MICHAEL MULLINS’ TINY LETTER

There has been a rush to purchase shares in Medibank Private since the Federal Government’s sale offer opened last Tuesday. Just two days later, the broker allocation was already eight times over-subscribed. 

The popularity of the share float is not surprising, as past sales of government owned corporations such as Telstra have produced windfall profits for cashed up Australians able to invest. The sales are also hugely profitable for the Government, which in the case of Medibank Private expects to raise more than $4 billion. Win-win, it would seem, at least for those who can afford to participate.

But there’s an important question that needs to be asked, which is whether Medibank Private is the Government’s to sell. In other words, what are the rights of the policy holders who consider themselves members with equity in the company?

There is a view that the government merely provided $10 million seed funding for the establishment of Medibank Private, as a member equity owned entity, and that that fund allocation has since been returned to the government many times over. Ray Williams, the public servant who created Medibank Private, saysthe plan to sell the business and keep the profits is tantamount to theft.

If member ownership was to be established, possibly by a High Court judgment, the policy holders would receive an allocation of shares, as has been the case with other entities that have been owned co-operatively. Examples including the demutualisation of NRMA Insurance in 2000. 

The New Daily online publication has been campaigning to establish the fact of Medibank Private’s policy holder ownership. It has published communications to policy holders in the 1990s demonstrating an understanding that ownership entitlements were among the benefits of remaining in the fund. One policy holder considering leaving was told: ‘We would be very sorry to see you lose the equity you have built up with the fund.’ New Daily published the ‘smoking gun’ letter.

John Menadue, who has been covering the issue in his blog, says the balance sheets of Medibank Private before 1997 clearly show that the members, and not the government, owned the assets of the company. He points out that the Howard Government changed the accounting treatment of Medibank Private 1997 in an attempt to establish government ownership by stealth.

The New Daily reports that at least 60 members have lodged complaints with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission demanding an investigation into statements made to them by federal governments before 1998 that they were the owners of the health fund’s assets. There is also documentation and a petition at change.org.

Aside from The New Daily and John Menadue, there has been little media coverage or public discussion of the issue. That’s surprising, because generally the media take any opportunity to embarrass the government. 

It could be that many of us are conflicted because we want to buy as many shares as we can in Medibank Private to get a share of the windfall. Whatever the explanation, the question of justice to the fund members is less important than that of the inequity of the entire system of private health insurance. Those who cannot afford the premiums receive inferior health care, and the government’s increasing reliance on public health insurance, and continued subsidies to those who can pay, undermine Medicare, the system of universal health care that does not exclude the poor.

As if it is itself a virus, Australia’s compassion deficiency in connection with asylum seekers has spread. Our government is now unwilling to send health care workers or Defence personnel to join the fight against Ebola in West Africa.

It has its reasons. Officials have advised that a return flight to Australia would take 30 hours, long enough for a health care worker with symptoms of the disease to die. Australia has been unable to secure an ironclad guarantee from the US, UK or a European country that they would treat an Australian worker. 

But what does an ‘ironclad guarantee’ mean when the context is one of compassion between citizens of different nations? If these nations are willing to open their hearts and resources to West African victims of the Ebola crisis, why would they not be willing to also help Australian Ebola victims? The Government’s thinking defies the logic of compassion, which says that if there is a will, there is always a way.

Australia is prepared to risk the lives of Defence personnel by sending them to face danger and uncertainty in the Middle East, where the motivation is essentially border protection rather than compassion. Aside from any deaths or injuries, many members of the Defence forces will return to Australia from the Middle East suffering post-traumatic stress disorder and place a strain on mental health services for decades to come. 

This is a price Australia is willing to pay to put down threats to the existing system of international sovereignty. We label those threats ‘terror’ and are quick to wage war against them. At the same time, we are oblivious to what terrifies human beings elsewhere on the planet, when it comes to providing the help that is most needed. We have lost the ability to reach out to others in need. To use the obvious analogy from the Parable of the Good Samaritan, Australia is the priest who passed by on the other side of the road.

Upon assuming office, the Government announced that Australia was ‘open for business’ and that it would ‘cut red tape’ to ensure that international investors regard us as a good place to put their money. It’s all about making Australia – already one of the richest nations on earth financially – even richer. But when asked to reach out to people in need in other parts of the world, the Government is prepared to impose extra layers of red tape.

Other nations and non government organisations apply Australia’s ‘open for business’ mindset to humanitarian emergencies. For example the Jesuit Refugee Service emphasises flexibility and rapid response in the way that it responds to international emergencies. President Obama has acted quick to dispatch 3000 military personnel to West Africa. They will train as many as 500 health care workers a week, erect 17 heath care facilities in Liberia of 100 beds each, and much more. For its part, Australia is putting red tape in place to stop skilled individual volunteers who are willing and able to travel to West Africa.

With promised cuts to the ABC upon us, the Corporation’s friends and enemies are out in force. 

This week’s bad news for the ABC was the Government’s appointment to its Board of commercial media financial controller Peter Lewis, who conducted the recent efficiency review that is the precursor to the imminent cuts. That makes it more likely than ever that the forces of economic rationalism will control the destiny of one of Australia’s most important creative and intellectual institutions.

The good news is that Essential polling has revealed that a majority of Australians is worried about cuts to the ABC. So if the government is more driven by polls than ideology, it will go easy on the public broadcaster. As Crikey pointed out on Thursday, there’s not a lot a government can do about the ABC’s popularity and the reality that cutting its revenue would be electoral poison.

Perhaps the greatest threat to the integrity of the ABC is that its management might be tempted to also go easy on the Government, in the hope that a relatively cosy relationship might work for both, minimising both electoral fallout for the government and cuts for the ABC. 

There are already signs of this occurring, with ABC management compliant in foreshadowing cuts to programs it considers expensive and expendable, thereby shielding the minister from public criticism and from having to justify his government’s blood-letting. Management appears, here, to be playing a politically partisan role which is certainly not in the national interest.

There is always a danger that ABC management will, wittingly or unwittingly, do the government’s work for it in a number of ways, including some that appear to be in the best interest of all Australians. For example, there is the coming week’s Mental As program blitz that is designed to promote mental health awareness. 

It is all about healing individuals, overcoming stigma, and enhancing the well-being of all Australians. Hardly anything we would want to discourage. But there is the sense that the ABC is doing what is properly the task of a government funded agency, rather than a broadcaster that usually aims to include in its programs a healthy dose of skepticism that is not compatible with such campaigns or focused messaging. 

Of course an exception can and should be made for a cause such as mental health. However there’s a good chance this will create a precedent, and the government might lean on the ABC to do something similar to push contentious causes such as the Anzac centenary next April. The revival and promotion of the Anzac myth began under former Prime Minister John Howard, and is criticised as a conservative ideological construct that is brainwashing the nation’s children.

The ABC will always have a complicated relationship with the government. Perhaps Malcolm Turnbull is mistaken when he talks up the importance this relationship when he says ‘a public broadcaster’s revenues are a function of its lobbying skills’. The Corporation is at its best when it ignores the government and focuses on its purpose and the people who are its audiences. If the people love their ABC, it won’t be necessary for its management to lobby poll-sensitive governments for funding. 

It is a regrettable reality of human nature that witnessing the suffering and anguish of particular individuals can be a source of entertainment for the rest of us. Making fun of mental illness has a long history that unfortunately continues to the present day. 

This was highlighted in the past week in the reporting of plans of the Royal Agricultural Society of WA to offer an amusement at this year’s Perth Royal Show based on the notorious Bethlem Sanatorium in London, commonly known as Bedlam.

Bethlem was known for its cruel treatment of mental illness patients as far back as the 13th century. Today it provides specialist care for more than 450,000 sufferers a year, and seeks to avoid the deliberate stigmatisation that was for so long part of its method of operation. The Perth Show attraction was to feature actors posing as disturbed psychiatric patients from centuries ago, when they were displayed as a public spectacle.

The chief executive of the trust that runs Bethlem, Dr Matthew Patrick, said in an open letter that the attraction would ‘foster discrimination and promote the perception of “scary mental health patients” which [would] undoubtedly deter people from seeking the help they need’. 

Mental health advocates criticised the Perth Show’s reinforcement of negative and inaccurate stereotypes. SANE Australia’s Jack Heath said: ‘We had thought that these sorts of attitudes or making jokes about these sorts of things had been put to bed, you know, 10 - 20 years ago, so it’s a great surprise to us.’

Mental Health Australia CEO Frank Quinlan said he was most concerned by the Agricultural Society’s ‘perpetuating the sort of idea that mental illness is something abhorrent and something that affects others and something that we should be frightened of.’

In reality, he said, mental health is something we are all close to. ‘One in five Australians experience a mental illness every year.’

The Agricultural Society has responded to the criticism by merely modifying the attraction, removing all references to mental health. However it remains to be seen whether the revised theme of ‘the outbreak of a deadly contagion’ represents much of an improvement. 

Judging from what we know, it is still a something of a freak show, stigmatising individuals and making fun of their suffering. If we ask ourselves how we should approach contagion, we might urge the physical isolation of those carrying the ebola virus, for example. But not their stigmatisation. The plight of these humans is certainly not a subject for amusement.

The Agricultural Society of WA has been around since 1831 and is apparently a respected and influential institution within the community. Its chief executive Peter Cooper claims the Show is ‘the most important community event in the State’. But his limp response to the Bethlem attraction controversy suggests the Society was more interested in appeasing critics than exercising leadership by fostering responsible social attitudes.

It could have owned the criticism and made a positive statement about understanding mental illness and how to deal with it. But instead the statement merely said the Society did not want to cause offence.

The Federal Government is set to release the report from its Renewable Energy Target (RET) Review Panel chaired by businessman Dick Warburton, with a decision to follow within weeks.

The review recommends a significant scaling back of Australia’s renewable energy scheme, with two options. One is closing the scheme to new entrants, and the other is supporting new renewable energy power generation only when electricity demand is increasing.

Even if the report’s recommendations do not make it through the Senate, it’s likely that it has landed a fatal blow on the renewable energy industry by destroying investor confidence. It’s the ‘sovereign risk’ effect was used as the major argument against the mining super profits tax.

The findings of the report support the prime minister’s stated wish to see the fossil fuels industry ‘flourish’ and environmental approval hurdles minimised. ‘It’s particularly important that we do not demonise the coal industry’, he told an industry gathering in May. The fledgeling renewable energy industry, it seems, is expendable.

The action to kill the renewable energy target is driven by a particular business case that takes no account of the moral imperative that is changing government policy in other countries. The Edmund Rice Centre released a statement on Friday urging Mr Abbott to visit a climate vulnerable Pacific atoll nation to see first hand the effect on the citizens of these poor nations of the greenhouse gas emissions from the likes of Australia’s coal industry.

It might move him to reconsider his resolve not to demonise the coal industry, and understand what’s behind the growing movement that considers such stigmatisation to be the only ethical course of action. Last Monday, Sydney University announced it had instructed its equities managers to halt investment in the coal and consumable fuels sub-sector of the Australian Stock Exchange. This is seen as a step towards divestment of its existing interests in companies including Whitehaven.

Divestment from fossil fuel investments is widespread overseas. It’s expected that the Vatican will commit itself to this, with Pope Francis planning to release an encyclical in coming months on humanity’s role in caring for the Earth.

The international grassroots organisation 350.org, which is urging the Vatican to act, distils its message in the simple logic: ‘if it’s wrong to wreck the planet, then it’s wrong to profit from that wreckage’. Anybody who is able to see the effect of rising seawaters on the lives of Pacific Islanders will at least be motivated to consider the evidence that there is a far better moral and business case for renewable energy than there is for fossil fuels.

There is a certain bitter irony in the fact that widespread child abuse is occurring within the Federal Government’s regime of immigration detention at the same time that the government sponsored Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is seeking to achieve justice for victims of past abuses. 

This begs the question of why Immigration Minister Scott Morrison continues to enjoy popular support for his management of border protection policies that facilitate child abuse even though there is overwhelming public backing for the work of the child abuse Royal Commission.

Surely the explanation lies in the extraordinary level of resourcing that the Government allocates to the Immigration Department to manage and manipulate public opinion. In March Fairfax reported that the Department employed a 66 strong team of ‘spin doctors’ and communications staff, up from just 13 under the previous government in 2011. By June this year, Fairfax was reporting that the number had risen to 95. 

If churches and institutions caring for children had made that kind of investment and successfully controlled the flow of information, it is less likely that there would have been the groundswell of public opinion that prompted former PM Julia Gillard to call the Royal Commission in November 2012. The scale of institutional child abuse would remain hidden and many victims denied eventual justice.

In July, the Human Rights Commission invited Sydney University Medical School paediatrician Elizabeth Elliott to join Professor Gillian Triggs in observing the health and well being of children in detention on Christmas Island. Her report, which described the children’s chronic physical and mental illness, was chilling. 

In commenting on the the minister’s announcement on Tuesday that 150 young children and their families would be released into the community on bridging visas, Dr Elliott asserted that ‘when it comes to children in need, most Australians feel compassion’ but compassion had ‘gone missing’. 

Most likely this has happened because the channels of communication – and consequently compassion – had been blocked by the Department’s media managers and the stories of these children have not been allowed to reach the hearts and minds of ordinary Australians.

Such compassion is a vital trigger that helps people access legal protections that they have a right to. It involves individuals talking and having their stories heard, far and wide if necessary. The stories become common knowledge, at least in general terms, and the compassion of Australians follows. This has occurred in the case of victims of past child victims of sexual abuse in churches and institutions.

Dr Elliott says ‘conversations with teenagers who could articulate their predicament were particularly poignant’. It is a pity that most detained children are not afforded the opportunity to reach professionals such as Dr Elliott, who could then advocate on their behalf. It is outrageous that the system actively denies this such opportunity in a calculated manner, particularly as the minister is, in many cases, their legal guardian and therefore responsible for their well being.

The Abbott Government shelved plans to amend section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act because it feared alienating ethnic minorities. The prime minister declared: ‘I want the communities of our country to be our friend, not our critic. … I want to work with the communities of our country as “Team Australia”’.

He was keenly aware that alienation of minorities caused by the 18C changes would have been likely to contribute to an increase in the number of young Muslim males travelling to wars in the Middle East, and subsequently return to Australia radicalised and skilled to carry out terrorist attacks here. Foreign Minister Julie Bishop had said that preventing Australian citizens from becoming involved in terrorist activities was one of Australia's highest national security priorities.

It would seem reasonable to assume that ‘Team Australia’ refers to a nation in which social inclusion is a priority for government policy. Such a term would indeed be meaningless if the government did not care about social inclusion. That’s why it’s so significant that the May Budget was one of the most divisive in the nation’s history.

One of the more extreme measures in the Budget was the proposed rules forcing young people to wait six months before getting unemployment benefits and require them to apply for 40 jobs per month. This divisiveness of this was amplified with Thursday’s release of statistics that show Australia’s unemployment rate is at its highest in 12 years.

How can the nation’s young unemployed feel part of Team Australia if they sense they are being punished by such a draconian regime? Surely they will feel excluded, sitting on the sideline with the chill wind running through their veins. 

Young Muslim males are well represented in the ranks Australia’s young unemployed, yet the government hopes they will identify with Team Australia and not be subject to the discontent that makes them open to the recruitment pitches of Muslim radicals.

It’s fine to protect young Muslim males from being excluded from mainstream Australia through vilification. But there’s little point to that if they feel excluded by a set of judgmental welfare rules. The government will be completely outflanked by their Muslim radical brothers in offering means towards self-validation.

It’s likely there’s a political imperative behind the government’s toughness against the young unemployed. Voters like to see governments crack down on ‘dole bludgers’ in the way that they want the boats stopped. So perhaps It’s something they feel they have to do to remain electable. 

However a group of church welfare organisations this week suggested a way out, which is to de-politicise welfare payments. They want the government to transfer the power to set welfare payments to an independent body that is motivated by fairness rather than electability. It is similar to the idea of an ‘Australian Entitlements Commission’ that Catholic Social Services Australia suggested in 2008 to set and review welfare payments.

Social Services Minister Kevin Andrews has already dismissed this week’s suggestion, but in doing so he is ensuring the politics of division will dog his government’s wish to contain the threat of home grown terrorists who side with Muslim radicals and not Team Australia.

After a three day visit last month, Professor Triggs said 'almost all' of the children 'were coughing, were sick, were depressed, unable to communicate (and) weak'. Some of them were not leaving their cabins and were not eating. Triggs said there is 'no eye contact with some of them' and 'a lot of the younger babies are not crawling or not doing the things they should be doing at their age group simply because of the conditions'.

Under the Immigration (Guardianship of Children) Act 1946 — the IGOC Act — the Immigration Minister is the legal guardian of children who arrive in Australia without a parent or carer. That means Morrisonassumes 'the same rights, powers, duties, obligations and liabilities as a natural guardian of the child would have'.

A report released last month by the Refugee Taskforce of the National Council of Churches in Australia argues that Morrison is not fit for the task and that an independent guardian should be appointed. The report, titled Protecting the Lonely Children, is written chiefly by Anglicare Southern Queensland mission and social justice researcher Jennifer Basham.

It points out that the minister has a conflict of interest in his roles as guardian, judge and jailer of unaccompanied children. Immigration ministers are generally not penalised for failing to consider or act in the best interests of the vulnerable asylum seeker children in their care, even though 'under law they have this most serious of duties'. In the IGOC Act, and in practice, the minister's border protection role takes priority over his guardianship responsibility.

As it happens, this subordination of Morrison's duty to protect children means he is not subject to social pariah stigma generally attached to parents, guardians or institutions that wantonly neglect the children they're responsible for. The majority of Australians voted for a government strong on border protection. Morrison is delivering in spades, so it seems they're prepared to turn a blind eye to claims of child neglect, especially if they're dismissed with such confidence by a rock star minister.

It's this suppression of information that is most significant, along with the repudiation of eyewitness accounts from erstwhile authoritative figures such as Triggs. Australians who voted for border protection are prepared to buy it, but for how long? The stories of the vulnerable children can't stay hidden forever. Their hope is that the increasing weight of evidence of the neglect will swing public opinion in their favour. After all, it's this kind of momentum that led to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

While some groups still believe that people infected with HIV should be stigmatised as a deterrent, the majority view at this month’s International AIDS Conference in Melbourne is that victims and the social groups to which they belong must be empowered. 

The media is being encouraged to listen to stories such as Sarah’s:

As a young woman, I was 21 when I was diagnosed, and it's that, it takes away your whole impression of what your life will be like. … And social stigma as well. It's really hard, like to be a young woman diagnosed, there's no education about it, you don't know how people are going to react to you. It's really scary, it's really scary.

Religious groups, school teachers, and the media can all choose to be part of the problem, or part of the solution, a source of fear or hope.

A few weeks before the conference, a health services practitioner in an eastern Victorian town reported that he or she was HIV positive. One media outlet played the fear card when it quoted a patient: ‘[I felt] pretty sick actually, very sick in the stomach’. 

Meanwhile the health worker had had the psychological strength to report his or her HIV positive status to authorities. This enabled them to take proper precautions, and it was therefore unlikely that any patients would contract the virus. If he or she had been been overcome by fear or shame, it is doubtful the alarm would have been raised, and the population would have been placed at greater risk.

Some continue to worry that infection rates are rising despite numerous campaigns, and feel that we therefore need stronger deterrence. In other words, greater stigma place on those living with HIV. The more positive way of thinking is to empower people in this situation to share their stories and experiences.

Associate Professor Trevor Cullen of Edith Cowan University is an expert in health journalism and reporting infectious diseases, especially AIDS. He is currently spearheading a pilot program promoting positive media education. He’s delivered media training to Conference delegates at the Melbourne AIDS Conference, andsays: ‘Research has shown that if effectively used, the media can lessen fear and stigma which are the biggest obstacles to seeking information and treatment.’

Former justice Michael Kirby is arguing that law reform is also essential in the fight against marginalising groups that are vulnerable to the AIDS infection. These include men who have sex with men, sex workers, injecting drug users, prisoners and refugees.

He says: ‘The law can be a guardian of people who are vulnerable and who are sick but the law … can be a burden on the person and their freedom, on their ability to see the importance of getting the HIV test, and getting onto antiretroviral drugs if they turn out to be positive.’

To this end, Victorian health minister David Davis has announced a move to amend the law criminalising intentional HIV transmission. Kirby praises the reform, adding that it is important that the message ‘should go to Africa, to Russia and other countries where [discriminatory] laws exist – and we should not be polite in the delivering of that message’.

Where the law and the media are prepared do stand with those living with the HIV – and not against them – there is hope that all concerned will take the necessary rational steps to contain the virus.

The Abbott Government's abolition of the price on carbon was part of its agenda to remove or weaken regulation that is thought to place a burden on business. Aside from the carbon tax, much of the Coalition's legislative program gives priority to capital over human need. The removal of important elements of the previous government's increased protection for consumers seeking financial advice is an example.

It is significant that the Abbott Government has a popular mandate to wind back its predecessor's policies that promoted social inclusion. This is despite the fact that many of the new Government's moves are clearly contrary to the common interest of the Australian people. For instance the mining super profits tax — which it is set to abolish — was designed to direct a proportion of the revenue from the nation's mineral wealth from large, predominantly foreign owned corporations, back to the common good of the Australian people. But the Australian people apparently want the big miners to keep their super profits.

Why? One possible answer lies in the symbolic value of business entrepreneurship. This is promoted as a good that trumps others, including — and especially — the social good. The social good has even been demonised, with welfare assistance depicted as the defining characteristic of the 'age of entitlement' that must be ended.

The glorification of business entrepreneurship has quite a bit of history, with the philosophy of the 'self made man' that came to dominate life in the United States and spread to other countries of the world, particularly in East Asia. Until now Australians have been proud to think of their nation as the land of the fair go, but it seems we've been won over by the promise of individual prosperity.

The culture of business entrepreneurship is difficult to avoid because it is linked to the globalisation of financial capital. But most especially, it dominates our education system, which must prepare young people to participate in the market economy. Future generations are likely to be indifferent, or even hostile, to the common good.

This was the scenario depicted earlier this month by Fr Benny Juliawan of the Jesuit Conference of Asia-Pacific, who was a keynote speaker at the Jesuit education colloquium in Sydney.

'School management, curricula and the general atmosphere in society idealise an entrepreneurial subject which revolves around discourses of competition and enterprise ... This underlying discourse of entrepreneurship redefines traditional values such as freedom and empowerment in a highly individualised sense.'

Juliawan believes the talents and personalities of today's students are geared toward joining a profession that will fulfil the material aspiration of the middle class, and that there is a serious shortcoming in the entrepreneurial self that is crafted through our education system.

The energy and focus of the activity of creating wealth is in itself admirable. But social — rather than business — entrepreneurship promises a better world. Business entrepreneurs measure performance in terms of financial profit and return, while social entrepreneurs offer profits for society and not just themselves. 

A good role model for aspiring social entrepreneurs is the Jesuit educated Australian rooftop solar pioneer Danny Kennedy, who featured on ABC1's 4 Corners two weeks ago. To realise his ambitions he had to leave his home country and settle in the US, where paradoxically he has discovered there is more appetite for social entrepreneurship than there is in egalitarian Australia. That's because it ultimately makes good business sense.