Greenwash Political Action Party and Urban Grassroots Movement for the Green Party

Monday, February 27, 2006

Costello’s pub talk

When Premier Iemma backed Costello last week - he didn’t just dog whistle - he lined himself up with a flake.

Peter Costello’s controversial Sydney Institute speech about citizenship and Australian values was nothing new. He said exactly the same thing on Lateline last year - see ‘Respect Australian values or leave: Costello’.

Here’s a taste of what he said in August 2005, when interviewed by Tony Jones:

· “…They recognise Australian law and Sharia law. There's only one law in Australia, it's the Australian law. For those coming to Australia, I think we ought to be very clear about that.
· “...where a person has dual citizenship… it might be possible to ask them to exercise that other citizenship.
· “… so I would say to people who don't feel comfortable with those values there might be other countries where they'd feel more comfortable with their own values or beliefs.”

The real issue - then as it is now - is how would Costello actually put in place a plan to deny citizenship, or remove citizenship from people who don’t uphold ‘Australian values’.

But Costello has no idea. He hasn’t even the vaguest of plans for how to do it.

How would you actually strip people of their citizenship? How would people be denied citizenship? How would we test if they are upholding Australian values? Who would decide what those values are? Would there be a questionnaire? An exam?

Costello won’t give an answer to any of these questions. He won’t ,because he can’t. And he won’t because he hasn’t even thought about it.

If the Greens were to propose a policy idea that couldn’t be backed up with a realistic plan for implementation, we would be ridiculed. But this from the Treasurer with an army of advisers and an entire department at his disposal!

Tony Jones nailed it back in 2005 when he responded to Costello ideas with:

“ But isn't this the sort of thing you hear in pubs, the meaningless populism you hear on talkback radio?”

When pushed to give an answer in that Lateline interview about how these ideas would actually be implemented, Costello admitted that it would be voluntary! You would simply ask the person to leave Australia.

So the Treasurer is not only pandering to racism but is flakey . He deserves to be ridiculed as much as heckled.

Costello’s Australian values - ‘paved roads’

It is worth reading Costello’s Sydney Institute speech to the end, where he lists in some detail what he sees are the six key Australian values.

Number 5 relates to the environment:

“The Physical Environment: Australia has clean air and safe food and water. It has open space and natural beauty.”

Obviously Costello hasn’t been in Sydney much lately where air pollution levels have been front page news and fishing has been banned in Sydney harbour because of dioxin poising.

Anyway the environment is a ‘thing’ not a ‘value’. A value might be appreciation or reverence for the natural environment or commitment to ecological sustainability. But Australians can hardly say we are good custodians of our environment - inadequate environmental flows in our stressed and dying inland rivers and the worst greenhouse gas emitters per capita in the world.

And then there the is ‘value’ number six:

“Strong Physical and Social Infrastructure: Australia has roads that are paved, where traffic moves.”

I don’t know what is more stupid: that Costello thinks traffic moves in Sydney or that ‘roads that are paved’ is a core Australian value.

The man is a flake.

posted by Ben Oquist # 9:41 AM 0 comments