The Situation of Democracy in Australia: An Open Letter to the Australian Community (July 2015)

TheSituation of Democracy in Australia: Open Letter to the Australian Community, July 2015 1

Well lock up asylum seekers in offshore detention centres, well stand idly by as they

slowly go crazy or harm themselves, well refuse journalists the right to speak to them

or to name them, well redefine our borders to not let them in, well farm them off to

our impoverished, under-developed neighbours rather than construct a humane and

efficient system to process their claims for asylum. It doesnt matter to us that more

than 85% of asylum seekers who arrive here by boat are found to be genuine refugees,

and that as signatories to the UN Refugee Convention we are obliged to offer these

people refuge.

We have failed. The Monthly September 2013: published prior to the last elections|

http://mnth.ly/ZNmlxl9

The Situation of Democracy in Australia: Open letterto the Australian community

On 10 December 2014 former Prime Minister of Australia Malcolm Fraser stated

in his opening speech at the newASRC facilities in Footscray:

The powers enshrined in the [Migration Act Amendment] bill appropriate to a

country living beyond the reach of the rule of law. The powers enshrined in this bill

are appropriate for a tyranny not for a democracy. and

The democratic system depends on the rule of law, it depends on due process, on

properly produced evidence on precedence and on process that is open to appeal to

a higher authority. This legislation gives the ministers Scott Morrison now and

whoever may be there in the future total arbitrary, dictatorial, tyrannical power

over the lives and futures of asylum seekers. Which destroys the rule of law as we

have come to know and accept it through the centuries.(...) It tears up international

law concerning what is called non-refoulement...The ministers decisions are

absolute, they are not subject to review.(...)

The misters powers are outside the rule of law and this is what we clearly need to

understand, they are beyond appeal. That is the power of a tyrant. And we need to

recognise it. We cannot pretend that this is just a minor change.It represents a

destruction of the democratic process.

We must spare a moment for the future... Today the bill applies to all asylum

seekers but it established a new practice beyond the rule of law. If there is another

group the government does not like will it extend a similar practice to that group?

Because once the government embraces such policies the policies tend to spread,

the practices tend to be used again and again. And we can all point to countries

where that has happened. (...) Opposition to the measures that this government

has introduced, opposition to this government needs to be reinforced and

strengthened to make sure that more and more people know exactly what the

government has done. video 14 minutes: https://youtu.be/CLy6Wu_5nLs

(slightly edited transcript available here:

www.smh.com.au/comment/immigration-minister-has-the-powers-of-a-tyrant-say

s-malcolm-fraser-20141210-124b4v.html)


Born in Germany after WW2 I have never used the word fascism lightly. I was

brought up with the critical thinking of Walter Benjamin, Theodor Wiesengrund

Adorno and Jurgen Habermas of the Frankfurt school. And I watched my father who

was a resisting teenager during the war refuse for the rest of his life to accept any

doctrine that would build on even subtle forms of generalisation and blind beliefs

and mass mobilisation. That included the churches and religion, which had played a

shameful role in supporting the Nazi regime. My father was extremely skeptical and

worried when I began to study Buddhism! Needless to say that I was brought up

where the daily news was scrutinised, analysed and debated and then compared to

many other insider sources in both content and method. It was of crucial

importance to learn to think and speakmany languages and to study history.

The memory of my old father asking people to leave our house never to return is

vivid: that is anyone who would express the slightest sympathy for the fascists old

or new.

Today I had to draw a line. The prevailing views, the decisions that are made and

actions that are taken by the Government of Australia elected and supported by a

complicit majority of Australians bear every hallmark of a fascist regime in the strict

sense of the word.

This is my interpretation of present events while I feel a deep responsibility to no

longer remaining silent. As one of my Buddhist teachers Prof Samdhong Rinpoche

writes: Remaining silent is also a kind of acceptance. So wherever evil is present

we must have the courage to dissociate ourselves from it and also

compassionately to oppose it: that is the responsibility of the wise.

One of the mechanisms of the Nazi regime was indeed that people would just

continue to go about their lives and argue that as law-abiding citizens they just

follow orders. So many German citizens of Jewish descent or religion failed to

understand the gravity and literal meaning of the Nazi fascism until the moment

they were deported into camps and delivered into gas chambers. Fascism does not

happen overnight. It proceeds in discreet daily increments; it has in its wings the

propaganda that postpones critical judgments and produces legislation changes

that justify itself and is carried by the indifference and apathy of people. There is

the banal evil (The Monthly, 2013) that knows how to create technicalities to send

people to certain death.

It is as Malcolm Fraser pointed out that this government does no longer qualify as a

democratic one.

This has been supported by a sober analysis Professor Gillian Triggs delivered in a

speech as recent as the 12. June 2015: "Respective Parliaments have, I suggest,

failed to exercise their traditional self-restraint in protecting democratic rights. The

volume of laws that currently infringe freedoms Professor George Williams

estimates over 350 such laws are on the books at present- suggests prioritizing

governmental power has become a routine part of the legislative process. As he

observes, the enactment of anti-democratic laws has become so accepted that they

elicit little community or media responses." And on 10. July 2015:


Particularly since the 9/11 attacks in 2001 on the United States, Australian

parliaments have passed scores of laws that infringe our common law freedoms of

speech, association and movement, the right to a fair trial and the counter-

terrorism laws. These new laws undermine a healthy, robust democracy, especially

when they grant discretionary powers to executive governments in the absence of

meaningful scrutiny by our courts.

What are the safeguards of democratic liberties if Parliament itself is compliant

and complicit in expanding executive power to the detriment of the judiciary and

ultimately of all Australian citizens?

What are the options for democracy when both major parties, in government and

opposition to agree upon laws that threaten fundamental freedoms under the

common law and breachAustralias obligations under international treaties?

I am requesting and encouraging you all to oppose fascism by recognising it for

what it is and speaking out. And not only historical fascism, the

fascism of Hitler and Mussoliniwhich was able to mobilize and use the desire of

the masses so effectivelybut also the fascism in us all, in our heads and in our

everyday behavior, the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very

thing that dominates and exploits us. M. Foucault Foreword to Anti-Oedipus:

Capitalism and Schizophrenia, 1972

POSTSCRIPTUM

There seems to be a myth about Australia entrenched in conventional perception

that Australians are somehow immune to fascism*. This is a misleading and

dangerous assumption for two reasons:

1. https://redflag.org.au/article/secret-history-fascism-australia

(please dont reply by telling me that this is a Socialist run page, i am aware of that)

and

https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2013/september/1377957600/christos-tsiolka

s/why-australia-hates-asylum-seekers an article by The Monthly prior to the last

elections

2. The assumption in itself reflects a fundamental lack of ability or willingness of

critical thinking and introspection. It is in their absence that fascism thrives and

implants its propaganda.

In the face of prolonged and systematic maltreatment of asylum seekers that have

been identified as clearly in breach of the International Law, it is no longer a

sufficient method of resistance to repeat lines like Real Australians can do better

than that or History will not look favourable on this.

The state is now actively doing what fascist regimes do and gone to change the

legislation and restructure decision making bodies. There are many examples for

this and here is one of the latest:


http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/immigration/liberals-order-purge

-of-refugee-review-body/story-fn9hm1gu-1227440521501

And an older one

http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2014/nov/14/law-changes-could-see-l

egitimate-refugees-sent-back-senate-inquiry-told

Tracie Aylmer was the first Australian to write a submission to the International

Criminal Court alleging that Australia's treatment of asylum seekers constitutes a

crime against humanity.

In October 2014 Andrew Wilkie lodged his submission to the International Crime

CourtThe Hague.

http://www.andrewwilkie.org/content/index.php/awmp/press_extended/case_agai

nst_abbott_government_builds_at_the_hague

In one of her emails to the ICCTracie writes:

We in Australia do not want to breach international law. We need help to ensure

that international law is enforced. Please act quickly, to save the 30,000 people

within the community as well as those in onshore and offshore detention. This

government has changed the laws. In order for the 30,000 people to gain a

temporary visa, they must obtain Freedom of Information documents from the

government. Applications for this visa need to be prepared and made within 28

days. The Freedom of Information documents take 28 days to process. If the

information is not within the application, the government denies the visa and the

asylum seeker is deported.

This is what we are seeing now - deportations. This system is set up to fail every

asylum seeker within the community, thereby giving an 'opportunity' for the

government to reject all claims of persecution. In addition, the asylum seeker has

no legal representation, so people from the community do their best, but there

aren't as many people as there are asylum seekers and they have little money to

help.

This government is using 'technicalities' to persecute the persecuted. Everyone who

helps asylum seekers are exhausted by the continuation of breaches. We need an

authority to help us ensure that people are properly considered. At present, since

everyone knows about these people, they are now entitled to 'sur place' claims of

protection, yet the government refuses to consider anything other than technical

deportations.

These types of technicalities were used to persecute, torture and murder Jews in

the Holocaust.TA [source facebook page]

[support Tracie here:

https://ozcrowd.com/campaigns/be-part-of-history-help-send-morrison-co-to-the-i

nternational-criminal-court/#.VaZoTPmqqko

*Note: Fascism defined as fundamentally totalitarian views and actions to the


exclusion of any possibility of critical thinking, debate or appeal. I cannot discuss

the mechanisms of fascism here in detail but the critical thinking of the Frankfurt

School is the most relevant in this context. Please consult Adorno, Habermas,

Benjamin, as well as Foucault.

I am not only referring to fixed or historical forms of fascism; most modern forms

have come to penetrate society without necessary displaying an ugly (identifiable)

figure head. Last not least, the term fascism is not used in the sense that

In the affirmation of the desire of the masses for fascism, what is troubling is that

an affirmation covers up for the lack of any precise historical analysis. In this I see

above all the effect of a general complicity in the refusal to decipher what fascism

really was a refusal that manifests itself either in generalization- fascism is

everywhere, above all in our heads- or in Marxist schematization. The non-analysis

of fascism is one of the important political facts of the past thirty years. It enables

fascism to be used as a floating signifier, whose function is essentially that of

denunciation. Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge, p. 130

The Situation of Democracy in Australia: An Open Letter to the Australian Community (July 2015)

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