Turnbull and Shorten haggle over detail of citizenship disclosure system

Michelle Grattan, University of Canberra

Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten are inching toward an agreement on the form of a citizenship declaration that each MP would have to make within weeks.

The two met in Melbourne on Wednesday, with Turnbull hoping they would finalise the declaration. But Shorten, who was accompanied by Labor Senate leader Penny Wong, had two objections to the proposal outlined by Turnbull earlier this week.

Shorten told a news conference later that Labor believed the declaration should outline what steps a person whose parents or grandparents had been born overseas had taken to investigate whether they were a dual citizen. Also, Labor wanted a shorter timeframe for MPs submitting the declaration.

Under Turnbull’s plan, an MP would state the details of where they were born and where their parents were born, and their belief that they were not a dual citizen. The declarations would have to be submitted 21 days after the Senate and the House of Representatives respectively passed a motion approving the new decoration system.

The government plans to move motions for the declaration in the Senate next week and when the House of Representatives meets on November 27.

It emerged on Wednesday that the government was proposing to bring the parliament back in late December to consider the declarations, which would open the way for any MPs who were thought to be dual citizens to be referred to the High Court. But Shorten seized on the point that a special sitting of parliament would be very costly for the taxpayer.

Shorten said the statements should be in by December 1, five days after the lower house resumes, and a week before parliament rises for Christmas.

“This would allow the disclosures to be checked out and then if there are any problems requiring referral to the High Court, that could be done in the last week of parliament,” Shorten said.

On Labor’s proposed tougher test, Shorten said: “Mr Turnbull’s resolution only goes to what the actual individual MP might believe, but I think that we require, and the High Court set, a higher test of us. Labor is not going to support watering down the High Court decisions to help a few MPs scrape back into parliament.”

Late on Wednesday the government and opposition were exchanging proposals for changes to the wording of the motion.

Both Turnbull and Shorten described the talks as “constructive”.

“We are certainly agreed on the need for disclosure of the kind that I’ve set out in the resolution,” Turnbull told a separate news conference.

“We’ve also agreed that the matter must be dealt with before the end of the year.

“By that, I mean that the disclosures should be made before the end of the year and the House and the Senate should have the opportunity, having considered those disclosures, whether any members or senators should be referred to the High Court … of course it may be that nobody needs to be referred to the High Court.”

Meanwhile, Liberal backbencher John Alexander, the member for Bennelong, is waiting for British Home Office advice on whether he is a dual British citizen. The issue revolves around whether Alexander’s father, who was born in Britain, renounced his citizenship – as Alexander believed.

If Alexander turns out to be ineligible to sit in parliament the government would face a byelection in a seat it would be vulnerable to losing.

The government is homing in on Labor MP Justine Keay, from Tasmania, who moved to renounce her UK citizenship before she nominated but did not receive confirmation until after the election. Labor insists that Keay met the requirement to make every reasonable effort to renounce a foreign citizenship.

Issues are being raised about several other MPs. The crisis has already claimed half-a-dozen victims.

Postscript

Four Liberal senators including a minister have nominated for Senate president – but the Nationals New South Wales senator John “Wacka” Williams has said he will not contest. Special Minister of State Scott Ryan has nominated to be the government’s candidate, as have David Fawcett, Dean Smith and Ian Macdonald. If Ryan were successful that would open up a vacancy in the outer ministry.

The government’s candidate will be chosen before the Senate meets on Monday.

Tasmanian Greens senator Peter Whish-Wilson will contest the position against the government candidate but has no hope of success.

The Nationals have never held the position. Williams’ bid was seen as part of the tensions between the Coalition partners in the wake of the citizenship crisis which has claimed two Nationals ministers, forcing Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce to a byelection and ending – at least for the foreseeable future – the political career of Fiona Nash.

https://www.podbean.com/media/player/k3zus-7afe23?from=site&skin=1&share=1&fonts=Helvetica&auto=0&download=0

Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The case for holding politicians to the same disclosure standards as company directors

Cory Bernardi was recently caught up in a dispute over whether he had correctly disclosed a property he owns.
AAP/Mick Tsikas

Bede Harris, Charles Sturt University

Recent commentary on the rules governing politicians’ declaration of financial interests has highlighted the ease with which they are circumvented and the laxity with which they are enforced.

Senator Cory Bernardi was recently caught up in a dispute over whether he had correctly disclosed a A$1 million commercial property he owns in South Australia. He denies any wrongdoing and says he complied with the rules.

There are differences between the regimes governing politicians and directors of public companies; the former relate to assets whereas the latter govern transactions. But they both serve the same end – ensuring transparency and reducing the risk of conflicts of interest.

Why, then, are the rules so lax for politicians?

Why MPs aren’t pursued

Parliamentary rules require MPs declare a broad range of interests. They must also declare interests they are “aware” are held by their spouses and dependant children.

Politicians file interests late – sometimes only after media exposure. They frequently disregard the rules relating to minor assets and defy the rule relating to reporting spousal assets. The requirement of awareness in relation to family assets makes ignorance an easily available defence.

However, the chief problem is enforcement. The relevant law says events occurring within parliament, which would include breaches of financial disclosure rules, cannot be judged by the courts.

This rule is important because it protects free debate. But it ultimately makes the enforcement of internal parliamentary rules subject to political forces rather than purely legal considerations. This is because of how parliament’s internal processes work.

The initial decision on whether an MP has acted in contempt of parliament – for example, by failing to declare assets – is made by the relevant house’s privileges committee.

The government has a majority on the House of Representatives committee, so there is obviously little chance it will find against one of its own MPs. And even if a committee does make an adverse finding, it amounts only to a recommendation. It is up to the entire house (in which, again, the government has a majority) to make the final decision as to whether contempt has occurred and, if so, what punishment to impose.

Where an opposition MP is under the spotlight, a finding of contempt is theoretically more likely. But the reason this is only theoretical is that a party with a majority is aware the time will come when it will lose that majority. For this reason, it will not want to establish a precedent that can later be used against it.

So, it is in the interests of both major parties not to pursue contempt matters too vigorously.

This was strikingly illustrated in 2002, when former defence minister Peter Reith refused to appear before a Senate committee investigating the “children overboard” affair. On the face of it this amounted to contempt. Also, the Coalition parties did not hold a Senate majority. But Labor refrained from compelling Reith to give evidence or face contempt proceedings.

The upshot is there is no real likelihood MPs will face punishment for breaching financial disclosure rules. All that happens is they are allowed to “correct the record” – which makes failure to disclose essentially risk-free.

Company directors face stringent requirements

Contrast this with the requirements imposed on directors of public companies.

If any “related party” of a company – including a director, their spouse, child, parent or other company that any of these parties controls – wants to enter into a transaction with the director’s company, the shareholders’ permission has to be obtained in advance.

So, for example, if the father of a director wanted to purchase a vehicle owned by the company of which she was a director, the shareholders would have to approve the transaction before it took place.

Most importantly, any person involved in a breach of the rules is subject to a civil penalty of up to A$200,000 if the breach is not dishonest (that is, if it is unintentional), and faces criminal prosecution and a fine of up to A$200,000 and/or imprisonment for five years if the breach is intentional.

The consequences of MPs breaching financial disclosure rules could easily be toughened by amending the relevant law. Breaches should be subject to normal court proceedings, rather than being left to parliament’s dubious procedures. There should also be a penalty regime mirroring that applicable to company directors.

Bede Harris, Senior Lecturer in Law, Charles Sturt University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Turnbull believes in timely disclosure of donations – just not his

Michelle Grattan, University of Canberra

During his Wednesday appearance at the National Press Club Malcolm Turnbull observed he was not a “political animal” like some of his opponents.

He meant it as a virtue – he was extolling his pragmatism on energy policy. But he failed, to his detriment, to show a political nose on something closer to home.

Having agreed that it would be desirable to have political donations disclosed in a more timely and transparent way (and flagging he opposed foreign donations), he then refused to say how much he had given in the last campaign.

The latest donations list had come out only hours earlier but Turnbull’s contribution – speculated to be A$1 million or $2 million – was missing, apparently because of a timing loophole.

So it was obvious Turnbull would be asked the question, equally clear that he would be called a hypocrite if he supported a general change but took advantage of the secrecy to which he is legally entitled.

What was the point? The story, in the broad, is out there (unless the amount is much higher than suggested). The figure will presumably emerge officially in the next disclosure round – that much closer to the election. And his coyness just diverted attention from his main messages about jobs, energy, education and other parts of his 2017 agenda.

How much he kicked in for his own re-election wasn’t the only delicate point on which Turnbull would not be drawn at the Press Club.

He was notably reluctant to buy into the issue of preferences for One Nation, which is topical in the context of the March election in
Western Australia. This week the Herald Sun reported there had been talks between the WA Liberals and Pauline Hanson about preference swapping.

Asked whether he would encourage WA Premier Colin Barnett to follow the precedent of Liberal predecessor Richard Court who did not preference One Nation, Turnbull said this was a matter for the WA division and for Barnett.

Later he was asked how Hanson’s views might have evolved in the last 15 years that made her “in any way less offensive” than when John Howard put her last. And where would Hanson be on his how-to-vote cards next election?
“I am not a commentator on the political evolution of One Nation,” Turnbull replied.

“We deal with all of the parties in the parliament including One Nation. … We respect every single member and senator… All of them have been democratically elected and we seek their support on legislation.”

In her first iteration, Hanson caused intense debate on the conservative side of politics about how her party should be handled. Many prominent Liberals argued passionately in terms of principle. It’s not like that any more.

Second time round, Hanson has changed a little – but only a little. The Liberals seem to have changed a good deal more. We’ll see what happens at the federal election on preferences but in the meantime, power is power and Hanson, with her Senate position, has quite a lot of it.

For Turnbull, despite abhorring many of her views, the relationship with Hanson and her party is all about transactions.

Just as it is with Donald Trump and his immigration crackdown – on which Turnbull keeps his thoughts to himself – and that deal to take Australia’s offshore refugees.

Turnbull had the refugee agreement, done with the Obama administration, reconfirmed in his weekend phone conversation with the President.
But on Wednesday it become mired in fresh confusion and uncertainty.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer reiterated that the deal, which he said involved some 1250 people, had the green light, while stressing there would be “extreme vetting” of proposed settlers. But then in a clarification to the ABC the White House cast doubt on how firmly it was locked in.

The ABC quoted a White House source saying that if Trump did go ahead with the deal, it would only be because of the United States’ “longstanding relationship with Australia”.

Turnbull remains publicly confident in Trump’s private assurance. The test of this confidence, and of the President’s word, will be how many refugees from Nauru and Manus Island eventually do land on US soil after the “extreme vetting” process. We might be waiting a while before we know the answer.

Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Plot Targeting Turkey’s Religious Minorities Allegedly Discovered

CD indicates naval officers planned violence against non-Muslim communities.

ISTANBUL, December 16 (CDN) — ISTANBUL, December 16 (Compass Direct News) – Chilling allegations emerged last month of a detailed plot by Turkish naval officers to perpetrate threats and violence against the nation’s non-Muslims in an effort to implicate and unseat Turkey’s pro-Islamic government.

Evidence put forth for the plot appeared on an encrypted compact disc discovered last April but was only recently deciphered; the daily Taraf newspaper first leaked details of the CD’s contents on Nov. 19.

Entitled the “Operation Cage Action Plan,” the plot outlines a plethora of planned threat campaigns, bomb attacks, kidnappings and assassinations targeting the nation’s tiny religious minority communities – an apparent effort by military brass to discredit the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). The scheme ultimately called for bombings of homes and buildings owned by non-Muslims, setting fire to homes, vehicles and businesses of Christian and Jewish citizens, and murdering prominent leaders among the religious minorities.

Dated March 2009, the CD containing details of the plot was discovered in a raid on the office of a retired major implicated in a large illegal cache of military arms uncovered near Istanbul last April. Once deciphered, it revealed the full names of 41 naval officials assigned to carry out a four-phase campaign exploiting the vulnerability of Turkey’s non-Muslim religious minorities, who constitute less than 1 percent of the population.

A map that Taraf published on its front page – headlined “The Targeted Missionaries” – was based on the controversial CD documents. Color-coded to show all the Turkish provinces where non-Muslims lived or had meetings for worship, the map showed only 13 of Turkey’s 81 provinces had no known non-Muslim residents or religious meetings.

The plan identified 939 non-Muslim representatives in Turkey as possible targets.

“If even half of what is written in Taraf is accurate, everybody with a conscience in this country has to go mad,” Eyup Can wrote in his Hurriyet column two days after the news broke.

The day after the first Taraf report, the headquarters of the Turkish General Staff filed a criminal complaint against the daily with the Justice Ministry, declaring its coverage a “clear violation” of the laws protecting ongoing prosecution investigations from public release.

Although the prime minister’s office the next day confirmed that the newly revealed “Cage” plot was indeed under official investigation, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan criticized Taraf’s public disclosure of the plan as “interfering” and “damaging” to the judicial process and important sectors of the government.

But when the judiciary began interrogating a number of the named naval suspects and sent some of them to jail, most Turkish media – which had downplayed the claims – began to accept the plot’s possible authenticity.

To date, at least 11 of the naval officials identified in the Cage documents are under arrest, accused of membership in an illegal organization. They include a retired major, a lieutenant colonel, three lieutenant commanders, two colonels and three first sergeants.

The latest plot allegations are linked to criminal investigations launched in June 2007 into Ergenekon, an alleged “deep state” conspiracy by a group of military officials, state security personnel, lawyers and journalists now behind bars on charges of planning a coup against the elected AKP government.

Christian Murders Termed ‘Operations’

The plot document began with specific mention of the three most recent deadly attacks perpetrated against Christians in Turkey, cryptically labeling them “operations.”

Initial Turkish public opinion had blamed Islamist groups for the savage murders of Italian Catholic priest Andrea Santoro (February 2006), Turkish Armenian Agos newspaper editor Hrant Dink (January 2007) and two Turkish Christians and a German Christian in Malatya (April 2007). But authors of the Cage plan complained that AKP’s “intensive propaganda” after these incidents had instead fingered the Ergenekon cabal as the perpetrators.

“The Cage plan demanded that these ‘operations’ be conducted in a more systematic and planned manner,” attorney Orhan Kemal Cengiz wrote in Today’s Zaman on Nov. 27. “They want to re-market the ‘black propaganda’ that Muslims kill Christians,” concluded Cengiz, a joint-plaintiff lawyer in the Malatya murder trial and legal adviser to Turkey’s Association of Protestant Churches.

In the first phase of the Cage plot, officers were ordered to compile information identifying the non-Muslim communities’ leaders, schools, associations, cemeteries, places of worship and media outlets, including all subscribers to the Armenian Agos weekly. With this data, the second stage called for creating an atmosphere of fear by openly targeting these religious minorities, using intimidating letters and telephone calls, warnings posted on websites linked to the government and graffiti in neighborhoods where non-Muslims lived.

To channel public opinion, the third phase centered on priming TV and print media to criticize and debate the AKP government’s handling of security for religious minorities, to raise the specter of the party ultimately replacing Turkey’s secular laws and institutions with Islamic provisions.

The final phase called for planting bombs and suspicious packages near homes and buildings owned by non-Muslims, desecrating their cemeteries, setting fire to homes, vehicles and businesses of Christian and Jewish citizens, and even kidnapping and assassinating prominent leaders among the religious minorities.

Lawyer Fethiye Cetin, representing the Dink family in the Agos editor’s murder trial, admitted she was having difficulty even accepting the details of the Cage plot.

“I am engulfed in horror,” Cetin told Bianet, the online Independent Communications Network. “Some forces of this country sit down and make a plan to identify their fellow citizens, of their own country, as enemies! They will kill Armenians and non-Muslims in the psychological war they are conducting against the ones identified as their enemies.”

No Surprise to Christians

“We were not very shocked,” Protestant Pastor Ihsan Ozbek of the Kurtulus Churches in Ankara admitted to Taraf the day after the news broke.

After the Malatya murders, he stated, Christians had no official means to investigate their suspicions about the instigators, “and we could not be very brave . . . Once again the evidence is being seen, that it is the juntas who are against democracy who [have been] behind the propaganda in the past 10 years against Christianity and missionary activity.”

Patriarch Bartholomew of the Greek Orthodox Church also openly addressed the Cage plot, referring to recent incidents of intimidation against Christian and Jewish citizens in Istanbul’s Kurtulus and Adalar districts, as well as a previous raid conducted against the alumni of a Greek high school.

“At the time, we thought that they were just trying to scare us,” he told Today’s Zaman. Several of the jailed Ergenekon suspects now on trial were closely involved for years in protesting and slandering the Istanbul Patriarchate, considered the heart of Eastern Orthodoxy’s 300 million adherents. As ultranationalists, they claimed the Orthodox wanted to set up a Vatican-style entity within Turkey.

Last summer 90 graves were desecrated in the Greek Orthodox community’s Balikli cemetery in the Zeytinburnu district of Istanbul. The city’s 65 non-Muslim cemeteries are not guarded by the municipality, with their maintenance and protection left to Greek, Armenian and Jewish minorities.

As details continued to emerge and national debates raged for more than a week over the Cage plan in the Turkish media, calls came from a broad spectrum of society to merge the files of the ongoing Dink and Malatya murder trials with the Ergenekon file. The Turkish General Staff has consistently labeled much of the media coverage of the Ergenekon investigations as part of smear campaign against the fiercely secular military, which until the past two years enjoyed virtual impunity from civilian court investigations.

According to Ria Oomen-Ruijten, the European Parliament’s rapporteur on Turkey, the long-entrenched role of the military in the Turkish government is an “obstacle” for further democratization and integration into the EU.

Report from Compass Direct News 

CHINA: LEGAL WHEELS TURN SLOWLY FOR UYGHUR CHRISTIAN

Detained since January, Alimjan Yimit awaits new court date.

DUBLIN, November 11 (Compass Direct News) – Chinese officials have yet to declare a new court date for Alimjan Yimit, a Christian house church leader and ethnic Uyghur in China’s northwest province of Xinjiang detained since his arrest on Jan. 12.

Alimjan’s name appears as Alimujiang Yimiti in Chinese documents.

State prosecutors in mid-October returned Alimjan’s case to a Xinjiang court for consideration, China Aid Association (CAA) reported. Court officials have refused to release details of the case to the public, but sources told Compass that further legal action is expected imminently.

Charges against Alimjan include “inciting secessionist sentiment to split the country” and “collecting and selling intelligence for overseas organizations,” CAA reported in June. Officials have threatened to hand down a sentence ranging from as much as six years in prison to execution.

Once a Muslim, Alimjan converted to Christianity more than 10 years ago and became active in the growing Uyghur church. Friends said they believe his faith is the real reason for his arrest.

His wife Gulnur has consistently proclaimed his innocence, pointing out that as an agricultural worker he had no access to information affecting national security and therefore could not be guilty of leaking such information.

Alimjan’s hair, dark when police arrested him on Jan. 12, is now graying as a result of harsh conditions in detention, sources said.

During Alimjan’s employment with two foreign-owned companies, officials from the State Security Bureau (SSB) regularly called him in for interrogation, forbidding him to discuss the questioning with anyone.

In September 2007, they closed the business Alimjan worked for and accused him of using it as a cover for “preaching Christianity among people of Uyghur ethnicity.”

Lawyers had hoped for an early acquittal for Alimjan based on evidence of unfair treatment due to his Christian beliefs. A lengthy bureaucratic process, however, has dimmed these hopes.

A trial was initially scheduled for April but postponed while court documents – including interrogation records from the Xinjiang SSB – were translated from Uyghur into Chinese.

When the case was heard on May 27, court officials allowed Alimjan’s two lawyers to be present but banned his wife from entering the courtroom due to the “sensitivity” of the case. After deliberations the court returned the case to state prosecutors citing insufficient evidence. (See Compass Direct News, “Court Cites ‘Insufficient Evidence’ in Christian’s Trial,” May 30.)

In September, Public Security Bureau officers in Xinjiang returned the case to state prosecutors, who again presented it to the court for consideration in October.

 

Another Uyghur Christian’s Appeal Denied

A second Uyghur Christian, Osman Imin, has aged dramatically and his health has deteriorated due to conditions in a labor camp where he is forced to work 12 to 15 hours per day.

In Chinese documents, Osman’s name appears as Wusiman Yaming.

The State Security Bureau in Hetian City, Xinjiang in September 2007 sentenced Osman to two years of re-education through labor for “revealing state secrets” and “illegal proselytizing.” Associates, however, said his arrest had nothing to do with disclosure of state secrets but with the fact that he was an outspoken Christian and a leader in the Uyghur church.

Authorities first arrested Osman in October 2004, holding him in a detention center in Hotan, southern Xinjiang, for an unspecified “violation of law,” according to CAA.

During his initial detention, Osman was chained to a metal bed and beaten repeatedly during interrogations, a source that spoke on condition of anonymity told Compass. (See Compass Direct News, “Uyghur Christians Arrested, Jailed in Xinjiang,” February 11.)

Osman was released on bail on Nov. 18, 2004 and bail was canceled in October 2006. On July 26, 2007, however, he was again placed under supervised house arrest and finally detained by police on Nov. 19 for allegedly leaking state secrets.

Officials had called for a 10- to 15-year criminal sentence, but after international media attention they reduced the term to two years in labor camp.

When Osman’s lawyer Liang Xiaojun appealed his sentence in June, court authorities insisted on a closed hearing on grounds that the case involved confidential information, CAA reported. They turned down the appeal, refusing to explain why and denying Osman proper access to his lawyer, which violated normal court procedure.

Compass previously reported that officials had arrested and detained a third Uyghur believer, a woman from southern Xinjiang. Further investigation revealed that both she and her husband were arrested on charges of theft.

Report from Compass Direct News