After many years of heated debate over whether January 26 is an appropriate date to celebrate Australia Day — with some councils and other groups shifting away from it — the tide appears to be turning among some groups.

Some local councils, such as Geelong in Victoria, are reversing recent policy and embracing January 26 as a day to celebrate with nationalistic zeal.

They are likely emboldened by what they perceive as an ideological shift occurring more generally in Australia and around the world.

But what of young people? Are young Australians really becoming more conservative and nationalistic, as some are claiming? For example, the Institute for Public Affairs states that “despite relentless indoctrination taking place at schools and universities”, their recent survey showed a 10 percent increase in the proportion of 18-24 year olds who wanted to celebrate Australia Day.

However, the best evidence suggests that claims of a shift towards conservatism among young people are unsupported.

The statement “we should not celebrate Australia Day on January 26” was featured in the Deakin Contemporary History Survey in 2021, 2023, and 2024.

Respondents were asked to indicate their agreement level. The Deakin survey is a repeated cross-sectional study conducted using the Life in Australia panel, managed by the Social Research Centre. This is a nationally representative online probability panel with more than 2000 respondents for each Deakin survey.

Robust social survey
With its large number of participants, weighting and probability selection, the Life in Australia panel is arguably Australia’s most reliable and robust social survey.

The Deakin Contemporary History Survey consists of several questions about the role of history in contemporary society, hence our interest in whether or how Australians might want to celebrate a national day.

Since 1938, when Aboriginal leaders first declared January 26 a “Day of Mourning”, attitudes to this day have reflected how people in Australia see the nation’s history, particularly about the historical and contemporary dispossession and oppression of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

In 2023, we found support for Australia Day on January 26 declined slightly from 2021, and wondered if a more significant change in community sentiment was afoot.

With the addition of the 2024 data, we find that public opinion is solidifying — less a volatile “culture war” and more a set of established positions. Here is what we found:

This figure shows that agreement (combining “strongly agree” and “agree”) with not celebrating Australia Day on January 26 slightly increased in 2023, but returned to the earlier level a year later.

Likewise, disagreement with the statement (again, combining “strongly disagree” and “disagree”) slightly dipped in 2023, but in 2024 returned to levels observed in 2021. “Don’t know” and “refused” responses have consistently remained below 3 percent across all three years. Almost every Australian has a position on when we should celebrate Australia Day, if at all.

Statistical factors
The 2023 dip might reflect a slight shift in public opinion or be due to statistical factors, such as sampling variability. Either way, public sentiment on this issue seems established.

As Gunai/Kurnai, Gunditjmara, Wiradjuri and Yorta Yorta writer Nayuka Gorrie and Amangu Yamatji woman associate professor Crystal McKinnon have written, the decline in support for Australia Day is the result of decades of activism by Indigenous people.

Though conservative voices have become louder since the failure of the Voice Referendum in 2023, more than 40 percent of the population now believes Australia Day should not be celebrated on January 26.

In addition, the claim of a significant swing towards Australia Day among younger Australians is unsupported.

In 2024, as in earlier iterations of our survey, we found younger Australians (18–34) were more likely to agree that Australia Day should not be celebrated on January 26. More than half of respondents in that age group (53 percent) supported that change, compared to 39 percent of 35–54-year-olds, 33 percent of 55–74-year-olds, and 29 percent of those aged 75 and older.

Conversely, disagreement increases with age. We found 69 percent of those aged 75 and older disagreed, followed by 66 percent of 55–74-year-olds, 59 percent of 35–54-year-olds, and 43 percent of 18–34-year-olds. These trends suggest a steady shift, indicating that an overall majority may favour change within the next two decades.

What might become of Australia Day? We asked those who thought we should not celebrate Australia Day on January 26 what alternative they preferred the most.

Among those who do not want to celebrate Australia Day on January 26, 36 percent prefer replacing it with a new national day on a different date, while 32 percent favour keeping the name but moving it to a different date.

A further 13 percent support keeping January 26 but renaming it to reflect diverse history, and 8 percent advocate abolishing any national day entirely. Another 10 percent didn’t want these options, and less than 1 peecent were unsure.

A lack of clarity
If the big picture suggests a lack of clarity — with nearly 58 percent of the population wanting to keep Australia Day as it is, but 53 percent of younger Australians supporting change — then the task of finding possible alternatives to the status quo seems even more clouded.

Gorrie and McKinnon point to the bigger issues at stake for Indigenous people: treaties, land back, deaths in custody, climate justice, reparations and the state removal of Aboriginal children.

Yet, as our research continues to show, there are few without opinions on this question, and we should not expect it to recede as an issue that animates Australians.

Dr David Lowe is chair in contemporary history, Deakin University; Dr Andrew Singleton is professor of sociology and social research, Deakin University; and Joanna Cruickshank is associate professor in history, Deakin University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Samoan Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mata’afa says the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) is focused on how they will approach the next seven years to achieve the 2030 Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Addressing the High-Level Political Forum (HLPF) on Sustainable Development in New York on behalf of AOSIS, PM Fiame said world leaders needed to leave nationalism behind and urgently put action to the rhetoric they had been propagating for the past eight years.

“Climate change, the global financial crisis, the covid-19 pandemic and geopolitical tensions have taught us that we are even more closely connected than we wish to acknowledge, and that choices made on one end have far and wide reaching devastating impacts on those of us who are many, many miles away,” told the UN High Level Political Forum.

“If we are going to uphold and deliver on our strong commitment to ‘leave no one behind’ and ‘reaching the furthest behind first’ we will have to leave nationalism behind and urgently put action to the rhetoric we have been propagating for the past eight years.”

PM Fiame said it was “time to stop kicking the can further down the road and doing bandage fixes”.

“We have to begin to earnestly address our global development issues, if we are going to begin speaking of a ‘summit of the future’ and ‘for future generations’.

“The sad reality is if we do not take care of today, for many of us, there will be no tomorrow or future.

‘We can do this together’
“We believe we can do this together, as the international community, if we return to the strong resolve, we had following the MDGs and knowing that if nothing drastic was done we would be worse off than we were as a global community in 1992 in Rio when we spoke of “the future we want,” Fiame said.

Faced with continuous and multiple crises, and without the ability to address these in any substantial and sustainable way, SIDS were on the “proverbial hamster wheel with no way out”, the Samoa Prime Minister said.

Therefore what was needed was to:

“Firstly, take urgent action on the climate change front — more climate financing; drastic cuts and reduction in greenhouse emissions, 1.5 is non-negotiable, everyone is feeling the mighty impacts of this, but not many of us have what it takes to rebounded from the devastation.

“This forthcoming COP28 needs to be a game changer, results must emanate from it — the Loss and Damage Fund needs to be fully operationalised and financed; we need progressive movement from the global stocktake; and states parties need to enhance NDCs.

“Secondly, urgent reform of the governance structure and overall working of the international financial architecture. It is time for it to be changed from its archaic approach to finance.

“We need a system that responds more appropriately to the varied dynamics countries face today; that goes beyond GDP; that takes into account various vulnerabilities and other aspects; that would look to utilise the Multi-Vulnerability Index, Bridgetown Initiative and all other measures that help to facilitate a more holistic and comprehensive insight into a country’s true circumstances.

‘More inclusive participation’
“This reform must also allow for a more inclusive and broader participation.

“Thirdly, urgently address high indebtedness in SIDS, this can no longer be ignored. There needs to be a concerted effort to address this.

“As we continually find ourselves in a revolving door between debt and reoccurring debt due to our continuous and constant response to economic, environmental and social shocks caused by external factors,” Prime Minister Fiame said.

“I appeal to you all to take a pause and join forces to make 2030 a year that we can all be proud of,” she said.

“In this vein, please be assured of AOSIS making our contribution no matter how minute it may be. We are fully committed. We invite you to review our interregional outcome document, the ‘Praia Declaration’ for a better understanding of our contribution.

“And we look forward to your constructive engagement as together we chart the 10-year Programme of Action for SIDS in 2024,” she said.

Fiame said the recently concluded Preparatory Meetings for the 4th International Conference on SIDS affirmed the unwavering commitment of SIDS to implement the 2030 Agenda as they charted a 10-year plan for a “resilient and prosperous future for our peoples”.

A ‘tough journey’
“We do recognise that the journey for us will be tough and daunting at times, but we are prepared and have a strong resolve to achieve this. However, we do also recognise and acknowledge that we cannot do this on our own.”

The summit marks the mid-point of the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. It will review the state of the SDGs implementation, provide policy guidance, mobilise action to accelerate implementation and consider new challenges since 2015.

The summit will address the impact of multiple and interlocking crises facing the world, including the deterioration of key social, economic and environmental indicators. It will focus first and foremost on people and ways to meet their basic needs through the implementation of the 2030 Agenda.

This is the second SDG Summit, the first one was held in 2019.

Republished from Pacnews.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

LIVE PODCST: In this episode of A View from Afar political scientist Paul Buchanan and Selwyn Manning discuss how security threats present themselves in a multitude of forms. This week we look at a threat that mixes belief with nationalism. This threat is most obvious in its homeland where the movement was conceived.

But its devotees have migrated to countries all over the world. When confronted by others within their communities, they respond with threats that by degrees… become more sinister.

We are talking about Hindutva nationalism, a right wing movement which has its political epicentre in India.

In the United States of America, a network of universities had organised a virtual conference to discuss Hindutva’s rise. The Washington Post reported this month “the backlash was swift and staggering”.

It added: “Nearly a million emails were sent to universities in protest, the virtual event’s website was attacked and forced offline, organisers reached death and rape threats”, and pro-Modi government media in India said the event was “Hinduphobic and fostered hate against the community”. ref. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/10/03/india-us-universities-hindutva/

And in New Zealand – where this South Pacific nation suffered the tragedy known as the March 15 white supremacist attacks that killed 51 Muslim people while they met for Friday prayer – concerns are now emitting from within the vibrant Indian communities that Hindutva nationalism is growing.

As Stuff.co.nz reported this month, a professor at New Zealand’s Massey University, Mohan Dutta, has spoken out against Hindutva’s far right messages.

Professor Dutta has received hate messages relegating his concerns as promoting Hinduphobia.

Again as Stuff reported, Professor Dutta has received threats such as: “Bootlicker”, “brown servant”. “If you were in India you would be burnt… We should do anything in our power to stop him.”

ref. https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/300420720/the-rise-of-hindutva-and-hate-in-aotearoas-indian-diaspora

So should we consider Hindutva as simply a right wing nationalistic political movement, with networks all over the world? Or does it pose a serious and growing threat to security?

And remember, if you are joining us live, we can include your comments in this programme.

Join Paul and Selwyn for this LIVE recording of this podcast and remember any comments you make while live can be included in this programme.

You can comment on this debate by clicking on one of these social media channels and interacting in the social media’s comment area. Here are the links:

• Facebook.com/selwyn.manning
• Youtube
• Twitter.com/Selwyn_Manning

If you miss the LIVE Episode, you can see it as video-on-demand, and earlier episodes too, by checking out EveningReport.nz or, subscribe to the Evening Report podcast here.

The MIL Network’s podcast A View from Afar was Nominated as a Top  Defence Security Podcast by Threat.Technology – a London-based cyber security news publication.

Threat.Technology placed A View from Afar at 9th in its 20 Best Defence Security Podcasts of 2021 category. You can follow A View from Afar via our affiliate syndicators.

We have this pretty fiction that the world is made up of approximately 200 politically autonomous nation-states. This in the entrenched ‘Wilsonian’ view of the political world that, in particular, was sort-of realised after World War One; a view that rendered the national empires (such as the British Empire) of the past obsolete.

In the liberal world order, the ideal structure of international polities would be 750 nation states each with between (say) three million and twenty million people. (OK, the Olympic Games and the United Nations would struggle to cope with 750 independent members; but that’s not a problem for a liberal order. In a true liberal order, each entity is too small to influence the order itself. In such a liberal order, the collective good is meant to happen through a kind of international marketplace; in marketplaces, properly understood, ‘competition’ and ‘cooperation’ are more like synonyms than antonyms.)

The twenty-first century is a quasi-liberal ‘rules-based’ order of nation states with populations ranging from about 1,000 to 1.5 billion, with a number of hegemon states. At present the major hegemons are: Washington, London, Berlin, Moscow, New Delhi, Beijing, Tehran, Riyadh. Minor hegemons include Paris, The Hague, Copenhagen, Addis Ababa, Ankara, and Wellington.

Nation States: Peoples or Territories?

Historically, a nation was a group of people – an uber-tribe – defined by ethnicity, language and culture. Thus, in the early days of nations, there were no formal territorial borders; though certain geographical features formed practical borders: seas, rivers, mountain chains, deserts. At some times in history, seas were the principal borders; at other times, seas became highway connectors leaving mountains and deserts as the main dividers.

Following World War One, and indeed through until the 1970s, the concept of nations as peoples (rather than as territories) remained dominant. Thus, while New Zealand became politically autonomous from Great Britain, New Zealanders continued to be British. (In my first passport, I was listed as a ‘New Zealand citizen’ and a ‘British subject’.) The practical extent of New Zealanders’ Britishness gradually diminished over the twentieth century; indeed when I sailed to the United Kingdom in 1974 – my ‘OE’ – my automatic right of permanent residence there depended on me having a British born grandparent. (I presume that would have included an Irish-born grandparent, given that Ireland was part of the United Kingdom from 1801 to 1921.)

The main point is that Anglo-Celtic ethnicity, English language, and recent history of empire all contributed to my being a part of a British nation. I even got to vote, in 1975, in the first Brexit referendum (though it wasn’t framed as Brexit then.) And in April 1976, with my then partner and on my trusty Honda 175 motorbike, I embarked on an all-Ireland tour. In Belfast and especially Derry, I ventured into a Civil War zone; the hegemony of London in Derry was not the benign British hegemony I grew up with in Palmerston North. Yet, even the independent Republic of Ireland was in many ways still British; the pound sterling circulated as equivalent to the Irish punt, there was no passport requirement of entry, and it was only in County Donegal that I heard the Irish language spoken in a natural setting.

The change came mainly in the 1980s; nationalism can be fuelled by economic hard times, and modern ‘territorial’ nationalism reflects the growth of liberal identity politics in a decade in which fresh thinking about capitalism and economics just got too hard. Then in the early 1990s, the cold war ‘evil empire’ that was the Soviet Union collapsed into constituent territorial nation states, as did the satellite empire of Yugoslavia. Some said that this was the ‘end of history’; the world order by 2000 was made up of about 200 nation states defined, not by ethnicity, language, or culture, but by (often arbitrary) territorial boundaries.

The 2000s’ decade represented the pinnacle of ‘globalisation’, a word interpreted in a number of ways, but whose key theme was the subjection of nation states to an imperfectly competitive global marketplace, through a mixture of neoliberal ideology and internet-based technology. The remaining substantially incomplete part of the globalisation ‘project’ was to liberalise the flow of people.

In the 2010s’ decade, however – the post global-financial-crisis decade – this era of international ‘market cooperation’ came to an end; most clearly within the European Union, and more latterly with the reassertion of Chinese and Indian hegemony within their extended territories. Nevertheless, by regarding most people as ‘labour’, certain free international flows of people expanded in the 2010s.

Today, the western liberal view of a nation state is that it is a tightly-bordered territory in which all resident citizens are equal beneficiaries of that state (territorial insiders), and with seven broadly defined groups of other people having lesser rights with respect to that state. New Zealand in 2021 represents a particularly extreme version of a territorially fundamentalist state; where, on the inside, any ‘unkind’ expression of traditional identity differences is virtually outlawed, but where it is open season to be unkind towards defined outsiders by virtue of their status as outsiders. This 2020s’ extension of deglobalisation in New Zealand is the ‘immigration reset’, which is being implemented under the cover of the Covid19 pandemic.

The seven outsider groups are:

• People currently living in New Zealand, but without political rights and subject to temporary permissions (some undoubtedly already expired) with respect to their legal right to be in New Zealand, and to pursue an economic life while in New Zealand. They are denizens rather than citizens of New Zealand.
• People who have the legal status of citizens or permanent residents (‘New Zealand insiders’), but who are not currently inside New Zealand. (We may include ‘realm citizens’ in this group, such as Cook Island or Niuean citizens.)
• People not in the former categories, but who have a familial relationship with New Zealand insiders, or have current or prospective employers (or education providers) in New Zealand, or are Australian citizens.
• People not in the former categories but who are in a position to buy their way into some form of residential status.
• People not in the former categories but who are in a circumstance to plead their way, as refugees.
• People – especially younger men – in the RSE (recognised seasonal employment) countries: Tonga, Samoa, Vanuatu, Tuvalu and Kiribati. This is, formally, a labour relationship associated with New Zealand’s Pacific hegemony. Of these, Samoa has a further relationship with New Zealand; unlike the others, it was member of the ‘New Zealand empire’ in the mid-twentieth century. New Zealand continues to have a closer hegemonic relationship with Samoa than with the other RSE countries. Tonga is of particular significance, because most of the victims of the ‘dawn raids’ of 1975 and 1976 were Tongan citizens who had overstayed their temporary work permits.
• Everybody else in the world, including people from places such as Great Britain, South Africa and India who previously had favourable access to New Zealand through their empire links.

Thus, discrimination at present is based almost entirely on a person’s current location and their immigration status. That is the meaning of ‘territorial fundamentalism’; a nation state becomes simply an enforced piece of real estate, defined by its borders rather than by its people. That and nothing more.

We may note that Jacinda Ardern’s ‘Dawn Raids’ apology (1 August 2021) was carefully worded to emphasise the “discriminatory” nature of those raids (which mostly affected Tongan overstayers, people who had worked in New Zealand on RSE-like contracts), not their brutality. Essentially – and from today’s standpoint of territorial fundamentalism – that apology was for the failure to deport enough people whose passports were not of Pacific Island countries. We should have deported more Canadians, for example.

As noted (by the various bullet points above), New Zealand’s territorial fundamentalism has some exceptions, or at least gradations. One of these involves money; there is a suggestion that semi-billionaires will have privileged future access to New Zealand (although, within this group, the non-discrimination principle may be tested; will a Chinese semi-billionaire face more difficulties than an American semi-billionaire?). Another discrimination is that most citizens of most counties in close proximity to New Zealand will have less unfavourable future access to New Zealand than someone from, say, the United Kingdom; the most obvious example being Australian citizens.

Australia and United Kingdom

Australia and the United Kingdom are, like New Zealand, leaders in territorial fundamentalism, although I sense that both are more discriminatory than New Zealand on matters other than a person’s current location or immigration status. There is a sense that Māori in Australia are more likely to run foul of their ‘good character’ laws than are pakeha New Zealanders in Australia. Another difference in Australia is that most New Zealanders there form a whole category of denizens, essentially tenured guest workers.

For a few years now, especially after the 2015 refugee crisis (mainly characterised by boat-people – ‘refugees’ and ‘economic migrants’ – coming out of Turkey, headed for the European Union; also a year of accelerated boat-people arrivals from Africa), BBC-type television dramas have highlighted the cruel interactions between vulnerable people and government bureaucracies. (Examples of such dramas are Collateral, and the black comedy Years and Years; we also see patterns in which most TV lead-detectives seem to be women, and in which Britain is an overtly multiracial society to the extent that even ‘white’ historical figures are depicted by ‘black’ actors.) Being British is now solely about the legal right to occupy British real estate; a right that is getting ever more difficult to secure. Anyone presently in Britain who does not have a legal right to be there is vulnerable to deportation, preceded by police raids at dawn, dusk or any other time of any day. While I am not clear about the current status of Irish citizens living in the United Kingdom, I suspect that it is not unlike that of New Zealanders in Australia.

China and India

These are hegemonic powers with a very strong sense of what constitutes their own territory, with the only blurs being their borders with each other (either side of Nepal and Bhutan). India has recently asserted its sovereignty over Kashmir, and China over Hong Kong.

The rise of territorial fundamentalism in the west has enabled China to accentuate its own form of territorial fundamentalism, with the once blurred boundaries in China’s far west now being claimed as inextricably Chinese territory, and fully subject to the imposition of Han Chinese culture and bureaucracy.

Hegemonic boundaries

Modern hegemonies are territorial nation states with significant fringes-of-influence. China’s inclination is to absorb those fringes into its formal territory, when they become troublesome. In addition to its Indian borderlands, those remaining fringes include Hong Kong, Macau, Laos, Myanmar, Mongolia, Taiwan, North Korea, and islands in the South China Sea. And, one small step removed from these, is South Korea.

It will be interesting to see how long it takes before Hong Kong and Macau switch to driving on the right-hand side of the road; that will be a practical symbol of their full incorporation into China.

American hegemony was – in the Cold War period – the entire cultural west. Thus, the Chilean coup of 1973 was largely instigated in Washington, as was the bloodless Australian coup of 1975. New Zealand largely wriggled out of that hegemony in the 1980s, and now constitutes an independent hegemon (albeit a minor hegemon) in the southwest Pacific. While the United States of America does have a formal realm (including Puerto Rico, American Samoa, and the Marianas Islands – and noting that Hawaii was incorporated into its core territory much as Tibet was in China), its main ongoing hegemonic interest is informal and in the western Pacific (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Philippines). Also, Israel.

In the 1990s, Berlin effectively freed itself from American hegemony, and extended a process of asserting hegemony over the rest of the European Peninsula. Thus, in the 1990s, Eastern Europe largely – and in accordance with its history – once again flipped between Russian and Prussian influence. Further, as the European Union became increasingly a Prussian hegemony, the United Kingdom – especially England – wanted out.

The United Kingdom

London remains a particularly interesting, and enigmatic territorial hegemon. The United Kingdom is itself a formal hegemony ruled from England. The United Kingdom has three further layers, all formally constituted. The first layer includes the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands, both tax havens. (Indeed all aggregated financial data for the United Kingdom is severely compromised, mostly because of these Switzerlands of the Irish Sea and the ‘English’ Channel.) The next layer is Britain’s realm, which includes a number of Caribbean tax havens and mid-Atlantic islands, as well as Gibraltar and Pitcairn. The final layer is the Commonwealth, although this expanding club (which now includes Mozambique and Rwanda) is largely a symbolic community of nations, and no longer reflects any realpolitik.

While there has been much recent focus on the status of Scotland, and of the impracticalities of a hegemonic boundary through Irish farmland, the really interesting case here may well be the Republic of Ireland, caught between – though geographically to the west of – two rival hegemons: London and Berlin. Dublin was similarly caught, as an uneasy neutral, during World War Two.

The twentieth century in Irish history represented a struggle for the political independence of the Irish people (an ethnicity which did not include the Scottish ethnics in the north), and was for a while resolved by Dublin and London both being subject to the hegemony of a union (EU) whose real political centre had become Berlin. The present arrangement – with a ‘forward border’ in the Irish Sea is unsustainable.

Further, I’m not really clear that the people of Scotland will openly favour a switch to Berlin instead of London as its political bedmate. A geopolitical land border along the River Tweed could be even more problematic than one in Ireland.

What I can see is – in a few decades time – Ireland rejoining the United Kingdom, albeit on different terms to those of the 1801 to 1921 period. We have seen in covid times that Scotland is already substantially independent from England. What needs to happen is for Westminster to become a solely English parliament, and for somewhere like Peterborough or Swindon to become a kind of federal capital city, accommodating a British Council that coordinates fiscal and foreign policy throughout a British realm that would naturally include both parts of Ireland.

Russia and China

Within Russia there is a strong sense of ‘Greater Russia’ which incorporates, in particular, Slavic and Tatar ethnic territories. While there has never been a sense that Russia has sought world dominance – there was once a sense that a Marxist worldview (a view formerly associated with Russia) did seek such dominance. Likewise, an American interpretation of consumerist liberal democracy also reached out to the entire world, and that kind of cultural hegemony was often associated with the United States as a powerful territorial nation state. Neither view really holds today. (Nor does anyone seriously think that Han Chinese culture or Islamic culture will ever prevail much beyond their present hegemonic boundaries.)

Nevertheless, Russia’s strong hegemonic attachment to a Greater Russia (and China’s to a greater China) will continue to create geopolitical tension. Indeed, there is a sense of foreboding at present that George Orwell’s book 1984 is becoming an uncannily accurate projection of our human future this century. In that book, the world was a surveillance society of manipulated truth, and politically dominated by three hegemonic ’empires’: Oceania, Eurasia and East Asia. In Orwell’s story, Oceania would flip between cynical alliances with Eurasia or East Asia. (In the 2020s, we may see ‘Eurasia’ forging such an alliance with ‘East Asia’.)

We can expect that, as in the past, Moscow will resist any attempts for nations under its influence on its western fringe (Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova) to further distance themselves. And Moscow can be expected to be welcoming towards any Eastern European nations presently within the European Union who show signs of distancing themselves from Berlin (especially Poland and Hungary), and to develop political institutions more in line with the present Moscow model.

And we can expect the far east Asian nations (especially South Korea) to develop through the tension of being on a major hegemonic boundary.

Southeast Asia and Indo-Pacific

One key area to watch will be Southeast Asia. Already the term ‘Indo-Pacific’ is becoming the new geopolitical buzz phrase. Southeast Asia (even including Philippines with its entrenched post-colonial links with the United States) is a mix of independent and contested territory; by the latter I mean that it is contested for influence by different religions as well as diverse regional and post-colonial polities.

Hopefully, Southeast Asia – as a region – can remain relatively free of those hegemonic influences, and can flourish as a kind of ASEAN commonwealth; and keeps itself free from the territorial fundamentalism, where borders and visas – and only borders and visas – matter.

Summary

The system of territorial nation states has evolved, since the Post-WW1 Treaty of Versailles in 1919, towards its textbook optimum; a world of many independent territorial states, indeed a change from the recent globalised world of interdependent administrative states. The human world will always remain a mix of big states and small states; there is no prospect of the breakup of China, India, USA, Russia or any of the other G20 territories. (Though if my speculation re the United Kingdom comes about, I think it would have to become a British Union in which England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland etc. are recognised as separate countries, as they are indeed by FIFA.) And there’s no obvious prospect of any of today’s small nation states merging into any union beyond the scope of the present European Union.

Covid-facilitated (and GFC-facilitated) ‘Territorial Fundamentalism’ is an excessive backlash from the globalisation epoch of the 1990s and 2000s. After-all, humanity is a dispersed though connected fraternity of nearly eight billion people. Border-controls of the types that are emerging are fundamentally cruel; and cruelty towards any of us is ultimately cruelty to all of us.

Despite our present zenith of territorial independence, many nations are significantly influenced by regional hegemons; a few countries find themselves caught between two regional hegemons. New Zealand is one of those hegemons, in the south Pacific; albeit a minor hegemon. Indeed countries like Tonga are not only pulled towards New Zealand.

The wider solution to the problems of humanity is to develop a concept of global human rights – for example, through a public equity framework – while acknowledging a wide plurality of social and territorial identities. While movement across the global human landscape should be as politically free as can be practically managed, the economic, political and climatic incentives that persuade people to seek refuge from certain places need to be addressed and understood. Regional hegemons can choose to play benign rather than malign leadership roles in this process. And human rights principles should prevail over administrative rules. We need an order based on principles rather rules.

————-

Keith Rankin, trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

contact: keith at rankin.nz

Up to 193 million eligible voters in Indonesia will go to the polls today, in what will be the world’s largest single-day election.

The election will see incumbent president Joko “Jokowi” Widodo go head-to-head with Prabowo Subianto, a former general in the Indonesian armed forces who lost to Jokowi in 2014.

This election is also significant as for the first time in Indonesia’s history, the presidential and legislative elections will be held on the same day.

READ MORE: Indonesia’s political system has ‘failed’ its minorities – like West Papuans

Why should New Zealand care? We put the question to some Indonesia experts…

Lester Finch, Director, AUT Indonesia Centre:
“Which country is New Zealand’s most disregarded Pacific neighbour? An archipelago of 17,000 islands, more than 300 languages spoken and 260 million people. Yes, it’s Indonesia.

“This large country is full of economic and social development opportunities for entrepreneurial Kiwis yet we don’t know what’s going on there. Many don’t know that the presidential elections are to be held this month and the outcome of those elections will have an impact on New Zealand.

“Indonesian language is a doorway to the culture. Australia has around 20 institutions teaching the Indonesian language while New Zealand has just one. Why? We just haven’t yet realised the opportunities Indonesia has for us.

“Indonesia is an exciting country with fine traditions and culture, especially its vibrant music and dance. Let’s pay some attention and step out of our comfort zone to get to know wonderful Indonesia and find out about the two individuals vying for the presidency.”

Natasha Hamilton-Hart, Director, New Zealand Asia Institute:
“For New Zealand, the election carries two major points of relevance. First, there are the implications for Indonesia’s future trajectory with regard to human rights and civic freedoms. While neither candidate is a liberal democrat, Prabowo’s platform, history and allies clearly speak to a greater willingness to espouse illiberal limits on individual and minority freedoms.

“Second, there are implications for Indonesia’s trade policy. Both candidates endorse strongly nationalist programmes, including a policy of self-sufficiency in food – which directly impinges on New Zealand’s export prospects in key products, including meat and dairy.

“There is at least a rhetorical difference, however. In the campaign, Prabowo has strongly criticised rising food imports in 2018, leaving Jokowi to defend these imports as necessary to maintain food price stability.

“Jokowi’s administration has been forced to allow these import increases despite an underlying commitment to an ostensibly pro-farmer self-sufficiency strategy. Imports have risen when food prices spiked, but the longer term strategy is likely to be here to stay.”

Sharyn Graham Davies, Associate Professor of Social Sciences at Auckland University of Technology:
“Given New Zealand’s recent overwhelming support of its Muslim community, including women donning the head scarf on the Friday following the Christchurch massacre, it is a shame that New Zealand will not find a kindred spirit in the next president of Indonesia.

“Both of the front-runners have poor track records when it comes to human rights. New Zealand rightly finds it difficult to ignore human rights abuses on the diplomatic stage.

“While the incumbent, Jokowi, is perhaps not malevolent, he has done little to support women or the LGBT community since his election in 2014. While Jokowi’s lacklustre presidency may not be a huge cause for concern, his appointment of vice-presidential candidate, Ma’ruf Amin, is an ultra-conservative Islamic hardliner who thinks Indonesia should be cleansed of its LGBT community.

“Distressingly, though, the Jokowi-Ma’ruf ticket almost looks almost benign compared to the other front-runner, Prabowo. Having married the daughter of former authoritarian ruler Suharto, Prabowo is implicated in a number of mass murders.

“New Zealand needs to pay attention to the upcoming Indonesian election to get to grips with how it will deal with our most populous neighbour when further human rights abuses occur.”

Indi Soemardjan, Chairman of the New Zealand-Indonesia Friendship Council:
“New Zealanders can start looking at the size of this election. There will be 800,000 polling stations, six million election workers, and the most complicated single-day ballot in global history.

“Altogether, there are more than 245,000 candidates running for more than 20,000 national and local legislative seats across hundreds of islands, in addition to the headline presidential contest.

“Paper ballots and nails are simply the method. No electronic nor digital ballots used.

“Unfortunately, this has also been considered the most divisive presidential election in Indonesia due to the fact that both candidates have effectively used social media channels (and millions of chat/WhatsApp groups) to create public opinion regarding their ‘ideological differences’, if any.”

Dewi Fortuna Anwar, Research Professor, Indonesia Institute of Sciences:
“With its population of over 260 million people, its strategic location at the crossroads between the Indian and Pacific Oceans and between Asia and Australia and its dynamic economy, Indonesia is the largest member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and plays a pivotal role in promoting regional peace, stability and prosperity.

“Indonesia is also the world’s largest Muslim nation, the world’s third largest democracy as well as a member of the G20. Indonesia prides itself as a country where Islam, democracy, modernity and women empowerment walk hand-in hand.

“Indonesia’s legislative and presidential elections serve to affirm its identity as a vibrant democracy, while at the same time the rise in identity politics and the proliferation of fake news have become serious concerns as both can undermine democracy. The results of Indonesia’s elections are clearly of interest to Indonesia’s neighbours, including New Zealand, as they will determine the direction that Indonesia will take in the next five years.”

Chris Naziris, lawyer at MKK Jakarta and Wellington:
“The 2019 election will be defined by competing populist policies, economic nationalism and rising religious conservatism. These could significantly impact New Zealand’s $1 billion worth of exports, the security of the region and the safety of New Zealanders.

“Indonesia has been a pluralistic and largely tolerant nation but continued low mineral prices (Indonesia’s extractive economy mirrors Australia’s) and increasingly ineffective nationalistic economic policies have failed to lift millions out of extreme poverty.

“This has led to frustration and resentment among many, especially outside Jakarta. In a time of growing US-China tensions, BREXIT, and European economic stagnation, the stability of Indonesia, as the largest economy in Southeast Asia is vital to New Zealand.”

Siah Hwee Ang, Chair in Business in Asia:
“Indonesia is a close neighbour to New Zealand and its economic ties with New Zealand have strengthened in the last couple of years. Indonesia’s trade and investment policies might adjust depending on the outcomes of the coming election.

“This will have an impact on New Zealand businesses either currently trading with our Southeast Asia neighbour or those with the market in sight.

“Even intermediaries that engage with Indonesian counterparts will have to keep themselves abreast of the potential change in political and business climate in Indonesia. More broadly, Indonesia’s election will have ramifications for ASEAN as a whole and the wider Asia-Pacific, which New Zealand is a part of.

“There will be ripple effects on trade and investment fronts, even if trade agreements may have ring-fenced some of these potential effects. Overall, clearly the election in the largest economy in ASEAN would have both direct and indirect effects on business engagements with the country and the wider context of the Asia-Pacific.”

Compiled by the Asia New Zealand Foundation’s Asia Media Centre.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

By David Robie

A human rights defender and researcher has warned in a new book published on the eve of the Indonesian national elections tomorrow that the centralised political system has failed many of the country’s 264 million people – especially minorities and those at the margins, such as in West Papua.

Author Andreas Harsono also says a “radical change is needed in the mindset of political leaders” and he is not optimistic for such changes after the election.

Harsono is author of Race, Islam and Power: Ethnic and Religious Violence in Post-Suharto Indonesia, a book based on 15 years of research and travel between Sabang in Aceh in the west and Merauke in West Papua in the East.

READ MORE: Indonesian elections – environment a missing topic

Race, Islam and Power – Andreas Harsono’s new book on human rights in Indonesia. Image: Monash University

Founding President Sukarno used the slogan “from Sabang to Merauke” when launching a campaign – ultimately successful – to seize West Papua in 1961.

But, as Harsono points out, the expression should really be from Rondo Island (an unpopulated islet) to Sota (a remote border post on the Papua New Guinean boundary.

Harsono, a Human Rights Watch researcher since 2008, argues that Indonesia might have been more successful by creating a federation rather than a highly centralised state controlled from Jakarta.

“Violence on post-Suharto Indonesia, from Aceh to West Papua, from Kalimantan to the Moluccas, is evidence that Java-centric nationalism is unable to distribute power fairly in an imagined Indonesia,” he says. “It has created unnecessary paranoia and racism among Indonesian migrants in West Papua.

Human Rights Watch researcher Andreas Harsono … violent repression has “created unnecessary paranoia and racism among Indonesian migrants in West Papua”. Image: HRW

‘They’re Melanesians’
“The Papuans simply reacted by saying they’re Melanesians – not Indonesians. They keep questioning the manipulation of the United Nations-sponsored Act of Free Choice in 1969.”

Critics and cynics have long dismissed what they see as a deeply flawed process involving only 1025 voters selected by the Indonesian military as the “Act of No Choice”.

Harsono’s criticisms have been borne out by a range of Indonesian activist and watchdog groups, who say the generals behind the two presidential frontrunners are ridden with political interests.

The Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras) and the Mining Advocacy Network (JATAM) have again warned that both presidential candidate tickets — incumbent President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo and running mate Ma’ruf Amin as well as rival Prabowo Subianto and Sandiaga Uno — have close ties with retired TNI (Indonesian military) generals.

These retired officers are beholden to political interests and the prospect of resolving past human rights violations will “become increasingly bleak” no matter who is elected as the next president.

President Joko Widodo and his challenger retired general Prabowo Subianto … “problematic track record on human rights”. Image: Jakarta Post

Kontras noted that nine out of the 27 retired officers who are behind Widodo and Ma’ruf have a “problematic track record on human rights”.

“Likewise with Prabowo Subianto and Sandiaga Uno where there are eight retired officers who were allegedly involved in past cases of HAM violations”, said Kontras researcher Rivanlee Anandar.

Prabowo himself, a former special forces commander, is implicated in many human rights abuses. He has been accused of abduction and torture of 23 pro-democracy activists in the late 1990s and he is regarded as having knowledge of the killing hundreds of civilians in Santa Cruz massacre in Timor-Leste.

90,000 killed post-Sukarno
Harsono’s 280-page book, with seven chapters devoted to regions of Indonesia, documents an ”internally complex and riven nation” with an estimated 90,000 people having been killed in the decade after Suharto’s departure.

“In East Timor, President Suharto’s successor B. J. Habibie agreed to have a referendum [on independence]. Indonesia lost and it generated a bloodbath,” says Harsono.

“Habibie’s predecessors, Megawati Sukanoputri and Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, refused to admit [that] the Indonesian military’s occupation, despite a United Nations’ finding, had killed 183,000 people between 1975 and 1999.”

Harsono notes how in 1945 Indonesia’s “non-Javanese founders Mohammad Hatta, Sam Ratu Langie and Johannes Latuharhary wanted an Indonesia that was democratic and decentralised. They advocated a federation.”

However, Sukarno, Supomo and Mohammad Yamin wanted instead a centralised unitarian state.

“Understanding the urgency to fight incoming Dutch troops, Latuharhary accepted Supomo’s proposal but suggested the new republic hold a referendum as soon as it became independent. Sukarno agreed but this decision has never been executed.”

The establishment of a unitarian state “naturally created the Centre”, says Harsono. “Jakarta has been accumulated and controlling political, cultural, educational, economic, informational and ideological power.

Java benefits
“The closer a region to Jakarta, the better it will benefit from the Centre. Java is the closest to the Centre.

“The further a region is from the Centre, the more neglected it will be. West Papua, Aceh, East Timor and the Moluccas are among those furthest away from Jakarta.”

The centralised political system needed a “long and complex bureaucracy” and this “naturally created corruption”, Harsono explains.

“Indonesia is frequently ranked as the most corrupt country in Asia. Political and Economic Risk Consultancy Ltd listed Indonesia as the most corrupt country in Asia in 2005.”

Harsono also notes how centralised power has helped a religious and ethnic majority that sees itself as “justified to have privileges and to rule over the minorities”.

The author cites the poet Leon Agasta as saying, “They’re the two most dangerous words in Indonesia: Islam and Java.” Muslim majority and Javanese dominance.

Harsono regards the Indonesian government’s response to demands for West Papuan “self-determination” as “primarily military and repressive: viewing Papuan ‘separatists’ as criminals, traitors and enemies of the Republic of Indonesia”.

He describes this policy as a “recipe for ongoing military operations to search for and destroy Papuan ‘separatists’, a term that could be applied to a large, if not overwhelming, portion of the Papuan population”.

Ruthless Indonesian military
“The Indonesian military, having lost their previous power bases in east Timor and Aceh, ruthlessly maintain their control over West Papua, both as a power base and as considerable source of revenue.

“The Indonesian military involvement in legal businesses, such as mining and logging, and allegedly, illegal businesses, such as alcohol, prostitution, extortion and wildlife smuggling, provide significant funds for the military as an organisation and also for individual officers.”

Andreas Harsono launched his journalism career as a reporter for the Bangkok-based Nation and the Kuala Lumpur-based Star newspapers. In the 1990s, he helped establish Indonesia’s Alliance of Independent Journalists – then am illegal group under the Suharto regime, and today the most progressive journalists union in the republic.

Harsono was also founder of the Jakarta-based Institute for the Studies on the Free Flow of Information and of the South East Asia Press Alliance (SEAPA).

In a separate emailed interview with me in response to a question about whether there was light at the end of the tunnel, Harsono replied: I do not want to sound pessimistic but visiting dozens of sites of mass violence, seeing survivors and families’ who lost their lost ones, I just realised that mass killings took place all over Indonesia.

“It’s not only about the 1965 massacres –despite them being the biggest of all– but also the Papuans, the Timorese, the Acehnese, the Madurese etc.

“Basically all major islands in Indonesia, from Sumatra to Papua, have witnessed huge violence and none of them have been professionally understood. The truth of those mass killings have not been found yet.”

Professor David Robie is director of the Pacific Media Centre.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz