Like the Prime Minister, I was born in England. I don’t hold that
against him. Perhaps it would be better if we discarded all this tribalism,
dispense with nationality, flags, passports – but wait! Tony Abbott is wedded
to flags, four, six, eight – I lose count. He bangs on about ‘our people’ and
‘enemies’ all the time. It is called chauvinism and xenophobia (which Pauline
Hanson couldn’t pronounce). Oh, and he’s made a career of it, hasn’t he!
I read David Donovan's article and thought he has
a point. Tony Abbott has a case to answer regarding his alleged dual
nationality and has shown no publicly acceptable reason for his continued
avoidance of the question. Basically, if you are in the right, give the
truthful, straightforward explanation and move on. He won't! It is costing him
credibility. Tony's Tradies will evaporate!
Not only was Tony Abbott required to "take steps" to
"relinquish" his British Citizenship to become PM, he
was required to do this to become a candidate for the House of
Representatives, in 1994, (twenty-one years back) when filling out the
Declaration 44 on the AEC form. If he was not
telling the truth, there will be multiple charges to answer. The steps actually
taken could have been to request the appropriate form from the British Embassy
and then to pay their punitively exorbitant fee, which has grown out of
proportion to its implementation costs since 1994 (even Australia's Big Four
banks would blush):
At this point, it becomes typically opaque as to whether something
actually happens and who is responsible for checking that it was done. Well,
the candidate is personally responsible
for this, in any case. The party Agent won't be going to prison. But there are
precedents where elected MPs have been challenged in court, have been declared
ineligible to take their seat and have been charged with serious offences
against the Australian Electoral Act, which carries a custodial punishment. Terry Sharples of One Nation was charged in the
Queensland Supreme Court in 1999. Margo Kinston reminded me how this happened. Tony
Abbott was one of those who plotted the funding of Sharples’ downfall. “Tony
grins his trademark grin. You're gunna love this, fellahs: let's call it Australians for Honest
Politicians.” I would never have picked Tony for dreaming that up, but the Prince
Phillip gong was awesome wasn’t it.!
So, what is wrong with having two or more passports? Ben Zygier had four, three of
which were Australian but in different names, all of which ASIO would have
known, since he was a MOSSAD employee. They did nothing.
David Hicks was carrying an Australian passport when he decided to join
the Taliban's military training school. After his many years of torture in
Guantanamo at the hands of our compulsory ally, his conviction was overturned.
He is a free man living in Australia. What an error in law it would have been if the Gillard government had cancelled
his passport as they threatened.
Now we have over 100 Australian passport holders allegedly joining ISIS,
but we don't know if they are tending the wounded, feeding refugees or actually
engaged in fighting. It is unlikely they would be fighting regular Australian
troops, though they could be fighting our SAS, who might be dressed as Shi-ite
militias. The Abbott government, famous for vacuous stunts, will not be
concerning themselves with nuanced questions like that, will they.
We also have hundreds of Australian dual Israeli passport holders
visiting Israel each year to perform Aliyah, so many that DFAT don't bother to
collect data on this flow of young people. Why not? An accountable government
needs this information and should be able to answer the question. Joining the
IDF means being deployed to tasks in the military occupation of Palestinians
and possibly carrying out those tasks in ways that violate the Geneva
Conventions, as Peter Slezak explained to the
ABC’s Presenter, Kirsti Melville.
We learn from reading Antony Loewenstein’s article that there are
indeed “…shocking new allegations by IDF personnel and their behaviour against
Palestinian children. [Remarkably even] Murdoch’s Australian also covered the revelations.” Australians, quite
frankly, including our political class, need to stay up to date, not rely on
shibboleths of the past. Check Breaking the Silence – straight from
IDF whistle-blowers. We should know this to be the case. The recruitment
propaganda for the IDF is shamelessly crude, complete with childish ‘scary’ pictures,
but the IDF shares some ‘clever’ touches with certain other armed forces in the
Middle East. Max Chalmers wrote about this
aspect in New Matilda
Former senior public servant, John Menadue, had this to say on Australians
joining the IDF: “Australians have fought in all of Israel’s wars since 1948…The
Muslim community in Australia has been very critical of Australians who go and
fight under the IS flag but rightly asks why Australian citizens are able to
fight with the IDF but not with IS.” We should stop and think about this.
Recently I watched a young Muslim woman in Glasgow in Scotland explain
on TV that she and her family sat around their TV each night fuming with anger
at the disastrous outcome of George W. Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard’s wars
against the people of Afghanistan and Iraq and Israel's war crimes in Gaza. She
also mentioned the deafening silence of our politicians – and it is that. People
like Tony Abbott and Bill Shorten should know what conscience means. The young
woman in a Hijab could have been speaking from Mt Druitt – or anywhere. So, our
Australian IDF recruits are contributing to a generalised sense of injustice
which is perfectly understandable and making an IS-inspired terror attack on
Australia more likely, not less likely.
So, how many passports do you have, Tony? Tell us do!
