 |
Welcome to the Graham F Smith Peace Trust E-newsletter.
In this Issue
In Other News
Carbon Tax Winners
The planned introduction of a carbon tax in July next year has already given a big boost to the clean energy sector, writes Victor Bivell (editor of Eco Investor magazine) in http://www.asx.com.au/resources/investor-update-newsletter/201108-carbon-tax-winners.htm. Read more about the impact of the carbon tax on the stock exchange, and how market analysts see these matters.
After the Intervention
‘There has never seriously been a high expectations relationship in which the humanity of Indigenous Australians is acknowledged … When we acknowledge the humanity of Aboriginal people we acknowledge the challenges and complexity we face together … I’m certain we share a desire to make a difference in Aboriginal communities.’
Chris Sarra from the Queensland University of Technology says white Australia must address its relationship with Indigenous people to truly close the gap in http://theconversation.edu.au/effective-indigenous-policy-reform-closing-the-right-gap-2743
Pass it on
Know anyone who might be interested in our newsletter? Click here to forward this email to up to 5 friends at once.
|
|
|
Spring 2011 Issue 14
We acknowledge that the Peace Trust operates on the traditional lands of the Kaurna people. We respect their spiritual relationship with the country and acknowledge that their cultural beliefs are important to the Kaurna people living today.
From the Chair
(Photos of Hiroshima Commemoration 6 Aug 2011 thanks to Fernando Gonçalves)
Congratulations to the No Strings Attached Theatre of Disability, awarded the S10,000 Peace Trust grant for 2011 at the annual Peace Trust Dinner at the end of June. You will remember that No Strings Attached was also awarded the inaugural Fringe Festival Peace Award. It is interesting to note that these decisions were made by two separate Peace Trust groups. This certainly speaks very highly of the work done by this theatre group. PJ Rose, Artistic Director of No Strings Attached, tells us how the grant will be used in this newsletter.
Thank you to all who worked and participated in making the Peace Trust fundraising dinner a success. Thank you to those who sent donations. I take this opportunity to inform you that the next Dinner is scheduled for 23 June 2012. Please put this date in your diary and do not forget to publicise it. Our ability to continue giving a grant of $10,000 annually depends on your support and generosity.
Much work is being done to ensure the future of the Peace Trust. We are presently working with ArtSupport, an initiative of the Australia Council for the Arts, which maximises philanthropic exchanges. Our younger members are seeking sponsorships and we are still seeking a home for the Peace Trust.
Phil White, who until recently worked in Tokyo at the Citizen’s Nuclear information Center, shares his response to the Fukushima nuclear disaster, following the earthquake and tsunami on 11 March 2011. This disaster raises concerns in very practical ways about the safety issues relating to the use of nuclear energy.
As we commemorate the tenth anniversary of the Tampa affair this year and await the outcome of High Court challenge of the government’s Malaysian deal I find it unbelievable that Australians who believe in fairness for all should not stand up for refugees. It is heartening that not-for-profit organisations have joined the public outcry against the Government’s decision to send refugees – and in particular unaccompanied minors – to Malaysia under the refugee swap deal.
As we finalise the Newsletter we mourn the death of Elliott Johnston and send our condolences to family, friends and colleagues. Elliott was a great friend of Graham Smith and family for more than 60 years. Graham had close links with Elliott and shared his aspirations for a better world. As Andy Alcock said in an e-mail to me recently “The world needs more like him and Graham – socialists that care about peace, human rights, social justice and environmental care.”
Thank you to all contributors to the Spring issue.
Responses to the newsletter are always welcome.
Léonie M Ebert
Founding Trustee & Chairperson, Management Committee
Fringe Peace Trust Award
The award is open to all Fringe artists who promote human rights, social justice and/or environmental sustainability in their work. Applications and guidelines for the 2012 Award are now available, go to http://artspeacetrust.org/fringe/. Information is provided to artists and companies registering for Adelaide Fringe (http://www.adelaidefringe.com.au/Taking-Part/Artist-Information.aspx)
Applications must be received by 31 January 2012
Vale Elliott Johnston QC
Elliott Johnston AO, QC, LLB Adel, LLD died on Thursday night, 25 August, aged 93.
On behalf of the Peace Trust the Board and Management Committee pay tribute to Elliott Johnston for his pursuit of justice and equality, and for the work he did to improve the lives of working people and make the world a better place. Elliott Johnston founded the law firm Johnston Withers in 1946 which acted for legally and economically disadvantaged people.
Elliott Johnston and his wife Elizabeth became Communists in 1941. His elevation to Queen's Counsel by the Dunstan Government, after his controversial rejection by the former Hall Government, was the highest public office achieved by a Communist in Australia. He resigned from the Communist Party when he was admitted as a Supreme Court Judge in 1983.
Elliott Johnston headed the National Commission of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody which produced a landmark Report in April 1991.This Report dealt with the relationship of indigenous people and the criminal system, and made 339 recommendations aimed at reducing indigenous over-representation in all stages of the criminal justice system. This was an exceptional achievement
Elliott Johnston will be very much missed as he helped many people and was an inspiration to many – even those who did not agree with his progressive politics.
We have lost a member of the Peace Trust and a great defender of social justice and human rights.
Finally we warmly remember Elliott Johnston as a great friend of Graham Smith and family for more than 60 years!
A biography of the life of Elliott Johnston called Red Silk: A biography of Elliott Johnson QC by Penelope Debelle was launched this year (Wakefield Press).
There will be no funeral service as Elliott Johnston donated his body for medical research. Instead there will be a Memorial Service at Elder Hall, University on Friday 9th September 2011 at 4pm.
Léonie M Ebert
No Strings Attached Theatre of Disability
No Strings Attached Theatre of Disability (NSA) is proud and humbled that two different selection committees chose our work for: a) the inaugural Fringe Festival Peace Award and b) the Trust’s major grant of $10,000 for the creative development of a new work called Knowing Home.
Knowing Home participants are among the most marginalized people in Australia – Aboriginal Torres Strait Islanders (ATSI) and disabled.
Most are displaced and dislocated, removed from their families and homes. Most grew up in Adelaide and now live in institutions or shared care facilities.
Each holds tightly to a longing for original home and family -- Country, Kin, Connection. As we’ve begun to explore these longings, we witness performer’s strong emotions -- sometimes painful, sometimes joyful, always provocative.
Each performer has high support needs, and herein lies an unexpected dilemma: a disability support worker’s job is to make sure their client is safe and secure and ‘happy’ -- calm. What opportunity then do these performers have to express their grief as other members of their communities do?
This creative development workshop is a sanctuary in which they can reclaim their human rights to social and cultural identity, their one opportunity to experience the dignity of labour by working together to create a performance about their deepest fears, longings and joys.
NSA will lead the creative development for Knowing Home, working with Kura Yerlo staff, professional ATSI artists and an informal advisory panel of ATSI partners to help find and connect the dots leading home. Together, we will explore ways to tactfully theatricalise shared experiences of grief and loss, honoring those feelings while working towards a reconciled peace for each participant and an acknowledgement of each performer’s ‘home’.
The Peace Trust’s faith in Knowing Home at this early stage of development is invaluable, and funds will support collaborating ATSI artists.
by PJ Rose, Artistic Director NSA
Aboriginal Peoples’ right to homelands
(Image Homeland on right © April Pyle/AI)
Is it a coincidence that the Government Strategic Review of Indigenous Expenditure is brought out just two days before Amnesty International’s Homeland Report?
The report (http://www.amnesty.org.au/indigenous-rights/comments/26216) focuses on the wishes of Northern Territory Aboriginal people, that homelands be recognised as places where the people are able to live their traditional lives on their own estates, where they can fulfil their ceremonial duties, care for their land and protect their culture, language and law. These rights are recognised in the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples(1) which was given formal support by Australia in 2009.
We are now faced with the Strategic Review, provided to Cabinet in early 2010. Although it identifies failures of both management and implementation, its suggested reforms reinforce much of the assimilatory biases of the first draft intervention by ignoring the views of Aboriginal people.
Bringing together diverse groups of Aboriginal peoples has never really worked. The recent experiences of small numbers trickling down to the future ‘hub’ towns from the homelands have proved somewhat testing. These people become squatters on other people’s land. They are without rights, mostly living in overcrowded town camps out of necessity, due to the failure of providing services to them on their own lands.
This Strategic Review recognises the need to work with Aboriginal people. It acknowledges the need to target local needs and to work in partnership. And yet, at the same time, it simply ignores the views provided by Aboriginal leaders regarding the importance to them of Homelands and fails to acknowledge the findings of recent studies(2) that identify the better health outcomes of those living in Homelands where food is more nutritious and people are happier.
The Amnesty Report and its recommendations must be given full consideration. Australia is lagging behind the world in providing support for Aboriginal self determination. Both the Amnesty Report and the Strategic Review acknowledge the importance of engaging with the people. What Government needs to recognise however, is that this can’t be accomplished after the decisions have been made. Real partnerships involve two-way listening and must incorporate the ‘on the ground’ realities before the decisions are made. Canberra-based notions, however thorough, are inadequate on their own.
According to Michele Harris, spokesperson for ‘concerned Australians’, ‘there will be no improvement to the lives of Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory until the views of the people become central to the decision making process’.
Rev Dr Djiniyini Gondarra is supported by other community leaders in calling for a Prescribed-Communities Representative Forum to be established to work with Government in all future planning. Government may even wish to consider them ‘partners’.
1 http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/en/drip.html
2 http://www.menzies.edu.au/news-and-events/media-releases/may-2009/healthy-country-healthy-people-study-supports-links-between-
Press release provided by ‘concerned Australians’
Fukushima Disaster – Lessons Learnt?
The most remarkable thing about the response so far to the "genpatsu shinsai" (nuclear-earthquake disaster) that has engulfed Japan is that there are still people who think nuclear power has a future. Should this be attributed more to the dependence of modern industrialised societies on massive inputs of energy, or to a collective lack of imagination?
We do not yet know how this unfolding catastrophe will end, but we can be sure that if most of the radioactivity in the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant remains on site, then the true believers will claim that this is as bad as it gets and that the risk is worth taking. The environmental damage of localised contamination and releases to sea will be discounted and long-term health impacts from exposure to low levels of radiation will be denied. Even those workers who suffer from acute radiation sickness will not find their way into the most commonly quoted statistics, unless they die promptly.
The truth is that even in the best-case scenario the environmental and human consequences of this disaster will be enormous. The potential impact of a worst-case scenario is beyond most people's comprehension. To give an indication of the amount of radioactive material involved, the total capacity of the three reactors that were operating at the time of the earthquake was double that of the Chernobyl No. 4 reactor that exploded 25 years ago in the Ukraine. To this you have to add the radioactivity in the spent fuel pools of all 6 units and of the shared spent fuel pool.
All of this is at risk and, due to the long-term heat-generating properties of the fuel, the situation will not be stabilised any time soon. Even if the radioactivity does not travel far, the release of just a fraction would have incalculable consequences for human beings and the environment.
Besides the true believers, there are also those who regard nuclear energy as a necessary evil. They don't particularly like it, but they see no alternative. But is it true that there is no alternative? For those who can't see beyond the current centralised, supply-driven electrical power systems and who assume an eternally increasing demand for energy, then perhaps it is difficult to imagine how modern societies could survive without nuclear power.
But if you allow the possibility of decentralised systems that reward the efficient provision of energy services, rather than the supply of raw energy, then hitherto unimagined options open up.
After last year's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and now the Fukushima No. 1 genpatsu shinsai, people must realise that business as usual is not an option.
To claim that nuclear energy has a future represents a colossal failure of our collective imagination ― a failure to imagine the risks involved and a failure to imagine how we could do things differently.
If future generations are to say that there was a silver lining to the cloud of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, it will be because human beings now looked beyond their recent history and chose to build a society that was not subject to catastrophic risks of human making.
Philip White was the international liaison officer of the Tokyo-based Citizens' Nuclear Information Center. He is currently living in Adelaide.
Artist's Work Haruki Murakami
Murakami has written 11 novels which have been translated into English, and about 40 other languages. His latest novel (1Q84) is due to be published in English later this year, and has already attracted much attention, despite a media blackout.
‘after the quake’, a collection of short stories about the 1995 earthquake, was published in 2000, and in 2011 each of the stories was adapted into a six-song EP to help benefit the relief efforts by musician Dre Carlan.
He was awarded the Premi Internacional Catalunya this year for contributions to world culture. His acceptance speech, which has been widely promulgated, drew parallels between the Fukushima disasters and the bombing of Hiroshima (see below for excerpts from his speech. A full translation can be found here http://www.senrinomichi.com/?p=2541 ).
Murakami's fiction, often criticized by Japan's literary establishment, is humorous and surreal, and at the same time digresses on themes of alienation and loneliness. Through his work he captures the spiritual emptiness of his generation and explores the negative effects of Japan's work-dominated mentality. His writing criticizes the decline in human values and a loss of connection among people in Japan's society.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haruki_Murakami
Imprints (http://www.imprints.com.au/) maintains a stock of his works.
Excerpt from Murakami’s speech
We had two fundamental policies after World War II. One was economic recovery, the other was the renunciation of war. We would forego the use of armed force, we would grow more prosperous and we would pursue peace. These ideas became the new policies of post-war Japan.
The following words are carved on the memorial for the victims of the nuclear bomb in Hiroshima:
“Please rest in peace. We will never make the same mistake again.”
These are lofty words. These words mean that we are victims and assailants at the same time. Faced with nuclear power, we are victims and assailants. Since we are threatened by the force of nuclear power, we are all victims. Since we use it and couldn’t prevent ourselves from using it, we are also all assailants.
Sixty six years after the nuclear bombing, Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plants have been spreading radioactivity for three months, and contaminating the soil, the ocean and the air around them. No one knows how and when we can stop it. This is the second source of devastation wrought by nuclear power in Japan, but this time nobody dropped a nuclear bomb. We, the Japanese people, caused this, we made our own mistakes, we have contributed to destroying our own lands and lives.
Why did this happen? What happened to our rejection of nuclear power after World War II? What spoiled our peaceful and wealthy society, which we had been pursuing so constantly?(See a translation of the complete text at http://www.senrinomichi.com/?p=2730)
The Peace Trust Garden: Spring cuttings of Incredulous aurea.
Who was the real Graham F. Smith?
There were many young and not-so-young diners at the annual Peace Trust dinner in June who had never met Graham and even more who were amazed to discover an aspect of his life which had never been publicly revealed.
It appears that Graham had a secret passion which was never publicly revealed or acknowledged – his fascination and research on Entomolites – fossil insects. As far as we can uncover (to date) this fascination began during his services in the armed forces in Indonesia during WWII when, as the story unfolds, he befriended a Hindu shaman – one of the local ‘big-men’ who was a renowned authority on insects and in particular their secret powers in mythology.
For reasons which are not quite clear even to his close inner family and friends he never publicly acknowledged this particular passion of his – but it is thought that he quietly researched and corresponded with mythologists and world renowned Entomolite(ologists?) until his death.
Enter Philip Adams – our larger than life Egyptologist (and dabbler in darker myths of mankind – courtesy of his patron Rupert Murdoch’s kindness). It is thought that Philip introduced Graham to Incredulous aurea. In the court of the Pharaoh emperor Kepheran (circa 2900 BC) it was reputed that one of his high priests – who in the daily court functions had responsibility of sifting through the plethora of emissaries seeking court with the Pharaoh King. The special power of this high priest was his uncanny ability to sift through the countless courtiers and emissaries through the use of this amazing scarab beetle – the Incredulous aurea.
The myth goes something like this: the golden beetle would sit at the table between the high priest and the suitor for audience. If truth was conversed, the beetle maintained its largely golden aura – but if there was any hint of deception, the translucent shell of the beetle changed to a dull red glow. Correspondence between Graham and Philip over many years uncovers this shared fascination with what they nicknamed in their letters, the “bullshit-beetle”.
Graham never publicly admitted the reasons for his pursuit of this mythological little critter and its true credentials, but one can guess that his astute and political acumen was very interested in revealing the bullshit factor in those whom he dealt with and encountered regularly on a political level.
Will the truth ever be revealed?
In search of the truth and separation of man from myth one of Adelaide’s most respected artists Karen Genoff has created her vision of Incredulous aurea and it is one of the eleven artworks which have been donated to fund raise for the Graham Smith memoirs. This beautiful wall piece by Karen Geoff will be available to view on the Graham Smith website over the coming few weeks.
We now have over 100 donations pledges ($50 each) towards our fundraising target of $10,000 to publish the memoirs. We only need another 100 pledges/donations. If you donate or pledge you will have the opportunity to win one of these eleven amazing artworks.
Please make this your Spring challenge to help us reach this target, which will finally separate man from myth.
By Viesturs Cielens, our amazing landscape guru. Contact 0407 603 215 or vcd@internode.on.net
Volunteers Always Needed
1. Kaurna Walking Trail Guides (training provided)
2. Executive Officer (part-time position)
3. Artists for Peace Network Coordinator
4. Newsletter Coordinators
5. for Fundraising Committee
Walk With Us – Book Review
Walk With Us is a new book that provides an insight into the current situation for Aboriginal Australians under the Intervention in the Northern Territory. The poignant title is a plea from prominent Elders in the Territory to not only be in solidarity with them but to accompany them as they dare to reach out for justice that has been so elusive. It is a call from the heart, an invitation to see more deeply into the issue and respond accordingly.
The book includes the changes made to the 2010 Legislation, the Elders visit to the United Nations, and the recent visit by the UN Human Rights High Commissioner who met in Darwin with NT Aboriginal Elders and Leaders. While there she sensed the “…deep hurt and pain that they have suffered” (May, 2011) and has joined many other prominent Australian leaders in calling for changes.
Walk With Us is a sequel to the book This Is What We Said (February, 2010) of which Michael Kirby AC CMG, said “….these are words that we should hear, that our parliament should hear, that our leaders should hear.”
Both books were compiled by ‘concerned Australians’, a committed group with extensive networks. Their effort is focused on supporting opportunities for the voices of Aboriginal people. Only the Aboriginal people themselves are able to share the realities of how the Government’s harsh policies directly affect their everyday lives, and the accompanying despair as their rights have been removed from them.
For more information regarding ‘concerned Australians’ go to www.concernedaustralians.com.au
Peace Trust Diary
Forthcoming Dates
• 5 -11 September National Land Care week www.landcareweek.com
• 9 September 4pm. Memorial Service for Elliott Johnston at Elder Hall, University of Adelaide.
• 21 September UN International Peace Day, Event for students only at Immanuel College. Contact Adrian von der Borch, 08 8271 3200
• 16 October World Food Day
• 16-22 October National Anti-poverty week www.antipovertyweek.org.au
• 19 October Commemoration Day for the sinking of SIEVEX
• 16 November International Day of Tolerance
• 25 November International Day for the elimination of violence against women
• 1 December. International AIDS Day
• 31 January, 2012. Closing date for Fringe Peace Trust Award applications
• 23 June 2012 Annual Peace Trust Dinner
Events – Dates to be Advised:
• Launch – The Graham F Smith Memoir
• Launch –Reconciliation Action Plan
Newsletter Deadlines:
• Summer Newsletter Deadline – 17 November
Please note: Contributions to newsletters are to be no more than 300 words and must state the source of image used. Articles which are longer than 300 words will be returned to writer for editing. One feature article per newsletter is set at 500 words.
Newsletter Disclaimer: Although links are checked to make sure they work, we cannot guarantee they will always work. Third party links may not necessarily hold the same views as the Graham F. Smith Peace Trust.
|
|
