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Well, we finally have a law which requires Australia to live up to its obligations of decency towards people we have detained - an obligation which applies to all people, irrespective of race and circumstance, an obligation that many people dislike.
Why the dislike? Well, in the case of the circumstance of jails, many people are driven by their short term emotions - specifically, a desire for revenge.
As far as the victims of crime are concerned, while they are in that overwhelmed state, they think they will feel "better" if they see the cause of their pain suffering. They won't: they will feel a short term elation, an elation with sadistic overtones that distracts from pain and defers dealing with that pain, and later, perhaps much later, they will still feel an emptiness that their pain echoes in. Forgiveness is not the solution, either: the way forgiveness is touted often results in a failure to act on remedying the causes of the problem - and consider: where would South Africa be if Nelson Mandela had simply "forgiven" his abusers, and gone on submitting to the abuses of apartheid?
There is a balance required here - genuine healing of the victims (we struggle with the variety of approaches that requires, given the wide variety of people, and the human failing of assuming others will react the way we do [one of the reasons some people do not understand how evidence-based crime prevention works, as they don't understand the different motivations of themselves and others], and thus benefit from what we benefitted from . . . and we need to give victims support when, for instance, releasing the criminals who harmed them from jail: forgetting the victim is a plague in our justice system, and amongst those who advocate for a better justice system), genuine needs of the justice system (which includes keeping society safe, deterrence [currently a valid issue to consider], and making sure society does not become something that should hang its head in shame), and even the needs of the victim - who still is a human being.
Some criminals are truly "beyond the pale" - there is no prospect for rehabilitation, or the damage they have done is so severe there is no reasonable way they could be released. I consider child abusers, mass murderers, and others who cause large scale harm (e.g., the senior-level drug criminal recently convicted in Mexico [most of those described as "drug king pins" aren't], and those who commit genocide and crimes against humanity - such as the generals responsible for the genocide against the Rohingya and Sudan's President).
Most criminals, however, are people like us who have made mistakes, or had a hard run in life, and when they are lifted out of a tabloid newspaper's derision so that we can see them as human beings, our views may well change. That has been demonstrated a few times by projects where members of the public were given the facts of cases, and asked what sentences they would impose. Compared to the actual sentences imposed by judges in these real cases, members of the public generally gave lighter sentences - the exception was that women imposed harsher sentences for sexual assaults, which is an indictment of (unconscious?) bias and sexism in our society. (For other examples, consider this, the work done to raise awareness of apartheid, and the work still being done to raise awareness and counter lies about indigenous people now.)
All that covers those who have been a victim of crime - incidentally, a step-niece of mine was murdered a few years ago, and a friend's son was killed by a drunk driver: I have some experience of being affected by crime, which may give those who judge these things not by the human capacity for empathy, but by the arbiter of experience only, some ill-judged approval. Yes, many people do need to have experience of events in order to have empathy, but that doesn't apply to everyone. I've met people who, for instance, are able to have some understanding and empathy for members of a minority and thus - without being "educated" on the issues - avoid the abuses others around them were dishing out.
What about those people who aren't victims of crime who advocate for abuse and harsh treatment of prisoners - people who, for example, react on the basis of what they come across in the media (or worse, from social media). In those cases, I consider it likely that such people are, to use a new (for me) wording, trying to demonstrate that they are members of a "tribe". In the past, I would have written about demonstrating their worthiness to be included in a social set, or a group of friends, but as I continue to read Amy Chua's book "Political Tribes" (Pub. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018, London, ISBN 978-1-4088-8154-5; Amazon; a review here), a book that I partly agree with and partly disagree with, I consider "tribe" may be the better word.
Issues such as justice, or even fairness, and the quality of a society are of less value when the issue is being judged by those who are trying to demonstrate their worthiness to still be included in a tribe (whether that is a group within society, or a society). There have been terrible attempts at humour based on this, but I consider it an aspect of why arguments based on decency have not worked on all people - neither with regard to crime, nor with regard to refugees and asylum seekers. My old arguments of leaders not taking people with them on the human rights journey still applies as well (the potential efficacy of that is shown the legacy of John Howard, which I will get to shortly), as do other arguments (remember the diversity and complexity of humanity), but tribalism is a newly identified (to me) aspect that needs to be considered.
Some Australians may be irritated at what they see as queue jumping, but it is hard to jump something that doesn't exist - we have not done enough towards a regional processing centre where it is needed, as we did do for Vietnamese refugees (boat people). In fact, our understaffing has been so severe I consider we have done nothing, leaving people who are trying to survive, many so they can rescue or care for families (again, I find it strange that so many people seem to need education on this aspect, but that need was demonstrated by the series where anti-refugee people were put through refugee experiences [not all, mind you, changed their minds, but that does not mean it wasn't worthwhile, it just shows the range of reasoning in humanity]), no option but "people smugglers" (many of whom are also trying to support families - and, as is too often the case, terms equivalent to "king pin" get too widely used).
In some cases, the resistance comes from lack of trust in the sources. This goes beyond the so-called "fake news" problem to a decline of trust in expertise that has been occurring over several decades. In my opinion, as a professional, I consider some of this loss of trust has been brought about by the arrogance of experts. In my field of work (engineering), a common view is that engineers can do things at lower cost than others - I dispute the basic premise, as I consider many people think they can build things (to simplify) when they don't know enough to do so, but in the context of loss of trust, it doesn't matter how much money you ultimately save if the first few iterations didn't work, all the people paying for this (i.e., the public) see, is failure - they see stupidity, not an evolutionary process, and, when they are quite probably struggling o pay bills, they quite rightly resent the expense. The costs of failure go beyond the dollars, however, as has been shown by the loss of public support for, and growth of activism against, the nuclear power industry following the Three Mile Island and Fukushima problems, and for the oil industry every time there is a major problem, such as the loss of a tanker or an oil rig.
Since the 80s, I've seen increased communication with people (lumped under the euphemism "stakeholders", although that is sometimes defined in a way that excludes the public), but that has been offset by the loss of transparency caused by neoliberalism (especially the commercial-in-confidence barrier).
Irrespective of the causes, there is a loss of trust in experts. Having now read part of Amy Chua's book, I am satisfied "tribalism" can be added to those causes. It is not enough to communicate: the communication must be in a way that can be related to by all the different tribes that are listening.
Tribes are defined, in part, by who they let in, and who they exclude. In this, if we apply the dictum "as above, so below", we can see that a group of people who are focused on who they let in to their tribe or social circle (which is not solely based on race, religion, blood ties, etc: values and opinions and ways of living also apply - even in some cases, styles of music) would consider applying that principle of screening to a larger group, such as a nation, to be reasonable - and some screening is warranted, PROVIDED it is based on characteristics that are genuinely needed for those circumstances, which gets us in to the whole human rights movement that goes back centuries at least, and more probably millennia.
Thus, the chilling evil of John Howard's infamous phrase "We decide who comes into this country and the circumstances in which they come" in 2001 resonated with many people who live their lives focused on who is "in" and who is "out" (if you will pardon a digression, at high school, my friends and I joked we were so far "out" that we were past the Kuiper Belt), people who were probably still struggling as a result of the economic hard times of the 80s and 90s, and who hadn't had a clear and believable explanation of what happened in terms of support and who paid for what.
This issue of trust and tribes is also, in my opinion, a key factor in reactions to legislation about cyber security against privacy. Now, although I consider there are genuine privacy concerns about such legislation, the visceral responses show there is an element of tribalism in it - people on my side of the fence consider the elites in power and the conservative hardliners advocating for more and unrestrained surveillance demonstrating an utter lack of understanding of our side of the fence to clearly be the sort of people we wouldn't invite over for tea, so how can they possibly be trusted with our most intimate secrets? Those on the other side of the fence probably think (a) those people over there (i.e., my lot) are smelly and obnoxious, and have no right to stop me making sure their presence doesn't contaminate me or my possessions, or (b) this is an exercise in my (Newtonian) logic, so how dare those people over there (i.e., my lot) have emotions and different forms of logic? (in the interests of balance, I recently came across a phrase [I don't recall where - I'll try to find it] about "the left trying to out-left the left".)
Under those circumstances, arguments based on justice and law don't really stack up - in fact, achieving change in some cases is a major personal trauma (see here).
John Howard's evil phrase resonated with enough of the tribes, and was the sort of simplification of the truth that is hard to refute without an exposition. It worked so well that it has divided Australia for nearly two decades, and formed the basis for governments to hold on to power - until now, when the price of the evil it led to is slowly becoming apparent to more people, apparent to the extent that the tribes they are in are starting to shift their position.
The debate and ranting in reaction to this legislation have, however, hardened the once shallow fault lines that Howard identified and then incised deeply into the bedrock of Australian society. In everyday conversations, my sense is that those who invested emotionally in the former hard line position do not know how to change their position without losing (emotional) face, and no-one has shown them a way to do so. (This is where we need to hear from those who have changed their position on this issue.)
They also fear possible loss of membership of their tribes, and there is still an ongoing fear of loss of jobs, and security (can those advocates who say things like "it is only ..." stop using bloody numbers that sound big to someone with a small social circle, who possibly works in a small company, and start using percentages of the total workforce, etc - and can we start talking about what is driving these movements, what is happening where refugees come from> Rant over . . . ) in this era of profound job insecurity.
Australia, as a whole, has been less of a nation since 2001: as an Australian, I am deeply ashamed of how we have let ourselves down (on this and other issues). I am ashamed of how we, as human beings, gave up a portion of our humanity, gave up part of what it is to be human - being humane, in response to fear. We've now looked back from the precipice of evil: we now need someone who will unite the various tribes (or sections, if you prefer) of Australian society, and give us a way to re-connect with "the better angels of our nature".
Amy Chua wrote:
This leaves the United States in a perilous new situation: with nearly no one standing up for an America without identity politics, for an American identity that transcends and unites the identifies of all the country's many subgroups.We share that need.
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(Some day, if I have time, I'll try to convert the above to a speech, like I did here, if I can ever think of a context such a speech could possibly be delivered under.)
