Scuttling Our Navy and Other Matters

SIR: Michael Evans (“Look Seaward, Australia”, June 2016) represents a welcome intervention in this key field, especially coming from a former soldier. There is nothing new about it though. A former Governor of New South Wales, Rear Admiral Peter Sinclair, once famously commented that Australia was a maritime nation with a continental mindset. Of course, it is a maritime nation and has been at least since Governor Phillip arrived in 1788. Australia’s prosperity has always depended on overseas trade, a reality that drove our intervention in the First World War, whatever the continentalists might claim.

The Royal Australian Navy has always understood the reality and for decades has had plans for a credible maritime capability locked away in its vaults, only to be sunk by the Army and RAAF, not to mention the politicians and bureaucrats. During my stewardship of the Australia Defence Association in the 1980s and 1990s, we constantly promoted the significance for Australia of a maritime security strategy both at home and overseas. The recent defence White Paper, sunk with all hands thanks to Prime Minister Turnbull’s enthusiasm for a double dissolution, had made a valuable start by committing Australia to a strategy of supporting a rules-based world order‚ and setting out a continuing plan for developing and sustaining an almost credible maritime capability.

The White Paper has gone the way of all of its predecessors back to 1976. The White Paper process itself tells the tale. The document with its twenty-plus years scope is produced in the Defence machine, adopted unenthusiastically by the government of the day, rarely if ever debated in Parliament by people with any interest beyond the pork-barrel opportunities for their electorates, and then largely forgotten.

The White Paper has no legislative standing, no funding commitments beyond the current financial year, and is even then subject to the immensely ponderous decision-making machine that is the Defence Department. It demands commitments from a series of governments more interested in scoring voter support in the bottomless pits of health, education and welfare.

Michael O’Connor
Home Hill, Qld

SIR: Peter Kurti’s article “The Myth of the Right to Die” (July-August 2016) is less than accurate about what so-called Dying with Dignity (DWD) movements around the world are actually arguing for. There has never been any question among such movements of supporting an unqualified “right to die”. For example, the DWD movement in Australia argues that a fully mentally competent adult who is experiencing unrelievable pain and suffering as a result of a medical condition or a severely debilitating incurable illness, should have the right to ask for help to end their life at a time of their choosing. The point of this is not to exert an absolute right to die but rather to avoid unbearable suffering.

Canada presents an interesting case study in the application of rights-based discourse to this issue. As your readers may know, the Canadian Federal Parliament recently passed an Assisted Dying law to be used in the kind of circumstances mentioned above. This law was the culmination of court processes over many years in which plaintiffs had invoked a clause in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This clause (section 7) states the following: “There is the right to the security of the person … and of the right to the psychological integrity of an individual.” The court decided that what was being invoked in this article is a person’s right not to be forced to undergo cruel and unusual punishment, which includes having their life protracted when they are suffering unbearably. On the basis of this clause the Supreme Court of Canada struck down the federal prohibition on physician-assisted dying and ordered the Parliament to introduce a law permitting it. Unfortunately Australia does not have a bill of rights.

Peter Kurti illegitimately equates assisted dying with suicide and goes on to make the case that suicide violates all societal norms. His language is strong: he says that “by harming the web of social relations and obligations comprising community and family life, claiming a right to die threatens to tear at the fabric of civil society”. And later, “every death by intentional self-harm has a profound impact on others. It … causes great emotional trauma.” But this ignores the often-reported fact that in circumstances where a person is at the end of their life and suffering unbearably, family and friends are totally supportive of the sick person’s desire to be relieved of their suffering. Indeed there are many documented cases where the family suffers trauma because they are witnesses of their loved one’s suffering, and in spite of being asked for help to die, know they can do nothing except stand by and watch the suffering continue.

Indeed the absence of a safe legislative framework for assisted dying in this country leads to some dire consequences. At a recent Victorian parliamentary inquiry into end-of-life choices the Victorian coroner made a very disturbing submission. He reported that many suicides being referred to his office were elderly people who were suffering multiple medical problems, severe pain and significant loss of quality of life. In the absence of an alternative they were killing themselves, often in horrific ways. He went on to say that in all of these cases, mental illness did not seem a factor, with the majority being well supported by their families, and having stated their wish to die clearly and on multiple occasions.

The question of assisted dying is extremely complex and the discussion about whether Australia should have a framework for allowing it under certain circumstances is in no way assisted by abstract and absolutist stances against “suicide”, as exhibited in Kurti’s article. It is a far more nuanced situation that this.

Liz Jacka
Marrickville, NSW

SIR: I think Peter Murphy (“The Legend of the State”, July-August 2016), misses the point. He said the electorate is essentially Happy or Discontented. Re John Howard he said: “The prevailing mood of happiness had given way to mounting dissatisfaction.”

Dissatisfaction has many causes and historically a good case can be made for the fact that the reins of power have been used to favour one major grouping in society as against others—either in reality or in common perception. The eras of discontent have been generally when there has been a major shift in the power relations towards those who control the means of production.

Now we find since the 2014 budget that was a very strong factor. We had, and still have, a problem of deficits. Who should bear the burden? has become the issue.

That too has become complicated due to some other discontents which are plaguing Western and other societies. I have just returned from the Philippines.

The discontents that have reared their heads are various. The reins of power are in the hands of the two major parties who have been targeting the centre—and the marginals—which leaves out a lot of people of various persuasions. Government, which also employs 25 per cent of the workforce and has become a monopoly on power whichever party wins, is seen also as the source of discontent. Government of whatever persuasion decides on environmental issues, which is a different divide.

Politicians look after themselves with good conditions and they have become self-perpetuating through the party systems—the union movement and/or the political aides pathways. Politicians shielded from real life along with their political/judicial team-mates are barriers to really getting ahead. Their closest workmates are the public service which in Australia is removed from both rural and major urban centres. So many recent elections have had a mantra of “trust”.

It is not just about the economic cycles. GDP and employment statistics are not the dominant measure of happiness any more.

Steve Smith
Lalor, Vic

SIR: The world-renowned theologian Dr Hans Kung, in his book Islam: Past, Present and Future (2008), gives sympathetic views of Islam as well as documenting the atrocities committed over the centuries by followers of the Islamic faith/political system.

Sharia law endeavours to give legitimacy to Islam, yet it is fundamentally flawed, as it has never been codified, even to this day, therefore it is subject to abuse.

Islamic State is by all accounts obsessed with the implementation of sharia law, the interpretation of which is decided by anyone, as there is no established priesthood in Islam, and anyone it seems can set himself up as an imam and have the right of life and death over non-Muslims, apostates and transgressors.

Are women, under sharia law, really less than men? Yes indeed, as are Jews and Christians, as well as people of other faiths—including, for IS, Muslims of the Shiite branch of Islam; they are branded dhimmi, is a form of persecution which is enforced to this day; Saudi Arabia is the extreme example.

Sharia law is an inferior system of justice to the more compassionate and humane “rule of law” developed by Western governments, especially the British under the Westminster system as well as the Roman Church during the 1700s.

“Islam today needs to implement a double paradigm change: not just that of the Reformation but also that of modernity, the Enlightenment,” says Kung. Humanity has both rights and responsibilities, not just obligations to God or their employer or their family.

Being candid about Islam is essential in today’s world. The West is far more informed about Islam than are the millions of Muslims in underdeveloped Muslim countries where education either isn’t available or is severely restricted. Under sharia law it is a sin for women and girls to be educated—death is the sentence, as experienced by Malala Youzafsai. Thankfully Malala survived to speak out for all Muslim women the world over.

Muslim clerics of all persuasions are well aware of the excesses that Mohammed committed in his pursuit of domination, and those excesses are recorded by classic Muslim writings.

Sharia law is the septic and suppurating Achilles heel of Islam, so it is necessary to make this fact plain to all Muslims, especially Muslim clerics. The rest of the world’s populations have at last awakened to the threat that has lain latent in their own countries for centuries. It will take time, understanding, and a clear and unequivocal rejection of the tenets of sharia law and the Koran as laid down by Mohammed—may peace be upon him, as he was an extremely violent man when he walked this planet.

John R. Bicknell
Bargo, NSW

SIR: I would like to alert your readers to an article on May 7 in the Spectator Australia by James Delingpole. It is a definitive report on the Marxist sabotage of environmentalism, under their front organisation, the Greens.

Lenin said “everything is political”. Gramsci followed this up with his “long march through the institutions”. This resulted in the nobbling of about a score of our basics, especially, as Delingpole points out: academe, the media, the arts and even business. Social Marxism reigns as a major force—class actions, refugee collectives, political correctness, open borders, radical multiculturalism, radical feminism and so on and on.

K. McManus
Ashfield, NSW