If the pictures taken in Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq had been taken in a Queensland jail, the person who took the photos would have been liable for 2 years jail. It is an offense to interview, photograph or record a Queensland jail inmate without official permission. As a result, in some instances in Queensland, prison guards have literally gotten away with murder.
I only became aware of these facts after reading this article by Bernie Matthews. This is the first of two articles that I commissioned Matthews to write for On Line Opinion, because I had a hunch.
My hunch was that the atrocities inside Abu Ghraib were little different from atrocities committed in hundreds of jails in the Western World. I knew that Corporal Charles Grane, the alleged ringleader, had worked at Pennsylvania’s State Correctional Institution – Greene (see this website for more details). I also knew that prisoners die in our prison system at a much higher rate than Australians die anywhere else. And I also knew that anytime I had been in a prison, which I have been a number of times for “A” Grade QDU debates, the fear and hostility in the air between warders and inmates was palpable.
Matthews lays it all out. He talks of his own sexual abuse and sensory deprivation; he lists and explores a number of unexplained deaths; and lastly he looks at the brutalizing transformation of prisoners in the system. Through it all runs the thread of a system that knows the brutalisation is occurring, does nothing to prevent it, and sets the rules so that it is unlikely to be reported on, until it erupts into a royal commission. What a disgrace.
Which raises a number of very interesting questions. The first is how the US government could claim that it was surprised by this abuse. Not only are there precedents, like the My Lai massacre, from earlier wars, but it runs a prison system in the USA and must employ any number of criminologists who could tell it what was likely to happen if it ran a prison system in Iraq. It makes this claim because it is caught in the dichotomous argument that it is the “good” waging a war against “evil”, so it cannot admit that these were crimes that were always likely to happen because it is not a completely unequivocally good society.
It gets away with the claim because journalists are not asking the tough questions. I am waiting for the day a journalist pops up at a press conference and quotes estimates of those who die from unexplained causes in US prisons or are abused in a year and draws the obvious link – in a prison population of the size in Iraq’s, isn’t it likely that statistically speaking more abuse is happening than we know of? Maybe it will never happen. Some journalists of course want to believe that the good bad dichotomy is absolutely, rather than relatively, accurate, and don’t want to see the murkier reality where no-one has an absolute claim on vice or virtue.
Other journalists want to magnify the damage done to the US. If we could see that what has happened is an inexcusable but commonplace part of imprisonment, then we might be less shocked, and the negative impact minimised.
Neither view of the issue has an interest in looking at the state of imprisonment in the Western World because it either further undermines the alleged sanctity of the US, or takes attention away from the war.
The upshot of this is bastardization and vicimisation of another sort. We are taught to view the Iraqis as a special case aside from the general human condition – diminishing and exceptionalising them. And prisoners everywhere lose through the implication that imprisonment in the “civilized” countries is humane.
Oh, and by the way, the first reading yesterday in every Christian Church that uses the lectionary was Acts 16:16-34 which recounts the imprisonment of Paul and Silas. I wonder how many preachers tackled Abu Ghraib in their sermons?

REGULAR readers will know I have a low opinion of rugby league administrators – about as low as a snake’s belly!
The latest scandal involving the NSW State of Origin player, Mark Gasnier, highlights two facts.
Firstly, the game of rugby league, and its senior players in particular, have a serious alcohol problem that must be addressed……and that the hierarchy continues to sweep under the bar cloth.
Secondly, the game’s administrators – with few exceptions – clearly do not enjoy the respect of the game’s highly paid players.
Frankly, on this occasion, I don’t just blame the player, or players, notwithstanding the disgraceful behaviour that has been revealed.
The bumbling, inept media performance yesterday by the highly paid CEO of the Australian and New South Wales Rugby Leagues, Geoff Carr, has worsened an already bad situation.
Mr Carr yesterday morning described the allegations as a “massive beat up” by the media. Within hours, he had to announce the player had been punted from the State of origin team.
Some beat up!
But the same Geoff Carr has “form”. During the Kangaroos tour of the UK late last year, he had to be dragged kicking and screaming to investigate the theft of property belonging to team members, amid widespread allegations that one player was responsible.
Surprise! Surprise! The case remains unresolved.
If highly paid rugby league players, or rules players, or soccer players, or croquet players, drag their game into public shame and disgrace, despite all the exposure, all the penalties, then the game concerned surely has a leadership crisis – and not just a player leadership crisis.
Officials like Mr Carr are highly paid (about as highly paid as the players)………..they follow the teams around like minstrels – and do so flying first class, staying in the best hotels, wining and dining at the game’s expense – without any real accountability – and when they go overseas they usually have a “side trip” to recover from the ardours of the tour, also at the game’s expense.
Not only did the player concerned make an obscene phone call to a woman he either did not know or hardly knew, it has also been revealed that some of the NSW team were trying to get on board a commuter bus at 7:30 in the morning, full as state school hat racks, after a night on strong drink.
I don’t feel sorry for the players concerned, and I certainly don’t feel sorry for the officials whose weak leadership, and in many cases poor example, makes them part of the problem not the solution.
I feel sorry for kids like my nephew who idolise rugby league players and must find the behaviour of their heroes bewildering, and the mums and dads who give up their weekends so their sons can play league in the hope that one day they might be a star as well.
They deserve better, and it is shameful that some of the game’s stars, and some of its senior officials, continue to let them down.
Punt the players, sure, but punt the over-paid, under- performing officials as well. I would be happy to supply a list of the latter!

An analysis (RTF, 247 KB) of our poll into voter attitudes toward Latham and Howard provides further insight into why Latham is polling so strongly after the budget. Everyone has made up their mind about Howard, and most have made up their mind about Latham. At the moment, they are just waiting for the election.
The research also suggests that we are a country divided into two tribes who use the same words to speak different languages. The defining attribute for each tribe is where you stand on Howard. His brand of politics appears to be what has split the community in a way that it hadn’t last election.
While Liberal voters are very strong in their support of Howard (95% of them approve), Labor voters are equally strong in their dislike (95% disapprove). When you look more closely the Labor disapproval figure is almost entirely collected in the Strongly Disapprove, while the Liberal approval figures are almost evenly split between Strong Approval and just Approval.
Labor voters are not barracking as strongly for Latham as Liberal voters barrack for Howard. Eighty-eight percent of Labor voters approve of Latham, seven percent down on the Liberal approval of Howard. Of these two-thirds are in the Approve rather than Strongly Approve category. Liberal voters are more susceptible to Latham than Labor voters to Howard. Only 69% of Liberals disapprove of Latham versus the 95% of Labor voters who disapprove of Howard. On the hatred index, Latham has an edge.
This is possibly because Liberal voters suspect he might really be one of them, which might help to explain why his Labor supporters are comparatively lukewarm.
Most people have made up their minds about each candidate, but in Howard’s case, only 2% of the entire sample are neutral, while it is 14% for Latham. Latham’s neutral rating is strongest with Greens voters, as well as Liberals. Again, it is likely that the reason that the Greens are neutral is probably the obverse of the reason that the Liberals are. Liberals suspect they like Latham, Greens suspect that they don’t.
There is little comfort to Howard in all of this. Voters generally know what they don’t like and vote against it. If more voters dislike you than the alternative, you are in trouble. Howard is in trouble. The relative softness of the Liberal dislike of Latham makes it more difficult to change that. The faithful are less likely to proselytise, and if I am right that the problems with Latham in many voters minds are because he is seen to be too close to the Liberals, then it is difficult for the Liberals to tap into it without repudiating their own reputation and performance.
One surprising thing is the rise of foreign affairs as an issue. 24% of the total rated it the most important factor and this was reflected in Greens, Labor and National Voters. Liberal voters rated the economy more highly. However, Foreign Affairs means different things to different people, underlining the divisions.
For Liberal voters it is holding the line – “Australian forces overseas”, “border protection’, “defense’, “How are to ensure the safety of Australia while still reaching out to other nations and people who need help”, “the response of Australia to militant fundamentalist Islamists & dealing effectively with the Iraq situation’, and “The issue of maintaining support for Iraq & Afganistan”. There is noblesse oblige, mixed with fear, and comradeship with the troops overseas.
For ALP voters: “Australia’s and Australians reputation in the region and globally”, “bringing the troops out of Iraq”, “Iraq and our lapdog behavior with the US”, “Iraq and the endless lying of the Coalition”. Anti-Americanism, resistance to involvement in Iraq, and concern for good reputation dominate this group.
Ominously for Howard, the One Nation voter who responded on this issue was also against the war as a pacifist – isolationism is one strand in Hansonism – and the other One Nation voter was concerned about Howard’s integrity suggesting he may have become just another politician to this group, which was critical to him last time.
Only Liberal voters saw the economy as the major issue, which suggests that to most, that part of the budget which dealt with economics was a non-event, because that is an issue they are not concerned about. When the budget did deal with health and education and other social issues like payments to parents, then it dealt with issues where they favour Latham, so there was little benefit to Howard. When Latham concentrated on only two issues in his reply – inoculation (a health issue) and “earn or learn” (an education issue) he was talking about the issues that people susceptible to voting for him find important. The budget gave him a platform to assert them over the top of the normal ambient noise levels of politics. This could easily explain his boost in the polls in the course of a week.
It could also be explained by the fact that the Abu Ghraib photos were corroding their way into voters’ minds. On the basis of our polling, I’m not so sure that defence and security is working in the Prime Minister’s favour anymore.

Although Prime Minister John Howard and President George W Bush are in dire need of fashion tips, they have chosen to alienate members of the community that could take them from drab to fab, or at least from dull to less so, with public statements about protecting marriage from lesbians in lounge suits and gays in wedding gowns.
Suggested changes to Australia’s Marriage Act and America’s Constitution should assure heterosexuals bunkered down in bridal shops they’re winning the battle to keep the ritual Archbishop George Pell believes “brings immense benefits” to husbands and wives, and god knows he’d know, all to themselves.
Unfortunately for Howard and Bush, the Straight Eye Versus the Queer Guy (and Gal) team, states like Massachusetts already allow same-sex marriages and un-Australian and un-American nations such as Canada and Holland do too.
If more important countries were undermining what President Bush has called “the most enduring human institution”, and others have labelled the institution to be endured the most, the war on the enemies of freedom might also have to be fought against those who support freedoms that the bringers of freedom to the unfree do not.
It seems to disturb those who think the meaning of marriage was immutably defined in the days when women had no rights and lifelong commitment lasted until you were struck down by a cold at eighteen that some gays and lesbians are utilising the term whether the church and state show up for the ceremony or not.
Singer Melissa Etheridge last year donned white and walked down the aisle with actress Tammy Lynn Michaels. Now only the most pathetic rock ‘n’ roll fan would claim Dick Clark’s house is a place of worship and the event proceeded without the recognition of California’s legal system, however, Etheridge has said “it felt like a wedding, looked like a wedding and cost like a wedding, so to me, I’m married…”
This comment should be considered alongside that of “gay marriage” opponent Nick Ferrett, a Brisbane barrister, who apparently doesn’t “discount…the depth of feelings which two people in such a union have for each other….(but) they are simply not feelings felt between two married people”.
Emotions are often unreadable, change, depend on the individuals involved, don’t have much to do with signing a piece of paper and didn’t necessarily have anything to do with marriage when hardship and expectations determined life choices.
In any instance, even if specific feelings exist only for the heterosexually married, or for anyone who considers themselves married, they should have nothing to do with what those in intimate relationships should be entitled to.
Regardless of if couples are wed by the Pope, in a registry office or by an Elvis impersonator, “marriage”, as Alexander Cockburn in The Nation argues, “should be separated from legal recognition of a bond, of a kinship”.
It’s time to strip marriage of its special privileges and see it as just another type of connection people opt, or choose not, to have.

Conventional wisdom says that the abuses in Abu Ghraib prison damage the US position in Iraq. This wisdom may be true in the very short term, but may not be in the long-term. The US response to Abu Ghraib is already demonstrating the benefits of a western democratic system, and there is plenty of evidence that Iraqis are keen to take advantage of that system.
Take this story from Aljazeera. Saddam Salih, one of those prisoners tortured and photographed naked has come forward and identified himself, no small disclosure in a society that values modesty. He presumably attended yesterday’s court martial of Army Specialist, Jeremy Svits, one of his torturers, because that was his intention. More significantly he intends to sue his tormentors.
Salih was formerly detained and tortured under the Ba’athist regime, but I am sure he never attended any courts martial, because there weren’t any, and bringing a civil suit wouldn’t have been an option either. Salih may have preferred Ba’athist torture to US torture – he actually says this – but surely he prefers western justice to Hussein’s. More importantly, by making use of due process, a tool not previously available to him, he actually becomes part of the US paradigm. Salih’s ordeal has brought him in from the cold.
The western response to the torture has been hysterical. We have been told that it will destroy the good name of the US in the region. How do we know this? We know it because journalists have interviewed various spokesmen who tell us this. Do we know whether this is a personal or widespread view? No. In fact, in the past when scientifically based opinion polls have been taken in Iraq they have shown that the popular view has often been at odds with the views being reported by journalists. Spokespersons, by definition, have a case to put, yet there is little attempt to try to delve more deeply and interview people who might be less partisan.
This poor reporting has been coupled with bad ethical analysis. Any number of op-eds have asserted that big crimes are exactly the same as major crimes; and that therefore these tortures are equivalent to those under Hussein. This is like saying that a smash and grab is the same as robbery with violence. Both are wrong, but you’ll sit in jail a lot longer for the second than the first because magnitude and context do count.
These op-eds also miss the point that under Hussein this behaviour was institutionalized, whereas under the US it is not – the investigation and the courts martial are proof of that. The test of a society is not whether it contains wrong-doers. All societies do. The test is how you deal with those wrong-doers. The US system is passing this test at the moment with its stars and stripes in full flight.
Some will object that the torture was institutionalized, in the sense that a number of the accused say they were acting on orders, and some accounts have Donald Rumsfeld, if not President Bush himself, involved in that chain of command. Even if that is true, and I am not making a judgement on it, the US judicial and political system will deal with the culprits. This is a country that has impeached Presidents before and will do so again.
There is no excuse for what has been revealed at Abu Ghraib, but it would be a pity if the suffering of the victims and our almost, literally, pornographic wallowing in it and our accompanying apprehension of guilt by association, were allowed to be the sole focus of our response. The suffering of these men can be turned into a benefit of sorts to them, and to their region.
It is relatively painless and easy, when you are the world’s sole superpower, to enter and shoot up a country that produces $50 billion GDP per year by injecting $200 billion worth of men and munitions into it. It is also relatively easy to put in place transitional governments and draft constitutions. It is not relatively painless to treat your own with the same fairness as you would the other. In doing that, the US will demonstrate that, whatever the confusion between aims and outcomes at the moment, they do have honourable intentions.
Looking back, we may find that Abu Ghraib was one of the turning points in Arab understanding, and perhaps even grudging acceptance, of liberal democratic principles, even as implemented by the US. It is in the interests of all to look at it this way.

THE front page of today’s Adelaide Advertiser carries this headline, with accompanying colour photograph – “Travel rorts scandal engulfs Liberal MP”.
The story is carried by just about every newspaper in Australia today, but The Advertiser story could hardly be more unfavourable for the Liberal MP concerned – Trish Draper, MP for the marginal SA seat of Makin.
On Sunday, Ms Draper obtained an injunction against Channel Seven’s Today Tonight program to prevent it running a story on a taxpayer funded overseas trip she made with her then “boyfriend”.
If Ms Draper, or the South Australian Liberal Party officials who apparently “advised” her, believed that this action would end the matter they should give politics away, and take up an occupation more suited to their naivety and incompetence – perhaps market gardening or commercial tatting!
A story which would probably have been a one day wonder, damaging though it might be, has become a scandal that threatens to engulf not only Ms Draper, but also the Special Minister of State, Senator Eric Abetz. The Prime Minister has also been dragged in, offering total support for Ms Draper, something he may regret.
There are two issues here. Firstly, the overseas travel by politicians matter, and then the wisdom of politicians seeking to use court injunctions to “block” the media from writing about them.
On the latter, the stupidity of the MP and her advisors is surely revealed by the fact that, even though the injunction remains in place, the real reason for her panic is now out in the open.
Clearly, Ms Draper had two concerns. Firstly, the legitimacy of taxpayers funding an overseas trip by an MP with a non-live in boyfriend, and, secondly, questions about the character of the gentleman concerned.
The fact that he is a “person of interest” to the Police is now well known.
But the real political damage lies is the unqualified declaration by Senator Abetz that the boyfriend was entitled to taxpayer funded travel under parliamentary rules.
Wrong, or so it now seems. The Advertiser has received written advice from the Remuneration Tribunal that the definition of spouse does not include a non-live in partner or boyfriend/girlfriend.
Senator Abetz claimed the travel was legitimate because of “modern domestic relationships”. Belonging as he does to the “moral right”, that is an usual comment for Senator Abetz to make.
Federal Members and Senators from all parties may well blame Senators Brandis and Mason and Ms Draper (and Senator Abetz) if the overseas travel issue now sinks their collective standing even further.
In truth it is a time bomb that was always going to explode.

The thing that I hate most about Newspoll is when you know that they know but they’re not telling. This morning’s Newspoll results are interesting, but what they leave out is even more interesting.
They appear to show that if an election were held tomorrow Labor would be heading for a decisive victory – 54% of the two-party preferred vote is close to Malcolm Fraser’s 1977 victory – which would be extraordinary given that we live in boom economic times, and these normally favour governments. However, Australia wide surveys of 1,145 people can hide a lot of regional wrinkles. Swings are never even. While you can’t lose with that sort of a margin, you can miss out on a lot of seats if your swings are concentrated in seats you already own.
Newspoll could have given us some tools for guessing at how the budget may have affected key marginals, but they didn’t. While they could tell us that young people and people earning over $52,000 p.a. were most enthusiastic about the budget, they didn’t tell us how inclined or otherwise they were to vote Labor or Liberal.
If we knew that we would not only be able to start mapping what seats might be more favourable to the government (for my Western Sydney theory see here) but whether their approval of the package had actually changed or maintained their vote pattern.
There is an assumption in The Australian’s Newspoll analysis that Budgets actually change votes. I am not sure that this is the case. People most frequently vote for emotional reasons which they then rationalize on the basis of performance or policy; or “What’s in it for me?” If we could have compared the voting trends of those in favour and those against particular measures, we might have been able to see whether that is true in this case. They might also have shown us a graph correlating party votes and previous budgets. Without this information, the newspaper’s claim that Latham has stolen Howard’s bounce, might amount to nothing.
One other source of annoyance is the Newspoll question asking “Would Labor have done a better job?” Wrong question. It should rather be “Could Labor have done as good a job?” Latham doesn’t need to top the government in this area, just equal them, because so many other things are running in his favour.
We will be conducting qualitative research this evening and tomorrow into what small groups of voters think of the budget. One of the issues that I will be keen to explore is the emotional side of the budget. Do voters feel that they are being bribed? If so, does this affect their vote? Do voters feel that the budget really reflects the government’s attitudes, or is it just about getting re-elected?
For quite some time I have criticized the Liberal Party for being unable to take good policy (or indeed any policy) and turn it into a story that motivates people. It may be that this budget does a good job with the facts and figures, but that there is a dissonance between what they say and what people see the party standing for. For example, the benefits to families need to be seen as an affirmation of the party’s support for the family and the need to change the tax system to favour families. It may be that Latham’s concentration on issues like bed-time reading, and his tableau before his speech-in-reply demonstrating his pneumococcal inoculation policy, establish him as more family- friendly than the government.
Presumably Glen Milne, on the basis of his column yesterday, would claim that the “bounce” is evidence of the success of Latham’s policy of “triangulation”. Beware fancy new-fangled names, they often don’t mean much more than marketing puff. The term is borrowed from Dick Morris, US celebrity campaign advisor to Bill Clinton who uses it to describe Clinton’s successful Third Way strategy. The idea is that you use a new paradigm to define yourself and that this neutralizes your opponents because they don’t know how to react. Problem is, in the Australian context this is not a new paradigm.
Bob Hawke and Paul Keating were the templates for much Third Way thinking. Here was a government that showed tough love – empathetic yet fiscally frugal. The challenge for Latham is that that template worked so well on the basis of the Bob and Paul bad cop/good cop routine. Latham needs to combine both in himself.

NOWHERE is the electorate’s suspicion of, and contempt for, politicians, and politics, more pronounced than it is in regard to the “perks and privileges” of public office.
The defeat of Merri Rose in the Queensland State Election only confirmed that politicians seen to be having a good time at public expense risk political oblivion.
The two Queensland Liberal Senators up for re- election later this year have recently received the kind of media coverage that would cause most politicians to have nightmares.
But it seems that Senators Brandis and Mason are happy to risk electoral wrath given their very ordinary defence of their overseas travels together at taxpayer expense.
They no doubt do so because they hold positions one and two on the Liberal ticket – positions that would ordinarily secure their easy re-election.
My “newsagents poll” yesterday confirmed that the “Courier Mail” front page story on the Senator’s travelogue went over very badly with voters. As one newsagent told me, customers would pick up the paper, read the front page story – and accompanying colour photographs – and mutter words such as “typical” and “bludgers”.
The Queensland Senate poll could be fertile ground for their opponents, especially minor party opponents, provided they get their act together.
Perhaps the only Senator capable of maximising advantage from the revelations is Senator John Cherry. Senator Cherry’s only real prospect of re-election is to take votes from the Liberal and National Parties.
The sugar issue, and the sale of Telstra, may be fertile ground he could till to undermine the National Party vote in regional and rural Queensland.
The indulgence of Liberal candidates one and two could well be just as fertile in Brisbane and South East Queensland.
A final point. Senators Brandis and Mason won’t be alone in having their indulgences paraded in the media. Today it has been revealed that South Australian Liberal MP, Trish Draper, took out an injunction against “Today Night” to block a story on her overseas travels, accompanied by her boyfriend.
High risk stuff that……….especially as the daily press has taken up the story already!
In recent months, the “Daily Telegraph” has had both Bob Carr and John Brogden, and their MP’s, on the back foot through the exposure of the overseas travels of NSW State MP’s.
Given the responses by Senators Brandis and Mason to the revelations about their travels, the media will no doubt be encouraged to delve further – and that will be of little comfort to all sides of politics.