DOCSLIB.ORG

GIVING Prince Philip an Australian Knighthood Is the Worst Decision of Tony Abbott’S Prime Ministership

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
GIVING Prince Philip an Australian Knighthood Is the Worst Decision of Tony Abbott’S Prime Ministership Giving Prince Philip a knighthood is both dumb and dumber THE AUSTRALIAN JANUARY 28, 2015 12:00AM Greg Sheridan Foreign Editor GIVING Prince Philip an Australian knighthood is the worst decision of Tony Abbott’s prime ministership. At every level, it is dismaying. It is wrong in principle, strategically mistaken and tactically disastrous. First, to principle. There is no place for knights and dames in Australian honours. They were abolished in 1986 by Bob Hawke and not restored by John Howard. They correspond to no Australian social reality. They have no general acceptance or broad legitimacy within Australia. Although they are notionally Australian knighthoods, they arise from an imperial connection and have nothing to do with Australia. The late Bob Santamaria, a hero of Abbott and a hero of mine, was offered a knighthood by - Malcolm Fraser. He turned it down without a second’s thought. He told me at the time that he was prepared to sacrifice a lot for politics, but there had to be a limit somewhere. He thought a knighthood a ridiculous thing in itself and was not prepared to make himself ridiculous. Strategically, it was extremely foolish to restore knights and dames. They have no chance of surviving into the next prime ministership, whether it is Labor or Liberal. Bill Shorten has sensibly said he will dispense with knights and dames. No one in the Labor Party will accept one. More than half of the political community won’t wear it under any circumstances. Howard regards knighthoods as anachronistic and would not accept one. Two types of government tend to make decisions such as this: those that are miles ahead and those that are miles behind. Those miles ahead have political capital to burn and can indulge themselves with foolish fripperies. Those miles behind have nothing left to do except empty symbolism. The other strategic foolishness is that successful Australian governments govern from the centre, and by enlarging the centre. Hawke and Howard worked hard to enlarge the potential informal coalition of their supporters. They marginalised their marginal supporters. Hawke was delighted anti-uranium demonstrators hated him. It reassured conservative Australians. Howard courted the Howard battlers. Both were careful to make their symbolism unifying and inclusive, not polarising and divisive. This meant both didn’t do some things they would personally have liked to do. Abbott was so aware that his knights and dames business had no support inside his own party, he did not take the original decision to cabinet, much less this foolish Prince Philip nonsense. I have nothing against Prince Philip, but I have no particular regard for him and, as an Australian, absolutely no loyalty to him. He is a foreigner and a member by marriage of a foreign royal family. He gets no award on my behalf. Peter Cosgrove and Angus Houston are two of the finest Australians we have produced. I have known both for many years and have the deepest regard for them. Do they now really expect me to call them Sir Peter and Sir Angus? Give me a break. While I continue to have the highest regard for both men, I feel they are both slightly diminished by acceptance of these ridiculous, nonsense, faux royal awards. Accepting these absurd honorifics should be seen rather as another unpleasant duty they have had to perform at the request of their country’s government. Abbott seems wilfully to misunderstand why the republican referendum was lost. Howard managed the republican process brilliantly and brought home to Australians the danger of interfering with the practicalities of our Constitution, which work well as they are. Many Australians voted no at the referendum even though, like me, they are republicans in principle. Abbott at the time seemed to understand this, joking he could form a faction called Republicans for a Constitutional Monarchy. Australians did not vote to restore the monarchy to the position it enjoyed in Australia in the 1950s, when it had often been a source of division, as the Catholic/Protestant, English/Irish divisions in Australia attest. These divisions are happily all gone now. Australians are satisfied with the status quo enjoyed under Hawke and Howard, and on these matters under Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd. The British monarchy plays no role in our life. No Australian has any real loyalty to the British monarchy, although we are happy to continue with the residual institutions and residual ties. Tactically, the decision on Philip is just bizarre. Here is a government with desperately urgent business to prosecute in the national interest, on budget repair and a host of other central issues. So it wastes its limited ammunition firing into the air a volley to honour Prince Philip, picking a fight it cannot win and one that divides and demoralises its own supporters. This was a very dumb decision. .
Load more

Recommended publications
  • 2004000444.Pdf
    Copyright of Full Textrests with theoriginal copyright owner and, except as permitted under the CopyrightAct 1968,copyingthiscopyrightmaterial is prohibited without thepennission of theowner or itsexclusive licensee oragent orbywayofa licence 200408342 from Copyright Agency Limited. For information about suchlicences contact Copyright Agency Limitedon (02) 93947600(ph) 0,(02) 93947601 (fax) Stories in distress: Three case studies in Australian media coverage of humanitarian crises Wendy Bacon and Chris Nash Abstract This article reviews three case studies in the Australian media reporting ofinternational humanitarian crises. The case studies cover a six-month period in 1999 and draw on all media over that period. The three case studies are: the violence in East TImor at the time ofthe 1999 independence ballot, the imprisonment in Yugoslavia of Prall and Wallace, two employees of CARE Australia, and the floods in Mozambique. While the three case studies collectively exhibit many ofthe standard characteristics ofmedia coverage ofhumanitarian issues, individually they dif­ fer significantly in the scale andorientation ofcoverage. Wesug­ gest that a significantfactor in these differences was the relation­ ship between the sources for the stories and the journalists, which in turn depended on other factors. We review the adequa­ cy of the Hall and Ericson positions on the source-journalist relationship in explaining these differences, and suggest that a field analysis derivedfrom Bourdieu is helpful in explaining the involvement ofsources from the political, economic and military fields, which in turn impacted on the relationship ofthe media to the stories. Introduction On December 27, 2003, while many people in the Western world were enjoying their Christmas holidays, more than 40,000 Iranians were killed in an earthquake in the ancient city of Bam.
    [Show full text]
  • The Australian, Argues That “The Cause of Aboriginal Welfare
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship Repository 1 “Black Armband” versus “White Blindfold” History in Australia: A Review Essay Patrick Brantlinger In The Australian for September 18, 2003, Greg Sheridan writes that “the cause of Aboriginal welfare and the quality of Australian political culture have been seriously damaged by the moral and linguistic overkill” of those historians who claim that “genocide” is an accurate term for what happened during the European colonization of that continent. He is seconding the current prime minister, John Howard, who has publicly declared that he wishes the historians would stop “using outrageous words like genocide” (qtd. in Reynolds, Indelible Stain 2). Sheridan thinks that “the past mistreatment of Aborigines is the most serious moral failing in our history,” but that it “never approached genocide or had any relationship to genocide.” Academics of “a certain left-wing cast of mind” engage both in pedantic, “linguistic” hairsplitting over definitions of such loaded words as “genocide” (a “jargon word,” according to Sheridan) and use those same words with gross, hyperbolic inaccuracy. Sheridan knows this is the case because “all dictionaries give [it] the same meaning.” And that meaning, according to his “Penguin dictionary,” is: “the mass murder of a racial, national or religious group.” This, Sheridan believes, never occurred in Australia, even though he also believes that “substantial numbers of Aborigines were killed by white settlers and British authorities in Tasmania and in Australia generally….” Apparently, he spies some clear difference Transnational Seminar, October 15th, 2004, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
    [Show full text]
  • AUSTRALIAN and INDONESIAN NEWS COVERAGE of the Dili MASSACRE
    AUSTRALIAN AND INDONESIAN NEWS COVERAGE OF THE DILi MASSACRE ( A Content Analysis of Australian and Indonesian Newspapers from 1 July 1991 to 31 March 1992) ' Yuventius Agustinus Nunung Prajarto A thesis submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts SCHOOL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE FACULTY OF ARTS AND SOCIAL SCIENCES UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES SYDNEY - AUSTRALIA 1994 iv AUSTRALIAlf ARD IImOHBSIAN IIEWS COVERAGE OP TBB DILI IIASSACRB (A content Analysis of Australian and Indonesian Newspapers frOII 1 July 1991 to 31 Karch 1992) SCHOOL OP POLITICAL SCIENCE FACULTY OP AR'l' ARD SOCIAL SCIENCES THE UNIVERSITY OP REif SOUTH WALES 1994 V AUSTRALIAN AIID IRDONBSIAN NEWS COVERAGE OF TIIB DILI MASSACRE (A Content Analysis of Australian and Indonesian Newspapers fr0111 July 1991 to 31 Karch 1992) Yuventius Agustinus Hunung Prajarto Thesis POLITICAL SCIENCE 1994 STATEMENT Name : Yuventius Agustinus Nunung Prajarto student No.: 2114322 School of Political science Faculty of Arts and social Sciences University of New south Wales I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, it contains no material previously published or written by another person nor material which to a substantial extent has been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma of a university or other institute of higher learning, except where due acknowledgement is made in the text. Date : 8 Febr~y 1994 Signatu ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS There are a number of people whom I can thank by name. I am particularly grateful to Rodney Smith, my supervisor. His help was invaluable in guiding the process of this research till its finishing touch.
    [Show full text]
  • Australia: Background and U.S
    Order Code RL33010 CRS Report for Congress Received through the CRS Web Australia: Background and U.S. Relations Updated April 20, 2006 Bruce Vaughn Analyst in Southeast and South Asian Affairs Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Congressional Research Service ˜ The Library of Congress Australia: Background and U.S. Interests Summary The Commonwealth of Australia and the United States are close allies under the ANZUS treaty. Australia evoked the treaty to offer assistance to the United States after the attacks of September 11, 2001, in which 22 Australians were among the dead. Australia was one of the first countries to commit troops to U.S. military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. In October 2002, a terrorist attack on Western tourists in Bali, Indonesia, killed more than 200, including 88 Australians and seven Americans. A second terrorist bombing, which killed 23, including four Australians, was carried out in Bali in October 2005. The Australian Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, was also bombed by members of Jemaah Islamiya (JI) in September 2004. The Howard Government’s strong commitment to the United States in Afghanistan and Iraq and the recently negotiated bilateral Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between Australia and the United States have strengthened what were already close ties between the two long-term allies. Despite the strong strategic ties between the United States and Australia, there have been some signs that the growing economic importance of China to Australia may influence Australia’s external posture on issues such as Taiwan. Australia plays a key role in promoting regional stability in Southeast Asia and the Southwest Pacific.
    [Show full text]
  • Inaugural Indonesia-Australia Dialogue 4-6 October 2011
    Australian Institute of International Affairs Inaugural Indonesia-Australia Dialogue 4-6 October 2011 Jointly organised by Australian Institute of International Affairs and the Centre for Strategic and International Studies Supported by Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Australia and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Indonesia Australian Institute of International Affairs Outcomes Report The inaugural Indonesia-Australia Dialogue was held in Jakarta from 4-6 October 2011. The Indonesia-Australia Dialogue initiative was jointly announced by leaders during the March 2010 visit to Australia by Indonesian President Yudhoyono as a bilateral second track dialogue to enhance people-to-people links between the two countries. The inaugural Indonesia-Australia Dialogue was co- convened by Mr John McCarthy, AIIA National President and former Ambassador to Indonesia, and Dr Rizal Sukma, Executive Director of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. The AIIA was selected by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to act as secretariat for the Dialogue. Highlights of the Dialogue included: Participation by an impressive Australian delegation including politicians, senior academic and media experts as well as leaders in business, science and civil society. Two days of Dialogue held in an atmosphere of open exchange with sharing of expertise and insights at a high level among leading Indonesian and Australian figures. Messages from Prime Minister Gillard and Minister for Foreign Affairs Rudd officially opening the Dialogue. Opening attended by Australian Ambassador to Indonesia HE Mr Greg Moriarty and Director General of Asia Pacific and African Affairs HE Mr Hamzah Thayeb. Meeting with Indonesia’s Foreign Minister, Marty Natalegawa at Gedung Pancasila, Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
    [Show full text]
  • The Roo and the Dragon Australia‘S Foreign Policy Towards China During the Rudd Era
    PRIF-Report No. 99 The Roo and the Dragon Australia‘s foreign policy towards China during the Rudd era Niklas Schörnig This report was prepared with the kind support of the German Research Foundation (DFG). Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF) 2010 Correspondence to: PRIF Baseler Straße 27-31 60329 Frankfurt am Main Germany Telephone: +49(0)69 95 91 04-0 Fax: +49(0)69 55 84 81 E-Mail: [email protected] Internet: www.prif.org ISBN: 978-3-942532-15-0 Euro 10.- Summary Living in the neighborhood of Asia’s giants has always been a challenge for western- oriented Australia. The rise of China, however, which is not only likely to lead to tremendous power shifts between the U.S. and China but most probably will also lead to a full-fledged power transition, is a formidable challenge for Australia. On the positive side, Beijing has become Australia’s number one trading partner over the last few years, when it comes to both exports as well as imports. Thanks to China’s ever growing demand for Australia’s raw materials and resources, Australia got off lightly during the economic crisis which hit many Western countries severely in 2008 and 2009. On the negative side, however, China’s economic rise is mirrored by a significant increase in the country’s military might. Beijing is investing heavily in military capabilities and has changed spending priorities from land-based forces to the air force and navy, a clear indication of power-projection ambitions. Many foreign policy experts – not only Australian ones – share the strong feeling that a naval clash between China and America in the South-East Pacific is the most likely scenario involving open military conflict between the two powers.
    [Show full text]
  • The Strategic Dimension of "Option J": Australia's Submarine Choice And
    STRATEGIC STRATEGIC INSIGHTS The strategic dimension of ‘Option J’ Australia’s submarine choice and its security relations with Japan 85 Andrew Davies and Benjamin Schreer Executive summary There’s a possibility that Australia’s future submarine (FSM) will be based on a Japanese design. The government has explicitly kept that option open, along with the possibility of buying the boats from Germany or France. There are reasons to worry about the project and industrial implications of ‘Option J’. Wherever the FSM is designed, built, or both, the supplier’s political reliability and technological suitability are vital, as is establishing trust in the ability of both sides to work together effectively and efficiently on such a complex capability. Experience on other projects has shown that those things can’t be taken for granted. Working on a commercial basis with a European supplier with experience in exporting submarines and submarine-building would probably be less fraught (it’s unlikely to be easy, regardless) than establishing a robust through-life relationship with Japan more or less from scratch. Soryu class SS-502 JDS Unryu being launched. Photo source JMSDF website, used with permission. March 2015 2 The strategic dimension of ‘Option J’: Australia’s submarine choice and its security relations with Japan However, where the Japanese option is concerned, there are also significant strategic factors to be considered, with both positive and negative implications for Australia’s interests and for regional security. Critics have talked up the negatives, but we’re not convinced by the arguments put forward to date. In particular, the negative implications for Australia’s trade, security and relationship with China have been overstated, as has China’s ability to punish Australia should it be inclined to do so.
    [Show full text]
  • How I Lost Faith in Multiculturalism Greg Sheridan From: the Australian April 02
    Australian Parliament Joint Standing Committee on Migration Submission no. 181 Committee Secretary Joint Standing Committee on Migration PO Box 6021 Parliament House Canberra ACT 2600 Australia I support the comments in the media article below and the attachment that confirm that muslims in Australia who place their beliefs and evidenced iniquitous and degenerate culture above OUR Australian Statute Rule of Law can NEVER be tolerant law abiding Australians and therefore by consequence are a threat to ALL other law abiding Australians and the Australian nation with the values bequeathed us by the ANZACs of Kokoda for our grandchildren and their grandchildren. From the self evidenced bigotry exposed by the Australian media, these criminals should be evicted from Australia on the basis that those who have applied for Australian citizenship and or residency affirmed and or swore an oath that they would comply with Australian Statute Law knowing that they were deliberately committing statute criminal perjury by making a false declaration. Extract “the only people who don't think there is a problem with Islam are those who live on some other planet” How I lost faith in multiculturalism Greg Sheridan From: The Australian April 02, IN 1993, my family and I moved into Belmore in southwest Sydney. It is the next suburb to Lakemba. When I first moved there I loved it. We bought a house just behind Belmore Sports Ground, in those days the home of my beloved Bulldogs rugby league team. Transport was great, 20 minutes to the city in the train, 20 minutes to the airport. On the other side of Belmore, away from Lakemba, there were lots of Chinese, plenty of Koreans, growing numbers of Indians, and on the Lakemba side lots of Lebanese and other Arabs.
    [Show full text]
  • Indo 96 0 1381338354 203 208
    Jemma Purdy, ed. Knowing Indonesia: Intersections of Self Discipline, and Nation. Clayton: Monash University Publishing, 2012.159 pp. Damien Kingsbury Academic self-reflection in the sometimes contentious study of Indonesia is as welcome as it is rare. That Jemma Purdy's edited volume seeks such reflection and takes as its point of departure the work of Herb Feith, who spent much of the latter part of his academic career in such self-reflection, is especially welcome. Reflection opens the door to frankness and these collected essays are revealing. Not least, they make explicit what has long been implicit in the work of this volume's contributors and in much of Australia's Indonesia Studies paradigm. Full disclosure: I was invited to contribute to the volume being reviewed but declined, given that the collection's premise was less self-reflection and more a critique of the field of inquiry. This review will, however, belatedly address some of that critique, in an attempt to unpack the book's central themes. It is worth noting, too, that, along with another academic, I was banned from entering Indonesia in December 2004. Some time later, after the other individual's ban had been lifted, I was told I could also have my ban lifted if I wrote "more favorable" articles on Indonesia. I replied that my writing on Indonesia was fair, but, as journalists say, "without fear or favor." This, then, goes to Edward Aspinall's observation (p. 72) that fear of being banned from Indonesia is a "constraining factor" in some academics' writing, or what George Aditjondro referred to as "visa-driven scholarship."1 This review is, then, written by an academic still banned from the site of the study.
    [Show full text]
  • Sheridan-The-Great-Climate-Fiction.Pdf
    The great climate fiction Greg Sheridan IT is natural that when Tony Abbott told Asia-Pacific leaders he was going to repeal Australia's carbon tax he found no opposition, and a good deal of support instead. He mentioned it in plenary sessions and bilateral meetings with all the leaders. In taking this action, Abbott is bringing us into line with Asia-Pacific practice. There is not one significant national carbon tax or emissions trading scheme operating anywhere in the Asia-Pacific. One of the most disagreeable defects of the Rudd and Gillard governments was the way they so often misrepresented reality, especially international reality. They tried to do this on such a scale that ultimately the public could see through it on many issues, especially boats and climate change. The politics of climate change the world over is full of rhetoric and devoid of action. If Australians are being asked to pay a tax, even if it's called an emissions trading scheme, they should compare what other countries are actually doing, not what some politician might once have said. The ABC in particular runs a constant propaganda campaign in favour of the idea that the world is moving to put a price on carbon. But the information is never specific. Any ABC interviewer with a speck of competence or professional standards should always ask the following: Name the specific scheme? Is it actually in operation? How much of the economy does it cover? What is the price of carbon? How much revenue does it raise? You can impose no real cost on your economy, but still have a scheme to brag about if you have economy-wide coverage but a tiny price, or a big price but a tiny coverage.
    [Show full text]
  • The Defendant (Summer, 2017)
    Te DEFENDANT Newsletter of the Australian Chesterton Society Vol. 24 No. 1 Summer 2017 Issue No. 92 ‘I have found that Marshall McLuhan - humanity is not incidentally engaged, Te Medium was but eternally and systematically engaged, Chesterton in throwing gold into the by Karl Schmude gutter and diamonds into the sea. ; therefore I In the 1960s, Marshall McLuhan was hailed have imagined that the as a media prophet acutely alive to the vast main business of man, changes in social consciousness fowing from a modern communications revolution. however humble, is Marshall McLuhan defence. I have conceived ‘The Medium is the Message’ and ‘The Global ‘I know every word of [Chesterton],’ McLuhan that a defendant is chiefy Village’ are among the most memorable once said. ‘He’s responsible for bringing me required when worldlings phrases that McLuhan coined. But he also into the Church.’ despise the world – that predicted the rise of the internet and social a counsel for the defence media. McLuhan was a post-graduate student in Canada in the 1930s when he discovered would not have been out In 1967, more than a decade before the frst Chesterton. He found Chesterton’s ideas of place in the terrible day website, he foresaw ‘one big gossip column,’ compelling, especially his novel way of when the sun was powered by an ‘electronically computerized restating perennial truths. darkened over Calvary dossier bank,’ that would store and preserve and Man was rejected of every kind of statement, from the most McLuhan himself had a similar propensity men.’ signifcant to the most trivial.
    [Show full text]
  • Australia Debates American Primacy in Asia 299
    296 UNITED STATES ENGAGEMENT IN THE ASIA PACIFIC 39. Information Daily (Formerly eGovmonitor), August 6, 2012, http://www. egovmonitor.com/node/53149 40. Yo-Jung Chen, "Can Japan count on its U.S. alliance?" Strait Times (Sin­ gapore), August 30, 2012; also William Choong, "Vietnam's Sino-U.S. dilemma," Strait Times (Singapore), August 30, 2012. 41. Daily Pioneer, June 7, 2012, http://www.dailypioneer.com/home/online­ channel/360-todays-newspaper/71193-india-... 42. Robert M. Hathaway, "India and the U.S. Pivot to Asia," YALEGLOBAL CHAPTER 13 ONLINE, February 24, 2012, http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/print/7638 43. The transcript of Ambassador Powell's question answer session with Asia Society president Vishakha Desai on September 12, 2012 can be found at: AUSTRALIA DEBATES http://www.rediff.com/news/special!we-find-some-of-the-hesitations­ in-india-frustrating/20120912.htm. 44. R. S. Kalha, "The Importance of Chinese Defence Minister Liang AMERICAN PRIMACY IN AsiA Guanglie's Visit to India," IDSA Comments, http://idsa.in/idsacomments/ The ImportanceofChinese DefenceMinisterLiangGuanglies. William T. Tow and H. D. P. Envall The hallmark of Australia's defense politics has been its dependence on great and powerful friends. Australia's reliance on the United Kingdom and British Empire until the Second World War was replaced by its strategic lifeline to the United States during that conflict and the subse­ quent Cold War. Described as a "half-turning point," this transformation did not mark the clear emergence of a more independent Australian foreign policy but instead signified the transfer of one dependency for another.1 Indeed, despite regular debates about pursuing a more inde­ pendent foreign and security policy, Australian strategy has historically been characterized by an expectation of protection along with a sense of trepidation that such protection may not be forthcoming.
    [Show full text]