The underbelly of the beast

There is the perennial joke about three blind men trying to describe an elephant.
One finds a rough wall; another a whiplike snake; and the third a huge hose. The joke has any number of punch lines, some lurid or disgusting, depending on the mood or attitude of the philosophy instructor. The real punch line is to show that people form perspectives on how they experience the whole, in this case an elephant.
I had one instructor who showed an elephant, then a second slide of a pile of elephant dung, which led to a long discussion about whether elephants got viral infections...

For almost two years now I have used this blog as a personal forum to pour out my frustrations and experience. It has documented efforts to understand the injustice and abuse I suffered first at the hands of my former partner, then before the social policies dominant in Australia. In the aussie vernacular, I was not impressed.
Articles were republished here with the permission of the authors even when I marginally disagreed with the comments or apparent purpose. Usually, I wholeheartedly agreed with the purpose, but had to force myself not to comment. These articles came from the many other forums, blogs, meetings and conversations I've attended over these years.

I found that I was collateral damage in a much larger struggle across Australia and the world. My former partner had simply taken advantage of a systemic prejudice against any man in a relationship in Australia, - probably best illustrated by an unreasonable but commonly taught statistic: 8 out of 9 men (87%) in relationships in Australia are abusive.
A statistic driven by the prejudice of the courts, and simply a greedy divorce industry, with no sense of social responsibility or democratic leadership.
If that statistic were true, then Australia would truly be a sick society. It is not, judgments on the current state of Australian democracy aside for the moment. I have found the people of Australia to be a warm and gentle people, male and female.

Because of my own bad experience, I might continue the analogy to say my experience as the guy behind the elephant - when it had diarrhea. This sort of experience is bound to shape a person's thinking.
My experience was further darkened by stumbling into other failings of Australian democracy: anti-Americanism fueled by a crude nationalism; the social stigma against the disabled; and the failure of the Australian education system to convey an understanding of democratic principles for citizens to believe in.
In every case, I had to take my own experience and interpolate causes, which is a process that left a bitter sense of uncertainty. It is too easy for anyone at any level to dismiss such conclusions with attractive rhetoric.
I was not privy to the facts, only the results.
Although many shared similar bitter experience, and formed a brutal cynicism, few would acknowledge or admit to the roots of the problems because they felt a need to be proud of their country. As an American who has endured the tortured times surrounding Nixon and Watergate, Reagan's attacks on social services, and now the Bush administration, I understand those feelings too well.
From the underbelly of the beast, the best you can hope for is to not get squashed.

It is gratifying to see that my conclusions drawn from limited experience were largely correct.
From The Age, today:

The Howard Government has been progressively dismantling the democratic processes that create the capacity for public debate and accommodate dissenting opinion. The tactics used to silence critics are diverse, including the withdrawal of government funding, threats to destroy the financial viability of dissenting organisations, appointment of party functionaries or friends to key positions, strict interpretation of laws governing release of information, and the targeting of individuals. One sector that has been a particular target of these efforts to silence dissent is the non-government sector.

In Australia, recent years have seen an unprecedented attack upon non-government organisations, most particularly upon those organisations that disagree with the current Federal Government's views and values. The attacks have come from the Government itself and from close allies such as the Institute of Public Affairs. Questions have been raised about NGOs' representativeness, their accountability, their financing, their charitable status and their standing as policy advocates in a liberal democracy such as Australia.

Finally, the name of an organization that has coordinated what I have seen and experienced.
I first saw the dismantling of advocacy over two years ago while working to modify the functionality of a database for a disability-oriented organization in Melbourne. One after another, the trainers and workers needed to share the story of how the agency had been forced from its advocacy role into training because funding had been cut.
Auditors had come through their offices, I was told, to ensure that their primary focus was not advocacy, because government policy was not to fund advocacy. I was appalled, but wanted to shake off the politics and get my work done. In time, I came to understand that this was a coordinated effort to dispel dissent across Australia as the Clive Hamilton and , spells out in some detail in his soon to be released book:

(above) This is an edited extract from Silencing Dissent: How the Australian government is controlling public opinion and stifling debate, edited by Clive Hamilton and Sarah Maddison. Published next week by Allen & Unwin, rrp $24.95

I have to wonder if this book will be restricted by the Howard government as "sedition" under the anti-terrorism laws still in full effect in Australia?

No one will call George W Bush a constitutional scholar. But how he could fete and honor John Howard nationally as the "Iron Man of Australia", and in the same breath say that Howard had employed methods from Manuel Noriega makes my head spin. Thankfully to date Mr Howard has not incorporated all of Noriega's methods. There are no death squads - that we are aware of.
The tone and attitude of Howard's national government for the last decade has filtered down to the state level though, at least in Victoria. Victoria's A/G, Rob Hulls, is cut from the same political cloth despite being a member of the opposition Labor Party. Although few Australians voice it, the sense of fear is culpable in many voices even if they will only speak of such things guardedly - meaning in tense voices only on the phone. I have been warned more than once about speaking my mind since the phones may be tapped.

The continued attacks on the advocacy work of NGOs, along with the survey responses described above, paint a bleak picture of the state of public debate in Australia, suggesting a high degree of coercion on the part of Australian governments.

Many NGOs are reluctant, if not afraid, to speak out.

While state governments are also guilty at times of pressuring NGOs to conform, the Howard Government's willingness to smother dissent poses a disproportionate threat to the democratic process in Australia.

As an American, I have to wonder if this is the sort of ally America wants or needs in this part of the world?
A point made in The Age article is privileged NGOs were openly invited to cabinet-level meetings, and that that is a federal crime in Australia; while other organizations were only met with closed doors and no funding. There was little question in many minds that something was wrong, but no one I met had any idea where to point the finger other than generally and meaninglessly at John Howard.
It's hard to say that the Nixon and Reagan (Iran-Contra) indictments were good for America. All in all, probably, but there was nothing pleasant or inspiring in them. How Australia would fare if members of a sitting or former government were jailed for criminal acts is hard to say. Bitter cynicism is easier to handle if you're helpless; frustration in the face of obvious guilt can damage a person or society for as long as memory remains.