A few items of note in the paper today:
Richard Glover, the lefty but sometimes amusing columnist/broadcaster (I quite like his writings about his family), has a very worthwhile column in which he points out that the media (and politicians) love to let accidents become the story. For example, in relation to the Private Kovco lost CD incident:
The lost CD is not a story about corruption. Or laziness. Or self-interest. Or malevolence. It is the story of an accident. That simple.
By leaving a CD in a computer drive, did the officer indicate disrespect for Private Kovco, or a lack of attention to her work? If anything, the opposite. She grabbed a few minutes before a flight to go over her report...
In ethical terms, who has behaved badly here? The defence officer who fell foul of an accident or the two people who made conscious decisions to make sure that accident had maximum impact?
And in relation to the the aboriginal stories of this week:
On Tuesday night, Mal Brough, the Minister for Indigenous Affairs, said he believed that pedophile rings were operating in some Aboriginal communities.
Everyone agrees there are pedophiles in these communities, and that they turn a blind eye to each other's crimes. Yet some believed Brough had used the wrong word in describing this as a "ring". And so we spent the rest of the week on the topic of whether Brough had accidentally used the wrong word.
Here's what was notable: officials in the Northern Territory seemed more passionate and angry about Brough's verbal accident - variously described as "ignorant", "offensive" and "a disgrace" - than they were about the hideous crimes themselves.
And so we prefer trivia to substance; an accident to a complex debate. Heads must roll. Brough must apologise.
I agree with Richard, but I can't see that he would display the same generosity of spirit towards any errors in intelligence leading to the Iraq War.
Mike Carleton for once says something that is worthwhile, and which seems not to have been said elsewhere (although I haven't paid very close attention to the story). This is about the claims of LTCDR Robyn Fahy that the Navy has treated her very badly (and had a Navy reserve doctor find her mentally ill, when others could not):
But Fahy also claimed she had been beaten up "on a daily basis" while a student at the defence force academy. "I can't remember a day where I wasn't punched, or hit, or slapped, or spat upon," she said.
To my mind and experience, this doesn't ring true. Bashed every day for three years? It stretches credibility, suggesting there are two sides to this story. Which I understand is indeed the case.
But here the Defence Force is in a bind. While Fahy is able to go public - and fair enough - the navy is gagged by the privacy laws, which prevent any detailed response to her.
From what I saw of it, the 7.30 Report story on her expressed no scepticism of this. I also heard Fahy's father, after Labor had called for a full judicial inquiry, say that the family did not want this, they just wanted the Navy to admit a mistake had been made and apologise. This suggested to me that the father thought her daughter's obsession with vindication had become unhealthy. What Carlton says is exactly right; the defence force is in a bind in PR terms in these type of cases, and media attention does nothing to really help the "victim".
Finally, Alan Ramsey continues to earn a pay cheque by writing an opinion piece comprised of enormous slabs of other people's words, and some really clever name calling of politicians (John Howards gets called "toad" today, in what is such a ridiculous introduction I can't be bothered re-printing it.)
Of more interest to me is Ramsey's take on the aboriginal issues. His political analysis is highly nuanced:
The multiplicity of official reports in the last 15 to 20 years dealing specifically or in part with the sexual abuse of Aboriginal children would make you weep. They are there, in government files and on the public record, by the number. What have the politicians done about them? Not a bloody thing, really.
This is "talkback radio" analysis. The point is not that nothing has been attempted in this area at all, just that what has been done has not been working, or (for any programs that have worked, such as the improvements in communities that have gone "dry") they have not been applied widely enough across all States and territories.
No, it's always much more gratifying for Alan to call a politician a name:
And all the ignorant chest-beating that went on this week from John Howard's young Brisbane cabinet minister, Malcolm Brough - who is known behind his back as "Mal-Bro", after the macho cigarette commercial of 25 years ago - disregards the mass of evidence available to government that institutionalised neglect is destroying Aboriginal families and reducing its people to exploited drunks, layabouts and sexual predators. It's not a failure of "law and order", always the easy fallback of lazy politicians with not a clue what else to do.
He's right to the extent that the problems are complex; but he's wrong to pander to lefty activists by suggesting it is all government's fault because not enough is spent on aborigines generally.
And despite this childish swipe a Brough, Ramsey goes on to quote (with approval) an old report that does claim there are pedophile rings in parts of aboriginal Australia:
"The existence of pedophile rings operating in a number of country areas of NSW is a major concern. (One Aboriginal-family-violence worker interviewed, stated she knew of children who had 'disappeared' with men who had driven into towns and taken them away with them.) This problem of predatory behaviour is not just confined to rural NSW, but has been identified as being prevalent nationwide."
Does Ramsay give Brough any credit for bravely saying something that the (Labor) Northern Territory government denies vehemently? Not at all.
Why is he still employed? He has been Australia's most embarrassing "serious" political commentator for so long.
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