Justice for Afghanistan?

Ben Roberts-Smith is a war criminal. While serving in the Australian SAS in Afghanistan, he murdered four unarmed Afghan civilians and committed other war crimes. He kicked an elderly handcuffed man over a cliff. He machine-gunned a prisoner with a prosthetic leg, then stole the leg as a trophy and used it in drinking games. He ordered soldiers under his command to murder unarmed civilians. He assaulted prisoners in his care, and ordered other assaults. These are not allegations; they are findings of fact by an Australian judge (though under a civil burden of proof, and sadly not in a criminal trial).

That judge said that Roberts-Smith had "disgraced his country" by his conduct. The Australian government gave him a Victoria Cross for it. But now, he is finally being prosecuted for it:

Ben Roberts-Smith has been arrested in relation to multiple counts of murdering unarmed Afghan civilians and prisoners in what looms as the most significant war crimes prosecution in Australian history.

Roberts-Smith is expected to be charged on Tuesday with five counts of war crime - murder following a joint investigation between the Office of Special Investigator and the Australian Federal Police. The maximum penalty for the offence of war crime - murder is life imprisonment.

Good. And hopefully the same will happen to the rest of Australia's war criminals. Because the Brereton Report found 39 murders, not just four, with 25 war criminals responsible. And they all need to be held to account.

Climate Change: Beaten by Australia

Australia has just announced its new climate target: a 62 to 70% cut in emissions by 2035:

Australia will vow to cut its emissions by 62 to 70 per cent by 2035, lifting its sights further as the world strives to reach net zero emissions by 2050.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the government had listened to the Climate Change Authority's advice.

"It's the right target to protect our environment, to protect and advance our economy and jobs, and to ensure that we act in our national interest and in the interest of this and future generations," Mr Albanese said.

"It's based upon the science, and it is independent advice to the government."

Compare this to National's pathetic, unambitious, irresponsible target of a 51 to 55% cut, which was pulled out of Rimmer's arse and explicitly ignored the expert advice of He Pou a Rangi. Thanks to National, we're going to be beaten by Australia, one of the most fossil-addicted countries in the world.

its completely pathetic. The only good side to it is that National's NDC is so unambitious as to likely be illegal, and the next government will inevitably have to increase it. And Australia has just set a clear bar for us to beat. But the struggle now is to ensure that there is a "next government" to do that; to throw these bums out at the first opportunity.

This is what the IPCA's anti-protest laws mean

Back in February, the "Independent" Police Conduct Authority issued a radical, out-of-the-blue proposal to ban protests. The core of their proposal was a requirement for protesters to notify police well in advance of any protest action, and to obey whatever conditions police subsequently set or directions they made, with failure to do so being an arrestable offence. The latter proposal has since been adopted as a Member's Bill by a National MP, so its very much the regime's agenda as well.

The IPCA's proposal was based in part on draconian Australian anti-protest laws. And there's a perfect example of what they mean in practice, with the possible blinding of a protestor by police in Sydney:

A former Greens candidate has been injured after allegedly resisting police arrest while picketing a business in Sydney’s west, with friends and family warned she may lose sight in her right eye.

The protest, which attracted between 50 and 60 people, sought to stop pedestrian access to a business that was accused by protesters of “supplying electroplating and surface coating services for a variety of applications including aerospace and defence technology” to Israel.

[...]

According to police, officers issued a move-on direction to the protesters at about 5.30am on Friday.

The force alleged the protest was “unauthorised”, as those involved had not given advanced notice nor submitted a form that protected them from being charged under anti-protest laws.

The key thing to realise here is that police may use "reasonable force" to effect an arrest. So creating an offence of "disobeying police" or "refusing to tell police your plans" is effectively a licence for police to beat people at will, an invitation to the sort of violent and brutal policing exemplified above. Or to the sort of violent and brutal policing we see in America, where police respond to protests with barrages of tear gas, rubber bullets, and baton charges, because apparently that's an appropriate response to people yelling and waving banners in the streets.

This sort of policing is profoundly incompatible with democracy. It is not the sort of policing we want to see here. And if the IPCA wants it, then they are no longer fit for purpose, and should be dissolved.

Another unfair Australian election

Australians went to the polls on Saturday in an election originally expected to be a tight contest between an uninspiring ALP government, and a full-on monstrous radical Coalition opposition. But then Trump happened, and Dutton doubled down on culture war bullshit, and so instead its been a Labour landslide. Which is welcome, I guess - shit-lite is still "lite", and everyone loves to see Trump get kicked in the balls - but it again shows the rank unfairness of Australia's electoral system.

The ALP won 56% of the seats on (at current count) just under 35% of the primary vote. The coalition - which got a slightly lower primary vote of 32% - won 26% of the seats. The Greens, who won 12% of the vote, and One nation, which got 6%, received no seats at all, while independents got 10% of seats for 7.5% of the vote. 10% of seats are still in doubt, so these numbers may change a little, but its also very obvious that this is a wildly disproportionate result, practically British levels of unfairness. And I'm not sure why Australians continue to put up with it, especially when it turns their politics into a cosy oligopoly where both shit and shit-lite push racism while pandering to the fossil-fuel industry, in pursuit of some horrific conception of a racist, coal-addicted median-voter.

Australian politics could be better. And the way to make it better is by moving to a fairer electoral system. It worked here, after all. But why would shit and shit-lite support that?

Australia jails another whistleblower

In 2014 former Australian army lawyer David McBride leaked classified military documents about Australian war crimes to the ABC. Dubbed "The Afghan Files", the documents led to an explosive report on Australian war crimes, the disbanding of an entire SAS unit, and multiple ongoing prosecutions. The journalist who wrote the stories, Dan Oakes, was later awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia for "service to journalism" for the work.

Today, in revenge, the Australian government jailed McBride for almost six years - a longer sentence than any Australian war criminal has so far received for the offences he uncovered.

The message is clear: when the Australian government commits crimes, the witnesses should keep quiet. Otherwise they will be victimised and persecuted. Its hard to see this as anything other than official government support for war crimes and war criminals. Provided they're committed by Australians, of course.

(And, lest we feel too superior, John Key passed a similar anti-whistleblowing law here, allowing the punishment of those who blow the whistle on the defence - spy deep state, which is yet to be repealed).

Justice for robodebt

Between 2016 and 2020, the Australian government inflicted nearly $2 billion of imaginary "debts" on welfare recipients, courtesy of an illegal automated overpayment calculation system. The policy led to suicides as people struggled to pay debts they didn't owe. The scheme was scrapped in 2020, and the illegal "debts" were later forgiven and repaid. And today, a royal commission into the fiasco has recommended prosecuting its architects:

The architects of Robodebt will be referred for criminal and civil prosecution after a royal commission handed down its report into the unlawful scheme today.

Commissioner Catherine Holmes has branded the former coalition government's debt-raising scheme an "extraordinary saga" of "venality, incompetence and cowardice".

"The report paints a picture of how the Robodebt [scheme] ... was put together on an ill-conceived, embryonic idea," Commissioner Holmes wrote.

"It is remarkable how little interest there seems to have been in ensuring the scheme's legality, how rushed its implementation was, how little thought was given to how it would affect welfare recipients and the lengths to which public servants were prepared to go to oblige ministers on a quest for savings."

It also finds that former PM Scott Morrison (who was social services minister at the time robodebt was created) misled Cabinet by failing to provide all relevant information about the scheme and its lawfulness. To prevent this happening in future, it recommends repealing Australia's blanket exemption of cabinet documents from the Freedom of Information Act. Its still secret who should be prosecuted, and what for. But the onus is now on Australian federal agencies to follow the recommendation. The problem is that they have a track-record of perverting the course of justice to protect those in power. Hopefully that won't happen in this case.

More Australian corruption

Oh look, another Australian state premier has been found to have acted corruptly:

Former premier Gladys Berejiklian engaged in serious corrupt conduct and breached the public’s trust through her secret relationship with now-disgraced ex-MP Daryl Maguire.

The Independent Commission Against Corruption’s (ICAC) bombshell findings end a wait of almost two years for a ruling on Berejiklian’s conduct while she was in a secret relationship with Maguire.

In the damning two-volume report, the ICAC found that Berejiklian engaged in “serious corrupt conduct by breaching public trust” through the awarding of grants that Maguire had personally lobbied for “without disclosing her close personal relationship” with the then Wagga Wagga MP.

But despite that, they recommend not charging her. That'll boost public confidence in politicians!

But Berejiklian isn't alone. Her predecessors Barry O'Farrell and Kristina Keneally were both found by ICAC to have behaved corruptly, meaning that half of NSW's premiers since 2009 have been corrupt. Something is terribly, terribly wrong in that state. And despite repeated ICAC investigations, the culture of corruption just seems to continue. Perhaps there's a problem with this whole "investigate, but never charge" regime...

Australia's most-decorated war-criminal

Ben Roberts-Smith is apparently "Australia’s most decorated living soldier", having won a Victoria Cross for killing people in Afghanistan. But today, after a stupendous self-own defamation case, he's also been proven to be a war criminal who committed multiple murders:

Ben Roberts-Smith VC, Australia’s most decorated living soldier, has lost a defamation case in which he was accused of multiple murders of unarmed civilians in Afghanistan, a federal court judge has found.

Justice Anthony Besanko found that, on the balance of probabilities, Roberts-Smith kicked a handcuffed prisoner off a cliff in Darwan in 2012, before ordering a subordinate Australian soldier to shoot the injured man dead.

And in 2009, Roberts-Smith ordered the execution an elderly man found hiding in a tunnel in a bombed-out compound, as well as murdering a disabled man with a prosthetic leg during the same mission, using a para minimi machine gun.

It's only a civil finding rather than a criminal one, but it still raises the obvious question: when will this war criminal be prosecuted for his crimes? And when will he be stripped of his VC? Or is that now a medal Australia gives to murdering war criminals?

"Growth" is worthless

Politicians are always telling us that we need to sacrifice and surrender legal and social rights or environmental protections in the name of economic growth. But is it worth it? Data from Australia says "nope":

A new paper from the Australia Institute shows 93% of the benefits of economic growth between 2009 and 2019 went to the top 10%, while the bottom 90% received just 7%.

The paper shows the share of economic growth going to the top 10% over that period was far higher in Australia than in other developed countries, including the US and Canada.

It also showed the phenomenon has been getting worse – in the postwar period, larger shares of the benefit of economic growth have been going to the top of Australia’s income recipients.

This is an Australian result, but there's no reason to believe Aotearoa is any different.

In short, most people see very little benefit from growth. If you're in the top 10%, great. but for the rest of us, all it means is higher inequality and the people at the top getting further and further ahead, making things worse for everyone else in the process. Which invites the question not only of why we should sacrifice anything for this, but also why we should even allow it in the first place.

An inquiry into freedom of information in Australia

Three weeks ago, Australia's Freedom of Information Commissioner - their equivalent of the Ombudsman - suddenly resigned, on the basis that the entire system was broken and he was unable to fix it. And now, the Australian Senate is holding an inquiry into the resignation, and the problems with Australia's Freedom of Information Act:

The Greens, Coalition and crossbench have teamed up to set up an inquiry into the freedom of information commissioner’s resignation over dysfunction and delays in the FOI system.

The FOI commissioner, Leo Hardiman, announced his resignation earlier in March citing his lack of powers to make changes necessary to improve the timeliness of reviews of FOI decisions.

On Tuesday the Senate voted to establish a legal and constitutional affairs references committee inquiry into the resignation, resourcing for FOI applications and reviews, and the possible “creation of a statutory time frame for completion of reviews”.

Naturally, the ALP - who in opposition had demanded greater transparency - opposed the move. Because government's gonna government.

Meanwhile, Aotearoa is still waiting for the review of the OIA the government promised in 2019, not to mention the fixing of the issues identified by the Law Commission back in 2012. They've refused even to review the unnecessary secrecy clauses they've passed. Despite its rhetoric, our Labour government is not interested in transparency in any way.

A bad sign

On Friday, a New South Wales court heard the case of Violet Coco. As part of a protest against inaction on climate change, Coco had blocked a Sydney motorway for 25 minutes. Using anti-protest laws passed by NSW's fossil-fuel-funded government, the judge jailed her for 15 months, with a minimum non-parole period of 8 months. The outrageous sentence has been condemned around the world, and has drawn more attention to Australia's attacks on the right to protest and transition into a fossil fuel tyranny. And now, the National Party wants to bring that tyranny here:

A new member’s bill will be lodged in the ballot that would make obstructing state highways, major roads, tunnels and bridges a crime.

The bill proposes up to two years in prison, a $20,000 fine, or both.

After disruptive rail protests on Wellington state highways, National are taking a stand against further obstructions.

Its only a member's bill, but member's bills tend to become official policy. Which makes this a very bad sign. At a time of increasing climate crisis and ongoing catastrophe's, National's answer is not to cut emissions, but to jail those demanding they do so. In addition to being grossly undemocratic, that simply does not seem to be a credible response.

Update (8/12/2022): Apparaently NewstalkZB memory holes its interviews really quickly, but fortunately the Wayback Machine had it, so I've updated the link. There's also a press release on Scoop for those looking for more information.

Some light in Australia

Back in 2013, a former ASIS agent blew the whistle on how the Australian government had illegally bugged the leaders of East Timor in order to listen in on their negotiating position over oil and gas rights in the Timor Sea. When the issue was raised in the International Court of Justice, the Australian government raided the homes of both the whsitleblower and East Timor's Australian lawyer, then charged them with revealing classified information. But today, at least part of that persecution has been ended, with the Australian government dropping against lawyer Bernard Collaery:

Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus has ordered the Commonwealth to drop the prosecution of lawyer Bernard Collaery, four years after he was charged with conspiring to release classified information about an alleged spying operation in East Timor

Mr Collaery was charged in 2018 for allegedly helping his client, an ex-spy known only as Witness K, to reveal details of the classified ASIS mission.

This is good, but its not enough - Collaery was persecuted for five years, essentially for representing a whistleblower. His client, "Witness K", was forced to plead guilty and convicted. They should be pardoned, and both should be compensated. The people who orchestrated that persecution need to be fired. But most importantly, Australia's "national security" laws need to be repealed to protect the public interest in leaking, so this can never happen again.

The Australian election

Australia went to the polls on Saturday, and while the preferences are still being counted, clearly voted for a change of government. Unfortunately, this being Australia, this meant swapping one coal-loving, refugee-hating racist for another. Which is perhaps why Labor's primary vote share decreased this election, with voters instead turning to the Greens and "teal" independents promising action on climate change and corruption. And hopefully this will mean some big changes in climate change policy. But it all depends on how those last preferences go, and whether Labor gets a secure majority, or whether it is forced into minority government.

(Australia's unfair electoral system is a big problem here. The ALP got ~33% of the primary vote and is flirting with 50% of the seats. Meanwhile, the Greens got ~12%, and around 2% of the seats. This is what Australians call "fair").

Are there lessons for Aotearoa? Unlike Australia, both our government and our opposition have at least pretended to care about climate change, and there isn't the level of high profile abandonment - going on holiday during the bushfires, ignoring the floods - that has driven public anger about Scott Morrison. Unlike Australia, our politicians take their jobs seriously and understand basic public expectations. We also have a very different political system, which makes independent challenges to MPs unlikely (we haven't had an independent elected since 1943, and the highest-profile recent example - Raf Maji - managed a distant second). But with MMP, if Labour is seen as not performing or being an impediment on climate change, people can and will just switch their vote to the Greens to shift the policy balance, and that seems like something that could happen next year. Underperformance by a future National government doesn't have such an easy outlet, however - which is probably something they rely on.

More Australian war crimes

Last week, Australia's ABC broke a major story about Australian SAS troops committing war crimes in Timor-Leste, murdering wounded people and brutalising their corpses. This week, they've got more, about an Australian-run torture centre:

During the widely celebrated peace-making mission in East Timor, Australian soldiers held 14 men and boys in a secret interrogation facility.

The detainees, suspected of being pro-Indonesian militia, say they were stripped, assaulted, deprived of food, water and sleep and forcibly shown the mangled bodies of two dead militiamen.

Their ordeal led to Australian military investigators recommending charges of torture.

Of course, the Australian military refused to prosecute its own. And of course, it refuses to say why. Meanwhile, the rest of us are left wondering why Australia lets its soldiers violate Australian and international law, and whether the failure to prosecute in Timor allowed and encouraged Australian soldiers to commit further crimes in Afghanistan.

Finally

Last month, we learned that Australia had agreed-in-principle to Aotearoa's offer to resettle refugees from Australian concentration camps. And today, Australia finally accepted it:

In a major about-turn, Australia has accepted New Zealand's long-standing offer to take 150 refugees a year for three years from detention centres in the Pacific.

The deal aims to rehome some of the thousands of refugees who have arrived in Australia by boat, and been placed in detention in line with the country's policy.

The original offer was made by then-prime minister John Key in 2013 and has continued to be extended by his successors Bill English and Jacinda Ardern.

Australian authorities have rejected the proposal until now, citing concerns that the refugees could claim Kiwi citizenship and then travel into Australia freely.

Australia's solution to that problem has long been a demand that we permanently deny their victims citizenship. Obviously, this has been unacceptable to the New Zealand government. And it looks like we got our way: the refugees won't be denied residency or citizenship. Further, while Immigration Minister Kris Faafoi has said that Australia's border decisions are a question for Australia, he's also said that we expect all kiwis to be treated equally - suggesting there may be diplomatic consequences if they try any continued victimisation.

Obviously, this deal could have been made nine years ago when it was first proposed. The fact that Australia refused over illusory, racist fears, and then tortured these people for nine years, is something Australian politicians need to be held accountable for.

Climate Change: No duty of care in Australia

Last year, in a victory for the climate movement, an Australian court ruled that ministers owe young people a duty of care over climate change. But today, that ruling was overturned by the Federal Court:

The Federal Environment Minister Sussan Ley does not have a duty of care to protect young people from climate change harm when considering fossil fuel projects, such as mines, a court has ruled.

The ruling of the full bench of the Federal Court overturned an earlier decision that found in favour of eight teenagers who brought a class-action case that challenged a proposal by Whitehaven Coal to extend its Vickery coal mine, near Boggabri in NSW.

[...]

“The court is unanimous in the view that the duty should not be imposed upon the Minister. The three judgments of the court have different emphases as to why this conclusion should be reached,” Chief Justice James Allsop said in his judgment on Tuesday.

Which immediately invites the question: if the government doesn't have a duty of care to the young, what exactly is it for? Unfortunately, in Australia the answer appears to be "protecting the profits of old, rich, fossil-fuel polluters".

Open Government: A warning for Australia

Australia has been formally warned that it is not meeting its commitments to the Open Government Partnership:

The Australian government signed up to the Open Government Partnership in 2015, a 78-country multilateral initiative designed to promote open government, fight corruption and empower citizen participation in policymaking.

But Australia’s efforts since have frustrated the group. It has failed to act on prior promises – including to improve donations transparency and strengthen the nation’s anti-corruption framework – and has missed the deadline to file its latest two-year action plan for 2021-23, which was due in December.

That prompted the OGP chief executive, Sanjay Pradhan, to write to the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet last week, warning that if it failed to meet the next deadline, its membership status would be reviewed.

The OGP has previously suspended Azerbaijan and designated several other countries as "inactive" for acting contrary to the OGP's goals or failing to meet commitments. If Australia does not quickly start acting, it is likely to suffer the same fate. And for a country which prides itself on being a democracy, that is simply shameful.

Read the fine print

The Herald reports that after nine years, Australia has finally accepted Aotearoa's offer to resettle people from its offshore concentration camps. Which sounds like great news. Except there's a catch:

The deal was confirmed "in principle" in the Australian Senate this week but awaits further negotiation, including Australia seeking a guarantee there would be no "backdoor" for the people transferred to come to Australia.

Australia is obsessed with the idea that people who have the temerity to request asylum from them can never be allowed to set foot there (apparently they think they're such a great country that people will still want to visit their dry racist shithole even after being tortured by them for nine years). Refugees in New Zealand of course are eventually granted citizenship, which means a right to travel to and live in Australia. Australia's "solution" to this is to ask us to continue to oppress its victims on their behalf by denying them citizenship. Successive New Zealand governments have continuously told them that that's not happening, which is why this has taken nine years. But shuffling this fundamental disagreement behind an "agreement in principle" doesn't make it go away, and its likely that Australia's desire for a "guarantee" will continue to hold things up. So we probably shouldn't expect any concentration camp victims any time soon, unless we rescue them ourselves.

Australia could of course solve this problem itself, simply by exercising its right to refuse entry at the border in the unlikely event that any of its victims show up there again. The fact that they are instead seeking to make us complicit in their oppression speaks volumes about the moral character of their government. Aotearoa shouldn't have a bar of it. Once we accept these people, they're part of the whanau, and we should not cooperate in any way with their abuser.

(Australia's offshore detention regime has been found to constitute cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment and is unlawful under international law).

AUKUS has consequences

Last week Australia announced a new security deal with the UK and US which would see it abandon its plans to buy conventional submarines from France and instead acquire nuclear-powered submarines from one of its new partners. France is pretty pissed about this - they were completely blindsided, and the submarine deal was worth tens of billions of Euros - and have threatened consequences for australia's betrayal. They've already withdrawn their ambassador (a fairly major step between ostensibly friendly countries), and now the other show is dropping: they're going to veto Australia getting a free trade deal with the EU:

France is seeking to enlist European Union support to delay a planned EU-Australia trade deal, as part of a plan to punish Australia for what it regards as serial deceit and subterfuge by Canberra before it cancelled the contract for 12 attack-class French submarines.

[...]

The EU Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, weighed into the diplomatic row on Monday, saying France had been treated unacceptably by the US, Australia and the UK and that many questions remained unanswered. EU foreign ministers were due to discuss the crisis on the sidelines of the UN general assembly in New York.

The next round of EU-Australia trade talks – the 12th – are due next month, and it remains to be seen how deeply other EU states wish to become embroiled in the fallout from the French loss of a commercial contract.

The French position makes sense. Why would you want to deal with a country which has just proven its duplicity? And the EU's qualified majority voting rule means they're not going to need too many friends to assemble a blocking majority if they really want to screw things up.

Bad neighbours

This week the UK effectively surrendered to Covid, with Boris Johnson insisting he would scrap all public health restrictions by mid-July in the apparent belief that the UK will "return to normal" if only enough people die. And today, New South Wales - currently in the grip of an outbreak - is apparently thinking of doing the same thing:

The New South Wales (NSW) government is facing its most difficult decision of the pandemic, with senior ministers cautiously canvassing abandoning a zero local-transmission strategy and accepting the Delta strain of Covid-19 will circulate in the community.

Three senior ministers, who would not speak publicly due to cabinet confidentiality, have acknowledged the Australian state has reached a “fork in the road” where it must choose between a lockdown to eliminate Covid or living with the virus.

To be crystal clear, "living with the virus" means allowing it to spread. It means people dying. And it means allowing it to breed new variants, which may be even more infectious, or which our current vaccines may be less effective against - basicly becoming a petri dish and an epidemiological threat to the rest of humanity. It is effectively declaring war against every government which is trying to protect its people from this horror.

In short, if New South Wales decides to "live with the virus" and become a petri-dish state, then we can no longer live with them, and our borders to them and anyone who is open to them will need to remain closed until they come to their senses. And the same goes for the UK.