Oceanía (Continuación)

MundoOceanía,

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.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOceanía

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.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOceanía

"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.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOceanía,

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.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOceanía

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.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOceanía,

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.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsiaMundoOceanía,

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.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOceanía, ,

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.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOceanía,

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.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOceanía

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.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOceanía,

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.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOceanía,

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.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOceanía

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.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOceaníaEuropaUnión Europea,

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.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOceanía

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.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsiaMundoOceanía, , ,

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.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsiaMundoOceanía, , ,

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.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOceanía,

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.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOceanía

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.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOceanía,

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.…  Seguir leyendo »