The move by the Palaszczuk government to cut the number of parliamentary advisors allotted to the Katter Australia Party is a great demonstration of how an authoritarian cast of mind can present itself as a champion of liberal values.
The KAP has three members in the Queensland parliament, led by the son of Bob Katter, Robbie Katter, or Bob Katter Jnr. (Since Bob is himself the son of the late Bob Katter, a far more formidable type than his progeny, I guess they should be Bob Jnr, and Bob Jnr Jnr.) The KAP was awarded several extra advisers as a price for their support after Campbell Newman — remember him? — was turfed out and a hung parliament elected. It’s a not unusual deal.
Now, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk is being taunted by the LNP about the deal because the mad Katters have failed to condemn former One Notion senator Fraser Anning, whose nativist speech contained the nasty, attention-getting phrase “final solution” regarding Muslim immigration. So the govt has removed the extra advisors, saying that “freedom of speech does not mean freedom from responsibility”. The irony — it is barely irony — is that Palaszczuk is using totalitarian methods to combat allegedly totalitarian speech. To remove support from a parliamentary party, even if it was extra support, for what they have said, or even worse, for their refusal to say something, is an attempt to control speech within a parliament through non-speech means.
That is thuggery, nothing more, nothing less. Why stop at the extra advisers? Why not remove KAP’s paid staffing altogether? Surely such paid staffing is facilitating abhorrent speech as much as the extra staffing? Ah, but such a move would reveal how anti-democratic the Queensland government is being.
Meanwhile, the Palaszczuk government has contracted with Serco to run a women’s prison, which will be substantially composed of Indigenous women jailed for non-violent crimes, or petty assaults incidental to alcohol abuse. This is handing incarceration to a firm that presided over rampant sexual abuse and inmate enslavement at the Yarl’s Wood detention centre in the UK, the illegal eviction of asylum seekers from Serco-run accommodation in Glasgow, presiding over a regime of self-harm and brutality on Christmas Island, and letting violence spread in remand centres they ran in New Zealand.
This is a firm that a Labor government should have nothing to do with. They are essentially selling women, selling black skin, to get a difficult issue off the books — abandoning the responsibility of progressive governments to find ways other than incarceration to deal with minor crimes and their social causes. All that and using financial threats to curb free speech.
What an interesting approach Anastasia Palaszczuk has to fighting fascism.
It’s all so clumsy and brazen, you’d swear Palaszczuk was a premier from an earlier era in Qld. 🙁
“This Fascism Kills Fascists …. & Makes Martyrs” what a bridge too far.
“Moderation”? …. Using terms used in the article? …. Misquoting Woody Guthrie?
When the ALP at whatever level adopts the neo-liberal dogma of contracting out for private profit taking services that are essentially a public responsibility, it should be called out in the same way and to the same extent as would other proponents.
SERCO is a global profit taker; it engages in race to the bottom employment practices; it has an established record in exploitative cost saving delivery of services to the needy in many nations; its own accountability for the roles in which it has sponged off the taxpayers dollar is abysmal; it harasses those of its employees who attempt to throw light on its operations.
Shame on Palaszczuk and her Cabinet for the decision to establish SERCO as its agent for corrective services for an already grossly disadvantaged subculture of prisoners.
The decision should remind those who care that, like a winter suntan on the gold coast, ALP commitments to engaging inequality and the gig economy, soon wash off leaving a neoliberal policy palour.
Bollocks, Rundle. I don’t want my tax dollars as a Qld tax payer to go anywhere near this rotten, feral party. Bang on all you like about totalitarianism and freedom to speak, but Katter’s mindless nongs deserve constant condemnation not appeasement.
I agree. Rundle’s argument is just pure tripe. Go back and read Herbert Marcuse’s ‘One Dimensional Man’ on repressive tolerance. For how long are you going to tolerate and fight for the rights of fascists to free speech? Until they’re knocking on your door? Get real. The principle of ‘free speech’ cannot, must not, be used in an absolute sense. And the Premier of Queensland is quite right, in my view, to strike back at those who use this principle to denigrate and harm others, and to limit their rights to free speech.
Way to make a political alliance issue into a free speech issue.
Palaszczuk made a political deal with Katter in a minority government situation which included extra resources. Palaszczuk has now ended that deal because being politically allied with Katter is no longer either necessary or palatable. This is exactly why political alliances do and should end- over principle.
By this standard, if someone votes for the Liberal Party it is fascism and censorship to stop voting for the Liberal Party.
We can talk about the ethics of doing deals for minority government like Palaszczuk did with Katter, absolutely, but that’s a different issue. With that deal done, though, the idea that ending the deal is fascism is absurd.
If Palaszcuk was cutting the Katter Party’s regular staff entitlements that everyone else gets, that would be different.