly with small, often badly behaved parties from the margins.

Her former press officer, Mike Munro, said: “From day one she did an amazing job – there were some fairly feral characters in the Alliance.” There were also plenty of controversial MPs in her own party, accused of everything from drink-driving and sexual misconduct to bribery and corruption. Her standards of ministerial accountability were tough, but as Munro put it: “She made sure they were all brought into the tent.”

From a farming family in the Waikato, Helen was resolutely down to earth and – in the Kiwi vernacular – not at all “flash”. She followed the footie (rugby), liked pop music, and went climbing and walking whenever she got any spare time. As the late Sir Edmund Hillary said of her: “She’s always off climbing something, doing something exciting and I think that New Zealanders admire that.”

But there were some things about Helen they never felt comfortable with. Her deep voice, her wardrobe of serviceable trouser suits, and her childless marriage to sociologist Peter Davis all brought their share of snide media comment. This didn’t seem to bother her much; she was no emotional chin wobbler. But as one media commentator pointed out: “Bossy women aren’t much liked or trusted in New Zealand.”

Columnist Chris Trotter in the Sunday Star Times went so far as to attribute the election result to ingrained sexism: “It was the men who just couldn’t cope with the idea of being led by an intelligent, idealistic, free-spirited woman; the gutless, witless, passionless creatures of the barbecue-pit and the sports bar (and the feckless females who put up with them) who voted Helen Clark out of office.”

Others see the election as the result of boredom. The country has, so far, been relatively free of the economic maelstrom that the rest of us are experiencing. But rather than stick with the partnership of Helen and finance minister Dr Michael Cullen that had led to stability and the high living standards New Zealanders enjoy, all the pre-election talk was of the need for “change”.

I first met Helen in 1975. I was a first-year at the University of Auckland; she was my political science tutor. She was then as she turned out to be later: informal, plain speaking, occasionally droll, determined and committed. Only six years later she was elected to represent the middle-class Auckland suburb of Mt Albert, a seat she still holds.

The next time I met her was in New Zealand House in London, where she had attended the premiere of Niki Caro’s film Whale Rider. All through her government she was also the minister for arts and culture. Not everyone in that particular world felt her reign was beneficial, but generally she was seen as firm but fair, a politician you could talk to.

Just before the election she attended the NZ Music Awards to give out a prize – but it was her appearance that got the standing ovation. From a room full of popular musos, after nine years in office, that says something about Helen. And I can’t imagine any British prime minister ever pulling it off.

Its banks secured in the warmth of the southern spring, Australia is not news. It ought to be. An epic scandal of racism, injustice and brutality is being covered up in the manner of apartheid South Africa. Many Australians conspire in this silence, wishing never to reflect upon the truth about their society’s Untermenschen, the Aboriginal people.

The facts are not in dispute: thousands of black Australians never reach the age of 40; an entirely preventable disease, trachoma, blinds black children as epidemics of rheumatic fever ravage their communities; suicide among the despairing young is common. No other developed country has such a record. A pervasive white myth, that Aborigines leech off the state, serves to conceal the disgrace that money the federal government says it spends on indigenous affairs actually goes towards opposing native land rights. In 2006, some A$3bn was underspent “or the result of creative accounting”, reported the Sydney Morning Herald. Like the children of apartheid, the Aboriginal children of Thamarrurr in the Northern Territory receive less than half the educational resources allotted to white children.

In 2005, the UN committee on the elimination of racial discrimination described the racism of the Australian state, a distinction afforded no other developed country. This was in the decade-long rule of the conservative coalition of John Howard, whose coterie of white supremacist academics and journalists assaulted the truth of recorded genocide in Australia, especially the horrific separations of Aboriginal children from their families. They deployed arguments not dissimilar to those David Irving used to promote Holocaust denial.

Smear by media as a precursor to the latest round of repression is long familiar to black Australians. In 2006, the flagship current affairs programme of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Lateline, broadcast lurid allegations of “sex slavery” among the Mutitjulu people in the Northern Territory. The programme’s source, described as an “anonymous youth worker”, was later exposed as a federal government official whose “evidence” was discredited by the Northern Territory chief minister and the police.

The ABC has never retracted its allegations, claiming it has been “exonerated by an internal inquiry”. Shortly before last year’s election, Howard declared a “national emergency” and sent the army to the Northern Territory to “protect the children” who, said his minister for indigenous affairs, were being abused in “unthinkable numbers”.

Last February, with much sentimental fanfare, the new prime minister, Labor’s Kevin Rudd, made a formal apology to the first Australians. Australia was said to be finally coming to terms with its rapacious past and present. Was it? “The Rudd government,” noted a Sydney Morning Herald editorial, “has moved quickly to clear away this piece of political wreckage in a way that responds to some of its own supporters’ emotional needs, yet it changes nothing. It is a shrewd manoeuvre.”

In May, barely reported government statistics revealed that of the 7,433 Aboriginal children examined by doctors as part of the “national emergency”, 39 had been referred to the authorities for suspected abuse. Of those, a maximum of just four possible cases of abuse were identified. Such were the “unthinkable numbers”. They were little different from those of child abuse in white Australia. What was different was that no soldiers invaded the beachside suburbs, no white parents were swept aside, no white welfare was “quarantined”. Marion Scrymgour, an Aboriginal minister in the Northern Territory, said: “To see decent, caring [Aboriginal] fathers, uncles, brothers and grandfathers, who are undoubtedly innocent of the horrific charges being bandied about, reduced to helplessness and tears, speaks to me of widespread social damage.”

What the doctors found they already knew – children at risk from a spectrum of extreme poverty and the denial of resources in one of the world’s richest countries. Having let a few crumbs fall, Rudd is picking up where Howard left off. His indigenous affairs minister, Jenny Macklin, has threatened to withdraw government support from remote communities that are “economically unviable”. The Northern Territory is the only region where Aborigines have comprehensive land rights, granted almost by accident 30 years ago. Here lie some of the world’s biggest uranium deposits. Canberra wants to mine and sell it.

Foreign governments, especially the US, want the Northern Territory as a toxic dump. The Adelaide to Darwin railway that runs adjacent to Olympic Dam, the world’s largest uranium mine, was built with the help of Kellogg, Brown & Root – a subsidiary of American giant Halliburton, the alma mater of Dick Cheney, Howard’s “mate”. “The land grab of Aboriginal tribal land has nothing to do with child sexual abuse,” says the Australian scientist Helen Caldicott, “but all to do with open slather uranium mining and converting the Northern Territory to a global nuclear dump.”

What is unique about Australia is not its sun-baked, derivative society, clinging to the sea, but its first people, the oldest on earth, whose skill and courage in surviving invasion, of which the current onslaught is merely the latest, deserve humanity’s support.

Six months ago Michael Jeffery, the then governor general of Australia, stuck for something to say about his female replacement, declared: “Anybody can be the governor general in [Australia] and that’s what makes it such a great place” – as if the other 14 Commonwealth realms that pick a stand-in for the Queen were somehow less democratic than Australia.

When it comes to choosing a head of state Australia is the least adventurous of the dominions. The 25 incumbents include one prince, two earls, two viscounts, seven barons and nine knights, plus an archbishop, a politician and a major-general. Hitherto, all have been men; none has been from an ethnic minority. Canada appointed its first woman, a member of the French-speaking minority, a quarter of a century ago: the second, Adrienne Clarkson, was born in China; and the present incumbent, who is female and black, was born in Haiti.

The governor general’s job is to represent the Queen. What the Queen would not do, the governor general, whether male or female, must not do either. The governor general needs to know how to talk to visiting monarchs, ambassadors, sportsmen and hoi polloi without actually saying anything, while showing interest in everything and concern about nothing. The governor general has to deliver the speech at the opening of parliament utterly deadpan, without so much as raising an eyebrow. Governors general, like British queens, have to do as prime ministers tell them. The poorest Australian has more rights than the governor general, who may not demonstrate, may not carry a placard, may not write so much as a letter for publication.

The outgoing governor general managed to keep his mouth shut and nose clean until this, his very last week, when he suddenly uttered an opinion. Referring to the Aboriginal population, or as he put it the 520,000 “people with indigenous blood”, he said: “I suspect that about … 400,000 of those are already integrated satisfactorily … to such an extent that you don’t hear about them. They’re doing what we would look upon as living normal Australian lives.” According to him it was only the 100,000 or so in the remote areas who had been “doing it hard for many years”.

All the people struggling in urban areas to reverse the devastation of poverty, displacement, imprisonment, drugs and alcohol were flabbergasted, but the governor general was groping towards a very blunt and rather wobbly point. Many people with “indigenous blood” have never lived as Aborigines. For them indigenous blood can be a passport to all kinds of benefits, including cushy sinecures in the establishment. Time was when these people would have passed for white; these days they tend to pass for black. Where once the black ancestors were hidden, it is now the white ancestors who are never mentioned.

Australia appears to have adopted the invidious one-drop policy that so vitiated assistance given to Canada’s First Nations. What is even more confusing is that Torres Strait Islanders, who came to Australia as indentured labour, were lumped in with indigenous hunter-gatherer peoples, though they at no time claimed sovereignty over any part of the continent. If Jeffery had grasped the real stinging nettle, and voiced a suspicion about just how diluted “indigenous blood” has been, the outcry would have been even shriller.

Pat Dodson, descendant of the Yawuru nation, ordained Catholic priest and former chairman of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, thundered from Alice Springs: “We’re not living normal lives. We’re totally over-represented in the political indicators. We’re dying a lot younger. We don’t have the educational opportunities.” Of non-indigenous Australians, 49% will complete year 12 of their schooling; only 14% of indigenous children in remote areas will get that far, and in the cities the proportion rises only to a third.

What was worse than the governor general’s touching innocence about the realities of urban Aboriginal life was his bland assumption that total assimilation was the only satisfactory goal. In Dodson’s words, Jeffery’s statement “really denies the uniqueness of who the indigenous people are and what their contribution to this country can be in their own right, as if they have nothing to contribute except the absorption of the culture the west has offered us. It’s a pretty damnable statement if that’s the case.” Marcia Langton, professor of indigenous studies at the University of Melbourne and descendant of the Yiman nation, refused to comment as to do so would be “too dangerous”.

Among the people tipped to take over Jeffery’s $365,000-a-year job was Lowitja O’Donohue, descendant of the Yankunytjatjara people and founder chairman of the now disbanded Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission. It was not to be. The choice of the prime minister, Kevin Rudd, alighted on a fellow Queenslander, Quentin Bryce – a woman who already had the job of state governor. Australian media are now congratulating the country on having matured enough to be ready for a woman governor general. Belize was mature enough in 1981, when Dame Minita Gordon took office. New Zealand, always more mature than Australia, has had two Dames do the job, Catherine Tizard and Sylvia Cartwright. Barbados has had Dame Nita Barrow, and the Bahamas Dame Ivy Dumont. St Lucia currently has Dame Pearlette Louisy as head of state, Antigua and Barbuda Dame Louise Lake-Tack. Only Grenada, Jamaica, Papua New Guinea, St Kitts and Nevis, Solomon Islands, and Tuvalu have yet to choose a woman for governor general.

Bryce – who was sworn in yesterday – is now commander-in-chief of Australia’s armed forces. The queen wouldn’t dream of issuing orders to the troops, so neither does the governor general. The only governor general to have taken the role of commander-in-chief at all seriously was Adrienne Clarkson, who visited Canadian troops in Kosovo and the Gulf. She came to the job after years as a talkshow host and TV presenter, so was used to offering style in lieu of substance; but even so she blundered into one footling controversy after another. On one mortifying occasion she took precedence over the Queen, apparently because some bewildered underling had not grasped that Clarkson was head of state only when the Queen wasn’t there.

Bryce is reported to have said under media bombardment that Australia will become a republic when the people decide, so there is a glimmer of hope that the first woman to take this most nugatory of jobs could also be the first republican. If so, she’d better learn pretty quickly to keep it to herself.

As Lionel Shriver once said, we need to talk about Kevin. It’s not as though Australia’s prime minister is likely to shoot up the school gym. But if hypercritical domestic media are to be believed, Kevin Rudd, elected amid a national sigh of relief last November and now making his first overseas foray, has a lot of personal problems.

Policy wonk, nerdy control freak, bureaucrat-in-chief, charisma-free bore and junketeer are some of the kinder epithets the whingeing Aussies have applied to the man who ousted the long-serving conservative John Howard.

Rudd has been forced to deny he is a robot, defend his “quirky” sense of humour, and rebut claims he is a US lackey after he jokingly saluted George Bush.

The Labour party leader is an avowed republican, so his weekend audience with the Queen at Windsor Castle was closely watched for signs of lese-majesty or other insurrectionary behaviour. Instead, the conversation began like this. Queen: “The weather is better than it was yesterday evening.” Rudd: “The snow was extraordinary.”

Nowadays Rudd says sacking the Queen as Australia’s head of state is “not a top order priority”.

And then there is the name: Kevin, which to some ears smacks more of Basildon boozers or billabong backwaters than international statesmanship. Rudd deflects the sneer by cheerfully emphasising his ordinariness. “My name is Kevin, I’m from Queensland, and I’m here to help,” he famously told his party conference last year. He went on to win big.

On substantial matters of policy, Rudd lacked vision, a crusty editorial in the Australian complained last week. “At this point in his premiership, [he] appears to be most interested in perpetuating what seems to be a love-in of convenience with his followers. His current world trip has included a lot of meetings designed to make Mr Rudd look important on the television news.”

Judging by his performance in London and at Nato’s Bucharest summit, however, that verdict – and the ad hominem attacks – seems off target. Rudd, whose first act as prime minister was to ratify the Kyoto protocol, agreed a series of measures to combat climate change, advance the millennium development goals, and reform international financial institutions.

While fulfilling his promise to pull out of Iraq, Rudd has kept the Bush administration sweet by recommitting Australian troops to Afghanistan. And with a visit to Beijing beginning tomorrow, the Mandarin-speaking PM’s claim to be one of the west’s better informed China interlocutors is considerable.

Speaking at the London School of Economics on Monday, Rudd acknowledged Australia’s growing dependency on China’s markets, where demand for iron ore, uranium, coal and wheat is fuelling a 17th consecutive year of Australian growth, budget surpluses and rising incomes. Concerns have also been raised over Chinese moves to buy controlling stakes in Australian companies.

Traditional allies and trade partners such as Japan worry, meanwhile, that developing Canberra-Beijing ties presage a political and strategic shift. Rudd visited Washington but his current world tour does not include Japan. “We favour increased regional cooperation, but Rudd has got his priorities wrong,” a senior Japanese diplomat said.

Rudd said China’s growing economic power and enhanced global security role, plus its importance in effective environmental protection, meant closer political links with Beijing were essential. “I will do whatever I can to get China on the bus in defence of common interests such as climate change,” he said.

But that did not mean he would dodge sensitive human rights issues such as the pre-Olympics crackdown in Tibet. “It’s a very complex business, dealing with China on these issues,” he said. “Millions of people have been lifted out of poverty [since China's modernisation process began]. But there’s still a very real problem with human rights. That’s the reality.”

He would be urging China’s representatives to restart a dialogue with the Dalai Lama while stressing that governments round the world continue to recognise Chinese sovereignty over Tibet, he said. “It will be a very difficult set of discussions.”

Rudd has coined a wonkish phrase to describe his approach to China and other foreign policy issues: “creative middle power diplomacy.” Despite past Labour criticism of Howard’s subservience to Washington, he stresses the ongoing importance to Australia of the US alliance, multilateralism via the UN and the EU, and “comprehensive engagement” with Asia and the Pacific.

Contrary to what his detractors say, this does not suggest a lack of strategic vision. Rudd the robot’s problem may lie elsewhere. For the Australian right, at least, this bloke is way too brainy.

The historic apology offered by prime minister Kevin Rudd to the “stolen generations” was a crucial step for Australia, as Richard Flanagan wrote on these pages this week. But it does not make amends for the role played by the British in the destruction and degradation of the Aboriginal race. Initially soldiers, convicts and settlers killed Aborigines as if they were animals threatening the crops. Later, in the 20th century, Fabian socialists provided the intellectual justification for the eugenics policy that led to the stolen generations scandal.

The British exterminated the entire tribe of Tasmanian aborigines, leaving only 40 survivors who were herded off their land and placed on an offshore island gulag. The governor’s wife led the hunt for their skulls to decorate London mantelpieces. At least there was a parliamentary inquiry, which reported in 1836 that “not a single native now remains upon Van Dieman’s land … the adoption of any conduct, having for its avowed or secret object the extermination of the native race, could not fail to leave an indelible stain upon the British government”. That “indelible stain” was, a century later, termed “genocide”.

We castigate the Turks for pretending the Armenian genocide never took place, but we are apt to forget the Tasmanian genocide. Last year the National History Museum had to be taken to court to stop it experimenting on the skulls of victims.

Rudd’s apology was directed at the policy that produced the stolen generations – Aboriginal children, mainly girls, snatched from their mothers for “assimilation” into white society. Its intellectual origin was the English eugenics movement, which held that “feeble-mindedness” and other “degenerate” traits could be eliminated by social engineering measures such as compulsory sterilisation of the “unfit” and by “breeding out” what were described as “degenerate” racial traits.

AO Neville (played by Kenneth Branagh in the Phil Noyce film Rabbit-Proof Fence) held the title chief protector of Aborigines in Western Australia and was the leading proponent of the policy. He was an Englishman who, inspired by eugenics, took very young girls from Aboriginal settlements and had them trained for domestic service with white families, relying on miscegenation – and rape – to produce by the third generation an acceptable skin colour and a lack of any distinctive aboriginality. His aim was to “merge the blacks into our white community” so that “we could eventually forget that there ever were any Aborigines in Australia”.

Much as white Australians may castigate themselves today for their deluded assimilation efforts, it is necessary, as with every genocide, to sheet home responsibility to the intellectual authors of the policy. These were the Fabian socialist heroes who believed eugenics principles could be applied to produce a “superior” society. Sydney and Beatrice Webb, John Maynard Keynes and Bertrand Russell all supported this cause. George Bernard Shaw argued for humane extermination of “the sort of people who do not fit in”. Marie Stopes publicly pleaded for the sterilisation of the “hopelessly rotten and racially diseased”. Virginia Woolf and DH Lawrence privately urged that the state should eradicate “imbeciles”. Their slogan was the vile aphorism of Oliver Wendell Holmes: “three generations of imbeciles are enough”.

Against this background, Neville’s “absorption” policy, adopted in 1937, was regarded as progressive. It was in line with modern thinking in the UK, where a Department of Health report had in 1934 recommended compulsory sterilisation of the “feeble-minded”, a class comprising “a quarter of a million mental defectives and a far larger number of the mentally subnormal”. It was not implemented, mainly because of opposition from Labour MPs, who feared working-class people would be the real victims of the Fabian intelligentsia.

Historical wrongs cannot be put right by belated apologies unless there has been a genuine attempt to understand – then remember and condemn – the thinking behind the policies that have had such appalling results. This is why we establish truth commissions, and why international courts now try the “intellectual authors” of widespread and systematic atrocities.

For that reason, the UK government should find a way to endorse the apology to Australian Aborigines, for whose sufferings Britain has been in part responsible – not only for the massacres and for the introduction of disease and alcohol that further ravaged the indigenous population, but by a much later and more insidious dose of eugenics theory. Every Holocaust Day we should remember the Tasmanians, and ask how it came to pass that the finest minds in the socialist pantheon were incapable of imagining the inhuman cruelty entailed by their plans for a Fabian utopia.

It is difficult to convey the deep emotion many Australians feel about the apology that is to be made to those indigenous Australians now known as the Stolen Generations, this Wednesday at 9am, as the first act of the newly elected Australian parliament. The national excitement around the event is palpable, with thousands heading to Canberra for it, and public screens being erected in most major cities for the live, national broadcast of the event.

Newly elected prime minister Kevin Rudd spent time last weekend with a Stolen Generation survivor, listening to her story. He has pointedly negotiated the wording of the apology with indigenous leaders but not the leader of the Liberal party. If Rudd’s Labor government achieves nothing else, it deserves credit for this historic act which allows Australia to once more move forward.

Nor is it easy to explain precisely why a merely symbolic act has come to mean so much more than simply saying sorry, or how it has taken on the burden of the hope and despair of many Australians.

In the late 19th century the theory that the Aborigines were an inferior race that was doomed to die out became accepted as fact. But such faux science was threatened by the increasing number of children of mixed descent who, unaware of their superior bloodlines, took on indigenous ways and values. To wash the blackness out, a prejudice was raised to the level of a supposedly compassionate act and became known as the policy of assimilation.

In its name it is officially estimated that, over the course of the last century, over a hundred thousand indigenous children were taken from their families and tribes – often forcibly – and raised in institutions and foster families where they would pointedly not be allowed their language or culture. These children were the Stolen Generations. How many lives – of both those taken and those left – were blighted and destroyed will never be known.

In 1995 the Paul Keating Labor government commissioned an inquiry into the forcible removal of Aboriginal children. But by the time the report was tabled in 1997, John Howard’s Liberal party – widely seen in its early days to have had truck with a racist far right – was in government, and empathy for the dispossessed was in short supply.

The report concluded that the children and their families had endured “gross violations of their human rights” and described the forcible removal of indigenous children as “an act of genocide, aimed at wiping out indigenous families, communities and cultures”. The report recommended compensation and an apology by parliament.

The report’s detailed stories of suffering – the sometimes violent removals, the beatings, floggings, sexual abuse, lies; and the inevitable harvest of human misery – the suicides, the alcohol and drug abuse, the violence, crime, the descent into hell – shocked and moved the nation. There arose in Australia a great movement for reconciliation.

Millions marched for this cause. Sorry Days were held, with extraordinary town hall meetings where many wept, and Sorry Books filled with individual Australians’ own apologies. There was at the heart of the reconciliation movement a sense that it offered all Australians a necessary and cathartic rapprochement that might enable the nation to finally go forward.

But for 11 years it did not happen.

John Howard, willing to apologise to home owners for rising interest rates, would not say sorry to Aborigines. He refused to condone what he referred to as “a black armband version” of history, preferring a jingoistic nationalism. He promoted a revisionist school of history that claimed the suffering of Aboriginal Australia had been grossly overstated. He went so far as to install one of that school’s leading proponents, Keith Windschuttle, on the board of the Australian Broadcasting Commission.

I am 46. I have met Aborigines younger than me who used to hide every time anyone official came round their camp, for fear of being taken away. I met a man in Darwin jail who was two years younger than me. He had been stolen from his mother at the age of three, sat in the back of a truck and driven for three days through the tropical heat to an institution in Darwin.

I continue to be astonished by what I learn about the appalling racism my country practised for so long. Only last year I discovered that in parts of Australia in my lifetime, white men could be jailed for cohabiting with black women. And yet so often I have only ever met with friendship, humour, and respect from those same Aboriginal people from whom I might expect anger and hate.

It is true that the apology will not alter the condition of Aboriginal people. The hurt won’t end, nor the misery and inequality that sees indigenous Australians with a life expectancy 17 years less than non-indigenous Australians. But it is a fundamental and necessary step towards Australians coming together to address their national ills, such as the violence and substance abuse of remote indigenous communities, the poverty and unemployment of urban Aborigines, and of once more looking at the matters of a treaty, land rights, and compensation to the survivors of assimilation.

These are complex issues. But in just half a century, Australia transformed itself from an Anglo-Saxon colony into one of the world’s most successful migrant nations. We did that; we can, if we wish, do this. Every nation sins. The measure of their greatness is their capacity to admit to them.

I recall a major concert in Melbourne in 2006 by Australia’s leading indigenous musicians. The concert was in part inspired, lost, elegiac, overwhelming. At the end, the hall of 2,000 people rose and there was ovation after ovation. Huge waves of emotion buffeted the hall. There was a goodwill upon which a different country could be built. At that moment I realised it was never about the past. Why is it we Australians have been so frightened of who we are? Could it be that what black Australia offers is not guilt but the invitation to a future as diverse, as large and extraordinary as the songs played that night in that hall?

Shiver me timbers, boys and girls, we is awash in a sea of pirates down here in the Southern Ocean and it’s time for a parley to do a little ‘splaining on the subject. This ocean now rivals the 17th century Caribbean for reported acts of piracy. The only thing lacking is the Sea Shepherd member Orlando Bloom.Japanese whalers are accusing the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and Greenpeace crew members of being pirates. Sea Shepherd and Greenpeace are accusing the whalers of being pirates. The whalers and Greenpeace are accusing Sea Shepherd of being pirates. The Japanese government is throwing the word piracy about as freely as the governor of Jamaica once did.

No one has sunk any ships, looted any cargos, kidnapped any damsels (just a couple of blokes) or forced anyone to walk the plank yet – but listening to the rhetoric, the public could be forgiven from thinking these activities are ravaging the Southern main.

My ship, the Steve Irwin, does fly a modern version of the Jolie Rouge, the original name of the banner that evolved into the skull and crossbones of the Jolly Roger. We decided years ago that if people were going to call us pirates, we would adopt our own version, and designed the crossed Neptune trident and shepherd’s staff with the skull.

As soon as we hoisted that black flag, kids from around the world began to write to us in support. Our Jolly Roger hats and shirts have become our most popular merchandise. Why? Because there is a romance associated with piracy that is separate from the reality. Some pirates were noble heroes and some were dastardly villains. It’s all a matter of perspective. If you love whales, we be heroes; but if you eat whales then we be pirates.

Back in the 17th century it was not the British navy that shut down piracy in the Caribbean. The military and the politicians were not interested. Piracy was finally shut down in the Spanish Main by the pirate Sir Henry Morgan. It took a pirate to end piracy. His reward was to be appointed governor of Jamaica, where he was able to pilfer more booty through politics than he ever did from the deck of a ship.

There are pirates of profit, like the Japanese; pirates of opportunity, like the politicians; and pirates of compassion, like Sea Shepherd. It is a little difficult to cast Sea Shepherd’s unpaid volunteers, selflessly trying to save the lives of whales, as ruthless pirates.

On the other hand, the Japanese whalers are illegally stealing and killing whales from a sanctuary and territory that is supposed to be under the sovereignty of Australia. The whalers have also taken hostages, demanding conditions for their return.

So why do those pirates in Canberra consistently refuse to protect Australian territory from illegal foreign exploitation? The answer is the same for those politicians today as it was for British politicians in 1650 – there’s money to be made, under the table and through the back door; there are trade agreements to consider; and some pirates – especially the Japanese – have good public relations firms and powerful financial backing. So we have Australia condemning the Japanese and doing very little to stop their whaling fleet’s ruthless plundering.

At least proper piracy has a long list of renowned and admirable practitioners: John Paul Jones, who founded the navies of both the US and Russia; Jean LaFitte, who stood with General Andrew Jackson in defence of New Orleans; and Sir Francis Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh, knighted by Elizabeth I.

I stand in honourable company as a modern-day pirate, though I’ve not shot anyone, burned any ships, looted any cargos or kidnapped anyone. We are also pirates with a sense of humour and a moral code of non-violence. In 30 years of eco-piracy we have never injured a single poacher, though we’ve sent nine whalers to the bottom. Instead of cannon balls, our guns shoot coconut cream and chocolate pie-filling. We toss stink bombs instead of grenades and we are so non-violent we don’t even eat meat or fish on our ships. No fish, fowl or mammals have died in the making of our high seas campaigns.

What we do is defend the whales from illegal slaughter by ruthless and merciless killers. If people want to call us pirates for that, we’re proud to be so. We have whales to save and Japanese ships to attack.

The change in public opinion about whaling has been dramatic. Thirty years ago Australian vessels would hunt sperm whales with the government’s blessing – but just two days ago an Australian customs ship, in Antarctic waters to video Japanese whaling activities, played a key role in winning the freedom of two anti-whaling activists. The hostage crisis began when they boarded a Japanese harpoon boat on Tuesday. Because Paul Watson, the leader of the conservation group Sea Shepherd, refused to cease his disruption of the whaling fleet, the Japanese refused to return the activists. But the stalemate was broken two days later when the Australian ship agreed to accept, and transfer, them.

In 1977 the Australian government, in the face of Greenpeace protests, appointed the retired judge Sydney Frost to head an inquiry into whaling. As a concerned Australian and a philosophy professor working on the ethics of our treatment of animals, I made a submission: whaling should stop not because whales are endangered, but because they are social mammals with big brains, capable of enjoying life and feeling pain – not only physical pain, but distress at the loss of group members.

Whales cannot be humanely killed: they are too large – even with explosive harpoons it is difficult to hit the right spot. And because whalers are reluctant to use large amounts of explosive, which would destroy valuable oil or flesh, harpooned whales typically die slowly and painfully. If there were some life-or-death need that humans could meet only by killing whales, perhaps the ethical case could be countered. But everything we get from whales can be obtained without cruelty elsewhere. Thus, whaling is unethical.

Frost agreed that the methods were inhumane, remarking on “the real possibility that we are dealing with a creature which has a remarkably developed brain and a high degree of intelligence”. Malcolm Fraser’s conservative government accepted his recommendation that whaling be stopped, and Australia soon became an anti-whaling nation.

While Japan has suspended its plan to kill humpback whales, its whaling fleet will still kill a thousand whales, mostly smaller minkes. Japan justifies this as “research” – but the research seems to be aimed at building a scientific case for commercial whaling; so, if whaling is unethical, then the research is both unnecessary and unethical.

The Japanese say that he discussion of whaling should be carried out on the basis of evidence, without “emotion”. They think that humpback numbers have increased sufficiently for the killing of 50 to pose no danger to the species. On this narrow point, they might be right. But no amount of science can tell us whether or not to kill whales. Indeed, the desire to kill whales is no less motivated by “emotion” than opposition to it. Eating whales is not necessary for health or nutrition; it is a tradition some Japanese are emotionally attached to.

They have one argument that is not easily dismissed. They claim that western countries are just trying to impose their cultural beliefs on the Japanese. The best response to this argument is that the wrongness of causing needless suffering to sentient beings is not culturally specific. (It is, for instance, a precept of Japanese Buddhism.)

But western nations are in a weak position to make this response, because they inflict so much unnecessary suffering on animals – through culling (the Australian slaughter of kangaroos), hunting and factory farms. The west will have little defence against the charge of cultural bias until it addresses needless animal suffering in its own back yard.

Kevin Rudd, Australia‘s incoming prime minister, combines iron discipline with a puckish sense of humor, political toughness with a reflective spiritual side, and a youthful disposition with an old pro¿s skill at divining where a majority lies.

The triumph of Rudd and his Australian Labor Party holds lessons for Democrats and other center-left parties. John Howard, the conservative incumbent swept from power after 11 years in office, had presided over record prosperity. For the first time in the country¿s history, wrote Peter Hartcher in the Sydney Morning Herald, a government was tossed out in unambiguously strong economic times.

Until Saturday¿s vote, Labor had lost four elections in a row. One young Labor politician I spoke with during a visit to Australia this summer worried whether her party would have any future if it lost a fifth time. As it happens, Labor under Rudd won its largest share of the vote in 60 years. Howard lost his own seat in a rout in which Labor went from 60 seats to about 86 seats (some races are still close) in the 150-member House of Representatives.

Rudd built on a strong reaction against Howard’s new workplace laws curtailing the rights of workers and unions. Labor won a swath of seats in the far suburbs of the big metropolitan areas where younger two-income families flourish but also struggle with rising mortgage rates and the work-family-community time crunch.

But it is the success of the 50-year-old Rudd in drawing a generational line across the Australian electorate that could be adopted elsewhere, particularly in countries like ours where young people are frustrated with replays of old battles. He overwhelmed the 68-year-old Howard among voters under age 30, beat him among those 30 to 50, and ran even or slightly behind among voters over 50.

Everything Rudd did cast the election as a choice between the past and the future, old and new, tired and fresh, all embodied in his core slogans, “New Leadership” and “Fresh Ideas.” The issues he emphasized — the need for action against global warming, an “education revolution” to make Australia “the best-educated country in the world,” and a pledge to bring broadband technology to the entire nation — reinforced his resolutely up-to-date aura.

Environmentalism mattered in this election. Howard suffered from his close alignment with the Bush administration on global warming, and Australia’s Green Party, with 7.6 percent of the vote, played a role in Labor’s victory.

Under Australia’s election system, voters rank candidates in order of preference. If no candidate gets a majority on the basis of first preferences, the winner is determined by redistributing ballots cast for minor parties on the basis of second preferences. Green ballots went heavily to Labor.

Rudd’s balancing act provides a model for center-left parties, but it also points to the tensions they confront once in power. Rudd won as a self-described “economic conservative” who would tightly manage the nation’s budget. But he also won thanks to an activated trade union movement fighting for its life in seeking to overthrow Howard’s workplace rules.

While Rudd’s centrism wooed swing voters, new political energies were unleashed through innovative organizing efforts on the left. The unions’ “Your Rights at Work” campaign mobilized especially the middle- and working-class neighborhoods where Howard had done well in the past. A Web-based group called Get Up! organized young progressives.

The efforts paid off. Kristina Keneally, a minister in the Labor state government in New South Wales, said that in Howard’s own district of Bennelong, “some polling places had over 50 volunteers between Labor, Get Up and Your Rights at Work.” Rudd has to keep his core promises to the unions and his pledges of economic sobriety to middle-of-the-road voters — and not disappoint either.

I saw Rudd this summer as his media maestros were beginning to push the party’s leader-focused “Kevin07″ campaign. Rudd was characteristically self-deprecating and a bit abashed about the narcissism of it all. But he knew exactly what he was doing. With the opposition in tatters and his own party grateful for victory, Rudd has earned great personal authority at the end of a very personal campaign.

One other thing: Rudd is resolutely pro-American, but he is also able to speak to China‘s leaders in fluent Mandarin. You wonder if that’s about the future, too.

Rudd relied on youth, moderation and voters’ exhaustion with the ideological categories of the past. But he also needed the passion of activists determined to end a long conservative era. Sound familiar?

John Howard famously said the times were his, and for more than a decade it seemed they were. Australia experienced the greatest and most sustained boom in its history. Yet at its end Australia’s indigenous population was in a ruinous state, its extraordinary environment was threatened on numerous fronts, and its people were beginning to ask where the wealth had gone: public schools and public health were in crisis, social welfare was straitened, housing was unaffordable for many, and wages and conditions were being cut under Howard’s industrial reforms.

Howard had promised that Australia would be relaxed and comfortable under his rule, yet this year Australians had become more fearful and suspicious of each other than ever, a state of affairs that Howard’s government seemed happy to exploit.

Howard’s divisiveness and his skilful manipulation of public opinion obscured the strange paradoxes of his era. If he flirted with racism, it was nevertheless under him that Australia ended up with the largest immigration programme in its history. His foreign policy was notoriously sycophantic to the Bush administration. Yet while he often seemed little interested in Asia, over the past decade Australia became far more closely tied in terms of trade to China, India, Japan and Indonesia, and its destiny ever more deeply enmeshed with the coming Asian century.

If he was the most ideologically driven prime minister Australia has had, on occasions he acted entirely out of character: his courageous introduction of comprehensive gun laws in the wake of the Port Arthur massacre in 1996, and again, under enormous public pressure, his sending of a peacekeeping force to East Timor to halt a campaign of repression covertly sponsored by the Indonesian military after the East Timorese voted for independence – flying in the face of Australia’s long-standing policy of support for Indonesia.

Howard’s seeming blandness disguised his ruthless determination radically to reshape Australia. His politicisation of the public service severely weakened that institution; his government’s ceaseless and ferocious attacking of alternative points of opinion brought a disturbing conformity to Australian public life; and he stacked body after body with sycophants and far-right ideologues to prosecute his causes through society.

Then there are the lies: the most extraordinary was his declaration that he would not introduce a consumption tax, though he later did; and the most shameful was the infamous children overboard case. At the height of the 2001 election, Howard’s ministers claimed that refugees on a boat approaching Australia had thrown their children overboard, leading Howard to declare: “I don’t want people like that in Australia.” Only after the election was it proven that the government had known the claim was false.

His condoning of the imprisonment of David Hicks at Guantánamo Bay without trial for five years, and the subsequent gagging of Hicks until after the election, suggested a growing contempt for human rights and the rule of law that was most frighteningly on display with his anti-terrorism legislation, much criticised for its provisions of secret trials and imprisonment.

The mandatory detention of refugees was vigorously defended and extended by Howard, though revelations of Australian citizens being locked up by accident for several months, and in one case deported to the Philippines, spoke not just of incompetent administration but of a darker heartlessness, echoing the infamous Tampa episode of 2001. When 400 refugees were rescued from a sinking boat and left stranded in the tropical heat on the deck of the Tampa, a container ship, Howard very publicly refused permission to land the refugees in Australia, an act that for many epitomised the brutal meanness at the heart of his government.

Though the country became far more chauvinistic under Howard, and though he often invoked the idea of Australia as justification for his government’s actions, he had no compunction in frequently going against the will of the people – whether in refusing to say sorry to black Australia in the face of the reconciliation movement; slowly and expertly destroying the widespread desire for a republic; or committing Australian troops to the Iraq conflict following anti-war demonstrations that were the largest in the nation’s history.

Then something strange happened: history changed and the times no longer were his. His ever lonelier support for the Bush administration’s adventurism looked increasingly foolish and possibly dangerous. The very climate of Australia was transformed. Every mainland capital city now has a water supply crisis so severe that people have been murdered by neighbours for watering gardens. Yet in the midst of a once-in-a-thousand-years drought, Howard remained until late last year a climate sceptic. His supporters dismissed global warming as they had so much else – more hysteria from the left. But it wasn’t: it was the world and the world had changed.

How odd then that, by voting in Kevin Rudd’s Labor party, it seemed in many ways that Australia was simply replacing one older short man with glasses with a slightly younger short man with glasses. Where Howard was a reactionary radical, Rudd is a religious conservative once described by a fellow Labor MP as “about as interesting as carpet”.

Rudd’s conservative agenda was often difficult to distinguish from Howard’s. He was declared a “heartless snake” by the Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson after swinging to the right of Howard on Aboriginal reconciliation in the final days of the election. His claim to be strong on climate change rings hollow when he has promised a subsidy of A$110m to Gunns Ltd, a company intending to build one of the world’s biggest pulp mills in Tasmania, which will burn half-a-million tonnes of native forest a year in the monstrosity of its electricity generator alone. Was this Howard’s greatest victory: the creation of a Labor party in his own image?

In the wake of his defeat the attacks on Howard’s legacy will turn ferocious, but at their heart will be an unease, a ritual exorcism of something deeper that Australians would perhaps rather not admit. For a decade Howard’s power had resided in his ability to speak directly and powerfully to the great negativity at the core of the Australian soul – its timidity, its conformity, its fear of other people and new ideas, its colonial desire to ape rather than lead, its shame that sometimes seems close to a terror of the uniqueness of its land and people.

At the end of his concession speech, Howard claimed to have left Australia prouder, stronger and more prosperous. But it didn’t feel that way. It felt like it had been a lost decade. It felt like the country was frightened, unsure of what it now is, unready for the great changes it must make, and ill-fitted for the robust debates it must have.

There was a strange sense that Australia, which had seemed so often to sleepwalk, mesmerised, through the past 11 years, had suddenly woken up. But where it might go and what it might do and be, no one any longer knew.

Sydney Morning Herald columnist Annabel Crabb has conjured a cutting ditty to describe the predicament facing the Australian prime minister, John Howard, in Saturday’s elections. “Oh voters: if you really care/Elect a man who won’t be there!/Vote for him on Saturday/It’s guaranteed he’ll go away.”

The poem is a reference to Howard’s Blair-like pledge to hand over the PM’s job to his deputy, the treasurer Peter Costello, some time during his next term.

But as opinion polls unanimously indicate, the 68-year-old Liberal leader’s descent into oblivion after 11 years at the top may come much sooner.

With the opposition Labor party of Kevin Rudd poised to sweep to power, Howard’s wished-for fifth term looks like a wet dream. He may even lose his own seat of Bennelong, held for 33 years.

Like Woodrow Wilson and Margaret Thatcher, he has out-stayed his welcome, writes Tom Switzer in the Australian. “Howard’s career is ending in failure … It was not supposed to be like this.”

Like the American conservatives who so admire him, Howard has resorted, in his last throes, to the politics of fear.

He warned this week of the “enormous risks” a change of government might entail, implying security and prosperity would suffer. A clumsy attempt to link Labor to Islamic terrorism appeared to have backfired yesterday.

Right-wingers sneer at the 50-year-old Rudd, likening him to a school prefect or class swot, a “Milky Bar Kid” who lacks experience and judgment.

“Do we really want a prime minister named Kevin?” they ask snobbily.

To which Rudd replies: “Howard’s government has gone stale and no longer comprehends the challenges of the future.” Like US Democrats now and in 1992, he says “it’s time for a change”.

With Australia’s resource-based economy benefiting from high commodity prices and most social groups doing relatively well, a Labor government is unlikely to face immediate domestic challenges. Rudd in any case styles himself an “economic conservative”, stressing continuity.

But in international affairs, a Labor victory may presage significant shifts in direction and emphasis. Howard’s unquestioning support for George Bush and his “war on terror”, his dispatch of troops to Iraq, his self-appointed “deputy sheriff” security role in the Pacific region and his rejection of the Kyoto climate change protocol are all issues that will cost him votes – and on which Labor takes a different line.

Rudd has pledged to withdraw combat troops from Iraq (although he may reinforce those in Afghanistan).

He says he will sign up to Kyoto and lead the charge for carbon emission reductions at next month’s UN climate summit in Bali.

He is also proposing increased foreign aid for unstable regional neighbours such as Fiji, Tonga, the Solomons and East Timor, where the Howard government has intervened, sometimes militarily, with mixed results.

“Most of the rest of the developing world is improving. In our neighbourhood … practically all the indicators are heading the wrong way,” Rudd said recently. “We’ve got a moral obligation to act, it’s in our self-interest.”

Rudd has also promised to close controversial offshore refugee detention centres set up by Howard on Nauru and Papua New Guinea.

Not unlike Gordon Brown, Rudd suggests Australia under his leadership will maintain a close alliance with the US – while tacitly distancing itself from the current White House incumbent.

All the same, Labor’s most significant foreign policy recalibration could involve a shift towards Asia, a shift that is already under way and which in time may push the US into the background.

Australia and Japan, already strong trade partners, signed a new security pact earlier this year. Canberra is increasingly involved in regional organisations such as the East Asia summit (that excludes the US). Relations with Muslim Indonesia are much improved.

But it is the pull of China, its growing international clout and its enormous markets that are most affecting conventional thinking. According to foreign ministry figures, China will become Australia’s largest trading partner this year, a trend buoyed by uranium sales to the Chinese nuclear industry. While exports to China are rising fast, those to the US are falling.

Rudd, a fluent Mandarin speaker who studied Chinese history and served as a diplomat in Beijing, is well placed to build up this key bilateral relationship.

Nobody in Canberra is talking about a break with the US and “the west”. But as the Asian century gathers pace, Howard’s end could mark a new beginning for an old dominion.

Among his many achievements, John Howard is sometimes credited with the invention of “dog whistling” politics – whereby, without any objectionable or racist idea being directly stated, the dog hears exactly the message meant.Whatever the truth of such claims, throughout his long career the Australian prime minister has left himself open to the accusation of racism. From questioning Asian immigration in the 1980s to initially welcoming the racist comments of the far-right MP Pauline Hanson, Howard was widely perceived to play the race card to great effect.

He won the 2001 election after dramatically ordering troops to stop a Norwegian container ship, the Tampa, landing on Australian soil hundreds of refugees it had rescued at sea. He has overseen a transition from a national commitment to multiculturalism to a strident advocacy of “national values” – an oily phrase that appears to be a stalking horse for a new intolerance. When riots broke out between white supremacists and Lebanese youths on Sydney beaches in 2005, he described it as an issue of law and order, rather than race.

Certainly Howard has shown scant interest in black Australia, which at the time of his coming to power seemed – for all of its problems – renascent politically, culturally and socially. There was a growing sense that whatever the Australian nation was and would be, at its heart lay a necessary accommodation with black Australia.

Within white Australia there was a growing movement for what was known as reconciliation – a movement that peaked with millions marching in 2000 to demand the government say sorry for past injustices. Reconciliation was a single word that encompassed a large hope. But John Howard refused to say sorry. For 10 years his government did little other than dismiss the suffering of Aboriginal people in the past as an invention of leftwing academics in the present.

Under Howard, federal government support for black Australia slowly dried up. Services were slashed, native title restricted. By 2000 official figures revealed that more than 41% of indigenous women and 50% of indigenous men could expect to die before they reached 50. Still nothing was done. The condition of many Aboriginal communities – frequently and accurately described as third world – grew only worse. The dreamtime was a grog-ridden nightmare. In the last few years black leaders, government agencies and welfare bodies have been talking of a growing crisis in traditional communities and calling for immediate action. But not until last week did Howard, less than six months out from an election and facing polls pointing to, in his own words, “electoral annihilation”, discover this “national emergency”.

The immediate catalyst was a Northern Territory government report into child sexual abuse in Aboriginal communities. It presented a horrifying picture of black Australia in collapse, ridden by violence, despair, pornography, drugs, gambling and sexual abuse, all fuelled by “rivers of grog”.

Howard’s response – a five-year takeover of 60 indigenous communities, with soldiers and police overseeing alcohol and pornography bans, the part-quarantining of welfare payments to parents to ensure money is spent on food and other necessities, and the compulsory testing of Aboriginal children for sexual abuse – stunned Australia. Initial confusion soon gave way to condemnation of the plan as draconian, racist, unworkable, an ill-conceived shock-and-awe campaign, a cunning land grab and a black Tampa doomed to fail. Howard’s past was rebounding.

It took many back to the horror of the infamous “stolen generation”, thousands of Aboriginal children taken, often forcibly, from their families into institutions in a misguided attempt at assimilation through the 20th century. Despite Howard’s reassurances, fear and panic were reported to have seized Aboriginal communities. Families were already fleeing to the bush, fearful of seeing soldiers take their children away.

Then condemnation transformed into what is now being described as “a widening revolt”, joining together Labor state premiers, a former Liberal prime minister, indigenous leaders, religious leaders, police, and more than 60 community and indigenous groups.

From Howard’s viewpoint, his action may well have successfully wedged the Labor opposition (which supports the plan federally) and black Australia, while portraying him as decisive and humane. His bold strategy seemed to turn 40 years of Aboriginal politics on its head with a pronounced rightwing twist: instead of self-determination, a new paternalism; instead of rights, duties; instead of welfare, obligations.

And yet Howard’s plan drew qualified support from one of black Australia’s most gifted and articulate leaders, Noel Pearson. This was less surprising than it may seem: his ideas, after all, were the stimulus for Howard’s plan. Pearson had long argued for personal responsibility and an end to a culture of welfare dependence in black communities, and had called for intervention.

But Pearson has made it clear in his writings that the fundamental necessity for black Australia is to understand why it doesn’t have power and what it must do to gain that power. Pearson, in giving Howard some common ground on which he could act and drawing Howard out, may just have done something remarkable.

It appears ever more unlikely that the profound issues Howard’s plan raises will be contained within his narrow authoritarian nostrums, and nor will it end with the federal election later this year. After 10 years a great debate has finally recommenced about white and black Australia. It is not a debate, as Howard for so long pretended, invented by ideologically driven academics about Australia’s past. It is about Australia’s future. It is about whether Australia is prepared to engage with the most fundamental truth of itself.

For 10 years the trauma at the heart of Australia had not only been denied, but exacerbated. Now there was a damburst, a national outpouring of despair and anger. With every day since he announced his plan, the clamour has grown only louder. And Howard – journeying like Quixote into the heart of a nation’s great historical wound that he had denied for 10 long years, seeing only a windmill of an election – seemed neither to comprehend nor care, as the ride grew rougher and stranger with every passing day.

Beyond the blue whale, the dinosaurs and the crocodiles, the Natural History Museum has a fundamental commitment to advance the understanding of the natural world through science. Behind our public and educational faces lie research laboratories, libraries and science staff who care for and develop a collection of more than 70m items from across the world. This work places the museum at the heart of the debate about science in society today, as well as cementing our role as custodians of knowledge for the future.

The natural world is not limited to rainforests and coral reefs: we want to satisfy our innate curiosity about mankind. Human ancestors, ideas on our common origins in Africa, health in past populations and patterns of migration are all explored in the museum. This work relies on a collection of 20,000 human remains, from full skeletons to small hair samples, from all over the world.

But human remains are not simply objects for study. These are the remains of people who once lived, and their presence in a museum gives rise to strikingly different views. Over the past 40 years, communities in Australia, New Zealand and North America have questioned whether it is right to keep the bones of their ancestors in a museum for study. They argue that they, not the museums, should decide the fate of the remains.

Freed in 2005 from the legal prohibition on releasing items from the national collection, the museum decided last year to return the remains – skulls, teeth and skeletons – of 17 Tasmanian Aboriginal people. Most came to the museum in the 1940s, through legal donation or transfer. But in the previous century, remains had been dug up from unmarked graves by the white settlers who displaced Tasmania’s indigenous people – the native population of about 4,000 was almost completely wiped out in the 30 years after the first British landing in 1803. Tasmanian campaigners have long argued that, by being taken from their burial places, their ancestors’ spirits had been violated and could not rest.

But not just the Aboriginal communities held passionate beliefs on the fate of the remains – so did the scientific community. We faced difficult questions: who would benefit from return or retention, and in what way? How could the interests of science and culture represented in the museum be considered in the same framework as the religious beliefs and feelings of past injustices expressed by the Tasmanians?

We recognise the painful experiences of communities and know that the circumstances in which the remains were acquired are unacceptable by modern criteria. We also believe that the information these remains hold could play a significant role in our understanding of human origins and diversity. It was made clear to us that the remains would be put beyond future scientific study after their return, so the trustees’ decision aimed to address the main concerns of both parties – to return the remains to Tasmania, but that the scientific data normally collected piecemeal should all be gathered as quickly as possible, before return.

The Aboriginal people refused to accept the decision and took the museum to court to halt the collection of data. Other people objected to the proposal to return. The final agreement allowed for the immediate return of the remains and the preservation of some vital DNA material, held under the joint control of the museum and the community group.

Other claimant communities and institutions holding remains will be watching closely to see how we continue to collaborate. For many, their future actions will also set a precedent and may influence how future claims are handled here and at other institutions across the UK and beyond.

The Australian writer Donald Horne meant the title of his celebrated book, The Lucky Country, as irony. “Australia is a lucky country run by second-rate people who share its luck,” he lamented in 1964, describing much of the Australian elite as unfailingly unoriginal, race-obsessed and in thrall to imperial power and its wars. From Britain’s opium adventures to America’s current travesty in Iraq, Australians have been sent to fight faraway people with whom they have no quarrel and who offer no threat of invasion. Growing up, I was assured this was a “sacred tradition”.

But then another Australia was “discovered”. The only war dead whom Australians had never mourned were found right under their noses: those of a remarkable indigenous people who had owned and cared for this ancient land for thousands of years, then fought and died in its defence when the British invaded. In a land littered with cenotaphs, not one honoured them. For many whites, the awakening was rude; for others it was thrilling. In the 70s, thanks largely to the brief, brave and subverted Labor government of Gough Whitlam, the universities opened their studies to these heresies and their gates to a society Mark Twain once identified as “almost entirely populated by the lower orders”. A secret history revealed that, long before the rest of the western world, Australian working people had fought for and won a minimum wage, an eight-hour working day, pensions, child benefits and the vote for women. And now there was an astonishing ethnic diversity, and it had happened as if by default: there simply were not enough Britons and “blue-eyed Balts” who wanted to come.

Australia is not often news, cricket and bushfires aside. That is a pity, because the regression of this social democracy into a state of fabricated fear and xenophobia is an object lesson for all societies claiming to be free. In power for more than a decade, the Liberal prime minister, John Howard, comes from the outer reaches of Australia’s “neocons”. In 1988 he announced that a future government led by him would pursue a “One Australia Policy”, a forerunner to Pauline Hanson’s infamous One Nation party, whose targets were black Australians and migrants. Howard’s targets have been similar. One of his first acts as prime minister was to cut $A400m from the Aboriginal affairs budget. “Political correctness,” he said, “has gone too far.” Today, black Australians still have one of the lowest life expectancies in the world, and their health is the worst in the world. An entirely preventable disease, trachoma – beaten in many poor countries – still blinds many because of appalling living conditions. The impoverishment of black communities, which I have seen change little over the years, was described in 2006 by Save the Children as “some of the worst we have seen in our work all around the world”. Instead of a political respect in the form of a national lands rights law, a war of legal attrition has been waged against the Aborigines; and the epidemics and black suicides continue.

Howard rejoices in his promotion of “Australian values” – a very Australian sycophancy to the sugared “values” of foreign power. The darling of a group of white supremacists who buzz around the Murdoch-dominated press and radio talk-back hosts, the prime minister has used acolytes to attack the “black armband view of history”, as if the mass killing and resistance of indigenous Australians did not happen. The fine historian Henry Reynolds, author of The Other Side of the Frontier, has been thoroughly smeared, along with other revisionists. In 2005 Andrew Jaspan, a Briton newly appointed editor of the Melbourne Age, was subjected to a vicious neocon campaign that accused him of “reducing” the Age to “another Guardian”.

Flag-waving and an unctuous hand-on-heart jingoism, about which sceptical Australians once felt a healthy ambivalence, are now standard features at sporting and other public events. These serve to prepare Australians for renewed militarism and war, as ordained by the Bush administration, and to cover attacks on Australia’s Muslim community. Speak out and you may break a 2005 law of sedition meant to intimidate with the threat of imprisonment for up to seven years. Once described in the media as Bush’s “deputy sheriff”, Howard did not demur when Bush, on hearing this, promoted him to “sheriff for south-east Asia”. Like a mini-Blair, he has sent troops and federal police to the Solomon Islands, Tonga, Papua New Guinea and East Timor. In newly independent East Timor, where Australian governments colluded with Indonesia’s 23-year bloody occupation, “regime change” was effectively executed last year with the resignation of the prime minister, Mari Alkatiri, who had the temerity to oppose Canberra’s one-sided exploitation of his country’s oil and gas resources.

However, it is one man, David Hicks, a spectacular loser in the new Australia, who now threatens Howard’s “lucky” facade. Hicks was found among the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001 and sold as bounty to the Americans by CIA-backed warlords. He has spent more than five years in Guantánamo Bay, including eight months in a cell with no sunlight. He has been tortured, and never charged with any crime. Howard and his attorney-general, Philip Ruddock, have refused even to request Hicks’s repatriation, as is his constitutional right, because there are no Australian laws under which Hicks can be charged. Their cruelty is breathtaking. A tenacious campaign by his father, Terry, has ignited a kind of public shame that is growing. This has happened before in Australia, such as the march of a million people across Sydney Harbour Bridge demanding justice for black Australians, and the courageous direct action by young people who forced the closure of notorious outback detention camps for illegal refugees, with their isolation cells, capsicum spray and beatings. Asylum seekers caught in their leaking boats by the ever-vigilant Australian Defence Force are now incarcerated behind electric fences on tiny Christmas Island more than 1,000 miles from the lucky country.

Howard faces no real opposition from the compliant Labor party. The trade unions, facing a rollback of Australia’s proud record of workers’ rights and up to 43% youth unemployment, have stirred, and filled the streets. But perhaps something wider and deeper is coming from a nation whose most enduring and melancholy self-image is that of disobedient larrikins. During the recent Ashes series, Ian Chappell, one of Australia’s most admired cricket captains, walked out of the commentary box when Howard walked in. After seeing for himself conditions in a refugee prison, Chappell said: “These are human beings and you can’t just treat them like that … in cricketing parlance it was like cheating. They were being cheated out of a fair go.”

Like other predominantly Anglo-Celtic nations, Australia is a tolerant and accepting society — in spite of what some members of the domestic left intelligentsia and the civil liberties lobby proclaim. While not without racial tensions, Australia has a relatively low level of ethnically motivated crime and a relatively high level of inter-marriage between the numerous ethnic groups. The country has not fought a war of independence or a civil war and has not been in imminent danger of invasion — even though Japan briefly considered doing so in 1942. Al-Qaeda’s act of war against the United States on September 11, 2001, was the first major attack to take place on American soil.

Similarly, Jamaah Islamiyah’s bombs, which exploded at the Bali tourist resort in Indonesia on October 12, 2002, brought civilian Australians into the front line. Some 20 Australians were murdered on 9/11. The Australian death toll at Bali was 88 — a horrendous toll for a population that is about a third that of Britain.

Australia’s Prime Minister, John Howard, happened to be in Washington on 9/11. Australia immediately committed special forces to the war against the Taleban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, which was under way when Mr Howard’s Liberal-National Party conservative coalition defeated Labor, led by Kim Beazley, at the election in November 2001. Labor supported Australia’s commitment in Afghanistan but opposed Mr Howard’s decision to commit Australia to the “coalition of the willing” in Iraq (in support of the US and Britain) in 2003.

Despite their differences on Iraq, the major parties have been more or less united on the need for a tough-minded approach to national security. Mr Beazley generally supported Mr Howard’s anti-terrorism legislation and his position has been followed by Kevin Rudd, who took over as Opposition leader last December.

While the political conservatives dominate Australian national politics at the moment, the social democrats are in office in the six states and two territories that comprise the federation. By and large, the Labor Premiers, who control the police forces, have backed Mr Howard on national security. This amounts to strong bipartisan support — since about 80 per cent of Australians vote for either the conservatives or social democrats.

Since 9/11 — and particularly since the Bali bombing — the debate on national security in Australia has been frank. Australia is an immigrant nation and Muslims have been part of the immigrant experience for more than a century. Muslims from Afghanistan, Turkey and South-East Asia, among other places, have settled in well and made a significant contribution to Australian society. Yet, as in other Western democracies, there is a radical Islamist presence in Australia that has been growing in recent years and that owes its allegiance to Wahhabism and the Muslim Brotherhood.

The composition of the Australian Muslim population is significantly different from that of Britain. Radical Muslims — or their parents or grandparents — have come mostly from Lebanon or North Africa, with some from the sub-continent. In addition there are a few home-grown converts to the cause — the best known of whom are David Hicks, who is held at Guantanamo Bay, and Jack Thomas.

The evidence indicates that all radical Islamists in Australia were either born there or entered the country on valid visas. Asylum seekers, who arrived unlawfully, have not comprised a potential threat to national security.

It so happens that the approach advocated for Britain by Martin Bright in his important Policy Exchange pamphlet When Progressives Treat With Reactionaries is consistent with what has occurred Down Under over the past five years. Put briefly, the Australian system takes Islamist ideology seriously. It does not deal with radical Islamists. It confronts extremists’ views, rather than seeking to co-opt “pragmatic” radicals who happen not to be in favour of the use of violence in the here and now for purely tactical reasons. After the bombings of 7/7 in London, Tony Blair declared correctly that “the rules of the game had changed”. In Australia the rules changed dramatically some time earlier. A few recent examples illustrate the point.

After the shock of 7/7 Mr Howard established a Muslim Community Reference Group and said that no radicals would be invited to join. When Sheikh Taj Aldin al-Hilali (the Mufti of Australia) ventured into Holocaust denial, Andrew Robb (the Parliamentary Secretary for Multiculturalism) let it be known that he would not be reappointed to the group. Last February Peter Costello (Mr Howard’s deputy) publicly declared that, if the radical Muslim cleric Abdul Nasser Ben Brika really wanted to live under Sharia law, he might choose voluntary deportation to Iran. The next month the Prime Minister told Reuters TV that Australia could not ignore “that there is a small section of the Islamic population which identifies with some of the more extremist views associated with support of terrorism”. In New South Wales the former Labor Premier, Bob Carr, and his successor, Morris Iemma, have made similar candid statements where necessary.

There remains a significant terror threat in Australia — with some convictions for terrorist-related offences and a number of Muslim men in Sydney and Melbourne awaiting trial on serious charges. However, the tough line on security seems to have worked well and there have been no terrorist attacks.

The Howard Government has let it be known that radical Islamism is also a threat to the overwhelming majority of the Muslim community and reminded its leaders of their responsibilities to resolve potential problems in their own self-interest. This approach has strengthened the position of moderate Muslims.

Meanwhile, the conservatives, with the support of social democrats, have advanced the cause of citizenship tests as a means of emphasising that all who choose to live in Australia are expected to sign-on to our democratic values. Moreover, imams have been advised to preach in English. There is little backing in Australia for the extremist right-wing view that Muslim immigration should be banned. But there is bipartisan support for tackling the real threat posed by radical Islamism in a direct, even blunt, manner.

Education ministers from across the Commonwealth gathered in Cape Town last week to discuss, with the world’s leading experts, how to change the lives of the millions of children denied schooling. Conspicuous by its absence from this important conference was Fiji. The Pacific island nation was suspended from the councils of the Commonwealth on December 8, following a military coup, the country’s fourth in 20 years. The nine countries currently in the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group agreed that it could no longer have a voice in our 53-nation family, nor receive any new technical assistance, for as long as it remains under the control of a military regime.

The essence of democracy is that people have a say in who governs them and how. Only in May, Fijians elected Laisenia Qarase as prime minister, in elections the Commonwealth deemed free and fair. At the time, our observer group also warned that the job of the military is “to protect the security of the country, at the direction of the government … The armed forces must recognise that they are subject to the constitution, the rule of law and the control of the government. Any behaviour to the contrary will breed an atmosphere of fear in the society.”

On December 5, despite countless warnings and pleas for restraint, Commodore Frank Bainimarama led the military coup that overthrew Qarase and his government. It is a deeply unpopular coup in Fiji, and has brought widespread protest from all corners of civil society. It did not go unnoticed that even the interim prime minister appointed by Bainimarama has said publicly that he was ordered to accept the post.

What happened in Fiji is a threat to democracy everywhere. If Thailand were a Commonwealth country, it too would have been suspended after September’s military coup. We don’t want this military virus spreading any further. If a parliament or government is not working well, then there are democratic processes to deal with that deficiency. Imposing rulers at the end of a gun barrel cannot guarantee sustained government by the people, for the people.

Commonwealth members have been suspended before. Nigeria was suspended in 1995 in response to the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa. It acted against Pakistan in 1999 after the military coup led by the now president, General Pervez Musharraf. Fiji has been suspended before, following a coup in 2000. Sierra Leone and the Gambia have also been suspended over the years, as was Zimbabwe, before its president decided to withdraw his country entirely.

The Commonwealth has been around longer than most international organisations and has learned to bite as well as to bark. It is the only international organisation that consistently takes its shared principles to their logical conclusion by making a stand against members that violate them.

Our Commonwealth priority now is not to isolate Fiji, but to see it come in from the cold. We will work hard to find ways to see democracy restored. The track record of Commonwealth sanctions combined with encouragement is a good one. None of those who have been suspended have taken it lightly: all have sought to come back, all have worked hard to do so.

The Commonwealth has no army and no security council. It has only the power and moral authority of family. Like any family it has sibling rivalries and seemingly distant cousins. Nothing hurts more than a family member lost: everything must be done to bring Fiji back into the fold. The people of Fiji have an inalienable right to the government of their choice, achieved through democratic means.

Resumen

En los años posteriores al 11-S, los diversos paquetes de reformas legislativas han llevado a un aumento progresivo de la capacidad del Estado australiano para inmiscuirse en la vida de los ciudadanos de a pie y detener y enjuiciar a individuos sospechosos de llevar a cabo actividades relacionadas con el terrorismo sin tener en cuenta las debidas garantías procesales que han caracterizado a la democracia australiana durante más de un siglo. Y aún así, lo que más reafirma los temores de los defensores de las libertades civiles, los socialdemócratas y los miembros de la comunidad australiana tan diversa étnicamente es el discurso promovido en paralelo por el Gobierno de John Howard, en el que el terrorismo se identifica prácticamente con el islam. El resultado ha sido una erosión desigual de la democracia mediante la cual los costes sociales derivados de ese aumento de las competencias del Estado recaen de forma desproporcionada en determinados grupos étnicos y religiosos. Así, el enfoque dado por el Gobierno de Howard a la lucha contra el terrorismo no sólo ha menguado el carácter democrático de Australia, sino que además está socavando también una larga tradición de multiculturalismo y llevando a las comunidades musulmanas a adoptar una postura defensiva que amenaza con aislarlas de sus conciudadanos australianos y complicar futuras iniciativas antiterroristas.

Leer artículo completo (PDF). Disponible también en el Real Instituto Elcano.

OVERVIEW

No part of Indonesia generates as much distorted reporting as Papua, the western half of New Guinea that has been home to an independence movement since the 1960s.

Some sources, mostly outside Indonesia, paint a picture of a closed killing field where the Indonesian army, backed by militia forces, perpetrates genocide against a defenceless people struggling for freedom. A variant has the army and multinational companies joining forces to despoil Papua and rob it of its own resources. Proponents of this view point to restrictions on media access, increasing troop strength in Papua of the Indonesian armed forces (TNI), payments to the TNI from the giant U.S. copper and gold mining company, Freeport, and reports by human rights organisations as supporting evidence for their views.

Others, mostly inside Indonesia, portray Papua as the target of machinations by Western interests, bent on bringing about an East Timor-style international intervention that will further divide and weaken the Indonesian nation. Specifically, according to this view, Western interests are encouraging an international campaign to review and reject a 1969 United Nations-sponsored plebiscite, called the Act of Free Choice, that resulted in Papua’s integration into the Indonesian republic. Should that campaign be successful, the international legal grounds for a referendum on independence would be established. They believe that the independence movement consists of a small band of criminals who have no real support in the population at large.

Neither portrayal of Papua is accurate, but both are extraordinarily difficult to dislodge – particularly because both contain kernels of truth that fuel false assumptions. Papua is not a happy place, but neither is it a killing field. Historical injustice and chronic low-level abuse on the part of security forces are facts. Solidarity groups concerned about Papua are more active now than five years ago, and some parliamentarians in Western countries have taken their cause to heart; this has not, however, translated into growing international support for Papuan independence.

Failure to understand the complexities of the Papuan problem not only produces bad policies in Jakarta, but can also have severe international consequences, as witnessed by the plummeting of Indonesian-Australian relations in early 2006 over Australia’s decision to grant temporary asylum to a group of Papuan political activists.

This briefing will examine several questions that lie behind the distortions:

• Who governs Papua and how? Are TNI numbers increasing, and if so, why?
• What substance is there to the claim of historical injustice in Papua’s integration into Indonesia?
• How strong is the independence movement in Papua? Who supports it?
• What substance is there to allegations of genocide?
• Are there Muslim militias in Papua? And a process of Islamicisation?
• How much of Papua is off-limits to outsiders? Why the restrictions?
• What can the international community do?

Leer artículo completo (PDF). Disponible también en Crisis Group.

MELBOURNE, Australia — A battle over the future of the past broke out here last week. The fight explains a great deal about how Australia’s conservative prime minister, John Howard, has hung on to power for a decade.

Pay attention to Howard. His approach could be a model for how parties of the right — including Republicans in the United States — manage to build majorities in turbulent times.

Last week, Howard organized a “history summit” to call attention to the decline of Australian history as a subject in high schools. In most states here, history has been subsumed within (and thus displaced by) a broader social studies curriculum focused on “studies of society and the environment.”

“I think we have taught history as some kind of fragmented stew of moods and events,” Howard declared, “rather than some kind of proper narrative.”

This is the sort of cultural and educational fight familiar to Americans. My gut is with those who see history as a distinct subject. Wherever we live, we should know our country’s national story.

Notice what has just happened: This writer, on the other side of politics from the Australian prime minister, has embraced his argument that old-fashioned history is worth teaching.

Howard has a genius for picking the right wedge issues. In this case, his argument appeals to conservatives who don’t like what Howard has called “black armband history” — i.e., a history that is primarily critical of Australia’s white settlers. But it also draws in many from outside the ranks of the right who have moderately traditional views about school curriculums.

This has been Howard’s way since he defeated Paul Keating, a Labor Party prime minister, in 1996. Oddly, the two political enemies have a lot in common.

As George Megalogenis argues in his new book, “The Longest Decade,” both Howard and Keating believed in opening up the once highly protected Australian economy to global market forces. The two, Megalogenis writes, “bombarded us with change.”

But there was a big difference. Keating was also in favor of cultural change — bravely so, in the eyes of his friends. He proposed that Australia get rid of its old flag. He wanted the country to stop being a constitutional monarchy theoretically under the queen of England and instead become a republic.

Howard, on the other hand, thought that in a time of rapid economic change, Australians needed to cling to some of the old sources of stability, including the symbols. He was for the old flag and against the new republic. David Kemp, a former member of Howard’s cabinet, said his old boss understood the reaction against globalization and economic change among conservative voters.

Howard has also waged war on political correctness. His liberal Australian critics see him as appealing in code to racist sentiment by, among other things, taking a hard line on refugees. Howard’s supporters see him instead as defanging hard-core racism. He has acknowledged that Australians have “badly treated our aboriginal people, shamefully treated them.” But he insists that “in the greater sweep of history, Australia has been a very tolerant, humane society.” Voters like to hear that sort of thing.

What’s exportable about Howard’s politics is his shrewd understanding that conservative parties embracing hard-line market economics need to provide those threatened by economic change with something to hang on to — tradition, nation, family, flag — so that their world doesn’t fly apart. Except on the immigration issue, where he used a sledgehammer, Howard has pulled off in a subtle way what Republicans in the United States have pursued with less finesse and a greater emphasis on religion than would work in this more secular country. Interestingly, though, the political role of religion is on the rise here.

There are limits to Howard’s approach. His government has pushed through an industrial relations overhaul that will undo many rights in areas, such as overtime, that Australian workers have long taken for granted.

Kim Beazley, the leader of the opposition Labor Party, believes the employment law changes, combined with rising interest rates, will start losing Howard the very votes his cultural traditionalism has earned him in the past. “All of a sudden he’s pulverizing that conservative working-class heartland,” Beazley said in an interview. On the history curriculum war, Beazley is not far from Howard’s view. But he sees the issue as just the latest attempt to distract attention from questions that could prove dangerous to Howard.

The next Australian national election is expected late in 2007. Watching whether Howard’s model can work one more time will be instructive, especially to U.S. Republicans who will need all the ideas they can find to hold on in 2008.

NEW ZEALAND is a little, South Pacific version of 1950s England. People are friendly, trustworthy and hard-working. You can leave your front door unlocked when you go out. Women can safely walk alone at night and, if you drop your wallet, someone will deliver it to your door the next day.

If you share this common view, then you are probably wrong about 1950s England and you are certainly wrong about contemporary New Zealand. On Thursday my home country made a rare appearance on the non-sports pages of The Times. In her farewell speech, the departing Governor-General of New Zealand, Dame Silvia Cartwright, lamented the country’s “dark secret”: we have an appalling amount of domestic violence.

New Zealand’s child murder rate is 0.9 per 100,000 children, compared with 0.4 in Britain and 0.1 in Spain. This makes it third worst in the OECD. Reliable wife-beating statistics are hard to come by, but there can be no doubt that it is also unusually popular in New Zealand. There are never vacancies at the women’s refuge.

Nor is violence only a family pastime. The overall murder rate is 2.5 per 100,000 people, compared with 1.5 in Britain. We have just as many assaults per person as Britain and 50 per cent more rapes.

New Zealand is not only violent, it is (relatively) poor too. Per capita GDP is only $26,000 (£14,500), compared with $35,000 in Australia and $37,000 in Britain. This is not because New Zealanders do not work. We have one of the highest employment rates in the world. It is just that what gets produced by all this work is not worth very much. New Zealand has a low-productivity, low-wage economy.

Of course, not all New Zealanders are violent and poor. In some towns — the kind that tourists visit — life is very nice indeed: rich, clean and friendly. The unpleasantness is concentrated. Its grim statistics arise from its large population of hoons.

Hoons are the underclass of New Zealand. They are inarticulate and unkempt to a degree that would appal even a chav. (No Burberry caps for hoons; simply wearing shoes often takes too much sartorial effort.) But, in other respects, hoons are just like the underclass of any other modern Western country.

They often grow up without their fathers. The succession of “uncles” who come through their home may beat or rape them. They attend school only because it is compulsory until sixteen, and leave having acquired neither an education nor any qualifications. They work in unskilled jobs, if they work at all. They have no interests and no ambitions, unless you count sex and intoxication (especially from marijuana, which grows like a weed in New Zealand). The sex leads to children, but rarely to marriage. They smoke, eat junk and die younger than the rest of us. And then their children do it all over again.

It is in this subculture of listless depravity that women and children are so frequently murdered and abused. And it is because New Zealand has such a large underclass that its social statistics are so bad.

Why are there so many hoons in New Zealand? You might expect this to be a matter of fierce national debate. Yet, until recently, there has been little serious discussion of the problem, and certainly no serious action to remedy it.

One reason for this diffidence is that many New Zealanders subscribe to the modern ethos of non-judgmentalism. For those whose motto is “I don’t like to judge”, it is almost impossible even to identify, let alone to remedy, the problem of an underclass.

But, more importantly, discussing these problems makes New Zealanders feel queasy because it inevitably draws you into race issues. Not all hoons are Maori, and not all Maori are hoons. Far from it. But there is a correlation. Consider just these facts.

Maori are 15 per cent of the population, but 50 per cent of the prison population. Forty per cent of Maori children grow up in fatherless homes, compared with 17 per cent of whites. A third of Maori boys leave school with no qualification, compared with 13 per cent of white boys. The child murder rate is 1.5 per 100,000 among Maori, compared with 0.7 among whites. Maori life expectancy is seven years less than that of whites.

What is to be done? Not simply more of the same. More generous welfare payments will simply make the dependency slightly more comfortable. And more “inclusive” — that is, less rigorous — state education will increase the advantages of privately educated children. New Zealand’s examination system is now so debased that good schools offer foreign qualifications. (Sound familiar?)

Some hope comes from an unexpected source. The Maori Party was created in 2004 when its co-leader, Tariana Turia, quit the Parliamentary Labour Party in outrage over legislation that eliminated certain Maori land rights. In the 2005 general election the Maori Party stole many thousands of votes from the Labour Party and now has four members in our 120-seat parliament.

It is strange to be anything but appalled by a race-based political party. But the Maori Party is not squeamish about facing New Zealand’s social problems, and it is free of the flabby political correctness that corrupts the discussion of social policy. Among other things, it seeks welfare reforms that will end dependency and strengthen the extended family.

Good luck to it. And to the other New Zealanders such as Dame Silvia Cartwright who are finally taking the country’s social problems seriously.

Two bundles held by the British Museum, made of kangaroo skin and closed by a drawstring, are unremarkable, but contain human ash gathered from a cremation fire by Tasmanian Aboriginals in about 1830. They are extremely rare physical traces of a population nearly exterminated during European settlement in the 19th century. This genocide, in which the indigenous people were shot for sport by farmers, was one of the most shameful episodes in British colonial history. The last full-blood Tasmanian Aboriginal died in 1888, but the original population continues to exist in the form of Tasmanians of mixed Aboriginal and European descent. And it is their representative body, the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre, that has asked for the return of their ancestors’ ashes.

The law prohibits trustees from disposing of any part of the museum’s collection – a sensible measure to protect against short-term financial or political pressures. But it has long been obvious that human remains are not like other objects held by museums. Descendants are distressed that the remains of ancestors have not reached their final resting place, in accordance with indigenous customs. And when, as in the case of the Tasmanian Aboriginals, those ancestors suffered such an egregious wrong, that distress is likely to be very intense.

Last year parliament passed a law recognising the unique status of human remains in museum collections, and enabling trustees to transfer ownership when appropriate. British Museum trustees welcomed this change; indeed, we helped draft a code of practice to accompany the law. Now the trustees could return human remains where the burial process had been interrupted, which includes the ashes in the bundles. But should they? That question proved more complicated than we expected.

The bundles were filled with the cremated ashes of a family member, then carried close to the body as amulets to protect against illness or alleviate physical pain. There is no way of knowing what would ultimately have happened to these two bundles had they not been collected by an outsider as records of structures of belief and religious practice among the native Tasmanians; it seems likely that they would have been laid to rest in a particular place in the landscape, perhaps in a tree or somewhere in the bush.

But – and it is a big but – these are now the only two such bundles known anywhere in the world. That means they are the only surviving physical evidence of a whole system of belief and a social order that has since disappeared: precisely the kind of object the British Museum was established to keep and preserve. In our present state of knowledge the ashes can reveal no further useful information about the health or physical history of the people when alive; but who knows what knowledge might one day be derived from them? As trustees, we had to consider if we could responsibly allow the loss of what might be the last possible information about Tasmanian Aboriginals.

The debate was difficult. How do you weigh a possible advance in human understanding against the desire of a community of people to see the return of the ashes of recent forebears so they can be disposed of with appropriate ritual? Which course of action will lead to greatest public benefit? Might a later generation of Aboriginal descendants deplore the loss of the already slender material evidence of Tasmanian customs? How will that loss look in a hundred years?

The trustees consulted three outside experts and the museum’s own curators. There was much debate on fact and law. Eventually we unanimously decided that the ashes should be transferred to the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre.

Tema: Este documento ofrece una visión general de las políticas militares diseñadas e implementadas por tres países de tamaño medio en el contexto del actual entorno de seguridad internacional.

Resumen: La “transformación” de las fuerzas militares en herramientas modernas y eficaces para garantizar la seguridad en un mundo cambiante es una preocupación clave de Estados y organizaciones internacionales. Algunas “potencias medias”, con recursos limitados pero dispuestas a contribuir a la seguridad, están adaptando sus fuerzas armadas para hacer frente a nuevas y desafiantes amenazas y a las exigencias de una mayor cooperación en el seno de alianzas y coaliciones. Este documento ofrece una visión general de las políticas militares diseñadas e implementadas por tres países de tamaño medio como ejemplos relevantesdel debate mundial en curso acerca de la adaptación de las capacidades y las estrategias de las fuerzas armadas nacionales al entorno de seguridad internacional actual. Estos casos son ejemplos interesantes del modo en que la voluntad política y la toma de decisiones de un país siguen siendo los principales motores impulsores de cualquier proceso de modernización de ese tipo.

Leer artículo completo (PDF). También disponible en el Real Instituto Elcano.

Tema: Este ARI analiza el enfoque australiano sobre el antiterrorismo.

Resumen: A diferencia de muchos de sus homólogos occidentales y vecinos de la región Asia-Pacífico, hasta hace poco Australia había tenido poca experiencia directa del terrorismo. Sin embargo, los acontecimientos del 11-S sacudieron a este país, haciéndole salir de su autocomplacencia, y desde entonces la lucha antiterrorista ha ocupado una posición central en los debates políticos nacionales. Canberra ha adoptado un enfoque a dos niveles con respecto a dicha lucha. A nivel internacional la piedra angular de sus políticas antiterroristas es la alianza militar de Canberra con Estados Unidos. A nivel nacional, el Gobierno australiano ha respondido a la amenaza terrorista endureciendo las competencias punitivas e investigadoras del Estado. Y, sin embargo, hay una serie de supuestos erróneos acerca de la naturaleza y las causas del terrorismo que mina la efectividad de las políticas a ambos niveles. Dadas estas circunstancias, no es probable que el enfoque dado por Canberra a la amenaza del terrorismo vaya a producir beneficios a largo plazo en términos de seguridad regional o nacional.

Leer artículo completo (PDF). Disponible también en el Real Instituto Elcano.