The ugly side of the Bush visit

Caption and photo from NY Times: Prime Minister John Howard of Australia, center, kept two Green Party lawmakers away from President Bush, far right with his head turned from the camera, after Mr. Bush's speech to Parliament Thursday. The legislators had heckled Mr. Bush during his speech, criticizing his foreign policy

It's taken me a little to absorb all of the pieces of George W Bush's visit to Australia this week. It was a brief visit in which President Bush was not seen by members of the Australian public as he was ushered from one staged event to the next. Which is fine. No Australian has a right to see, meet or speak to him (unless the Prime Minister invites you to his 'unofficial' barbeque with the Prez).

Australians should have access to their Parliament House. There is a public gallery after all. It seems members of the public couldn't get within a kilometre of the place due to 'security considerations'.

Our (political) representatives had some access as Bush addressed a joint sitting of the Parliament, which, as Parliament was not officially sitting cost Australian taxpayers upwards of $2M to stage.

The Prime Minister spoke. The Leader of the Opposition spoke. The President spoke. Simon Crean, the Labor leader and Leader of the Opposition spoke well and managed to drive home the point that Australia had a lot in common with the US, admired the US but didn't always agree with the US. [Crean speech]

And a couple of Greens senators interjected during Bush's speech. While John Howard went puce with rage, Bush handled it well saying spontaneously, "I love free speech" as the Senators were ordered to leave.

Both Brown and Nettle refused to leave. Brown even shook Bush's hand after the address that was capped by a standing ovation while Nettle tried to pass the U.S. president some papers, which Bush refused.

Brown -- an outspoken critic of the war in Iraq and a campaigner to have two Australian nationals held at the U.S. base in Guantanamo Bay returned to Australia -- interrupted Bush as the president was talking about the end of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq.

"I didn't shout anything, I spoke very loudly so that President Bush got the message about the two Australians who are illegally held at Guantanamo Bay after President Bush repatriated the four Americans from that hell hole," Brown told CNN.

"But I did say to President Bush, 'Respect Australia. Return the Australians to this nation for justice and if you respect the world's laws, the world will respect you.'"

Prime Minister John Howard labeled Brown's outbursts "something of an embarrassment."

"Bob Brown did it quite deliberately," Howard said in a radio interview. "It was a politically contrived stunt." [Source: CNN]

(I have previously discussed the two Australians held at Guantanamo Bay. They were allegedly training with Al Quaeda but as yet have not been tried so it is unclear what the charges are.)

Mike Carlton in the Sydney Morning Herald said, "Brown did no more than exercise a parliamentarian's right to speak in Parliament. What it may have lacked in courtesy, I suppose, it more than made up in its assertion of a once much valued trait of the Australian character - a robust questioning of authority."

Better impolite than undemocratic

Senators Brown and Nettle certainly acted in an impolite way to a guest in Parliament House. However you can imagine it came from a great sense of frustration. Bob Brown request to make a speech in Parliament was declined. As you can see from the photograph that leads this, the Prime Minister and members of his cabinet physically blocked Brown from getting close to Bush.

Perhaps John Howard took Bush's labelling him a 'man of steel' too literally. If Bush was in physical danger then he has a cadre of secret service agents to step in. Why was Howard and his crew physically restraining a democratically elected representative of the Australian people from meeting an invited guest? This picture really speaks volumes.

While Howard accused Bob Brown of a "politically contrived stunt" it is John Howard who turned the whole visit into a political stunt and in so doing stomped on our democracy.

Every aspect of the visit was stage managed to ensure that John Howard controlled it for maximum political gain. Simon Crean managed a single 20 minute audience with George Bush, despite more Australian's voting for his party than John Howard's in the last election. (Howard is in government as the leader of a coalition between his Liberal Party and the National Party).

Alan Ramsay (of SMH) in commenting on the exclusion of Crean, "...the Opposition Leader was left out in mugsville. He was not included in the welcome at Canberra airport, in the farewell, in the ceremony at the War Memorial, or in the barbecue at the Lodge, the only social occasion Bush would agree to. Even the press gallery was represented at the lunch by its president, Malcolm Farr of The Daily Telegraph. But not the Leader of the Australian Opposition. If nothing else, you'd have thought protocol if not manners might have extended an invitation to Crean."

Crean was not invited to the barbeque at the Prime Minister's Official Residence as it was not an 'official event'. I am sure that we the Australian taxpayers officially paid for it! Instead there was a mix of radio shock jocks, captains of industry and cricketers and sportsmen (they were all men), and Steve Irwin, The Crocodile Hunter, who stayed true to form in his Khaki shorts in Parliament (the 'public' gallery) and at the BBQ.

A free press?

Unlike the US, a free press is not enshrined in any aspect of Australian Law, though they are regulated - some of the rules on local content will become points of contention in the free trade agreement which is being secretly negotiated with the US. That is not paranoia. It is being negotiated behind closed doors and we the Australian people (and less at risk the US people) have no say in what concessions may be made.

Back to the media. Again it was a matter of tight handling from John Howard. There was no press conference with Howard and Bush. Australian journalists clearly could not be trusted to be as compliant and diplomatic as their American counterparts.

If we live in a robust democracy and if we are visited by a world leader who avows that he loves free speech then why are Bush and Howard so afraid of these journalists? What have they got to hide or deny?

Geoff Kitney in the Sydney Morning HeraldIt is surely somewhat extraordinary that a historic moment such as this, when the world's most powerful democratic leader visits one of the world's most successful democracies, with the chief goal of heaping praise on his hosts for their courage in going to war for freedom and democracy in Iraq and elsewhere, is marked by a virtual lock-out of opportunity for questioning and discussion.

The rules of Parliament block the media from bringing in video cameras. The Government shoots its own vision for sharing with the media (more image control).

Against the rules and the wishes of the Speaker of the House (aka the referee or umpire of debates) CNN managed to get a camera in. This could only have been aided by US Government officials. I am pleased it happened as it was the only way we got any sort of sense of how the scenes in Parliament unfolded. Australian TV channels had to buy the CNN coverage to show the Australian people what happened in their Parliament. Left to the Prime Minister, Australians would be kept completely in the dark.

That incident is my summary from the Margot Kingston article, "Parliament greets Bush: A day in the life of our faltering democracy" Yet again Margot has the real news and insights. It is long but well worth reading.

By the way the New York Times article which has the Australian Prime Minister and his people manhandling the Senator Brown Senator Nettle and was the 5th most emailed article from the New York Times in the past 24 hours. That motivated me to at least provide some more details for international readers.