In amongst all the media and political frenzy regarding the Tamil asylum seekers  refusing to get off some boats in Indonesia, a much greater and more problematic stand-off has been occurring in Thailand.

160 Hmong people, originally from Laos, have been kept in a detention centre in Thailand for the past three years.  Despite the UNHCR saying the people have been recognised as refugees, and four countries – Australia, Canada, the USA and the Netherlands – offering to resettle them, the Thai government considers them to be “economic migrants” and proposes returning them to Laos.

This report from a year ago provides a bigger picture of the sort of long running abuses in Thailand. It details thousands of Hmong refugees who have been locked up for years, agreements being signed between the Thai and Laos governments to return the “economic migrants” and refusals by Thai authorities to allow the UNHCR to enter the detention centres to make refugee assessments and determinations.

It is necessary for the Australian government to continue to work with Indonesia and other countries in our region to find workable compassionate approaches to the large number of asylum seekers in the area.

But Australia must not be complicit in facilitating human rights violations or mistreatment of asylum seekers and refugees (or unauthorised migrants for that matter). We should also get out of the habit of turning a blind eye to what other governments in our region are doing.

The more we know about what happens elsewhere in our region, the more obvious it becomes why refugees would risk their lives and rack up large debts to try to find safety in Australia.

Last night he rose to speak on the package of CPRS bills and gave a speech that any climate sceptics – should they be genuine sceptics rather than outright denialists – ought to read and ponder.  Birmingham supports his party’s position on the bills and recognises the Government’s cynical timing.

It is sad that this government has sought to force upon the parliament very cynical timing in the consideration of their legislation relating to an ETS … bringing it back to this place for these last two sitting weeks of the year, exactly three months later, smacks of exactly what it is: rank political opportunism.

Nevertheless, he wants to see a deal reached to pass the CPRS.  “I hope that our sensible, sound amendments to fix this legislation are accepted because, ultimately, I hope to be voting for this legislation.”

But it is Birmingham’s broader rationale for taking action that serves as an effective and clear articulation of why even sceptics should endorse taking action to mitigate climate change.

…I do not know whether climate change is real.  I do not know whether human impact on climate change is real.  I am not a climate scientist.  I have never pretended to be.  I also note that, so far as I am aware, nobody in this place or the other place pretends to be a climate scientist or qualified in such fields.  I note that many come to this debate with opinions that are doubtful of the veracity of climate science… I hope that they are right, because if they are right then the future for the planet looks much rosier than it does for those who take a far dimmer view of what climate science and climate change could possibly mean.

… with the exponentially increasing global population of people around the world, all of whom quite rightly aspire to have ever-improved lifestyles, we must be aware that this growth of populace and growth of consumption with it will of course have some impact on the environment in which we live.  I am reminded of Newton’s old law of motion: that for every action that is always an opposite and equal reaction.  In my mind, continually emitting ever increasing volumes of any one chemical compound into the atmosphere must ultimately have some impact.

For these reasons I believe, as I have said in my previous contributions on these bills, that we should give the planet the benefit of the doubt and opt for action ahead of inaction when it comes to climate change mitigation.  It is, however, a case of making sure that we get that action right.

The conservative position on climate change must surely be one of risk management – the risk of not taking action is far greater than the risk of taking action in the event the climate change hypothesis proves flawed.  Like conservation, which had its historical roots in the conservative side of politics, climate change action should be as much at home on Right as on the Left.

It now seems likely that a reportfrom Queensland’s Crime and Misconduct Commission (CMC) into the way police dealt with that death in custody will be finished by the end of the year.  Precisely what is made public and what happens from there is still unknown, but the CMC’s credibility will be stake almost as much as that of the Queensland Police service. 

There have been growing criticisms of a perceived ineffectiveness of the CMC, as well as allegations that elements within the CMC may be too close to the government and the police.  A report today in The Australian that the Parliamentary Crime and Misconduct Commissioner, Alan MacSporran, has “accepted a brief to represent the Queensland Police Service at the second coronial inquest into Doomadgee’s death, to be held in February” will do little to quell those concerns.

It is hard not to perceive a justice system operating on double standards when Aboriginal people accused of being involved in a riot on Palm Island, after an initial official announcement that Mulrunji’s death was accidental, were quickly arrested and charged, while so little has happened in response to the death itself and the clear indications of malpractice in the way police investigated it. 

There has been more than sufficient evidence provided to the first inquest, as well as at the trials of some of the accused rioters, to warrant a major investigation. The people of Palm Island, and the many people of Queensland and beyond who support them, are still waiting. Let’s see what the CMC delivers.

At least she kept her teeth in.

Friday update:

Feel the power people. Feel the power.

You’d think, after THAT business earlier in the year, that Turnbull, or one of his staff, would have thought to themselves that renewing the claim of misleading Parliament was something, generally, to be avoided.  But Turnbull, as always, seems to have some difficulty with his impulse control.

The direct result was that it gave Rudd an excuse to duck the genuine question of whether the deal really was preferential.  Each time he was asked about the Oceanic Viking today – Question Time began moments after it was revealed the stand-off had ended – he circled back to the accusation of misleading Parliament.

It’s a minor matter.  It’s obviously not remotely on the scale of the Grech business, for example. And yet it confirms again what senior Liberals have said about Turnbull – he’s brilliant but too inclined to brainsnaps and misjudgements.

The broader point, though, is: who cares anymore about misleading Parliament?  Do voters care?  Does anyone outside Parliament and the Press Gallery?  Given the way in which Question Time has devolved into a cross between a particularly dire amateur theatre performance and your most boring Economics 1 lecturer’s greatest hits, does the whole supposed sanctity of telling the truth in Parliament mean anything any more?

John Howard didn’t resign after being forced to admit he misled Parliament about his meetings with Dick Honan in 2002. That was an open-and-shut case of misleading Parliament, but hardly the grounds on which any Prime Minister should have had to end their career.

On the other hand, remove Parliamentary accountability and one of the critical bulwarks of accountable government is ostensibly lost.  The right of Parliamentary privilege also surely is accompanied by the responsibility of truth-telling.  And yet those notions look curiously old-fashioned in an era when the truth is only one available narrative, and not necessarily to be regarded as any more useful than others that may be available.

This is not to say that all politicians are liars. Some are.  But the good ones don’t lie – they merely provide those parts of the truth most convenient.  Good politicians live in the margin of uncertainty between truth and deception, generally preferring not to be pinned down with too much detail unless it serves their purposes.  Misleading Parliament is a quaint concept for such practitioners.

The announcement by Mr. Holder that has gained the most media attention is the decision to pursue a prosecution in the civil courts against five detainees who are currently charged with conspiring to commit the 9/11 terror attacks. The detainees are Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin ‘Attash, Ramzi Binalshibh, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi.  This case is to be heard in the Southern District of New York, which means in the same locale as where the attacks took place.

Holder says that the men will get a fair trial.  But will they?  Will it be possible to find enough individuals who live in that part of the New York, or on the island of Manhattan generally for that matter, who do not have strong and intractable views about who caused 9/11, or who knows someone directly affected by the events of that day?  Mr Holder’s decision to try these men ‘a few hundred yards’ from the former World Trade Center seems to be more about politics and maximizing the chances of successful prosecutions than it does about a fair trial.

In fact, the whole issue of whether or not high profile defendants charged in relation to high profile tragedies should be tried in places where the events took place is currently being examined by the US Supreme Court in the context of the decision by a trial judge to allow trial of former Enron executives Jeff Skilling and the late Ken Lay in the city that was synonymous with the company’s name – Houston.  If the Supreme Court rules in Mr Skilling’s favour, then the Obama Administration may find themselves embarrassed into having to move this 9/11 trial to somewhere more neutral.

But while the upcoming 9/11 trial hit the headlines, one other aspect of Mr Holder’s Friday announcement has, relatively speaking, slipped under the radar.  It is the decision of the US to continue to refuse to release or repatriate to Canada, Canadian citizen Omar Khadr, who was arrested in 2002 in Afghanistan at the age of 15 and who has been detained in Guantanamo Bay ever since.  Khadr, born in 1986, was kept locked away for five years before being charged with murder and other terrorism related charges.  He was tortured by US military personnel in the form of sleep deprivation and he was interviewed by both Canadian and US officials without having access to legal representation or having a guardian or his parents present.  Two Canadian courts have ordered that country’s government to repatriate Mr Khadr on the grounds that his rights to be treated fairly have been abused.

What makes the case of Omar Khadr so morally repugnant is that he was tortured and mistreated by authorities in 2003 and 2004 – when he was still a minor.  That itself, should be enough for the Obama Administration to release him back into the community.  He was simply a child soldier, caught on the battlefield.

It is perhaps no surprise that it starts out with the so-called Golden Rule which is often said to lie at the heart of almost all religions – “always to treat all others as we wish to be treated ourselves.”  Given its aim of universal applicability, it is both short and simple in form. But (to me at least) it is not simplistic, nor is it simple to apply.

However, its messages are ones well worth reflecting on in considering the public debates of today – both the major, such as climate change and global inequality, and the not so huge, such as how to respond to small number of asylum seekers looking to get here by boat. That is not to say that the policy solutions to these and others issues are simple – they often are not. But rather, to assess potential solutions and the way we debate them, against some fundamental principles such as this:

It is also necessary in both public and private life to refrain consistently and empathically from inflicting pain. To act or speak violently out of spite, chauvinism, or self-interest, to impoverish, exploit or deny basic rights to anybody, and to incite hatred by denigrating others—even our enemies—is a denial of our common humanity.

At time of writing, over 13 750 people have affirmed the Charter – some well known public figures, many not.

The Charter for Compassion on YouTube

Gordon Brown’s recent speech on immigration raises many issues, but so far as Australians are concerned, surely one of them must be “why the hell aren’t we a republic?”

The speech foreshadowed the closure of a range of skilled occuptations to non-EU citizens, as well as a tightening of regulations around student visas.

I’m not advocating policy changes on migration here (or not policy changes for the special benefit of Australians, anyway). And of course Australia’s own migration policy has moved a long way since the days of the 10-pound-Pom.

But shouldn’t our Constitutional arrangements – our Head of State – reflect this changed reality?

Britain has set its own foreign policy priority – and it’s Europe, not the Commonwealth. We aren’t abandoning the Mother Country. Mother’s moved on.

I grew up in South-East Queensland, in the general area whose water needs would have been serviced by the dam, and I did not pee indoors during winter for my entire childhood. Tank water – you weren’t about to waste it on flushing. Water was a treat - when we visited city relatives with town water, we’d clamour for a luxurious “big bath”.  I remember staring in hypnotised horror at a visitor who put the kitchen tap on all full-blast, instead of the usual trickle.

Admittedly,  having to confront menacing cane toads in the dark as I struggled with my undies after a pee was a childhood trauma that may have played a role in driving me south of the border for university, where I remain to this day and where I have picked up wasteful city attitudes to water. I turn the tap on full-blast, I shower for longer than is strictly necessary for good hygiene, and I pee indoors (which must come as a relief to the citizens of Canberra). Give people more or less unlimited access to water, and we’ll use too much of it. The population of South-East Queensland is booming – and it’s booming with people who (like most Australians) do not have frugal attitudes to water.  As the Australian Water Association says, that needs to change.

But quite why Fielding felt the need to reveal this today, on the morning when hundreds of representatives of the Forgotten Generation arrived in Canberra to hear an apology, and emotional speeches from Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull, is a mystery.

If I had to hazard a guess, I’d suggest Fielding, as always, wanted some media attention.  It’s a matter for Fielding as to whether the revelation of his abuse is appropriate in a political environment.  Maybe it is.  But his timing suggests a desire to distract at least some of the attention being paid to the Forgotten Generation in his direction.

Maybe I’m wrong.  Maybe I’m being too hard on Fielding.  But given his long history of stunts, I don’t think so.

It’s a simpler matter re Wilson Tuckey.  This morning he said “seeing as though we have an important event today the Prime Minister should apologise to me and say sorry Wilson.”

Clown.