Angry scenes from outside a community meeting in Camden last night evoked frightening memories of the Cronulla Riots for many Muslim Australians.

Nearly 800 people turned up to the meeting called to protest plans for an Islamic school in the semi-rural town on Sydney’s outskirts. Police turned away around 100 people when the community hall where the meeting was staged became over-crowded.

Outside the Hall, young people draped in Australian flags, sported clothing and placards adorned with anti-Muslim slogans, chanted “Aussie, Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi” and yelled racial abuse. One yobbo was caught on film threatening any Muslim who fronted with physical violence. This follows a recent hate crime at the site of the planned school involving the suspension of a pig's head between two stakes.

The school, which is proposed to accommodate 1200 students, would sit adjacent to an existing public school but it is being opposed on racial, religious and planning grounds by local residents. Over 2500 submissions have been made to the council with only 600 in support of the Islamic school proposal.

Inside the hall, NSW MLA, Rev. Fred Nile, was the keynote speaker at the meeting. He claimed Islamic schools were breeding grounds for terrorists. Fred Nile quoted from the Koran to justify his anti-Muslim stance. If he’d consulted his Bible and considered the example of Jesus who preached tolerance towards minorities he may have been able to represent a genuinely Christian perspective on the issue.

Nile’s Christian Democratic Party (CDP) campaigned against Muslim immigration at the Federal Election and is opposing both the Camden school proposal and one planned for Bass Hill. The Party’s number one NSW Senate candidate, Pastor Paul Green, ran on a platform of “No More Muslims, No More Mosques” and appeared in election propaganda wearing a tuxedo and bow tie. He preached disdain towards Muslims (bordering at times on hate-speech)on the campaign trail: “Every vote for the Christian Democratic Party is a vote for a ten year moratorium on Muslim immigration. And as a Senator I’ll be asking every Council in Australia to refuse all applications for new mosques until a Christian Church can legally be built in Saudi Arabia. Then Australian Muslims can have one mosque for every Christian Church built in Saudi Arabia." Neat argument – apply the standards of democracy practiced by Saudi Arabia. I thought Christianity had moved on from the principle of an “eye for an eye”?

Another NSW upper house MP, Liberal Charlie Lynn, also voiced his opposition to the proposal at the meeting – on planning grounds. This is the line which was also adopted by the Labor Party candidate for the seat with Kevin Rudd’s support during the election campaign.

Islamic groups - who were not invited to put their case to the meeting - said the tenor of the gathering and the political contributions were disappointing and irrational. The Quranic Society, which is behind the school proposal, told the ABC they just want to build a school for their children like a Catholic or Jewish school.

Tonight, members of the Community Relations Commission, the Police and the Camden Mayor have met in the town in an effort to ease community tension following the meeting.

This issue is a powder-keg. It highlights the racist undercurrent empowered by the dog-whistling of the Howard Government and the hate-speak of people like Pauline Hanson and the CDP. The result is a dangerous, racially driven mob mentality which has already crossed over into physical violence once at Cronulla.

History shows us powerful examples of the manifestation of racist mob violence fed by fear. In another time and place - Germany circa 1938 - Jewish people endured a night of horror called Kristallnacht (crystal night) which involved hordes of racists smashing thousands of Jewish shopkeepers’ windows and ransacking their homes. There are scary parallels between the rise of anti-Semitism in 1930’s Germany and the post-September 11th development of Islamophobia.

As I’ve argued before, Kevin Rudd must tackle Islamophobia head on and engage Australian Muslims in meaningful, cross-cultural bridge building exercises which he can drag the rest of Australia along with – kicking and screaming if need be. Failure to provide such national leadership will simply encourage racism to thrive and fuel the potential for hate-crimes and mob violence on the scale of Cronulla or worse.    [read more]

Hilary Clinton has been reduced to wrinkles in a pants suit. Maxine McKew's skirt is centre stage. What's the show called? "Misogyny in Da House".

I've considered starving the issue - negative media representation of women in politics - of oxygen but this is a problem that clearly needs further public airing.

Why? Because when a woman of Hilary Clinton's character, experience and intelligence is deemed unfit for the White House because of perceptions the voting public will be turned off by the prospect of watching a woman age before their eyes, it sends a message to the world that feminism is still several battles from winning the gender equality war. And, because far too many men just don't get it.

Lest I be accused of being a reactionary man-hater (again!), I say this from the perspective of a feminist woman who is actually rather fond of men. I also have evidence - in the form of a sexist backlash against my Crikey! story from earlier this week on the Canberra Times' attempt to diminish Maxine McKew's defeat of John Howard via a demeaning front page photograph selected unapologetically by Editor, Mark Baker.

My story about the fiasco attracted a significant number of comments on
Crikey! and a similar number of responses via my blog. Then
there were the emails...many of them were personalised, misogynistic rants that displayed the most extraordinary ignorance. At Crikey, where 30 comments were posted, over 60% of respondents were men. The vast bulk of identifiably male responses took issue with my critique of the Canberra Times' decision to run the tasteless "up-the-skirt shot" of Maxine McKew. At my own blog, while most of the respondents were men, their reactions were almost evenly split along positive/negative lines. But those expressing distaste for my opinion mounted similarly misogynistic arguments.

Some comments were so sexist they were laughable - like this one from Kevin Charles Herbert: "Julie Posetti is showing signs of her damage at the hands of the Catholic eduction system. I commend Mark Baker for not backing down to the hairy chested feminists who exist in every newsroom". (Note to Kevin: I went to public school and I don't need to wax my chest!)

And others’ like Tom Mclaughlin, helped argue my case: “I kno (sic) this is dangerous turf, and yes sexist photo, but here's the thing: Sexy tv presenter does not a serious public policy talent make”. This was my point: McKew was being judged by the Canberra Times in the context of her appearance and sex appeal as being unworthy of the sort of respect afforded to male politicians.

More seethe-worthy was the assertion from a number of male respondents that women offended by the Canberra Times' treatment of Maxine McKew were whinging about nothing and that her choice of clothing was the real problem - that is, she "asked for it". (Uncovered meat comparison anyone?).Take for example this comment from David: "Maxine sexualised herself with her choice of dress. Why should only male politicians should (sic) have a dress code?" On my blog, David was on about pants suits again: “…the effort of people like Julia Gillard and her modest pantsuits should be applauded for giving government the respect it deserves.” This “a lady should wear a nice demure pants suit” argument is amusingly ironic. Who’s wearing the pants in this story? What’s their point? That it really is a man’s world and the only way a woman can be taken seriously in public life is to adopt a male dress code?

Another correspondent, Rob Garnett underlined the problem when he asked of my story “What is this woman going on about. Maxine has been made a parly sec, Julia's the deputy leader, we have a female health minister and Penny Wong is on the world stage. Get some perspective.” Er, that was my perspective, Rob – all that womanly achievement and yet media representation that sexualises and objectifies women continues to undermine their status in comparison to men.

Meanwhile, as the media's commentary on Hilary's pants suits (a discourse which has distracted from coverage of her policies and intellectual gravitas) has proved, even women politicians who wear pants can't escape gender bias in the media.

This was a point echoed by a Queensland correspondent to my blog "...so outraged by Maxine's photo being published I can barely type...women politicians in Queensland are often described in the press in terms of their shoes...Hilary's pant suits have featured in the last four articles I've read on her campaign. My five year old daughter just doesn't get it and asks why they don't put photos of men's shoes in the paper?"

This is not a “pseudo-controversy” and I (like many other women who were equally offended) will not simply “get over it”. As Crikey reader MA Smith (gender unknown) commented, “The issue is not just her underwear. It's how a woman is portrayed on the front page when she has just taken on the most powerful man in the country, and won. As an aggressive whore.”

I wonder if this rampant sexism is another product of the Howard assault on respect for difference derided as "political correctness" by the former PM? Newsflash guys: feminism is no longer a dirty word! And, thankfully, this is a view shared by many men. Take, for example, the perspective of Crikey reader Malcolm Thurston: "I totally concur with Julie. Baker was caught out. His pathetic excuse in the Canberra Times,was exposed for what it was, when an appropriate photo of the same event appeared on p2 of the same days SMH,by the same photographer.The 'Times photo was crude".

But the most encouraging reaction came from a young male Canberra journalist who wrote to me "My two bob in - as a young male, I can easily recognise when someone has a dirty mind. The CT editor is one of them. ...It's frankly embarrassing to see editorial decisions like that being made. In a time where women are gaining more control in the newsroom, there needs to be a level of respect that news organisations have to abide by. XY reporter for the CT, echoed your sentiments...My news editor XX was spitting chips as well.”

When I watched my 3rd year students graduate from their journalism course this week at the University of Canberra I was struck once again by the gender shift among the ranks of junior reporters. Relevantly, I'm regularly asked by News Editors for the names of successful male students because their newsrooms are already "female dominated". But while the ranks of women journalists have swollen dramatically over the past 20 years, most editorial management and senior reporting positions are still occupied by men. Newsrooms remain sexist workplaces (something female Channel 9 reporters subjected to John Westacott's 'f**kability index' could testify to) and women journalists make life choices to avoid being crushed by the glass ceiling on a daily basis. But we shouldn't have to wait for equality in newsrooms for women to be reported equally by the media.

Men are just as capable of understanding the consequences of female subjugation and stereotyping as they are of appreciating racist representation of black men from a white male perspective. But they have to want to remove their blinkers.

Note: A version of this story was first published at Crikey!    [read more]

Australia’s Channel 7 has banned its staff from ‘Facebooking’, blocking their access to the popular social networking site via a central firewall. What a short-sighted, anachronistic means of attempting to boost productivity in a business that revolves around journalism and entertainment.

Web 2.0 platforms like blogging, YouTube and Facebook are not just time-wasting distractions from the business of media, they are also increasingly important research tools for journalists.

I note Channel 7 isn’t attempting to block access to YouTube – they obviously appreciate that web 2.0 platform as a source of news and vision from citizen journalists. So, why ban Facebook? It offers members the opportunity to send video, post links and provide tips to journalists in a more targeted way than YouTube. Did they originally consider banning journalists from access to email – the pre-cursor to Facebook?

From a reporter’s perspective, social media sites like Facebook are the new version of the indispensable contact book – supplementing the telephone book as a tool for locating sources. As a 7 news worker told the Daily Telegraph, the ban is counter-productive: "It's annoying for people like us who actually need to use it for work - seriously, we use it for research, trying to locate people and that sort of thing… It's not like we're sitting there poking or sending virtual cocktails." Indeed!

Consider the role Facebook played in coverage of the recent Federal Election. Politicians' FB pages became the source of stories – stories about their engagement (or lack thereof) with young voters, their popularity (Kevin Rudd kept having to create replica pages so he could add more FB friends…John Howard kept his page private because he had hardly any) and their capacity to interact with new technology. In short, their FB status became a metaphor for their social relevance.

And, as the US election approaches, Facebook is actually becoming another platform for media outlets to reach new audiences as newspapers and broadcasters struggle to keep pace with online media. ABC America not only allows its reporters to use Facebook at work its actually formed a ground-breaking partnership with FB to provide election coverage on the site. Reporters have been given their own pages to allow them to interact with audiences and a specific ABC-FB group, “US Politics”, has been established which effectively creates a mini, network-based, themed news-site on the platform allowing FB users to track coverage and participate in debate around the issues along with the reporting of them. So, ABC reporters may now find themselves adding ‘Facebook correspondent’ to their other roles as filers of traditional TV news stories and providers of text, audio, video and multimedia productions to the network’s online output. Watch that space – it’s a trend that’s likely to spread to these shores.

Meantime, Australian journalists also use the site for networking and debate with colleagues within their news organisation and from other media outlets. It provides an online version of the ‘pub debate’ model of reflexive practice that allows reporters to debrief, analyse and critique each others' work - a healthy professional practice which should be encouraged, not stifled. Employers should also consider the potential Occupational Health and Safety benefits of Facebook for journalists. It could, for example, serve a useful purpose in trauma-related recovery as journalists exposed to horrific events in their daily work find a safe space to discuss their feelings and experiences.

The other point for Channel 7 to consider relates to the role of Facebook as a marketing tool. It’s a virtual popularity index for individual members and is increasingly used by advertisers, celebrities and organisations to promote their products and causes. Seven’s celebrities and the programs in which they star are already featured on Facebook and there’s been an angry reaction from the network’s stable of stars to the FB blockade.

Someone needs to tell the bean counters at 7 Network headquarters that they’re peddling a false economy. Maybe they need a good trout-slapping via ‘superpoke’?

Declaration: I'm a certified Facebook addict and any attempt by the University of Canberra to block my access will be met with fierce opposition involving 'poking' with a blunt stick.    [read more]