Mr Morgan: Japan must change ‘ingrained beliefs’ in family law system.

An Irish father, who has spent three years battling to see his children after their mother took them to Japan, has welcomed the country’s confirmation it will sign an international convention on child abduction.

The announcement has given fresh hope to Carlow native Dave Morgan and thousands of foreign fathers who have, for years, been denied access to their children.

Currently, Japan does not recognise joint custody rights after a marital breakdown.

This means foreign fathers of Japanese children are effectively left without rights once their former partners move, or in some reported cases abduct, children to Japan.

No foreigner is said to have succeeded in persuading a Japanese court to return a child to his or her habitual country of residence.

Last week, the Japanese government announced that it would move to sign the Hague convention on child abduction, first introduced in 1980.

“It is desirable for our country to be consistent with international standards,” Yukio Edano, the government’s chief cabinet secretary, told reporters.

Signing the convention would mean Japan would be compelled to return abducted children to their country of habitual residence — until custody agreements are signed.

In April, Dave Morgan of Carlow, told the Irish Echo that he had seen his children Sean, 14, and Renee, 12, just a handful of times in the last three years.

In June 2008, his Japanese wife bought three one-way tickets and moved to Japan, where dual parenting is not recognised after a relationship breaks down.

His children have not been allowed to talk to their relatives in Ireland.

Mr Morgan cautiously welcomed the Japan’s announcement.

“I am sceptical about the intentions of the Japanese government to implement it completely,” said Mr Morgan. ‘I think they are under a lot of pressure from the US, France and the UK to sign it.”

Once it is signed it will take a massive change in Japan’s family law system and the ‘ingrained beliefs’ of what is best for children after marriage, he claimed.

“If Japan sign the agreement I will take action to make sure that it is enforced in my case.”

Last week, the Irish Embassy in Japan sent Mr Morgan a list of local lawyers and said they could liaise with relevant authorities on his behalf, if he secured a court ruling in the country.

He is sceptical of the convention being enforced by the courts.

“I know, though, that the legal avenue is a waste of time as family law in Japan always judges that the children should stay where they are at the time of the court hearing, they nearly always grand custody to the mother and even if they grant minimum visitation rights, they are never enforced,” he said.

:: Australian Government welcomes move

Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd also welcomed the announcement by Japan.

“The Hague Convention is an important, proven law-based instrument to manage international parental abduction and access cases,” he said.

“Australia welcomes Japan’s decision to proceed with preparations to ratify the Convention. Once ratified, the Convention will provide a new mechanism to assist to resolve international parental abduction cases with Japan affecting Australian citizens.”

Australia will continue to work with Japan on the sensitive issue of parental abduction of children, said Attorney-General Robert McClelland.

Recent recommendations to the Government have suggested slashing the country's immigration intake.

With a federal election due in Australia before the year is out, immigration is shaping up as one of the major issues of the campaign as talk of massive cuts to the current scheme loom ominously on the horizon.

Currently, Australia takes in around 300,000 immigrants per year, but new advice given to the federal government recently recommends that this figure should be drastically reduced to 180,000 a year.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is on record as supporting what he termed a “big Australia”, but if the advice is followed it would likely lead to a huge drop in the number of Irish people allowed to emigrate to Australia.

The number coming from Ireland has steadily increased in recent years due to the recession there and the fact that Australia has escaped the worst ravages of the global financial crisis.

In the year to the end of June 2009, 2,501 Irish people got residence visas for Australia, up from 1,989 in the previous 12 months. Many of these are 457 visas issued for specific skills in demand, such as information technology and engineering.

The increase in one-year Working Holiday Visas in this period was even more dramatic. The number issued to Irish people aged 18 to 30 rose to 22,788, from 17,120 the previous year.

The Australian Financial Review has reported that the advice given to the Government is part of a push to exercise more control over the number of people coming to Australia outside the formal migration procedures. This includes 457 and student visas.

Liberal party leader Tony Abbott says he is opposed to the current situation in which Australia’s population is expected to reach 36 million by 2050. Australia’s current population is 22.3 million and is increasing by one person every 1 minute and 10 seconds.

The opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison said that if the Liberals win the election later this year they will slash immigrant numbers.

There is support for this move from the public. A national survey taken by the Lowy Institute shows that while 72 per cent supported a rise in Australia’s population, 69 per cent want it limited to 30 million or fewer.

However, following concerted criticism by business organisations, and from some within his own party, Morrison played down his earlier comments. “If there is an interpretation out there that this is a wholesale policy, it’s not a wholesale policy,” he said.

Heather Ridout of the Australian Industry Group said population growth does not need to be curbed. “If we are going to make that choice to restrict migrants, over the years we are going to have to pay higher taxes to support an ageing population,” she said.

The managing director of the Australian Tourism Export Council, Matthew Hingerty, said “the service economy would grind to a standstill without backpackers and 457s”.

by Pádraig Collins

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd shares a laugh with QIA president Eamon Gaffney at the QIA St Patrick's Eve dinner on March 16 in Brisbane.

The Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, offered some political lollipops to the Irish community on St Patrick’s Eve as a means of securing the Irish vote for Labor in this year’s federal election.

“Option one,” he said, “was making the new national anthem It’s A Long Way To Tipperary. Option two – replacing the AFL, and rugby league and rugby union with Gaelic Football as the national football code. Option three – my personal preference – opening up the Lodge to all Irish Australians for St Patrick’s Day, with an open bar and Guinness on tap.”

Presidentially, he continued: “And so it shall be if we see the re-election of the Rudd Government.”

While Mr Rudd’s tongue was firmly in his cheek, there are some issues of concern to the Irish in Australia where some Prime Ministerial energy would not go unnoticed.

So Mr Rudd, here are some real issues that would deliver the same political dividend.

Top of the list is an issue that has been much neglected during the Rudd years, constitutional change.
Generations of Irish Australians have been forced to endure living under the English Crown and the British flag. The opportunity and means to advance the issue is at your fingertips, Mr Rudd.

Please don’t consider us impertinent if we respectfully suggest that you GET ON WITH IT!.

As former Prime Minster Paul Keating said last week, unless something changes soon, Australia will wind up with King Charles and Queen Camilla and “how absurd would that be?”

Furthermore, as Australian academics and commentators debate the new national curriculum for our schoolchildren, we believe it is a perfect opportunity to ensure that Irish history, and its points of interaction with Australian history, is taught in the new course.

The stories of the Irish in Australia are more than historical footnotes. Yes, Australian history cannot be made sense of without reference to Britain. But, similarly, it cannot be fully understood without reference to Ireland.

In the first instance, Ireland’s story is central to convict history.

The Castle Hill Rebellion, the Eureka Stockade, the emergence of Ned Kelly – all of these significant events are covered in Irish fingerprints.

Ireland’s campaign for independence in the early 20th century provides a context for the conscription debate here during the First World War that was recently described by former Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser as “the most significant political event in Australia”.

Many Australians would be amazed to discover that Irish Catholics were exposed to sectarian discrimination during that period, which excluded them from jobs, housing and political power.

Please, Mr Rudd, can history and geography teachers be made to write out 1,000 times “Ireland is not part of the UK”.

It is a mistake made by many otherwise upstanding Australians that never fails to irritate.

Perhaps less seriously, Mr Rudd, could we make those who tell Irish jokes or attempt the Irish accent be put on a float at the Sydney St Patrick’s Day Parade in stocks.

The Irish Echo is very pleased that you have embraced your Irish heritage with such enthusiasm. We believe that your great-grandparents from Ballingarry, Co Tipperary would also approve of your support for these initiatives.

Oh, and Mr Rudd, allow us to give you a heads up – It’s a Long Way To Tipperary is not cherished as an Irish song, written as it was in England in 1912.

Try The Fields Of Athenry. Like many great Irish songs, it’s about Australia.

Opposition leader Tony Abbott addresses the crowd at the QIA St Patrick's Eve Dinner on March 16.

The mood was celebratory but the tone was distinctly irreverent as the Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and the man who wants his job, Liberal leader Tony Abbott went head-to-head at the Queensland Irish Association’s St Patrick’s Eve Dinner.

Mr Rudd, clearly enjoying the boisterous mood at Australia’s oldest Irish function, flagged some new policies aimed at attracting the Irish vote at this year’s federal election.

“I asked my department to provide the Cabinet with some options for boosting St Patrick’s Day celebrations.

“They came up with three. Option one – making the new national anthem It’s A Long Way To Tipperary.

“Option two – replacing the AFL, and rugby league and rugby union with Gaelic Football as the national football code – or option three, my personal preference, opening up the Lodge to all Irish Australians for St Patrick’s Day, with an open bar and Guinness on tap. And so it shall be if we see the re-election of the Rudd Government.”

In a good-natured war of words with his political nemesis, Mr Rudd fired the first salvo when he revealed, tongue firmly in cheek, that his “Irish namesake” St Kevin of Glendalough was “an abbot”.

“He wasn’t a mad abbot,” the PM teased. “He was a run-of-the-mill abbot, given to long boring sermons and moral crusades against the lasciviously short loin cloths of the sixth century.

“His one great virtue was that he was attributed with many extravagant miracles – including steering his monastery through the global financial crisis of 578 AD.”

The remarks set the tone for a night of barbs and verbal potshots between Australia’s political heavyweights, each one cheered on by the 500 in attendance.

Mr Rudd reminded the gathering that his grandmother Hannah Cashin was born on the Tweed River in 1892, the daughter of Irish parents who had migrated from the small parish of Ballingarry in Co Tipperary.

His family, he said, “had  links to the Young Irelander Rebellion of 1848 – having come from the town where the national tricolour of green, white and orange was first unfurled”.

“No,” the PM sneered, “I’m not asking Tony to discuss his views, as an ardent monarchist, on the actions of the British Crown against a nascent Irish republican movement.”

The point was not lost on the  mainly Irish Australian gathering which, ironically, toasted the Queen until a philosophical overhaul in the 1990s.

Mr Abbott took aim at the Prime Minister in response, claiming that he was trying to look “more Queensland and more Catholic” while he was trying to look “less Catholic”.

The new leader of the Opposition said that he admired St Patrick for his simple philosophy or “don’t worry, have faith and pray” which, he said was “very similar to the Coalition’s political strategy over the next 12 months.”

Mr Abbott said he always felt a “teensy weensy ambivalent about St Patrick because he got rid of the snakes from Ireland.

“If he ever showed up in Canberra, a lot of us would be out of a gig,” he said.

by Billy Cantwell

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd addresses the crowd at the Queensland Irish Association Dinner in Brisbane on March 16.

Speech by Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, MP, delivered at the Queensland Irish Association St Patrick’s Eve Dinner, Brisbane, on Tuesday, March 16.

“[QIA club president] Eamon [Gaffney] said a couple of weeks ago that there’s no place for politics at a dinner like this. And of course he’s right.

But in my experience, packing 500 people of Irish extraction into a dining hall like this and offering to quench their thirst with a glass or seven of Guinness is the first step towards fomenting political insurrection.

Politics and the Irish go together like leprechauns and rainbows.

So in a warm spirit of non-partisan Irish hospitality, let me welcome my political opponent Tony Abbott to Queensland.

This time last year, I mentioned my namesake, St Kevin of Glendalough who lived in 6th century Ireland.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the works of this great saint, I can let you in on a little secret. St Kevin was in fact an abbott. He wasn’t a mad abbott.

He was a run-of-the-mill abbott, given to long boring sermons and moral crusades against the lasciviously short loin cloths of the sixth century.

St Kevin in fact lived in a cave as a hermit for seven years – nothing compared to my ten long years in opposition.

His one great virtue was that he was attributed with many extravagant miracles – including steering his monastery through the global financial crisis of 578 AD.

He also held back wave after wave of unauthorised people movements of the latter 6th century, otherwise known as the Anglo-Saxons and Jutes.
St Anthony, on the other hand, was not Irish.

He was born in Portugal, lived in Italy and preached throughout Europe.
He was a seriously multicultural 13th century type.

St Anthony was trained as an Augustinian. Be careful, Tony – Martin Luther also began life as an Augustinian.

In fact St Anthony was a man of shifting allegiances – later becoming a Franciscan.

St Anthony is now best known as the patron saint of lost things. To be theologically correct, lost things probably doesn’t extend to lost causes.

For that we must turn to St Jude. And to be equally correct, St Anthony was canonised in record time – a mere 12 months after his passing, a testament to his virtue.

St Kevin on the other hand had to wait 1300 years. Whether that says something about their namesakes in 21st century Australian politics, I’ll leave you to judge. But I digress.

One year ago, when I spoke to this gathering, I mentioned my Irish grandmother.

Hannah Cashin was born on the Tweed River in 1892.

She was the daughter of Irish parents who had migrated from the small parish of Ballingarry in County Tipperary. I confessed to a few family secrets.

Like my family’s links to the Young Irelander Rebellion of 1848 – having come from the town where the national tricolour of green, white and orange was first unfurled.

And I owned up to my family’s involvement in a long-running factional fight that raged across Tipperary in the 19th century, between the Shanavests and the Caravets.

There’s even a whisper that Hannah Cashin’s grandfather may have been the same William Cashin killed by the blow of a stone to his forehead in the great factional fight of 1838.

Which is probably why my forebears felt at home in the Australian Labor Party after they arrived on these shores.

But now that I’ve come clean about my own past – there’s a matter of history that Tony needs to clear up.

No, I’m not asking Tony to discuss his views, as an ardent monarchist, on the actions of the British Crown against a nascent Irish republican movement.

I’m referring to an historic document that I have with me on the podium tonight.

It lists the names of the men and women transported to Australia on the Second Fleet in 1790.

It inscribes the name of my paternal forebear Thomas Rudd – from the thieving English side of my ancestry, as opposed to the revolutionary Irish side.

Thomas nicked a pair of shoes and got seven years in Australia. He served his time.

He then returned to England – only to reoffend in 1799, and get transported to Australia for a second time, and for another seven years.

Getting transported to Australia twice for thieving reflected a prodigious talent. And a worthy professional preparation for politics.

But I digress. The question raised by this Second Fleet passenger list concerns another passenger.

On the same vessel to Australia that transported Thomas Rudd was another passenger by the name of: William Abbott – from Norfolk. The question I have is, does Billy Abbott bear any ancestral relationship to Tony Abbott? And what was his offence?

And did the forebears of Rudd and Abbott ever cross each other on the high seas – burdening future generations of Rudds and Abbotts with a score to be settled that would finally be fought out on the national stage more than two centuries later?

But as Eamon has said, a Queensland Irish Association event like tonight’s is no time for politics. Especially not in an election year. So I won’t be making any policy announcements tonight.

Although, this being an election year I asked my department to provide the Cabinet with some options for boosting St Patrick’s Day celebrations.
They came up with three.

Option one – making the new national anthem It’s A Long Way to Tipperary.

Option two – replacing the AFL, and rugby league and rugby union with Gaelic Football as the national football code.

Option three – my personal preference – opening up the Lodge to all Irish  Australians for St Patrick’s Day, with an open bar and Guinness on tap.

And so it shall be if we see the re-election of the Rudd Government. A few comments of a more serious nature.

As we know, Ireland isn’t exactly the world’s largest nation. But it’s hard to think of a national day celebrated with such spirit and enthusiasm anywhere in the world.

And two million of our 22 million Australians claim Irish ancestry. This reflects the vast reach of the Irish diaspora. And the enduring power of Irish culture and identity.

But that’s Ireland – small nation, with big hearts and a grand character. The course of our nation’s history was profoundly influenced by Irish migrants and their progeny – the Ned Kellys, James Scullins, Ben Chifleys and Paul Keatings.

Including those who, in the words of Chifley, shone their light on a hill. As well as by less well-known Australians of Irish descent.

Those who we might say, followed the old Irish folk custom of putting a candle in a darkened window, to guide the way of strangers.

People who, one by one, helped build our national character as Australians. The larrikin humour. The rebellious character. The deep suspicion of authority. The warm hospitality. What became for us mateship.

And the deep, deep instinct to defend the underdog. Great Irish traits – traits that we can all celebrate.

That’s why I’m delighted to announce a very special celebration.

On St Patrick’s Day next year, the National Museum of Australia will open the most comprehensive exhibition ever on the Irish in Australia.

It will celebrate all aspects of the Irish contribution to Australia.

Its time span will extend from the Irish who came on the First Fleet, to the thousands of Irish backpackers who visit Australia every year.

It will be a generous and scholarly exhibition, with hundreds of exhibits from every state in Australia and from Ireland and the United States.

Many of those items have never been on display before.

The National Museum tells me that no country has ever had an exhibition on this scale, celebrating the contribution of the Irish diaspora.

The exhibition should attract interest from all across the world, and I expect it to be seen by tens of thousands of Australians before the National Museum takes the exhibition to Ireland later in 2011.

And in June this year, ahead of next year’s exhibition, the National Museum of Australia will be publishing a book to celebrate the stories of Irish Australians – suitably titled Sinners, Saints and Settlers.

Friends, the first occasion when the Queensland Irish Association’s St Patrick’s Day celebrations were held here in Tara House was 1928.
The Catholic Archbishop of Brisbane, James Duhig, great friend of Labor Premiers T.J. Ryan and Red Ted Theodore – spoke on that occasion of his great pride as an Irish Australian.

His pride in the history, the culture and the values that came with being Australian of Irish descent.

But more than all of that, he spoke of his belief that God had given a diversity of gifts to different peoples throughout the world. And he spoke of Australia’s special opportunity.

‘Never in the history of the world’, Archbishop Duhig said, ‘had any nation had such a great opportunity for combining these diverse gifts of different cultures’.

He spoke of the combination of the Irish, the English, the Welsh, the French, the Germans, Italians and the Danes.

Eighty years and three generations later, Archbishop Duhig’s words still ring true.

Ours is a culture today more greatly enriched by the gifts of cultures from every part of the world.

And no nation has a greater opportunity than does Australia, to bring together, in harmony, those different cultures – to build something far greater than the sum of its parts. Australia is a young nation.

Our future offers extraordinary opportunity. And no people have made a greater contribution to our history, character and identity than the children of St Patrick.

So on the eve of St Patrick’s Day, we celebrate Ireland.

And we celebrate Ireland’s contribution to the great nation that we all cherish – Australia.

So tonight I propose a toast – to Australia.”

See also Victorian Premier John Brumby’s IACC Breakfast speech :: Wednesday, March 17

And NSW Premier Kristina Keneally’s Lansdowne Club speech :: March 19, 2010

Irish Australian Deborah O’Neill, pictured above with daughters Caitlin and Brianna, son Noah and husband Paul, has won the Labor nomination for Robertson.

Irish Australian Deborah O’Neill has won her pre-selection battle with high profile MP Belinda Neal in the New South Wales seat of Robertson on the Central Coast.

The University of Newcastle lecturer and former Sydney Rose of Tralee’s next challenges is to retain the marginal seat at the next federal election, due later in the year.

The Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, congratulated the mother-of-three saying “Debbie O’Neill is going to be a great candidate for us’’.

Ms O’Neill’s pre-selection battle attracted national attention as her opponent – the sitting member – was Belinda Neal, the controversial MP who was told to get anger management classes by Prime Minister Rudd after an incident at Igaunas nightclub in Gosford in January 2008.

Ms Neal was accused of bullying staff asking them “don’t you know who I am”.

Ms Neal is also the wife of NSW Minister John Della Bosca who had a well-publicised affair last year. The couple have subsequently reconciled.
The pre-selection battle was fiercely contested but Ms O’Neill prevailed by 98 votes to 67.

Ms O’Neill’s parents Mary and the late Jim met in England but were originally from counties Kilkenny and Cork respectively.

“They met at a dancehall called Shorrocks in Manchester. Mum fell in love with Dad’s Irish accent. Mum had moved to England from Kilkenny when she was aged 11 to live with her uncle and aunt,” Ms O’Neill told the Irish Echo recently.

“They got married on June 4 1960 when they were both aged 20 and set sail from England on July 4, heading for the promise of a new life.

“Dad had taken Mum to see a film about migrating to Australia and she was impressed by the pictures of clothes drying in the sun. I was born in Australia on their first wedding anniversary,” she said.

Ms O’Neill remembers her dad, who was just 49 when he died, very fondly.
“My father talked about Ireland a lot. It was heartbreaking for him not to be able to go back for weddings and other family occasions.

“I didn’t get to Ireland until I was 17, after I had finished high school, and I got back again two years later as the Sydney representative in the Rose of Tralee.”

It was former Prime Minister Paul Keating who finally inspired Ms O’Neill to join the Labor Party when she heard his election concession speech in March 1996. “It inspired me to think, if you want things to change, you have to be part of something, you have to act,” she said.

by Billy Cantwell and Pádraig Collins

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, pictured at least year's St Patrick's Eve Dinner in Brisbane with QIA president Eamon Gaffney and Queensland Premier Anna Bligh, will appear again at this year's dinner on March 16 along with opposition leader Tony Abbott.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and opposition leader Tony Abbott will be the guests of honour at the Queensland Irish Association’s (QIA) St Patrick’s Eve Dinner in Brisbane on Tuesday, March 16, it has been revealed.

The country’s two leading politicians will attend the event in what is a major coup for the club, while visiting Irish Government minister Billy Kelleher will also be on hand.

This will be the second year in a row that Mr Rudd will appear at the QIA dinner, having spoken at length about his own Irish background at last year’s event.

QIA president Eamon Gaffney told the Echo that the club is delighted to be playing host to both Mr Rudd and leader of the opposition Mr Abbott.

“It really is a feather in the Irish community’s cap to have the Prime Minister come to us two years in a row,” Mr Gaffney said.

“And to have Tony Abbott come too is really great. This is the first time in quite some time that we will have both sides from national politics at the event.

“It’s a bit like America really – the Irish vote is quite important to them. Not that this will be a political venue for either of them – we keep politics out of it at the St Patrick’s Eve dinner.”

by Isabel Hayes