My latest piece at The Guardian, on how polls and public opinion have little to do with Rudd’s quest to establish political dominance: Again, the refugee issue clarifies Rudd’s approach. Central to his strategy is the use of regional (international) statecraft to establish authority. By having Indonesia expose Abbott’s plan to “turn back the boats” as a dangerous […]
20 Jul
Some moments have “turning point” written all over them. So it was when Liz and I started Left Flank three years and two weeks ago, when we highlighted a speech by Julia Gillard justifying her “lurch to the Right” on border security, and compared her language with that of John Howard — defending Hansonism — from 1996. […]
01 May
Cross-posted from Larvatus Prodeo. Thanks to Mark Bahnisch for convincing me to return to this subject. I have to confess that I couldn’t bring myself to watch Monday’s Four Corners on the scandal of Australia’s “offshore” asylum seeker processing regime. I’m on the Sydney Refugee Action Coalition email list and read horrifying stories from Manus […]
10 Mar
Comments Off on Europe: The persistence of racism & the fascist threat
by KEVIN OVENDEN Below are the points, updated and a little amplified, I made in a contribution to the highly successful Unite Against Fascism conference in London on 2 March. The speech (and I’ve incorporated my summing up) was in a workshop with Petros Constantinou from Greece, Marwan Mohammed from France and Glyn Ford […]
03 Aug
Left Flank has been away on holiday, but we’re back now. Below is a repost of my response to the sickening asylum seeker “debate” that happened in late June. Since then the issue has been shifted off to an elite “expert” committee which, as The Piping Shrike has pointed out, represents the exhaustion of the […]
24 Jun
I’m reposting a recent piece I wrote for Overland Journal’s blog, in response to the debate over the contentious Enterprise Migration Agreement negotiated between the Gillard government and Gina Rinehart to allow the mining billionaire to import up to 1700 skilled workers from overseas. It was written as an open letter to Paul Howes after […]
24 May
Comments Off on Thin edge of the wedge: Economic nationalism & the skilled migration ‘debate’
To his credit Bob Brown was one of the clearest opponents of Pauline Hanson when she rose to infamy in the 1990s, not something the major party leaders could have been accused of at the time. But more recently he has pushed both population limits arguments and a line against skilled migration. Yet Hanson used […]
11 May
Comments Off on How to become part of the political mainstream #47: Learn to dog-whistle
Have the Greens decided to join the chorus of anti-immigrant racism that has bedevilled Australian politics for over a century? It seems so, with Bob Brown using the term “queue jumpers” to describe skilled migrants entering the country. Criticising Julia Gillard’s “Malaysian Solution” to deport asylum seekers, he argued: We know more than 90 per […]
11 Jan
Comments Off on After Arizona: The sickness at the heart of American society and its aetiologies
Despite shock being professed around the world, the shootings in Arizona over the weekend shouldn’t be surprising. The United States stands out for its high levels of political polarisation in a rich, industrialised country, and as Gary Younge points out, this polarisation has reached new highs during the presidency of Barack Obama. It is this […]
29 Dec
ABC’s The Drum Unleashed has published my analysis of refugee policy today. I take on Robert Manne’s recent surrender to the inevitability of coercive state policy towards asylum seekers as a fact of political life:
31 Jul
2 Comments