BY SARAH STEPHEN
John Howard must be proud of NSW Labor Premier Bob Carr, though he might never admit it. Howard and Carr see eye to eye on so many issues, most particularly the supposed imminent threat of terrorism in Australia and the calculated use of dog-whistle politics to spread the mythology that terrorism and crime are intimately linked with Arabic and Muslim culture.
A dog whistle is pitched so high that dogs hear it but humans don't. Dog-whistle politics involves pitching a message to a particular group of voters that other voters don't hear, or don't respond to. So Carr talks about stopping crime among "people in the south-west", he's talking about Sydneysiders of Middle Eastern descent.
Carr's racist message is often coded or veiled, but the unspoken message is clear to those it's directed to. It also lets him off the hook from being accused of explicit racism.
On November 21, 2002, Carr's government introduced the most draconian "anti-terrorist" state legislation in the First World. Under the new laws, the police minister is granted unprecedented powers to declare a state of emergency. Police can search people's homes without a warrant and strip-search suspects, who can also have their possessions confiscated and be ordered to stop engaging in perfectly normal and legal activities.
Such powers could make it legal for police to violently disperse just about any protest action, no matter how peaceful. The courts have absolutely no jurisdiction over these powers. This represents one of the most sweeping attacks on democratic rights in Australia.
Following the deportation of alleged terrorist suspect, Willie Virgile Brigitte, seven houses in Sydney were raided by ASIO agents on October 26. They seized property and questioned six people, but no charges were laid.
Carr immediately backed the secret police raids. Speaking on Sydney radio station 2UE on October 27, Carr said Sydney was "very much" safer following Brigitte's deportation — and no doubt "safer" still after the harassment and intimidation of seven Australian families!
Stephen Hopper, a lawyer for one of men questioned by ASIO, said Carr's talk of terrorist cells was "fear-mongering, because there are quite clear laws [which specify] that if you are an associate of any terrorist organisation or a member of any terrorist organisation you can be arrested. If what Bob Carr was saying is true — that they've smashed an al Qaeda cell — this gentleman would be under arrest and so would a number of the people who were subject to this raid. Bob Carr has come out and he has attacked these people ... but there doesn't appear to be any evidence to support it, particularly with the client I've got. I don't believe he's done anything."
On Channel Nine's Today Show on October 29, Carr urged people to remember the break-up of alleged Jemaah Islamiah terrorist cells in Australia following police raids in the wake of the Bali bombings.
"These raids send a message that we are monitoring you, we know who you are, and that cell dispersed, those Jemaah Islamiah supporters went back to Indonesia", Carr said.
This is a deeply disturbing allegation. No charges were ever laid against the families who were raided in October and November 2002, weeks after the Bali bombing. It is true some of them decided to return to Indonesia. But leaving the country is not an admission of guilt. No doubt it was in order to escape a rise in racist hostility from other Australians, and a country where they no longer felt welcome or safe.
Carr's standard response to any criticism of police powers and the new anti-terrorism laws is to accuse critics of supporting the Bali bombers.
The Murdoch press reported his comments on October 28: "If you don't want your homes raided by police, commonwealth and state, and by ASIO, then have nothing to do with people who are promoting terrorism, like Jemaah Islamiah or like al Qaeda".
"Really, have we forgotten Bali so quickly?", Carr continued. "The threat is real, Australia can expect to be targeted."
Responding to suggestions that Muslim people in western Sydney felt under siege, Carr lashed out: "Well I'm sorry, but 88 Australians died in Bali. The Twin Towers were brought down. There was a terrorist attack in Jakarta."
What clearer incitement can Carr offer to those Australians who have fallen for the racist scapegoating of Arabs and Muslims since 9/11?
Another instance of Carr's racist dog-whistle politics in recent weeks was his response to the October 14 drive-by shooting of a house in Sydney's south-western suburb of Greenacre, in which two people were killed. He called for the perpetrators to "obey the law in Australia or ship out of Australia". In saying this, Carr implied that he knew the culprits were not Australian-born, when in fact nobody had been identified or charged.
There was understandable outrage and condemnation from many quarters at Carr's attempt to turn the Greenacre incident into an issue of "us" (law-abiding, white Australians) versus "them" (criminal elements who come from Middle Eastern countries with their "medieval" behaviour).
Carr later defended his response: "They're pretty strong comments because I'm not going to see our society degraded by this sort of pattern of revenge killing. Obey the law of the land or leave us. I can't make it simpler."
Carr threatened that revenge killings would be given "zero tolerance", as if other types of murders were tolerable.
The incident revealed a disturbing level of sympathy among both Labor and Coalition politicians for the profoundly racist attitude that Muslim migrants who break Australian laws should be sent back to their places of origin.
Carr's use of dog-whistle politics has unleashed a torrent of racist hostility. Talk-back radio and tabloid newspapers have been running hot with people blaming Muslims for all the world's evils.
Federal education minister Brendan Nelson argued that the Greenacre crime was somehow "un-Australian". He told the October 16 Sydney Morning Herald: "Anyone who thinks that they will be coming to Australia and want to bring that sort of behaviour with them, they would do well to listen to Mr Carr's remarks because that is what the average Australian thinks."
Ironically, it was Liberal opposition leader John Brogden who challenged Carr to clarify what he meant. "Is he actually suggesting that people who are migrants to Australia, who have become citizens and then break our laws and commit a crime, should they in fact be sent back to their place of birth?", Brogden asked. "That's a ridiculous proposition. No citizen in this country can have their citizenship revoked, we have an Australian justice system ... and we have jails in New South Wales that should deal with people in that situation."
However, Brogden agreed that anybody who wasn't an Australian resident who committed a crime in Australia should be deported.
The reasons put forward for the Greenacre shootings are all based on conjecture — the police claim they think it was related to a domestic feud, the Liberal opposition argues it was part of a criminal turf war which had been growing for 12 months.
Carr didn't name any ethnic group as being involved, because he didn't have to. He's done the groundwork since he first came into office in 1995, inflaming racist hostility against the Middle Eastern migrant communities in south-western Sydney.
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, November 5, 2003.
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