Contemplate this moral dilemma: You were so desperate to have a baby you underwent IVF to conceive. You were convinced, though, that you only wanted one baby and just before the procedure you requested the clinic only implant one embryo. But the doctor, following your earlier written instructions, went ahead and implanted two embryos. The result was ultimately the birth of two healthy babies. But you found the difficult pregnancy and the arrival of twins a big burden - physically, psychologically and financially. How would you react? Would you consider suing the doctor or the IVF clinic for damages?

Now that you’ve tried to predict your own behaviour, ask yourself how you would view a decision by such a mother and her partner to sue over such circumstances. Does your answer change if you learn they are lesbians?

The ACT Supreme Court continued hearing a case last week in which such a couple is suing Canberra Gynaecologist/Obstetrician, Dr Sydney Armellin, for $400,000 in damages, claiming the birth mother was impregnated with two embryos against her wishes and at significant cost.

I recently lost a baby when I was almost three months pregnant and it was my third consecutive miscarriage, so infertility and motherhood are issues that have weighed heavily on my mind (see my earlier post, ‘Baby Lost’ ). And, I know the issues are complex and individual, but I’m struggling to fathom this action.

Life-made-to-order is a problematic concept at the outset and it always involves risk – multiple births and the inheritance of unknown genetics and traits from anonymous donors are in the mix along with all the usual risks associated with childbirth and parenthood. But these are calculated risks many people are willing to take in order to conceive a longed for child.

Without commenting on the legal merits of this case, my moral problem with this story is a mindset that takes one from longing for a baby to demanding compensation when two instead of one are delivered. My personal reaction is understandably emotional but my concerns are twofold: 1) How will they explain to their children that one of them was so unwanted they went to court to sue for their birth (and I wager it’s inevitable that the children will discover the truth despite attempts to suppress the identity of the parents) and, 2) When so many people are so desperate to have a child and endure such torment to conceive and sustain a pregnancy how could someone in this situation so regret the birth of a healthy child?

My reaction is tempered somewhat by the rather unbalanced and emotive reporting which has characterised the coverage of this case to date. There’s been an unjustified, disproportionate focus on the sexuality of the parents with headlines like this one from the Sydney Morning Herald colouring reports: “Lesbian Sues Over IVF Twins”. Seriously - what difference does it make if they're lesbian, gay or straight?

But bigoted coverage aside and acknowledging my own human weaknesses, I’m struggling to sympathise with these parents. Have motherhood and childbirth been so reduced to controllable commodities?

In reaction to this story, one friend commented to me that he felt he actually owed God or the state for the healthy lives of his children and couldn't fathom wanting to sue for their births. I sympathise with this view. Of course, pre and post-natal depression are factors here which need to be acknowledged. But, while my head can understand the sense of loss associated with a perception of a life-choice being violated, my heart can’t get past the pain I’d feel if I discovered that my mother was so disappointed with my birth that she sued for damages.

But, the bigger question remains: how do we value life?

I've raised more questions than I've tried to answer here - this is partly in response to my acknowledged emotional reaction to this story and the complexity of the issues...which are far from black and white. So, it's over to you - what do you think?    [read more]

The conservative Anglican diocese of Sydney is the major power-wielder in Australian Anglicanism and the biggest purse, but it lost an important theological battle this week with the Church hierarchy approving the ordination of women bishops.

The Sydney diocese had argued that women should be prohibited from ordination as bishops because they didn’t fit the definition of a person as defined by the Church’s constitution. Perplexed? So was I.

The constitution stipulates that a bishop must be a baptised person who is at least 30 and in Priest’s orders. That sounds like an undeniably unisex approach, but the Sydney diocese – led by Archbishop, Peter Jensen – argued that the word person, in this context, meant men and was not intended to reference women.

This narrow-minded, fundamentalist approach is consistent with the furious fight mounted by the diocese over a decade ago against the ordination of women as priests in the Anglican Church. The diocese lost the war but continues the battle, refusing at the local level to ordain or employ women priests.

The conservatives rely on New Testament verses interpreted as ranking men above women – socially, relationally and religiously. The main verse relied upon is this one from Ephesians: “Wives, be subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord….For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church…” (Eph 5:22-23) But the counter argument is more essential - from Genesis: “And God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” (Gen 1:27) The Bible also indicates the equality of men and women in the context of non-racialism and liberation from slavery: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28) A truly liberating and socially progressive verse if ever there was one!

Interpreting scripture is a contentious business and I’m not a theologian, but I strongly agree with the supporters of women’s ordination who argue that these verses need to be understood in context – both textually and culturally. Indeed the same people who argue against women’s ordination cite such arguments to justify the non-literal interpretation of other Biblical verses – like the ones requiring women to cover or shave their heads in church and in prayer or those regarding the preparation of foodstuffs and capital punishment. It’s also relevant that these fundamentalists from the Sydney diocese would point to Islamic extremism as evidence of the problems with literal interpretation of sacred texts.

And, it's worth noting that fundamentalist, literal interpretations of scripture have been historically used to justify the continuation of slavery, racial segregation, apartheid, the activities of the Ku Klux Clan, domestic violence, child sex assault and myriad other examples of man’s inhumanity to man.

At a personal level, as a former member of the Anglican Church in the Sydney diocese, I’m celebrating the decision on behalf of women who’ve been alienated, humiliated and emotionally abused by those in their Church who have sought to devalue them.

I left the institutional Church after one too many arguments about the role of women with a misogynist parish minister. The last straw was his assertion to a friend, who’d been ordained as a Salvation Army Minister, that she could not have been ‘called’ by God because she was a woman. I publicly challenged his assertion, asking if he thought the ‘Devil did it’. I can still see the anger welling up in his eyes. There were women – talented, intelligent, educated, professional women - in tears on the lawn outside the church that day and I knew it was time to leave.

So, I hope this decision to finally recognise the authority of women at the highest level of the Anglican Church brings some healing to the women I walked with before I walked away.

There’s fear within the Anglican Church that the decision will lead to a formal split with the Sydney diocese leaving the fold. Their loss, you might say. However, such a decision would be an extremely short-sighted measure as the Church struggles to find relevancy in the 21st century and ‘bums on seats’ are falling weekly.

It’s not too late for reform but it’s too late to turn back the clock.    [read more]

This is the transcript of a story I produced for ABC Radio National's "Life Matters"

I sat in the maternity ward with tears burning tracks down my face. I was surrounded by posters picturing birth and tiny hands and nurturing breasts, listening - afraid of babies’ cries - as life seeped out of me. The dignified African doctor looked at me and quietly said, “I’m very sad for you…very sorry”. I was 11 weeks pregnant. This was my third consecutive miscarriage and it was heartbreaking…

Six weeks earlier, while on a working holiday in Europe, I’d discovered I was pregnant. It felt like a miraculous conception given my partner’s cancer-related fertility problems. But within 24 hours I started to bleed. The next day I ended up in casualty at a strange hospital in an unfamiliar town in the middle of England.

I held my breath as the radiographer probed my stomach in search of life. I didn’t believe her when she pointed at the screen and said “look, that vigorous flashing is your baby’s heartbeat!” The report said: “foetus 6 weeks, one day. No sign of abnormality…”

Once a heartbeat is detected at 6 weeks there’s a 95% chance the baby will live to be born and despite trying to psych myself into a protective state of suppressed joy, I grew more excited with every passing day.

But several weeks later, only a day after returning home, I started to bleed again. And, I instinctively knew things wouldn’t be OK this time…despite everyone else’s insistence on optimism.

I spent days in a medical holding pattern. Hope lingered after seeing the GP but grief was unleashed via the ultrasound machine. This time, when the radiographer probed my stomach, there was just dead silence. There was no heartbeat detected. Our baby had died. Two days later I was hospitalised for a procedure that essentially amounts to the abortion of a longed-for baby.

The medical system with its cold terminology and emotional distance typically just compounds the grief. The death of a baby in the womb prior to 20 weeks gestation, in the absence of a complete miscarriage, is called a ‘missed abortion’. My baby went from being described as a ‘healthy foetus with a strong heartbeat’ to a ‘missed abortion’ overnight. The impact was devastating. As was the fact that as my body rejected my baby, I had to sit in waiting rooms full of happily pregnant couples and small children.

At first I couldn’t cry, but then a toddler in one of these waiting rooms came stumbling over to me and, mistaking me for her mother, put her chubby little hands on my knees and looked directly up at me, confused. I instinctively said “Hello sweetheart…you’ve got the wrong mummy” and then I began sobbing.

The tears wouldn’t stop and all I could say was “sorry”. I think I was apologising for the awkwardness other people felt; the fact that I was publicly displaying what society sees as inappropriate grief (it’s not like I’d lost an ‘actual’ baby) and because I somehow felt responsible for the extinction of the life inside of me. Grief isn’t logical. The fact that when miscarriage is discussed, it’s usually behind hands, and it’s invisibility in the media, make the grief seem even more illegitimate.

It’s not easy to know what to say – this is a taboo subject. Inappropriate responses range from – “oh well, at least you know you’re not infertile” to “were you really pregnant?” (I kid you, not) and “do you think you drank too much when you didn’t know you were pregnant?” Such remarks can make your heart break - over and over again.

It’s a cold fact: 25% of all pregnancies will terminate naturally. Frustratingly, a cause is rarely found and parents grappling to deal with the ‘why?’ and ‘how?’ of it all will often be told “it’s just bad luck”. However, after three consecutive miscarriages, I now find myself diagnosed with ‘recurrent miscarriage’.

This means I have a statistically much higher chance of miscarrying if I conceive again. There is strange comfort in this diagnosis. At last the medical fraternity is prepared to take my loss and my obstetric health seriously. But the way I feel now, the prospect of another miscarriage is too much for me to contemplate.

The involuntary loss of an unborn baby is compounded by the already complex issues around childbirth confronting contemporary women. Childless women often find it difficult to escape the judgement of others who make assumptions about their maternal nature (or lack thereof) and even their sexuality. And while childlessness is a deliberate, considered choice for a growing number of women, pregnancy remains a venerated female birthright among the sisterhood.

I’m in my late 30’s and I desire to have a child but it’s not an all-encompassing,
‘get-pregnant-at-all-costs’ obsession as it is with some women. In fact, during this latest pregnancy, I began to realise that the hopes and expectations of others regarding my capacity to be a mother may actually exceed my own. I wondered whether this meant I just wasn’t very maternal or if the fact that I had an intellectually stimulating career and rich life experience meant my identity was just less one-dimensional than some other women’s.

Maybe this is heartbreak speaking. Some will say it’s the bitterness of a childless woman. But, it is a genuine reflection on the impact of other people’s celebration of me as a pregnant woman and the sense of shame that’s somehow imparted by the experience of losing a baby. Like it or not, the ‘mother’ identity translates to status and belonging among the vast bulk of women. And as much as I try to dismiss my sense of failure on a reaction against society’s over-emphasis on women’s role as mother and child barer, the loss of this identity feels acute.

Perhaps this is because feminism has failed to date to take us beyond the role we’re physically destined for. Perhaps it’s because women need to celebrate their other identities – lover, partner, friend, sister, professional – in equal measure to motherhood. All I know is that it feels like the expectations of society and womankind hang heavily on my shoulders as I grieve for the loss of another small life. To be honest, all I want to do is get on another plane to another time and place…where the pain isn’t so raw and where my identity is disconnected from all things maternal.

I think a big part of making this grief less difficult to bear is openness. This is why I’ve told you my story.

(This story was originally broadcast on Radio National's (ABC) Life Matters program on 27/9/07 as a monologue recorded by me. You can listen to and download the story here)    [read more]

We’re told we live in the ‘Age of Terror’ post-September 11th. But I actually think it’s the ‘Age of Insecurity’. We’re afraid of attack and subversion so we build barriers and increase security…think APEC and airport check-in procedures. The irony, though, is that these measures drive fear and breed insecurity.

How did you feel when Sydney was locked down for APEC with wire fences, police checkpoints and enforced public holidays in the name of safety? Did all that make you feel more protected and secure or just more conscious of your fear and diminishing freedoms?

The same is true of airport security procedures. I’ve recently returned from two months in Europe with Heathrow – London’s monolithic terrorist target – as my British Airways transit hub. The much criticised and publicised 'one-bag policy' (introduced for security reasons)enforced at Heathrow reportedly jearpordises British Airway’s viability and, I can tell you from personal experience, it threatens to render transiting passengers temporarily insane.

I’m actually concerned that I may turn up on one of those voyeuristic airport docu-dramas as a ‘problematic passenger’ after taking on a ridiculously inflexible security officer during one particularly traumatic transit through Heathrow. The one-bag policy made me snap. This policy permits only one small carry-on bag on planes leaving from, or transiting through, the airport. The problem is, you are allowed to get on flights heading for London from any other airport in the world with two carry-on bags – say, for example, a small handbag and a laptop bag. But when you try to transit to your connecting flight - big trouble!

Case in point: I arrived at Heathrow, en route from Amsterdam to Manchester, successfully navigated the intestinal passenger transit lanes with my two bags, but got deflected at security by a burly bloke on a power trip who insisted I shove my laptop into my tiny handbag to meet the ‘one-bag’ policy requirements. Already tired and cranky after flights delayed by storms and general incompetence, I tried at first to politely point out that square pegs don’t fit in round holes. But the 'burly one' was less than amused and told me I’d just have to go back and put one of my bags in my checked-in luggage – for security reasons. Logical solution you might think…not! My luggage had been checked through directly and was already making its way onto the connecting flight without me.

I tried to rationalise with the 'burly one', but to no avail. So, at his feet, I grunted and groaned and shoved and poked (swearing under my breath deliberately loudly enough for him to hear) and somehow I managed to sandwich these two bags together by removing my travel documents, newspapers and books – all of which the rules stipulated that I could carry in my hands in addition to my one piece of luggage. But the resultant tower of collapsed baggage was a ridiculous site and it was so cumbersome that the security officers on the x-ray machines simply removed one bag from the other and scanned them separately while I struggled with my piles of books and documents.

Once I made it through security, in a lather of sweat, I breathed a sigh of relief. But it was premature. I was required to clear customs at one of Heathrow's domestic terminals, but the computers at the checkpoint had crashed, thanks to an attempt to install new security measures, including connection to an Interpol database. Trouble was, the highly efficient folk at Heathrow didn’t have a back-up plan for the upgrade, so when the computers went down, the lines at the customs desk just grew and grew…along with passengers’ anxiety, stress and anger.

The old British approach to law and order just exacerbated the problem – when a plodding bureaucrat came whistling along with a laptop (but without the power cord which he took another 20 minutes to locate!) it was isolated for processing EU passengers only. The old divide and conquer approach! So, Americans, Canadians, Australians and all other passengers without EU blessing watched their line grow and grow while the EU passengers leaked one by one through the barriers. Flights were being missed by the minute and tension grew at a faster pace.

So, guess who decided to speak up again to try to negotiate a more equitable solution to the processing? Yep, that would be me. Once again, though, there was no reasoning with the power-wielders. “It’s just the rules…we process EU passengers first and we won’t process any other passengers until their line is cleared” said the woman in charge. “But” I heard myself challenge “that line will never end…it just keeps replenishing because it’s so slow moving…see (I pointed to the never-decreasing line) ...wouldn’t it be fairer to alternate the processing of EU passengers with our queue?”. She wasn’t amused. “Where are you from?” she asked. I answered “Australia” and got this typically class conscious response: “Yes, well that may be the way you do things down there but it’s not protocol here…now calm down and get back in line!”. I was calm, but that was a real provocation...nevertheless I bit my tongue. However, by that stage I’d become a sort of customs queue bolshevik and the mob behind me was ready to revolt. Fear breeds restriction which, in turn, breeds anger and danger. Luckily at that point another lackadaisical airport clerk came wandering along with a second laptop and tempers were checked as the line finally started to move.

Contrast that experience with my travels to New Zealand this week. While Sydney airport threatens to compete with Heathrow in terms of security and frustration, at the other end, in Dunedin, it's a whole other world. In NZ, there is no 'War on Terror'. When we checked in for the return flight on ‘Freedom Air’ I reluctantly pointed to the large wall clock I was hoping to carry on board in addition to my handbag and laptop. I expected rejection, but instead I got: “No problem, it’s a full flight but we should be able to find a safe place on board for that”. I did a double take.

I thought for sure there’d be trouble at the security checkpoint…this was after all a large clock with prominent hands and mechanical components – tick, tick, tick. It was so big it only just squeezed through the x-ray machine with a shove from a remarkably cheerful security officer. But when it made it through to the other side of the machine, the operator asked sternly “Who belongs to this” pointing at my clock. “Ah, me” I said tentatively. “Gee, it’s a beautiful clock!” she said “Do you mind if I ask where you bought it?” I laughed and offered up the shop name. Then another bloke in a security uniform picked it up, handed it to me and, proud of his wit, said “There you go, take that with you and watch time fly!”

I walked onto the plane with a big smile on my face and tried to remember if this was what it was like before the ‘War on Terror’ and the 'Age of Insecurity'.

"The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear." - Aung San Suu Kyi
   [read more]

As I was standing in a supermarket line last night, I was assaulted by the Australian tabloid women’s magazines at the checkout. Juxtaposed on the covers were headlines screaming “Kirstie Blows Out” and “Brad Fears For Fading Angelina”.

Poor, tragic, Kirstie (Alley) recently lost umpteen kilos after starving herself for months on a diet of cardboard-like Jenny Craig dinners and wasn’t the tabloid sisterhood proud? After years of lampooning the star of Fat Actress over her weight and alleged hamburger-addiction, she was hailed a heroine for trimming down. “Good for her!” I thought at the time, knowing from personal experience how humiliating it can be to witness other people’s reactions to your weight gain. But, at the same time, I predicted she’d re-gain the kilos (as most Jenny Craig ‘losers’ do) and suffer even more stinging public ridicule via these so-called ‘women’s magazines’ for ‘falling off the diet wagon’. I was right. She’s ‘ballooning’ again and every kilo is being tracked by the paparazzi and salivated over by culpable editors.

Angelina Jolie, meanwhile, was being criticised by the same magazines for her diminishing frame and accused of suffering from an eating disorder. Talk about irony!

These mags are to the Australian print media what A Current Affair and Today Tonight are to TV journalism - a destructive, anti-intellectual assault on the senses and the mind. But what makes them worse offenders in my book is that, unlike the male-dominated world of tabloid TV, it’s women who run these magazines and women who buy them. And, it’s women who are almost exclusively their victims.

I have particular empathy for the ‘Fat Actress’ after being compared to her by a female colleague in the week after embarrassing photos of her (with hamburger being stuffed guiltily into her mouth) were published world-wide. I’ve always thought of Kirstie Alley as a beautiful woman – thin or fat – so I should have been flattered by the comparison. Instead I was stung. I knew where this woman was going when, in the next breath, she asked me “Aren’t you hot in all that polyester?” Suffice it to say she’s young, gorgeous, privileged and thin - and we’re not close.

What is it with women? Why are we so prone to bitchiness and the destruction of each others’ self-confidence? How can we be proud of our sex when we delight so much in other women’s misfortune and public humiliation? Don’t we have enough to contend with in a society where sexism and domestic violence are rampant and the glass ceiling still stifles our careers? How liberated are we, really, when our identities are apparently still so deeply connected to our body image?

I’ve been pondering these questions at length lately because I’ve realised just how guilty I’ve been of assigning large chunks of my own self-worth in accordance with what society deems physical beauty to be (which is a very narrow definition in itself!). And, in subconsciously adopting this measuring stick, I’ve devalued men as well as myself. What I mean is this: it’s not physical beauty in a man (and, being heterosexual, it’s blokes who draw me in) which makes me swoon. Take, for example, George Clooney: there's no doubt he's extraordinarily physically attractive, but it’s his wit, charisma, talent and political activism that move me from admiring him, as one would admire a Rembrandt, to a state of semi-swooning. And, beyond Hollywood - in the real world - it’s intelligence, humour, soulfulness, creativity, passion, and courage tempered by tenderness, that ‘do it’ for me. So, if my attraction to men is so multi-dimensional, why do I sell them short by assuming they won’t find me attractive because of my ample ‘curves’?

It took a man – a virtual stranger - to wake me up to this double standard. When he told me he found me attractive, I was floored. Who, me? In my mind, while I'd attracted plenty of male attention when I was thin, I’d pretty much come to assume that I was, as a ‘larger lass’, physically repugnant to men. So, I’d assumed this amazing, swoon-worthy guy in a handsome wrapper wouldn’t find me attractive. What shallow thinking! Not only was I guilty of assigning unfairly narrow definitions of sexual desire to this man (and, by extrapolation, all men) I was underselling myself, damn it! I'd apparently forgotten I have a brain and a heart and a funny-bone - all of which I find attractive in a man, but hadn’t valued highly enough in myself.

In writing this, I realise I’m still not convinced he found me physically attractive (clearly, I have some residual ‘baggage’ to work through!)…but that’s immaterial because I know he found other, less transient, elements of me desirable and that was a real gift. He woke me up to my enduring beauty (beauty that’s more than skin-deep) and my self-confidence has grown by the bucket-load as a result. I feel like I’ve been 'turned back on' and I now count my ‘virtual stranger’ as a friend.

It’s not that my long-term partner was oblivious to my deeper desirabilty, but he fell in love with me when I was thin and I guess I’d somehow (unfairly... irrationally, perhaps) reached the conclusion that he didn’t find me physically attractive anymore either. Pretty narrow-minded of me, huh? I blame anorexic models, Hollywood, those horrid mags and a whole lot of negative socialisation experiences for this mindset. And, yes, some men can share the blame. They are the ones who rank physical beauty above all other attributes and those who reduce women to plastic boobs. (Although I really can't fathom the appeal of breasts that don't move and look likely to explode upon touch!). There are also the abusive ones... .Then, there are those men for whom size really does matter. I once knew a ridiculous man who threatened to leave his wife if she got fat after having children because she would "no longer be the woman (he) married". But, I realised long ago that such men simply aren't worthy of women's attention. And, I’ve decided it’s high time I took responsibility for my own thinking, so I’ve changed the track.

Yes, I acknowledge the need to avoid obesity for health reasons, but I’m finally shaking off decades of negative mental conditioning and I'm looking nakedly at myself in the mirror and (almost) liking what I see. Damn, self confidence is sexy!

I encourage you to join me on this journey of self-discovery. You can start by boycotting those bloody horrible tabloid ‘women’s’ mags that keep you addicted by preying on your own lack of self-confidence and your misplaced desire to feel better about yourself by laughing at other women's failure and humiliation. Do it for Kirstie, do it for me and, most importantly, do it for you!

(PS For those of you wondering what I actually look like - refer to the stylised image above; shrink her from head to toe; enlarge her waist and derriere (significantly!); normalise her facial features and lengthen her hair)

Post Script - The lyrics to India Arie's 'Video' offer food for thought on this theme:

Sometimes I shave my legs and sometimes I don't
Sometimes I comb my hair and sometimes I won't
Dependin' on how the wind blows I might even paint my toes
It really just depends on whatever feels good in my soul

(CHORUS) I'm not the average girl from your video
and I ain't built like a supermodel
But, I learned to love myself unconditionally
Because I am a queen
I'm not the average girl from your video
My worth is not determined by the price of my clothes
No matter what I'm wearing I will always be India Arie

When I look in the mirror and the only one there is me
Every freckle on my face is where it's supposed to be
And I know our creator didn't make no mistakes on me
My feet, my thighs, my lips, my eyes; I'm lovin' what I see

CHORUS

Am I less of a lady if I don't wear pantyhose?
My mama said a lady ain't what she wears but, what she knows
But, I've drawn a conclusion, it's all an illusion, confusion's the name of the
game
A misconception, a vast deception
Something's gotta change
But,don't be offended this is all my opinion
ain't nothing that I'm sayin law
This is a true confession of a life learned lesson I was sent here to share with
y'all

So get in where you fit in go on and shine
Clear your mind, now's the time
Put your salt on the shelf
Go on and love yourself
'Cos everything's gonna be all right

CHORUS

Keep your fancy drinks and your expensive minks
I don't need that to have a good time
Keep your expensive car and your caviar
All I need is my guitar
Keep your Kristal and your pistol
I'd rather have a pretty piece of crystal
Don't need your silicone I prefer my own
What God gave me is just fine

CHORUS

So get in where you fit in go on and shine
Free your mind, now's the time
Put your salt on the shelf
Go on and love yourself
Cos everything's gonna be all right

CHORUS    [read more]

Q: When is a journalist a potential terrorist? A: When s/he’s interviewed Osama Bin Laden - according to the Australian Federal Government.

Prominent UK editor and outspoken critic of the Iraq War, Abdel Bari-Atwan, has finally been granted a visa in an about-face by Australian immigration officials. But only after taking his case against the government to the Australian media.

The editor of Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper, who has been invited to speak at the Brisbane Writers Festival this weekend, was intially refused a visa without explanation. Dr Bari-Atwan told the ABC's AM program he believed he was a victim of direct racism. “If I am going to be banned, simply because my name is Abdel Bari Atwan and because I am Muslim and because…I don't have white skin, because I don't have blue eyes... It is racial discrimination.”

Within two days of the interview being aired, he was granted that elusive visa and he's now making his way to Australia. For its part, a spokesperson for the Department of Immigration says the visa application was never denied… it was just delayed. Maybe it went missing in the same place they lost Vivien Solon and Cornelia Rau? Or perhaps, like Dr Haneef, he was just deemed, without evidence, to be of ‘bad character’.

Dr Bari-Atwan was the last Western journalist to interview Osama Bin Laden and he’s a regular guest on CNN, the BBC and Al Jazera. But as he pointed out on AM, interviewing a terrorist and taking a contrary stand to the Iraq War don’t make him a terrorist. “I don't have a criminal record. I have never been indulged in any sort of Islamic fundamentalism. I am a secular person so why they are treating me like this?” He asked.

He’s also been a frequent visitor to the US, where he’s been granted visas to deliver lectures at bastions of extremism such as Harvard University. That makes us more security-conscious than the justifiably paranoid US of A.

Banning journalists and political opponents; discriminating against visitors on the basis of their religion and skin colour…what’s next? Detention without charge? Suppression of free speech? Restrictions on freedom of movement and association? Our government using fear as a political tool? Oh yeah, we're already there.    [read more]

If I hear one more journalist or commentator pointing to our Prime Minister’s nickname, ‘Honest John’, in an effort to explain the electorate’s regard for the man’s integrity, I’m afraid my head may explode.

It’s an ironic label people! Like a tall man called ‘Shorty’ or a red-head nick-named ‘Bluey’ – get it?

In John Howard’s case, it was a nick-name first bestowed in the late 70's by a political enemy within his own party after the then Federal Treasurer reneged on promised tax cuts. It was also adopted by the ALP and wry scribes to ridicule 'Honest John' over his broken election promise. In the wake of a decade of broken ‘core’ and ‘non-core’ promises it’s a nick-name that still has currency.

The fact that Howard and his henchmen have managed to capitalise on this label, as though it were an indicator of his integrity and decency, is testament to the skill of their spin-doctors, the lack of historical knowledge of many journalists and community ignorance.

So, are we clear? ‘Honest John’ is an ironic nick-name. Not like rain on your wedding day (apologies to Alanis Morissette, but how ironic are that song's lyrics?) but like this:

Honest John
Brilliant George
Stupid Einstein
Ugly Angelina
Etc etc etc

OK, I’m glad we’ve got that straight!

Supporters of Howard's long-suffering deputy, Peter Costello, are now probably wondering what to make of 'Honest John's' promise to hand over power mid-term if he wins the next election. And, Howard Government Minister, Jo Hockey's, claim the PM is the 'Don Bradman of Australian Politics' seems deliciously ironic. 'The Don', of course, failed to score a single run in his last test match... . 'Out for a duck', his innings track record was diminished by the performance.

It's also worth noting that Howard's opponents within the Liberal Party now call him by the decidely unironic nick-name, "The Lying Rodent".    [read more]

Is the ‘Chasers’ War on Everything’ the new model for Australian investigative journalism? The ABC TV program that glued a record 3 million viewers to their screens last night is billed as comedy, but at times it comes close to the most confronting, critical TV journalism on offer. After a decade of nobbling and political interference by the Howard government, the National Broadcaster has bordered on timidity at times, but satire has become a partial defence against benign reporting.

The role of these pseudo-journos was highlighted last week when they drove a 'Trojan Horse' through the security overkill surrounding APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation). As the country was whipped into an anti-terrorism frenzy, the city of Sydney went into lockdown to protect the so-called ‘Leader of the Free World’, George Bush, who was visiting for the APEC forum (or was it OPEC? George wasn’t sure). It was nigh on impossible to get to work, and as one Sydney resident found, just crossing the road in the general vicinity was enough to get you locked up without charge. So, when the Chaser boys (and they are all blokes) envisaged their security-breach stunt, they didn’t expect to get very far.

They may not have set out to scrutinise security procedures or comment on the highly politicised anti-terror hype surrounding the meeting, but that’s exactly what they achieved by pushing the boundaries of comedy to the point where they merge with enterprising journalism. Their scheme went like this: take a few large black cars, a Canadian flag, some extras to use as runners (picture Secret Service agents in dark glasses jogging alongside the cars), some obviously fake ID passes and a comedian dressed as Osama Bin Laden and push the security barriers to the limit.

Their passes had the word ‘Joke’ emblazoned across the top and the security code on their car window sticker was SFA (i.e. Sweet F All) but check point after check point they rolled through security barriers. Actually, they more than rolled through, they were invited to breach the barriers by some of the uniformed police officers assigned to protect the President, who told them "you do what you like, matey" and "the road’s yours". In the end, they got within 10 metres of the President’s hotel, in broad daylight, amidst the tightest security Australia’s ever seen.

But they weren’t ultimately stopped by these extraordinary security measures – they just lost their nerve, admittedly keen to avoid arrest given the legal impediments to free speech and movement during APEC. In the end, they turned their cars around at the last check point. Still amazed at the absolute ‘access all areas’ permission they were granted by the 'security puppets', they tried one more time to provoke a reaction – they let ‘Osama’ out of the car. And guess what happened? The 'security puppets' came running – there was a Muslim on the loose! But until then, nobody had asked to see their credentials, questioned them about their authority, nor searched their cars. In the aftermath, 11 of the show’s staff were charged with allegedly entering a ‘restricted zone’. But as they've already proved, it was less ‘restricted’ and more ‘open by official invitation’.

Their ‘story’ illustrated several important points – the multi-million dollar security measures were so flimsy, Osama Bin Laden himself could have reached the President had he just travelled in a black car with a Canadian flag and darkened windows; if you are dressed as a conservative white Secret Service officer you can breach any barrier but don’t expect similar access if you ‘look like’ a Muslim; sometimes journalists have to risk arrest to get a good story in a police state; and, Australian officialdom has officially lost its sense of humour. It also raised questions about the legitimacy of these security measures – were they really any more than a political stunt? It’s satire but it looks and sounds more and more like journalism.

But that wasn’t the view expressed by many talkback callers and ABC complainants this week – the Chaser boys were called stupid, wreckless, dangerous, unpatriotic and, that most pejorative of labels – Un-Australian. Thank goodness, though, the ABC Managing Director, Mark Scott, still has a sense of humour. Today he told an Adelaide audience he thinks the Chaser is good comedy “I am a great fan, I think they work incredibly hard and I'm delighted for them, the success that they've had particularly this year.” That’s good news for the Chaser, good news for journalism and good news for the ABC’s editorial independence.

Download the video of the Chasers' APEC episode (MP4 or WMV)

Update: Chaser Fans @ the Lock Up    [read more]

They are deconstructing our country's identity and stealing its heart. They are the Howard Government. And, they have made me embarrassed to be Australian.

I was standing at a bar during an Amsterdam drag-show recently (I've probably already lost the far right and there go the homophobes!) and a bearded gay biker asked me: "Are you American?" I feigned mortification and said "No, puh-lease, I'm Australian." "Same thing", he retorted dryly.

A decade earlier, I would have mounted a strident defence of my country's proud identity as a fair-minded, tolerant, multicultural society. After all, we'd finally delivered land rights to Aborigines, admitted the genocidal nature of the child removal policies of previous decades and become a safe haven for people escaping international conflicts and crises. As a nation we were smug about our socio-cultural achievements and some of us subconsciously sat in judgement on Germans, American imperialists and white South Africans. But fast forward a decade, and all I could do was laugh in nervous agreement. My biker at the bar had a very valid point. Our government has led us into a dubious war as America's 'Deputy Sherrif'; made demonising non-Anglo Australians a shameless national sport; and turned the clock back 50 years on indigenous rights. As Australians we are now shamed in the international community like the pariah nations of past decades.

The seriousness of our moral decline became starkly apparent to me during my time in Amsterdam. I was there to participate in the 7th International Diversity conference - a gathering of academics, community workers and activists from around the world. At the conference, I anchored a discussion group about cultural diversity and the media and, in that forum, the distance we've fallen became patently obvious.

There were several Australians in the room and the discussion quickly turned to the coverage of multiculturalism in our country and, from there, to a critique of the political drivers behind what we agreed was increasingly narrow and racist coverage. This didn't surprise me - although there was catharthsis in the shared disgust. What did unsettle me, though, were the reactions of other international contributors to the discussion. Most notably, two Afrikaner South Africans in the group. They sat with jaws open and gasped while we debated the issues. "Do you mean they've abolished multiculturalism" they asked incredulously. "Yes" the Australians answered collectively. As a young Canadian post-grad student astutely observed: "What you've told us reminds the rest of us just how quickly the gains can be lost and the clock turned back on tolerance."

A week earlier my concern about Australia's descent into racism had been underlined by an exchange with another South African - an inspiring journalism professor [Guy Berger] who was a political prisoner in the apartheid years and exiled because of his activism. The concerned expression he wore while I 'down-loaded' - about the Australian government's clamp down on free speech; the policy of imprisonment without charge (the excesses of which were amply evidenced during the Haneef affair and APEC); the demonisation of minorities and the racist underpinnings of Aboriginal policy - made me realise how close to the edge we are teetering. In South Africa's apartheid past, courageous journalists like Guy Berger risked much more than being out of step with the pack and labelled 'Leftist' and 'biased' - they risked banning, exile, imprisonment and even death to challenge racism entrenched by a totalitarian government. I had to ask myself "what are you prepared to do to counter your own country's descent into officially endorsed racism?"

"Is she seriously drawing parallels between South African apartheid and Howard's Australia?" I hear you ask. Before you write me off as a reactionary exaggerator, ask yourself this...how unimaginable is 'Australian apartheid' in the context of the new racism afflicting our society and the clampdown on our civil liberties excused on the so-called 'war on terror'? I believe there are real historical and cultural parallels between the political climates that preceded apartheid in South Africa and Nazism in Germany...shocking as that may sound. It's crept up on me - this realisation that we've slipped so far. It's like we've been cooked in slowly heated water...lobster-like.

In 1996 I reported for the ABC on the election that swept the Howard Government into office. And, within weeks of Howard's assent, I began to despair about the ill, racist wind that he fanned - firstly by failing to counter the divisive and alienating messages of the xenophobic ex-Liberal Party candidate, Pauline Hanson, then by appropriating her policies. When I filed a long analysis of Hanson's racist Aboriginal affairs policies for ABC Radio's, The World Today, the unprecedented level of listener response - which ranged from positive and congratulatory to threatening and vile - should have been a harbinger of the social upheaval Howard's wedge politics would deliver. But I remained hopeful my country would wake up and defend its fair, just and multicultural image which had been so proudly embraced (or so I thought) by my generation.

Mindful of the democratic role of journalists as informers and watchdogs, I vigorously pursued stories about Aboriginal rights. I tackled the then Aboriginal Affairs Minister, John Herron live on AM after he said the Stolen Generations (Aborigines forcibly removed from their families under the White Australia Policy) were better off for having been adopted by white families. And I cried quietly during a long interview with the Aboriginal leader and the then head of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC), Lowitja (Lois) O'Donoghue, who revealed to me for the first time the story of her 'theft' from her mother as a toddler. The AM audience heard how she grew up culturally isolated - without her language - and how her mother had died not long before O'Donoghue had finally tracked her down. It was heartbreaking and I was confident her message would tweak the Howard Government's moral compass and encourage them to put down the dog whistle they were using to rally racists around the country. How wrong I was.

If you'd told me back then that within a decade ATSIC would be dismantled, Aboriginal self-determination would be abandoned; Indigenous land-rights would be rescinded'; multiculturalism would be killed off as official government policy and replaced with 'integration'; and, most shockingly, that Howard would send the military into remote Aboriginal communities to enforce new racist policies - which included forcible removal of children from their families on the pretext of protecting them from child abuse - I'd have called you loony. But you'd have been prophetic, not insane.

A decade later, our country's heart is breaking. We all suffer when we aid the genocide of our Indigenous people - and that is undoubtedly what we do when we stand silently by and allow their hard won rights to be trampled while their land is stolen again along with their dignity. This is a soul-wrenching suffering that we won't fully appreciate until it's too late to redress. And it's not just Aboriginal Australia suffering the effects of this new racism - Muslims and Middle Eastern Australians are increasingly demonised by this government as it seeks to exploit the fear of the post 9/11 climate. Pauline Hanson has also returned to the fray with an updated swag of racist election policies, including a threat to ban all Muslim immigration. These Australians are further ostracised by a media which has too frequently failed to question and critique discriminatory government policy and assumptions.

Again, we all suffer from Howard's socio-cultural 'retro-form'. We suffer because the ostracism of minority groups further entrenches feelings of isolation and resentment within the communities affected and, as the evidence of home-grown terrorism shows, such feelings are easily exploited by extremists. In other words, the Howard Government's exploitation of our fear of terrorism actually makes us less safe, as well as more insular and culturally bland. And, we suffer because we are collectively diminished by our tacit acceptance of new, narrow definitions of what it means to be Australian. We suffer because our government divides us rather than unites us.

The slow-boil effect of this new racism has caught many of us by surprise, but it's time to wake up and smell the injustice. It's time for increased community activism and, I believe, it's time for Australian journalists concerned with democracy and values like tolerance and equality to actively work against the racism colouring national debates about immigration, terrorism and cultural identity, in the interests of both good journalism and morality. I'll undoubtedly be labelled a Leftist "bleeding heart" by government apologists but this is not about party politics, it's about hope for the future. As the 17th century English historian and theologian, Thomas Fuller, observed "if it weren't for hope, the heart would break."    [read more]