Ranga -- Derogatory and Offensive?

Barry O'Farrell is the New South Wales Opposition Leader, and he believes he is a shoe-in to be the next Premier of New South Wales.

It is pretty hard to see how the Labor Party can pull this one out of the fire as they are behind in all the polls and it would seem that there is some Labor fatigue in the electorate.

However, where there is a will there is a way and O'Farrell would not be the first NSW Opposition leader to shoot themselves in the foot on the way into a seemingly un-lose-able election!

This is evident in a recent Twitter post the leader of the opposition made, supposedly off the record, to a journalist, Latika Bourke. He referred to Australia's current Prime Minister as a "Ranga". Now ranga is derived from the word orangutan (in Indonesia this is an abbreviation of the words orang hutan, which means simply forest dweller). The word reflects the colour of one's hair, in this case, red. There is little doubting that the PM's hair has been a topic of discussion over the years as it moves between various shades of red.

However, the offense is not so much singling the PM out for the colour of her hair, but rather referring to her as a monkey. It was not all that long ago Australians were up in arms when one of our cricketers, Andrew Symonds, was called a monkey by a visiting Indian player, Harbajan Singh. When will people realise that calling other people monkeys is going to attract attention, most probably negative, despite the intent.

The 'tweet' was regarding the problems that the Liberal Party was having in selecting candidates in key seats leading into the 'soon' to be announced Federal Election. Verbatim the tweet reads like this:

"Deeply off the record - I think the timetable and struggle to get candidates reflects internal poll - pre and post the ranga."

My guess is he could have said the same thing in a different way and made the same point, even though Twitter restricts posters to 140 characters or less. This also reflects how much more difficult it is to have things off the record in the twitter-verse. O'Farrell realised the error of his ways pretty quickly and removed the offending tweet. However, this was not done soon enough and people had already re-tweeted it and as they say, the rest is history.

As an aside, on my most recent practicum placement, I had a red-headed student in one of my classes and he was regularly referred to as a ranga. This did not seem to bother him though, and was seemingly accepted as par for the course. I was only observing the class, but apparently the offensive nature of the word had been discussed. Yet, the young lad referred to himself as a ranga as well. So, it is perhaps an interesting debate as to whether the context and the usage of the word is exclusively offensive or are there times when it can be co-opted and used as a source of empowerment.

Hypocrisy?

The Australian Labor Party is against the death penalty. This is not one of the reasons or a factor in the reasons that I vote for the Labor party. I have traditionally voted Labor as the party of those of us workers struggling to make ends meet. Stupid, maybe! The coming to power of the Rudd Labor government is likely to test those core beliefs that I hold in Labor representing the socialist democratic ideals that I hold.

That said, this is really a post about the hypocrisy of the Labor party with respect to its position on the death penalty. Stephen Smith, the Foreign Minister of Australia, is going to be making representations to the Indonesian Foreign Minister, Hassan Wirajuda, about the Bali Nine. These representations are in fact a plea for clemency. This is merely a case of public relations where the government can later claim that it has done everything it possible can to save them from the firing squad.

The hypocrisy here is that the Labor party is against the death penalty but it is not going to be making any representations with respect to the Bali Bombers who are also on death row. I have written about the Bali Bombers in this blog a number of times (if you're interested search "Bali Bombers").

My view is that I am against the death penalty and my preferred option for Amrozi, Samudra, and Mukhlas is that these murders rot in jail for the terms of their natural life. However, as they have been sentenced to death, then so be it! These killers are being afforded opportunities to appeal their sentences that in theory others might also have enjoyed but were never afforded the same opportunities to exercise.

The difficulty here is that most Australians would, and should, be aware and also understand that if you traffic or smuggle drugs into or out of Indonesia and you are caught in Indonesia then you are in trouble. Up the proverbial creek without a paddle, so to speak. The death penalty applies; no ifs, no buts, and no maybes. If you play Russian Roulette and get caught, you die! You take the risk then you know what the consequences are.

The simple reality here is that Australia could much more easily adopt the high moral ground here if it was uniformly against the death penalty no matter who the convicted persons are. This would include the Bali Bombers.

The warm fuzzy feeling that one might get when they know that the Australian government is making representations on their behalf quickly evaporates when the cold hard reality sets in that these representations equate to nothing more than the government saying the same crime in Australia would not be subject to the death penalty. These representations might just be more effective if Australia was serious in its opposition to the death penalty and not just paying lip service to the issue.

The idea that Australia is vocal in its opposition to the Iranian government's policy of executing children need not be cited as some form of achievement. State sanctioned murder is abhorrent at any time and the fact that this punishment is meted out on children is particularly abhorrent. Th need to oppose it goes without saying.

Australia needs to step up to the plate and make clear that it opposes the death penalty on all crimes. Australia can still respect the sovereignty of Indonesia as a State without having to accept the death penalty. I know the international legal arguments that can be made here with respect to States that are already imposing the death penalty have a right to continue to do so. Nevertheless, a representation from a government that is universal in its condemnation of the death penalty will always be more effective than those representations coming from a government that wavers on the issue.