The Australian people, much to their credit, were about as impressed with their leaders for bowing towards Washington as we were with ours. Bush is to visit Canberra and speak before Parliament during his whistle-stop tour of the east. For the purposes of this, a great security cordon is being set up about the Parliament and its precincts, beyond which no members of the public will be allowed passage, into this, one of the most famously open of Governemt areas.
MP Bob Brown is not best pleased about this, as he made clear in Parliament recently. The Sydney Morning Herald reported:
“This is the centre of democracy in this nation. This is the elected parliament of the people of Australia and this [place] belongs to the people of Australia. How dare you close it down and put up a ‘trespassers will be prosecuted’ sign outside our Parliament because President Bush’s Secret Service, in consultation with authorities here, have told you to do so. How dare you! This is the Australian people’s parliament. It is not to be closed down because President Bush or [China’s] President Hu and their secret service agents tell you … This place is being turned into a replica of what they have in Beijing.”
It is quite outrageous the Australian people are being treated in this way. It is quite outrageous that the presiding officers of this place should be so obsequious to the faceless people of other countries who come in here and dictate what shall or shall not be the arrangements for visitors. Mr President, this is not Beijing, this is not Baghdad, this is not Dallas. This is Canberra. You should have shown more respect rather than simply bowing at the knees to the dictates of the secret services of other countries …
“We love this country and we love our democratic system. We do not want it invaded, curtailed or cut back by the way other people run theirs. Rather than telling us what to do and how we might present ourselves in our corner of the world, President Bush should come here and learn how he might better present himself to the rest of the world by seeing people as equal and by spending some of the largesse of the US on helping others who don’t have anything, rather than on armaments and unilateral decisions as to how to run the world …”
Brown would not give an inch. He insisted the Senate president give a “categorical assurance” that no “foreign personnel” would be allowed into the Parliament during the Bush and Hu visits “bearing arms”. The President, Senator Paul Calvert responded: “Established procedures have existed for many years on this matter. They have not been departed from in regard to the forthcoming visits. I hope the Senate will understand that I will not expand on that.” What Calvert was saying was code for yes, US and Chinese security agents would be carrying concealed weapons, both inside and outside Parliament.
That upset Brown even more. “We do not need gun-toting people sheriffing over us in this Australian Parliament,” he said. “It is bad enough you have a made a decision to exclude [the public] from their parliament. It is wrong, this obsequiousness, this knee-trembling. We can protect people who come to this Parliament. We can treat them with dinkum dignity while not being obsequious. This subservience is not Australian …”
Columnist Mike Carlton in the Sydney Morning Herald, has an innovative suggestion for those MPs wishing to show their disdain:
I urge Quick and Co to wolf down copious quantities of an explosive rogan josh before Dubya’s appearance and then to let their digestive organs erupt in mute, gaseous protest. The rest of us can watch eagerly for a puzzled clouding of the presidential brow, a slight flaring of the already rather simian presidential nostrils. The Quick and the dead, you might say.
Go Ozzies!