Thursday 28th of March 2024

rattus at large .....

rattus at large .....

from Crikey ….. 

Mungo: Howard's detention regime diminished us all 

Mungo MacCallum writes: 

There was much to loathe about the Howard years, but two things were utterly unforgivable. One was the abandonment of Australian citizens to illegal imprisonment and torture - David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib. The other was the incarceration of children behind razor wire until they went mad.  

Of course mandatory detention began under Labor, and there were already disturbing stories coming out of the detention camp at Port Hedland by the time John Howard came to power in 1996. But it was he who developed the idea as a conscious policy of government, to be pursued for political gain whatever the cost to the victims.  

It wasn’t just the children who suffered: despairing adults routinely attempted suicide and self-mutilation after years of imprisonment. But it was the persecution of the children which was most obscene, made more so when the then minister in charge, Phillip Ruddock, referred to one disturbed little boy as "it." 

This process of dehumanisation was again deliberate government policy, part of a propaganda campaign to depict the internees as deserving of their fate. They were not to be considered refugees, but asylum seekers or boat people.  

Well, not even that: unlawful immigrants, queue jumpers chasing a better lifestyle. They probably carried disease and may well have been smuggling drugs. By 2001 they had become child-murderers and potential terrorists. No wonder they were locked up: after all, if they hadn’t done something wrong obviously they wouldn’t be behind barbed wire.  

Just to prove the point the running of the camps was turned over to a firm which specialised in running American prisons and whose boss boasted of the harshness of his treatment of inmates. Others were outsourced to Nauru and Papua-New Guinea, putting them beyond the reach of Australian law.  

And of course all the prisoners were kept isolated from the media; the lie Ruddock used to do so was that he was protecting their privacy. In fact, of course, they were clamouring to tell their stories. When they were able to, Ruddock and his department intensified the smear campaigns against them.  

The assumption always was that they were guilty, and the onus was on them to prove otherwise, a task made nearly impossible by the fact that they were never informed of the case against them. In any case the fact that most arrived at Australia’s off shore islands, now "excised" from the immigration zone, meant that they never even reached the asylum they were seeking.  

The policy was cynical, brutal, and clearly illegal under international law and treaty, and did immense damage to Australia’s international standing and to our own view of ourselves. We are all better for its removal.  

Truly, when you change the government, you change the country.

vale the descendant of lunatic aristocrats...

...

Mungo has two stories in our top nine over the last week and only announced his retirement on Monday. He kept writing right until the end. What a professional he was.

Mungo was part of the Bunyip aristocracy, as his family were offshoots of British aristocracy. His great-great-grandfather, William Charles Wentworth, came to the NSW colony in the early 1800s and stamped his mark as an explorer and politician, and as a father of the nation.

His family stamped its mark on this country. His father, also Mungo, was a pioneer of television nationally. His uncle, William Charles Wentworth IV, was a Liberal Party minister under Robert MenziesGough Whitlam described Mungo as “the tall, bearded descendant of lunatic aristocrats”.

But, despite his family being known generally for its Right-wing views, Mungo was from a different cloth. A true progressive, Mungo cut his teeth on the alternative Nation Review — the journalistic cradle of so many fearless reporters and the model for Independent Australia.

Mungo is a journalist such as Australia has very seldom seen and may never see again. Irascible, incorruptible, totally truthful, fiercely independent and completely in command of every tool in his trade, Mungo MacCallum was exceptional. Vale Mungo, your legacy will long live on.

 

Read more:

https://independentaustralia.net/business/business-display/vale-mungo-maccallum--a-true-progressive-voice-gone,14605

 

Vale Mungo... In his own words:

 

It takes all my effort to breathe and I’m not managing that too well. And now my mind is getting wobbly – hard to think, let alone concentrate.

So I am afraid there is not much point in continuing to push the rock up the hill. I shall retire to my Lazy Boy recliner and doze over the television watching (or not) old sporting replays, propped up by drugs, oxygen and the occasional iced coffee. I am rapidly winding down.

I am sorry to cut and run — it has sometimes been a hairy career, but I hope a productive one and always fun. My gratitude for all your participation.

So a seasonal Hallmark message:

Christmas is coming and Australia is flat.

Kindly tell us ScoMo where the bloody hell we’re at.

And when we’re certain that you know that you don’t haven’t got a clue.

Then join in our Yuletide chorus as we sing: FUCK YOU!

Thank you and good night.

Cheers, Mungo.

 

https://independentaustralia.net/life/life-display/thats-all-she-wrote,14590