Tag Archive for: election

The international bipartisan banner and Oz politics

‘Politics stops at the seaboard and anybody who denies that postulate is a son of a bitch and a crook and not a true patriot.’—Dean Acheson, US Secretary of State

Acheson, a wry moustachioed warrior with a WASP’s wasp humour, injected much irony into the iron demands of patriotism.

In foreign and defence policy, the bipartisan banner is used to persuade and bolster, to enlist and to enforce. Bipartisanship serves high policy and low politics.

Political detente allows both sides to agree to agree—and not to argue about tough or important issues. No risk of being politically wounded if you don’t fight.

Australia will see how this works throughout the year. Parliament is back and the partisan battle begins. Once the May budget is delivered, election fever will spike and surge and consume Canberra until Malcolm Turnbull announces his date with destiny and the voters.

The window for a simultaneous half-Senate and House of Reps election is between 4 August 2018 and 18 May 2019. Expect an election this year—the opinion polls will help you track the fever. The commentariat nibbles at the idea Bill Shorten has peaked and the tide turns for Turnbull. Perhaps. The months beyond the federal budget will tell.

The moment polls show Turnbull he’s within reach, the real poll happens. If the prime minister has to hold off until next year, he’ll be clinging to the reins rather than driving the cart. Hanging on will mean the polls still crush the government; panic in coalition ranks will build.

Recent Oz history indicates Turnbull needs to be a freshly re-elected prime minister by Christmas, or he’ll be an ex-PM, dispatched by his voters or his party.

Australian political lore says voters decide using a domestic and an international question, framed by their interests, beliefs and histories: The two questions are:

Domestic: Who will do the best job running the economy and managing the nation?

International: Who do I trust to keep Australia secure?

Politicians spend most of their time fighting the domestic battle. The Turnbull government’s chant about jobs and growth is directed at an average voter delightfully dubbed Mr Jobson Grothe. Labor’s focus on family budget struggles means their pitch is to a voter I’d dub Mr Costa Living.

There’s not much distance between Mr Grothe and Mr Living. The bash and bombast of the Lib–Lab domestic fight is the deep division of small differences.

Now to Lib–Lab bipartisanship around international issues. As long as each side can tick these boxes, they’re happy not to argue:

  • US alliance
  • Asian commitment and engagement, even integration
  • The defence-of-Australia strategy that’s been embraced as official policy since the end of the Vietnam War
  • Multilateral institutions and the UN (Following Foxish trends from America, some conservatives cavil, but Australian voters like the UN and are positive about international institutions. The consensus prevails.)
  • War in Afghanistan
  • Building navy ships and submarines in Australia

Afghanistan and building ships here are interesting case studies in the silent curse of bipartisanship.

The new ships policy is already completely clothed in bipartisanship. The Liberals killed off the Oz car industry policy yet, within political nanoseconds, embraced the logic of a ship/submarine industry policy. High strategy meets low politics and, presto, a new holy cow is born to graze on many billions of dollars.

Afghanistan was Australia’s longest yet least-debated war. The commitment consensus between Australia’s major political parties never wavered; thus, they didn’t talk about it. The bipartisan unity held as the nature of the war evolved, casualties rose and support among Australians fell away.

As Andrew Carr argues in his paper I’m here for an argument, bipartisanship ‘weakens the quality of national policy, reduces accountability, lowers public engagement, and risks estrangement between the military and civil leadership. As it currently operates, the demand for bipartisanship is putting Australia at risk’. You’ll hear none of that as election fever rises.

Labor will berate the Libs about cuts to international aid and question the revived Trans-Pacific Partnership (on both issues Labor will be attacked from the left by the Greens). The Greens–Labor fight for inner-city seats will snatch at the bipartisan Lib–Lab blanket. Yet it’d be a huge surprise if Labor broke with its Hawke–Keating heritage by actively fighting the TPP. Unlike the Europeans and the Americans, Australians think ‘trade’ a good thing, not a swear word.

The Lib–Lab nuance in the bipartisan dance is that the Libs are going to stand much closer to Donald Trump than Labor, while Labor will stand closer to China than the Libs.

The Turnbull government has done a nice job dancing around the Trump dichotomy by lavishing praise on the US while saying nothing negative about The Donald: stress US leadership, downplay the US leader.

The dance worked for Trump’s first year, but won’t survive Turnbull’s lavish reception in Washington later this month, ‘the highest-level visit by an Australian leader in more than a decade’. US presidential hugs usually help Oz leaders. Not this time. Turnbull will strive not to be Trumped while lauding 100 years of alliance mateship.

Labor is standing closer to China, accusing the government of China-bashing and promising a warmer view of China’s belt-and-road infrastructure initiative.

On both China and the US, the bipartisan consensus will rule with some sniping at the edges.

After losing Senator Sam Dastyari over his passionate panda-hugging, Labor won’t run as the China candidate, any more than Turnbull will be the Trump candidate.

Unfurl the bipartisan banner—proclaim patriotism and avoid an argument.

Same same but still same same: Australia’s national drug supply reduction strategy

Image courtesy of Flickr user Tony Webster

With Sunday marking the 28th International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking and the federal election drawing ever nearer, it’s worth reflecting on what Australia’s next government ought to be thinking about when it comes to illicit drug supply reduction policies.

In 2015 the Australian Crime Commission’s (ACC) illicit drug data report—and the unclassified version of the organised crime threat assessment—made it clear that record illicit drug seizures by law enforcement weren’t having an impact on the domestic availability of ice (crystal methamphetamine) or any other illicit drug. On 8 April 2015, then-Prime Minister Tony Abbott announced that Australia was in the grip of an ice epidemic. By June 2015, Australian media was abuzz with reporting of our ice epidemic and its insidious impacts on communities.

Australia’s unquenchable appetite for ice—and its high profit market—has impacted on drug supply and organised crime beyond our shores. Australia’s market demand has led to a surge in ice production across China, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam. According to United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the by-product of Australia’s demand is that the ASEAN region is now flooded with cheap ice.

In December last year the Australian National Ice Taskforce handed down its final report. A few weeks later we saw the release of the Council of Australian Governments National Ice Action Strategy 2015. Both the report and strategy made it abundantly clear that Australia wasn’t going to arrest its way out of the ice epidemic. But it was equally clear that supply reduction still has an important role in our national drug strategy that contributes to harm reduction.

So for six months we’ve been waiting to see how the Turnbull government’s new softer harm minimisation and demand reduction strategies—worth $300 million over the next four years—will make a difference. In the meantime neither ice, nor illicit drugs more broadly, have received much media attention.

If you look to Australian law enforcement’s key performance measures—seizures of illicit drugs and arrests—supply reduction efforts have continued at a striking pace. But in reality, the vast majority of enforcement work hasn’t been targeted at innovatively disrupting the supply of those drugs to Australia. Australia’s border and law enforcement work is still focussed on seizing drugs, and as one senior federal police officer colloquially described it ‘banging up crooks’. But the high profit Australian market ensures that those ‘crooks’ and their drugs are quickly replaced.

We’ve had the new ‘dob in an ice dealer‘ hotline implemented. The ‘hotline’ approach was a great political announcement. It presented a tangible initial deliverable for the federal government’s investment in the National Ice Task Force. This otherwise well-intentioned idea most likely diverts police resources to the investigation, disruption and prosecution of low-level ice dealers.

ACC reporting highlights the pivotal role of China in the production and shipment of ice and its precursors. That’s made possible because of China’s enormous chemical and pharmaceutical industries. The importance of the Chinese connection for ice supply reduction shouldn’t be underestimated, which is why the jewel in the crown of Australia’s recent international disruption efforts is Taskforce Blaze.

Taskforce Blaze is a collaborative effort between Australian and Chinese police focused on stemming the flow of ice to Australia. Taskforce Blaze is likely to be a pivotal component of Australia’s supply reduction strategy in the future. In addition to intelligence sharing for investigations, the taskforce allows for the transnational disruption of criminal syndicates in Australia and China.

It’s startling that with a domestic ice epidemic and a regional ice flood, law enforcement is nowhere to be seen in any Australian political party’s election promises or policy platforms.

Australia’s ice epidemic hasn’t disappeared, nor has it been addressed or mitigated. Right now Australia’s major political parties should be considering how they might make a stronger commitment to addressing the supply, demand and harm of illicit drugs in Australia. Six months down the track from the release of the National Ice Strategy, Australia’s national illicit drug supply reduction strategies lack both focus and innovation.

The next Australian government should consider developing a law enforcement policy statement focused on clearly articulating its strategic intent, its expectations of agencies, and the resources it will assign when it comes to offshore supply reduction.

To innovate our drug supply disruption strategies, Australia’s next government needs to consider how to further internationalise its law enforcement activities.

That internationalisation will first need to focus efforts on strategic interventions in illicit drug transit and production countries. The expansion of existing law enforcement partnerships with ASEAN member states and China are key to having meaningful impacts on supply.

To have a lasting impact on the availability of ice, Australia needs to pursue less tangible, but more complex and difficult strategies focused on addressing the diversion of drugs and precursors in the Chinese chemical and pharmaceutical industry. That kind of capacity development and international engagement will require a whole-of-government approach, which is yet to materialise. It will also require careful diplomatic moves from the DFAT, who until now have left police diplomacy to the operational agencies.

The government should consider establishing a small team within the Attorney-General’s Department with responsibility to work with the ACC, Australian Federal Police, DFAT, AUSTRAC and Australian Border Force to develop innovative new strategies for regional offshore disruptions.

But let’s be frank—even with new ideas and money it’s going to take time and a lot of effort—to reduce the supply of illicit drugs to Australia.