AUSTRALASIA
A Cargo of Questions 1992
Western Australia
PORT HEDLAND
Development of the iron ore mining industry in Pilbara has transformed port Hedland from a small tidal port into one of Australia's largest exporting ports with an annual throughput in excess of 40 million tonnes. The life of the community is governed by the operations of BHP, Australia's leading international company. Its roots are in mining and in steel, particularly in the raw materials that are used in the manufacture of steel.
BHP understands more than any other Australian company the vital role that steel makers play, not only in the regions in which they operate, but in the economic well-being of the world as a whole. In 1969 Australia was exporting 20 million tonnes of iron ore representing 8% of total world ocean borne trade. This substantial growth was achieved through a combination of circumstances:Who pays for the hidden cost of Australia's future in Asia?
- The discovery in the late '50's of vast iron ore reserves in the Pilbara region of Western Australia amenable to high volume, relatively low cost mining operations.
- A decision in the early 1960's by the Australian Government to lift a 30 year embargo on the export of iron ore.
- The Japanese industrial development boom, based mainly on steel and heavy industry, which was destined to continue well into the 1970's and 1980's.
From: MEETING THE CHALLENGE, Iron Ore, BHP-UTAH Minerals International (1992).
- The expansion in the mid 1970's of the steel industry in the people's Republic of China, Taiwan and the Republic of South Korea.
Is Australia situated on the Pacific Rim, or on the front line?
Australian business and government is acutely aware of the need for the development of specialised knowledge concerning Asia: Is this a genuine cultural contact or another form of Orientalism?
Information Wrap
Investors fret over Japan. The sharemarket was again preoccupied with the uncertainty that surrounds the plight of Japanese equities yesterday. Overall industrial issues were the most keenly sought and the industrial index managed to rise 10.1 points to 2450.9 in contrast to the drop in mining shares which caused the all resources index to close 2.6 points lower at 925.5.THE AUSTRALIAN March 24, 1992
Dr. Barry Shaw rejects the popular notion that Australians are not good exporters. "Compared with Japan and the United States, we export more than we should, given the size of our economy compared with theirs. People see the World Bank figures and say this means that Australian exporters of goods and services are not good at business. But this is not true. The figures conceal the extent to which Australian exporters are obliged to enter into joint venture arrangements in Asia and are, therefore, not counted as having won Australian exports.THE AUSTRALIAN March 24, 1992
Also
"By the late 1980's, Canberra negotiated the Timor Gap Treaty with Jakarta. Under this treaty Australia and Indonesia have agreed to a scheme under which the two countries will exploit East Timor's rich oil and natural gas reserves. The Timorese, declared as too poor for independence, were denied any profit from their own natural wealth. By January 1992, the joint Indonesian-Australian board overseeing exploitation of the Timor Gap oil and gas reserves had awarded eleven contracts, including one to BHP Petroleum. All contracts were awarded after the Dili massacre in November 1991."INDEPENDENCE OR DEATH, Mark Aarons, (in East Timor, A Western Made Tragedy, by Mark Aarons and Robert Domm.
South Australia
PORT ADELAIDE
What is a boat person?
Where do they come from?
Is a boat person less than a person?
In a country where most of the population originated in lands all over the Earth, isn't everyone descended from a boat person?
Information Wrap
Boat people detained at a Port Hedland detention centre continued their hunger strike yesterday. Immigration Department officials had expected the protest to end on Monday night. The protest began last Friday after the 56 boat people who arrived on WA's far north coast earlier this year were told their applications for refugee status had been rejected. Earlier this week, a Roman Catholic priest, father Larry Reitmeyer, said the boat people told him the protest would end on Monday night.
THE WESTERN AUSTRALIAN, March 25, 1992
South Australia
BORDERTOWN
Bordertown is in a prosperous agricultural area of South Australia, close to the state border with Victoria, an abstract line forming a division that runs north south 3km west of longitude 141 Degrees East across desert, mountain and river, from the Murray river to the ocean of Discovery Bay.
The Prime Minister, Mr Keating, last night proposed regular head-of-government meetings to promote cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region, a key initiative in his first wide-ranging foreign policy speech. Urging that Australia intensify its role, especially in its political role, in the region, Mr Keating said the opportunities for Australia in Asia "cannot be overstated. We must be careful not to overplay our hand, but if our timing is good and we choose things which genuinely serve the wider interest, we can help shape the regional agenda". Mr Keating's speech, entitled 'Australia and Asia. Knowing Who We Are', was delivered to the Asia-Australia Institute in Sydney, and continued his recent themes: that Australia must turn to Asia more, and that it still had to throw off the remnants of the old British shackles. He was pleased "but not surprised" by the positive reaction in South-East Asia to the "recent surge of independent and republican thinking in Australia". But the process of asserting an independent Australian spirit had to be taken a lot further. Mr Keating rejected the argument that Australia's democratic institutions and traditions of tolerance and open debate somehow disqualified it from forming successful relationships in Asia. "My starting point is that Australia's democratic institutions and traditions are non-negotiable," he said. THE AGE, 8 April, 1992
Knowing who we are?
Knowing who they are?
Knowing who we are not?
Information Wrap
The Federal Court has blocked attempts by the Immigration Minister, Mr. Hand, to deport 37 Cambodians whose applications for asylum have been rejected. The action has been taken by lawyers acting on behalf of the boat people, following the government's decision to reject their applications amid uncertainty about the political situation in Cambodia. Most of the Cambodians, who are part of a group of more than 400 boat people in detention, have been awaiting a decision since 1989. The Melbourne-based Refugee Advice and Casework Service took the matter to Mr. Justice Ryan yesterday after Mr. Hand refused a request of temporary refuge for its 22 clients held in Villawood. The government's decision to deny the Cambodians refugee status was criticised by the Catholic and Anglican churches and the New South Wales Law Society. The NSW Law Society President, Mr. John Marsden, said that their lives would be at risk the moment they set foot in Cambodia. "When a goverment suddenly announces that after two years of vacillation that hundreds of people will be deported, you wonder if decisions have been made on grounds of information or for the sake of expedience."
THE AGE, April 8, 1992
Also
The 1951 Refugee Convention provides the standard international law definition of refugee status: "The term 'refugee' shall apply to any person who owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, member of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country." the convention was drawn up at the height of the cold war and the Soviet bloc withdrew from the drafting process. The West, therefore, turned it into a propaganda tool by designing it to protect individuals fleeing from the Iron Curtain countries. The definition, thus, is grounded in violations of individual civil and political rights. To that extent it is effective, but is inappropriate to cope with mass trans-border movements.
THE GUARDIAN, 5 August, 1992
Victoria
PORT MELBOURNE
In 1835 permanent European settlement was made at the present site of Melbourne, although whalers and sealers had used the coast for a number of years. These settlers were not interested in the convict system and turned convict ships away. They wanted to form a breakaway colony, seeking approval by calling the new state Victoria, with a capital city named after the Queen's Prime Minister Lord Melbourne. In 1851 the colony separated from New South Wales, coinciding with the discovery of gold. The gold rush created huge growth in the economy and an influx of people in search of wealth. As Canvas town grew alongside Melbourne Victoria's population grew from 77,000 to 540,000. Roads and railways were built to move gold, supplies, mining equipment and people. The independent diggers soon came to recognise the inequality that existed between the many who laboured side by side in the mud, and the few who held the land and government power. Taxed by the state, through a licence fee of 30 shillings a month, brutalised by the police force, and without political rights, representatives or the vote, 800 diggers of the Ballarat Reform League threw their licences into a bonfire and prepared to fight for their rights. at the Eureka stockade on 3 December 1854, troopers attacked the stockade, leaving 30 miners and 5 troopers dead. defeated in this massacre, the miners won their political demands, supported as they were by a whole population that shared their grievances.
Class identity?
Is it possible to be of one class and identify with the struggle of another class?
What class is our culture?
What is popular culture?
What class does television belong to?
What does it mean to be working class and identify with the middle class, and vice versa?
Why is it that in political warfare it is the working classes of combatant nations who kill each other?
Class identity?
Is it possible to be of one class and identify with the struggle of another class?
What class is our culture?
What is popular culture?
What class does television belong to?
What does it mean to be working class and identify with the middle class, and vice versa?
Why is it that in political warfare it is the working classes of combatant nations who kill each other?
Information Wrap
Victoria's unemployment rate has rocketed to a new post-war record of 11.6% with the state suffering a relapse which has plunged it into its worst period of unemployment of the recession. the statistics on unemployment tell us many things about what is happening in Australia, bu they say nothing of the human impact of restructuring our industries: the shock of retrenchment, the helpless descent into poverty, the despair at how much competition there is for jobs in the recession. One Shepparton factory worker described what it felt like to be retrenched.: "I'd been there for 13 years, and when I went out the gate I had tears in my eyes. Blokes were walking around in a daze. I know I was. In Maryborough a female textile worker described being "herded into the lunch room and told 'don't come back'. We didn't even have time to say goodbye to our friends. I had worked there for 30 years, ever since I had left school. We gave - and we got nothing. We were not treated with any dignity. "One reason workers are ushered so smartly from the premises is the fear by man employers that embittered workers will sabotage equipment. But a woman from a Bendigo textile factory found the suspicion demeaning. "They wouldn't let us work out that week for fear of sabotage. We took pride in our job. We wouldn't have done that," she said. Employers often picked on "troublemakers" for redundancies. A driver from Shepparton who argued with the boss claiming the trucks were unroadworthy was the only one laid off. And a textile worker in Epping was the only one to complain when management ordered people to work machines from 7am to noon without a toilet break. "When a manager called the meeting everyone was scared to speak because of the economic situation. I was scared too, but I start to speak up. 'A prisoner can go to the toilet when he wants to but not me, not the working class". I got the sack in two weeks. I was 11 years in that job."
THE AGE, 10 April, 1992
"Duped by the nation and duped by the class, the suffering masses are everywhere involved in the harshness of conflict in which their only enemies are masters who knowingly use the mystifications of industry and power. " Francois Perroux.Also
Victoria
PORT ALBERT
Port Albert became the
first port in South Gippsland, opening up the inaccessible hinterland to
European settlement in the 1830’s and 1840’s. It was a company town, run by
shipping interests. For the purposes of the British political authorities,
Australia was an empty land, terra nullius, despite the evident existence of
aboriginal people who had arrived by sea 40,000 years earlier. As the exploitation
of South Gippsland grew apace, the indigenous tribal peoples that lived along
the coast disappeared. Port Albert too, lost out, its place as a maritime
communications centre being supplanted by the new railway link to Melbourne.
Whose law?
Is possession being there first?
Can a land be shared?
What is a human right?
Why do we insist on the right of a nation to determine itself, when many societies under stress have never experienced nationalism, and the concept of native land simply has no meaning?
Why build tidy hygienic boxes for a nomadic people to live in?
Where is the way of living, even in potential?
In the struggle to recover identity, why are we surprised that the visually organised environment is necessarily destroyed, and the body abused?
Information Wrap
The Human Rights Commission will make an annual “state of the nation” report on Australia’s handling of Aboriginal disadvantage, as part of a national response to a report by the Royal Commission on Aboriginal deaths in custody. The joint federal-state response to the report – which found widespread social and economic disadvantage among Aborigines – will be tabled in federal parliament today. Amnesty International is preparing to send representatives to Australia next month – a move guaranteed to focus international attention on the measures taken to overcome Aboriginal disadvantage. The delegation will be in Australia for two weeks and will meet the Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Islander Affairs, Mr Tickner. The Human Rights Commission’s “state of the nation” report will be prepared by an Aboriginal commissioner, still to be appointed, who will head a new unit. The unit will have powers under the commission to inquire into areas of Aboriginal disadvantage. A proposal to place the commission outside the powers of the Public Service Act is the one recommendation rejected by the Commonwealth, based on concerns that it would give ATSIC’s 60 regional councils excessive freedom. Initiatives to improve police-Aboriginal relations, to overcome alcohol and substance abuse, to provide better schooling, housing and education, to ensure jails are a last resort, and measures to deal with youth disadvantage have been supported. While today’s announcement by Mr Tickner will detail the Commonwealth and States’ responses to each of 388 recommendations, it will include spending of only $150 million over five years to implement law and justice and substance abuse initiatives.
“Irrespective of how they dress ATSIC up to present it as an Aboriginal body, the basic framework is still white legislation. It’s a further example of illegal white sovereignty over Aboriginal people.” Bill Cragie, Aboriginal activist. The black community’s biggest criticism of ATSIC is that despite claims it provides greater self-determination, it is a white instrumentality ultimately answerable to the Federal Parliament. Hard-line opponents say that if the government is serious about giving Aboriginals control over their destiny, there should be no role for the white Parliament. Alternatively, non Aboriginals raise questions about the wisdom of having a decentralised, quasi-Aboriginal operation controlling an annual program budget of more than $500 million.. ATSIC's chairwoman, Lois O'Donoghue has been one of the most active Aboriginal participants in so called white instrumentalities. She rejects suggestions that Aborigines can only achieve self-determination independent of the white Parliament. "If in fact we are seeking funds to deal with the disadvantage that our people have then we have to deal with this white system. That is the only way we can do it," she says, and that while radical Aborigines want sovereignty and a provisional Government, the cause will never be advanced and disadvantage redressed without money. To be practical, you just need the dollars to do it."
THE AGE, 31 March, 1992
