Give referendum a single focus
ABORIGINES deserve special recognition as our first people.
If a constitutional amendment acknowledging the unique position of Aborigines is to succeed, it is crucial that the referendum question likely to be put to Australians by 2013 is not crowded with extraneous issues. The Prime Minister's Expert Panel on the Constitutional Recognition of Indigenous Australians, co-chaired by Pat Dodson and Mark Liebler, is on the right track suggesting a preamble to the Constitution providing such recognition. A February Newspoll showed 75 per cent of Australians are in favour, only 16 per cent against and 9 per cent are undecided.
Other ideas floated in the panel's discussion paper, however, would be more divisive. A push to strip the Constitution of its race power or enable the government to make formal deals with Aborigines on land, cultural and educational issues would struggle to gain majority support in a majority of states.
To achieve broad community and political consensus, a new preamble needs a form of words that acknowledges our indigenous people while also recognising others who since 1788 have shared the toil of taming a magnificent but often hostile continent. After the failure of the verbose preamble penned by Les Murray and rejected in all states in the 1999 referendum, the text put to the Australian people should be simple, clear and inspiring. While it must acknowledge the special place of the first Australians, it should not separate them from their fellow Australians.
It is a delicate task calling for rare semantic precision. But with bipartisan goodwill, Australians would embrace the spirit of the 1967 referendum when 90.77 per cent -- the biggest majority ever achieved in a referendum -- voted to give indigenous people the dignity and opportunity that should belong to all.
Why the Greens are seeing red
BOB Brown feels the heat but needs to find some answers.
When Patrick Walters broke the children overboard story in The Weekend Australian and pursued its implications for the Howard government, there were no complaints from the Greens. Nor when we relentlessly examined the AWB scandal, leading to the prime minister, deputy prime minister and foreign minister being hauled before a commission of inquiry. Yet now, as the nation grapples with the complex issues of climate change policy, the Greens bristle at simple questions aimed at providing scrutiny on behalf of our readers, and claim bias. This is particularly difficult to understand, given this paper has long supported a market-based carbon emission reduction scheme, and that Australia would have one now if the Greens had not voted down Kevin Rudd's carbon pollution reduction scheme.
Bob Brown is undoubtedly one of the most powerful politicians in Australia and after the formation of the new Senate in July, when the Greens will assume the balance of power in their own right, his influence will only increase. The heavy responsibilities of shaping the economic, social and environmental future of this nation rest, in part, on his shoulders. He needs to understand that our democracy demands fearless scrutiny of those who exercise power.
Senator Brown is clearly used to an easy ride from sections of the media who cheer his moral postures rather than examine his actions. Now he is in coalition with a struggling government, he is facing difficult questions, even on occasions from the ABC. This is as it should be. Yet the Greens leader is behaving erratically, blaming News Limited for stories broken elsewhere, labelling us the "hate media" and declaring a strategy to take us on.
In the climate policy debate, Senator Brown clearly wants journalists to back his cause, arguing that the media should be "part of the process of moving Australia into a much more secure future". This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the media's role in civic society. The activism he advocates is anathema to a newspaper aiming to hold authority to account and reflect the breadth of national views, including from the 88 per cent who did not vote Greens. In our first edition 47 years ago, we declared: "This paper is tied to no party, no state and has no chains of any kind. Its guide is faith in Australia and the country's future." When the ABC explores the impact of phasing out coal mining or we chronicle the waste in ill-judged renewable energy schemes, the media is fulfilling its vital role.
Senator Brown's cheap shots about our readership figures underscore his lack of answers. Never complacent, we remain happy with our strong sales and place in the nation's public discourse. The Greens' polling slump this year from 15 per cent to 10 per cent might be the real spark for Senator Brown's aggression. This slide should have their leadership searching for mainstream values rather than victim status.
Hamas-Fatah pact a major stumbling block to peace
ISRAEL'S right to exist must be fundamental to any solution.
As an exposition of the vastly changed landscape in the Arab world following the tumultuous upheavals in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere, it is difficult to fault President Barack Obama's speech on Middle East policy.
In Cairo two years ago, in setting out his hopes for a new beginning with the Arab world, Mr Obama unwisely sought to distance himself from George W. Bush's freedom agenda for the region, then the butt of criticism by Democrats, instead setting out what was in effect a short-sighted policy that sought engagement with repressive regimes such as those of Syria and Iran. Mr Obama hasn't made the same mistake again. Instead, he has outlined a program of direct support for democratic change that should end the perceptions of ambivalence and uncertainty that have dogged his administration since the advent of the Arab Spring and in Iran in 2009.
Coming down on the side of the angels was the easy part of Mr Obama's speech. He could hardly have done otherwise. More difficult by far was his attempt to define the parameters for progress towards peace between Israel and the Palestinians, and it is hardly surprising that the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has reacted so critically to Mr Obama's call for a two-state solution of the conflict based on pre-1967 boundaries with mutually agreed swaps.
Israel's security is what a peace deal with the Palestinian leaders -- if it is ever going to happen -- is all about and a return to pre-1967 lines would simply leave Israel indefensible as well as abandon significant Jewish population centres, such as those in the West Bank, beyond those lines.
More realistically, Mr Obama has questioned how Israel can be expected to negotiate a peace deal in the light of the new Hamas-Fatah unity agreement, given that Hamas seeks the destruction of Israel and will not recognise its right to exist, and warned Palestinian leaders that they will not win recognition of Palestine by going to the UN, as they are planning to do in September.
The Hamas-Fatah accord has, indeed, introduced a major new element into what prospects there are for a resumption of peace talks. Mr Obama should leave Palestinian leaders in no doubt that unless and until Hamas rejects terrorism and recognises Israel's right to exist there is no prospect of negotiations. The onus on this is on the Palestinians. The bedrock of any policy must be Israel's right to exist and its security, and the Palestinian leadership, from Fatah or Hamas, must be told this in no uncertain terms. Mr Obama failed to suggest action to get peace talks restarted. That is unfortunate. There is an urgent need for action and he must now get cracking on realistic solutions.
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