MICHAEL MULLINS’ TINY LETTER

Pope Francis' most famous utterance 'Who am I to judge?' reflects the priority he gives to mercy as the hallmark of his papacy, and this as underlining his recent announcement of 2016 as the Holy Year of Mercy.

Mercy, he writes in his apostolic letter Evangelii Gaudium,must be freely given, in a climate in which 'everyone can feel welcomed, loved, forgiven and encouraged'.

Francis has himself given a good lead in the way he has sought to shame cultures and institutions – such as capitalism and banks – and not individuals.

Public shame has become quite a phenomenon in recent years, with the rise of social media. But unfortunately it has been less about criticising institutions than targeting individuals, often with the deliberate intention of hurting them.

This destructive behaviour is the subject of a new booktitled So You've Been Publicly Shamed, by Welsh journalist Jon Ronson. Ronson talks about ordinary people who put a foot wrong, often innocently, and are mercilessly pilloried for it in social media. It's a negative consequence of the democratisation of the media of public communication.

'The silent majority are getting a voice. But what are we doing with our voice? We are mercilessly finding people's faults.'

Some argue that the shaming of an individual can serve a useful function in terms of promoting positive and responsible behaviour. But, they also point out, it often causes lasting harm in the form of poor mental and physical health. They say it can activate the hyper-pituitary adrenal and immune systems.

But whether it is a useful reality-check or a psychologically crushing admonition from the peer group, it is always a less effective long term corrective than Pope Francis' idea of mercy, which 'gets involved by word and deed in people’s daily lives [and] bridges distances', rather than creating isolation.

During the Senate Inquiry of the past week, there has been a degree of public shaming of large corporations such as Apple, Microsoft, Google and Ikea, for systematic tax dodging. This is always better than pinning such reprehensible behaviour on individuals, who are more likely to respond with bitter denial that will only entrench their behaviour.

If we follow Pope Francis' example in criticising the culture rather than the person, we are more likely to get from 'offenders' the kind of humble self-revelatory actions that are characteristic of good public citizens. An example is the astonishing statement in 2011 from Warren Buffett, one of the world's richest citizens, who declared that he paid less tax than his employees, and that he and his wealthy friends have been 'coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress'.

Clearly Buffett did not feel isolated by public criticism of him as an individual. It is more likely that he recognised the truth in negative commentary on the culture of unbridled capitalism such as that we now hear from Pope Francis. In Francis' words, he would have felt 'welcomed, loved, forgiven and encouraged'.

Serious TV viewers have been celebrating last week’s arrival of legal Netflix on demand content, which offers ’all you can eat’ streaming for just $8.99 per month.

On the one hand, it makes pay TV more accessible to low income earners, who until recently were looking at an unaffordable $50 entry level Foxtel subscription.

But on the other, it’s really not good news for any of us, because effectively it will mean an end to the telling of Australian stories, as our screens become increasingly flooded with overseas content.

The big media corporations are lobbying Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull to waive licence fees and reform ownership rules so that they can consolidate and be ready to compete against the likes of Netflix in a new on-demand media environment that will see the end of media forms we know today, including printed newspapers and ‘appointment’ or scheduled network television.

Turnbull feels sorry for our media executives, who are suffering from the reality that the internet has lowered the barriers to entry to the media and, on face of it, fostered greater competition and diversity. This has enabled overseas publications such as The Guardian and the Daily Mail to establish themselves here with a modest outlay, taking significant market share while providing only a limited amount of Australian content.

But it seems our media companies are expecting the government to change the rules in their favour without a corresponding commitment to maintaining  localism. Much of the content of both the Murdoch tabloids, and Fairfax titles – and other media – is networked, with little or no recognition that there are still discrete cultural markings in different parts of Australia that demand particular treatments of national stories and adequate space for local stories.

It was only a few years ago that readers were crying foul when Fairfax announced plans to merge the Canberra bureaux of The Ageand the Sydney Morning Herald. It was argued that Victorian and New South Wales readers needed different coverage of federal politics to reflect their particular needs and concerns. That battle was lost.

Now it is drastic staff cuts that will reduce the ability of Fairfax’s regional newspapers to cover local stories and address concerns of their readers. Independent MP Cathy McGowan told Federal Parliament last week that regional newspapers such as her local Albury-Wodonga Border Mail play an important role providing local news, and job cuts and work practice changes would have an adverse impact on the region. The ABC’s MediaWatch addressed the issue last Monday, highlighting the newspaper’s proud past record in campaigning on behalf of the local community.

Netflix and the Daily Mail and the Huffington Post don’t care about whether people in a local area get a cancer centre, mental health resources, or safer roads, or if they know about what’s going on in their backyard. Nor, it seems, does Fairfax, or Murdoch’s Newscorp.

There was a time when nearly all media outlets were independent of each other, and locally owned, by proprietors who cared as much about the welfare of their regions and cities as they did their own bottom line. That was the case with the Border Mail, which was established by the Mott family in 1903 and held by them until Fairfax bought the paper in 2008.

Big media companies don't deserve favours from the Federal Government until they can demonstrate a commitment to localism. In the meantime, consumers may as well take advantage of the technological advances of the internet and enjoy Netflix and the Daily Mail.

Britain has emerged from recession with a stronger economy than other European countries. There is once again economic growth, but optimism is somewhat muted by a widening gap between rich and poor. The wealthy are enjoying increased prosperity and those on lower incomes are being left behind.

That is the picture painted last Wednesday by the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby in his landmarkspeech on ‘The Good Economy’.  As a former business executive who worked in the oil industry for more than a decade, he speaks with particular authority on economic issues. 

He acknowledges that market capitalism is an ‘extraordinarily efficient’ means of wealth distribution and liberator of human creativity, and that the alternatives ‘have always led to inhumanity or even tyranny’. But he explains that it too easily accommodates human greed and needs to be reconciled with social justice.

Welby’s ideas are familiar to those who have studied Catholic social teaching, particularly his definition of the ‘Good Economy’ as one that is based on the principle of subsidiarity. Subsidiarity requires economic decisions that directly enhance the creativity and well-being of human beings. This contrasts with the Thatcherite policies of conservative governments in the UK and Australia, which are unashamedly pro-business with the claim that they will create more jobs and everybody will benefit in the long run.  

The Archbishop says there is ‘a possibility, a great potential, for wealth to act as life-giving water, spreading through all the channels of our economy’, but wealth needs to go hand in hand with a narrative of gratuity, solidarity and subsidiarity that is ‘creative, generous, imaginative, responsible and communal’.

In making the point that a Good Economy is one in which everybody including the marginalised has a role to play, he refers to a speech that was delivered in the House of Lords last month by Jean Vanier, the esteemed founder of the L’Arche communities for the intellectually disabled.

‘We see there that sense that he has that those who the world sees as weak, through their disabilities, are those who can bring hope and strength in a lived out community.’

The context of Welby’s speech is a divided Britain that is preparing for a general election. London and the South East are forging ahead, but much of the rest of the country is still ‘trapped in apparently inevitable decline’. Prosperity belongs to a few but everybody has a vote.

If the UK is at a cross roads with its coming election, Australia is in not too dissimilar circumstances, with a government that is demonstrably out of touch with the majority of the population and going through some very public soul searching. 

Among Welby’s solutions for addressing the high levels of inequality is getting big business to pay its fair share of taxes. The same applies in Australia, with Dr Cassandra Goldie of ACOSS urging the Federal Government to tackle inefficient and unfair tax arrangements such as negative gearing and superannuation concessions for the wealthy.

As our Coalition MPs reconsider their direction in terms of leadership, we can hope that they will think about a 'slow cooking' economy that might grow at a reduced pace but has all Australians feeling they are involved and benefiting equally. 

Rupert Murdoch’s tweets about the Prince Philip knighthood were as bizarre as the knighthood itself. It’s clear that the Prime Minister will not comply with Murdoch’s wishes because they were expressed so publicly and in such a self-discrediting manner. 

But if his directions had been issued behind closed doors, they might have been taken seriously and acted upon.

Who is really in power is always an interesting, important and often depressing question. The common good so often has little to do with the way the nation is governed. In many areas of public policy, vested interests rule.

Former top public servant turned blogger John Menadue is often critical of the influence the multinational drug companies and other interests on government health policy. He wrote during the week that the reason reform is so difficult is that health ministers are in office but not in power. ‘The AMA has a long and dubious history in opposing key health reforms going back to its opposition to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme In 1942’.

Vested interests have stymied most, if not all, areas of policy reform in recent years, especially taxation. That has to be the only explanation for why negative gearing and superannuation concessions for the wealthy have remained untouched during the so-called budget emergency. 

Often the vested interests will manipulate public opinion with expensive public relations campaigns that turn the public will against the public good. That is the case with the mining companies and the super profits tax that was repealed by the Abbott Government.

De facto government by vested interests can be legal or illegal. Recently we have been witnessing the proceedings of the ICAC in NSW, and in the 80s in Queensland there was the Fitzgerald Commission of Inquiry into Possible Illegal Activities and Associated Police Misconduct. The Commission’s successful outcome led to the public interest and the workings of government being brought back into alignment, for a time.

The former Commissioner Tony Fitzgerald gave a rare and notable interview on Wednesday to the ABC’s Leigh Sales, in the lead up to Saturday’s state election. He said that as post corruption inquiry premier Wayne Goss set a new high standard for good governance, Campbell Newman has set a new low standard. 

Wayne Goss himself was an outstanding personality, a great leader, a man of great integrity… And then Beattie came in, and I'd say that throughout that period, from Borbidge, Beattie and then Anna Bligh, although I didn't watch a lot of it very closely, there's been a constant movement away, bit by bit, to the old-style politics.

Does it anger voters that vested and/or corrupt interests so often call the shots? Often it doesn’t because bad governance has become the norm and people lose sight of what they’re entitled to expect. It is only when corrupt or unelected powers become discredited that alternative possibilities become apparent and proper governance has a chance to flourish. The Fitzgerald Inquiry thoroughly discredited Queensland’s state government and a number of its instruments. It’s possible that Murdoch’s erratic and inopportune tweets will sow the seeds of his fall from power and influence. 

Bali Nine drug runners Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan are on track to be executed by firing squad during the first half of this year. A letter rejecting Sukumaran’s presidential clemency bid was hand-delivered to Bali's Kerobokan prison by an Indonesian government official earlier this month. A similar outcome is expected for Chan before a date is set for the pair to be executed together.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott stressed that Australia would make ‘the strongest possible representations’ on behalf of Sukumaran. ‘Australia opposes the death penalty. We oppose the death penalty for Australians at home and abroad’.

Abbott deserves praise for his focus on our abhorrence of the death penalty, and his avoidance of the argument that they are model prisoners who have turned their lives around, even though the evident truth of that provides a solid basis to urge the granting of presidential appeals for clemency. Such appeals make the decision to take or spare human life an act of political will, and going down this track is an uncomfortable compromise for those who believe that the death penalty is wrong per se. As a value, human life becomes relative to President Widodo’s otherwise commendable political will to combat drug addiction. It is no longer absolute.

It should be stressed that any acceptance of the death penalty as an option, is incompatible with upholding human life as an absolute value. The image of Indonesia as a mature and civilised nation is diminished, and the actions of an Indonesian state firing squad are different to those of Islamic State executioners only by degree. They signal an Indonesia turning back to a barbaric past evidenced in atrocities in East Timor (with Australian Government acquiescence), and the disregard for human life that accompanied Sukarno’s demise as depicted in the 2012 film The Act of Killing, again without opposition from Australia.

Where Abbott does not do himself any credit is in his qualification that Australia’s ’strongest possible representations’ on Sukumaran’s behalf will be subject to the need to avoid jeopardising Australia’s relationship with Indonesia. Not only does it suggest that Australia can accommodate Indonesian state barbarism (as it did under Whitlam). It is also an unequivocal declaration that opposing the death penalty is less important than the effort to stop asylum seeker boats from reaching Australian waters. We can recall the Abbott Government’s insistence in its early days in office that the boats must be stopped even if it upsets Indonesia. Indonesia was duly upset, but relations bounced back, as they always do. There is no reason to fear our long term good relations with Indonesia could not withstand strong and unqualified opposition to the death penalty. 

Further, we need to put the Australian Government’s accommodation of Indonesia in the context of its support for America’s effort to disable Islamic State and its barbarous practices. Human life as an absolute is a core value we are seeking to uphold on behalf of many innocent populations in the Middle East. If we act on our belief that killing human beings is not OK in these distant lands, why can’t we take a more decisive stand against the taking of human life on our doorstep? 

Blake Society Chair Rev Dr Rod Pattenden has written about the power of religion to maintain our ‘tribal’ differences while at the same time acting as a resource for dissolving the false boundaries in our society that hold us back from a spirit of ‘generous understanding’ of each other.

The announcement of the winners of the Blake Prize for religious art is usually a welcome demonstration of the fact that corporate sponsors recognise the role religious imagination has to play in our society. But the apprehension at Saturday’s event at the UNSW Paddington Campus in Sydney was a sign that this recognition is faltering, and that the 63rd award of the Prize may be the last.

Without a major sponsor for the past seven years the prize is in desperate need of a miracle to maintain its running costs of around $60,000. Pattenden spoke about the ‘big hole’ in the Blake’s finances that needs to be addressed.

‘In approaching sponsors, many of them recognise that spirituality is a difficult, if not prickly, subject for consideration in Australia,’ he told Fairfax. ‘Sponsors prefer their art to be popular and safe.’

On Saturday the main prize of $25,000 was awarded to Melbourne artist Richard Lewer for his hand-drawn animation that depicts the story of elderly Perth man Bernie Erikson, who survived a failed suicide pact with his wife. Lewer said he wanted to raise questions about euthanasia as a live issue in a way that did not judge the morality of Erikson’s actions.

Pattenden described the winning entry as a beguiling work that presents a complex story of love and death in a simple story-like form. ‘It invites reflection and the format is really very beautiful and the soft compassionate voice of the artist leaves us with questions to consider’.

The Blake includes a poetry prize and a Human Justice Award, which was awarded on Saturday to another Melbourne artist – Hedy Ritterman – for her depiction of 96 year old Richard with his hands on a museum plinth holding a belt that is his only possession that survived his World War II incarceration in concentration camps (pictured).

Works such as this command our attention and deep reflection, and they defy our society’s demand for commodification. Our fickle politics of the past few years shows that the majority of Australians are prepared to gloss over serious issues such as how to answer the life and death needs of the refugees whose lives have been disrupted by the wars we wage. 

Politicians are driven by opinion polls, and most corporate sponsors are inclined to follow their lead. The Blake is looking for sponsors and philanthropists that value the asking of difficult and unpopular questions.

Among silly season news stories in the media this year is the trivialising treatment of Greens Senator Larissa Waters' deadly serious call for parents to avoid buying Christmas toys that gender stereotype their children.

She quotes a No Gender December campaign coordinator's declaration that 'women mow lawns and men push prams, but while we've moved on, many toy companies haven't'. Waters says apparently harmless child gender stereotypes can adversely affect self-perception and career aspirations, and even end in domestic violence that echoes the bullying many have experienced as children.

Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi heard about the media release and thought his fellow senator had 'consumed too much Christmas eggnog'. He said: 'To say you're giving a boy a truck or a hammer is somehow leading to domestic violence and gender pay gaps is simply bizarre'. He had in mind the so-called 'gender wars' of the 1970s, rather than all the work that has been done to identify the causes of young people committing suicide.

Meanwhile there was a mixed message from the Prime Minister, who sniggered and joked about political correctness as he uttered the cliche 'let boys be boys, let girls be girls'. But then he was spot on when he went on to declare: 'Above all else, let parents do what they think is in the best interests of their children.'

Of course all devoted parents work hard to make sure their children are 'happy little Vegemites'. Mostly, thoughtful choice of appropriately gendered toys, clothing and other accoutrements, helps to give children a sense of psychological fulfilment. These things often have them feeling one with their environment and not on its margins. 

Parents put love before dogma in supporting their children to come to terms with who they are with respect to gender. Dogma refers to social norms and expectations in the various sectors of society. Tony Abbott's utterance 'Let boys be boys, let girls be girls – that's always been my philosophy' is  an expression of dogma. It is, to turn his slur on himself, politically correct. 

Dogma is part of a deductive process that does real harm to people who don't measure up to expectations. Dogma judges and excludes them. They feel alienated from family and various social groups and units of society and develop a sense that their life is unworthy. A logical consequence of that is that they can be driven to thoughts of suicide. 

The Church is often perceived to put dogma before love, and the desire to redress this was behind discussion that took place at the Synod on the Family, reflecting Pope Francis' 'Who am I to judge?' approach to acknowledging and affirming diversity.

'Who am I to judge?' has become a catchphrase very much identified with the pontificate of Pope Francis. It can also act as a reality check formula for parents of children struggling to establish gender identity. 

Parents must understand that choices of toys for Christmas that are based on dogmas such as 'blue for boys, pink for girls' do not necessarily make their children contented or help them to grow into fulfilled adults. It's much better if parents are able to discern what really makes their children happy and to act on that, even if it means that they themselves end up on the margins of society.

Dempster did not name the manager, but last Monday the incoming Director of Radio Michael Mason told a meeting of Radio National (RN) staff that they would suffer disproportionately because the ABC had to ‘reshape the network for the digital future’. He went on to announce extensive cuts to RN’s specialist programs.

RN is the home of specialisation at the ABC, and religion has been one of its signature specialisations, because of the public broadcaster’s ‘cultural diversity’ charter obligation, and the fact that, often and increasingly, there is a deeper religious or spiritual explanation to what is happening in our world that eludes most, if not all, other mainstream media.

Yet religion is a particular target of the ‘reshaping’, with a 40 per cent staff loss compared to 10 per cent in other RN program areas. At the time of writing, the only program to remain in its current form is Andrew West's Religion and Ethics Report, though it will suffer from the 70 per cent cut to resources for religious programs. There will be less depth in Rachael Kohn's The Spirit of Things, with its air time being reduced, and the ABC’s longest running radio program Encounter will be absorbed into a new program that belongs to the features genre.

‘Genre’ is RN management’s new buzzword, but it’s hard to fathom why. That is because it does not sit well with Managing Director Mark Scott’s ‘digital future’ vision, as long as the the widely accepted ‘content is king’ meme continues to apply to digital publishing industry practice. 

Genre is associated with form, which is opposed to content. It allows for the endless repetition of single and superficial ideas, while the principle of specialisation provides multifaceted checks and balances to guard against this. Each discipline offers a different way of looking at the world, and isolating one from others allows us to reach the greater depth of understanding required by the ‘cultural diversity’ charter obligation. 

Meanwhile the curse of digital technology is that it is too easy to publish the same thought in as many forms or ‘genres’ as we like. That’s why content is indeed king and an ABC that values specialisation is perfectly positioned to shine in the digital world. It’s just a pity that the management ‘nincompoops’ don’t appear to grasp this. 

Of particular concern is news that those managers who do understand – the guardians of specialisation at the ABC – have been made redundant or had their roles reduced. Religious TV executive producer Rose Hesp – who is responsible for Compass and the purchase of the BBC’s Songs of Praise, which the ABC is cancelling – is going, and the role her RN equivalent Jane Jeffes is being diluted.   

Rupert Murdoch has been accused of manipulating the Abbott Government to ensure the emasculation of the ABC, as payback for the support that helped it win the 2013 Federal Election. It’s not the size of the cuts that are likely to deliver what Murdoch wants, but management’s decisions in implementing them.

In a surprise move during the week, Senators Jacqui Lambie and Ricky Muir joined Labor, the Greens and other independents in passing a disallowance motion that reverses changes that watered down Future of Financial Advice (FoFA) legislation that was designed to protect consumers.

In 2012, Labor enacted the original legislation that put an end to commissions and bonuses linked to the sale of financial products recommended by financial advisers. Financial advisers were banned from receiving commissions and instead needed to charge clients – rather than the big banks – a fee for their services. 

For a short time, consumers no longer received ‘free’ financial advice. But they could be more trusting of their advisers because, like anybody in business or the professions, financial advisers look after the interests of those who pay them. This was now consumers rather than the big banks. 

But unsurprisingly, the banks were not happy with this, and successfully lobbied the Coalition Government to weaken Labor’s consumer protection legislation. The Government was able to put the banks’ wishes into law as soon as Finance Minister Matthias Cormann could persuade Clive Palmer to reverse his opposition to diluting Labor’s protections.

The battle between big business and consumer advocates over who gets to pay financial advisers has broader implications for the provision of professional services in the community, particularly in health and education. It reaches into the important issue of public trust.

A few years ago leading educators endorsed the practice of companies such as McDonald's funding numeracy and literacy programs in schools because governments did not have the funds that were needed. It goes without saying that school principals and teachers will avoid doing anything to offend those who are paying for their programs, at the very least. In all likelihood, many will put in a good word for McDonald’s, or whoever is providing sponsorship funds.

Corporate ‘partnerships’ with schools and other other organisations providing human services, such as welfare agencies, are now common. It is true that these sources of funding enable a lot of good to be done. But at every point it has to be asked who is calling the shots. The companies would not be in it if their involvement was not demonstrably serving their bottom line. Otherwise their shareholders would have good reason to revolt.

Now that cuts to the ABC are being announced, we are reminded that it is Australia’s most trusted media organisation and public opinion leader. The reason is simple – the public is paying for it. Its charter, management and staff have always been fervently opposed to sponsorship. If the ABC ever accepts advertising or other forms of sponsorship, trust will be eroded.

We need to recognise the importance of instilling and maintaining trust in all our public institutions and professional practices so that they serve the interest of the community ahead of that of big business. They're worth paying for.

The Murdoch press was reporting on Friday that Australian warships had been dispatched to ‘intercept’ the Russian flotilla ‘steaming towards the G20 summit in Brisbane’, suggesting there could be open hostilities between the two countries.

The Daily Telegraph ran with the headline ’Vlad’s naval subterfuge’, as if it was part of a Russian plot to undermine what the Telegraph termed ‘our’ G20.

Such theatrics are as much about Australian media reporting of the ships as they are about the passage of the ships themselves. Could it even be that the press was conspiring with the Abbott Government to undermine the G20 in the wake of the climate change action momentum that was established during the week at APEC? Whatever it was about, it’s clear that more serious heads needed to prevail for the G20 to maintain its relevance and Australia its credentials to host important events that do not concern sport.

The Australian Government was indeed blindsided by the groundbreaking and ambitious emissions target agreement between the US and China at APEC. The US said it would cut emissions by 26-28 per cent below 2005 levels by 2025. China pledged to peak emissions around 2030, though it will be aiming to achieve this sooner. Long-term targets present a particular problem for the Abbott Government because deeper emissions cuts would be very expensive under its Direct Action policy.

Obviously the Government feared what opposition leader Bill Shorten was pointing to when he made the optimistic suggestion that the Brisbane G20 ‘could become famous for the fusing of the economic, environmental and security imperatives for climate action’. Shorten imagined that, in the lead-up to next year’s Paris conference, we could be talking about what the ‘Brisbane Declaration’ had to say on climate change. 

Whatever the legacy of the Brisbane G20, the mostly behind the scenes conversation among leaders, and the sharing of conviction that can eventually lead to formal resolutions and action, was all important. That is what would have preceded the resolution on carbon emissions targets at APEC, and it is what many groups mindful of the condition of life for future generations, were quietly hoping for.

One of these groups was the religious leaders from Australia who signed an open letter to leaders of the Brisbane G20. They regard the earth as sacred, and insist that it is our human responsibility to protect it. They say that this requires leaders to commit to a rapid transition away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy, and they point out that ‘It is entirely possible to create thriving economies that are also sustainable’. 

This points to what is perhaps the new phase of climate denial – attempting to assert that investment in renewable energy is not also good for the economy, and indeed better for the economy than keeping with fossil fuels. China seems to have accepted this, while Australia has gone backwards.

If the G20 was to be properly successful, it was likely that Abbott would lose face. But it is important that advocates for climate change action did not see such an outcome in itself as a triumph. Instead of gloating, they must themselves maintain a humble posture and attempt to shepherd the Government towards the reality and opportunity that China and the US embraced at APEC.