It's not the Stasi comrade, it's APEC

THE first item on The Sydney Morning Herald's website yesterday morning truly deserved greater prominence."The APEC security fence that stretches through Sydney's CBD is a 'wall of shame' and undemocratic, the Communist Party of Australia says," it read.Well, Holy Caxton! Stop the presses! Where has the SMH's news sense gone?Surely the real news lay in the fact that The Sydney Moaning Herald had found an actual living member of the Communist Party of Australia in 2007, a feat akin to finding a yeti in the chilly fasts of the Himalayas, or catching a yowie taking to the waves at Bondi.Furthermore, the SMH's genuine home-grown Communists found there was something undemocratic in a barrier offering law-abiding Australians, and foreign visitors, a modicum of protection from the threats of violent protest offered by the motley crew of disreputable thugs currently assembling in Sydney and hoping to impress the media with attacks on those sworn to preserve public order.Hey, wake up, CPA. This isn't a "wall of shame". The genuine "wall of shame" split Berlin for 28 years from 1961 to 1989.

It was built by Walter Ulbricht, Communist leader of East Germany, the pathetic little Soviet satellite whose stellar contributions to the wider world can be summed by the words Stasi, now synonymous with secret police, and Trabant, the ubiquitous mass-produced family car some workers were permitted to own. It's worth remembering, too, that the real "wall of shame" was built to prevent oppressed citizens fleeing their Communist workers' paradise for life in the democratic West, the West that members of the Communist Party of Australia and elsewhere - and their fellow travellers in academia and the media - attempted to claim was forever on the verge of collapsing in a morass of corruption fuelled by the insidious military industrial complex. Except it didn't. The Berlin Wall came down two years after US President Ronald Reagan visited Berlin and urged Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to tear it down as a demonstration of the glasnost policy that became one of the factors that would eventually lead to the collapse of the entire Soviet system. The puny barricade Australia's miserable Communists are protesting about is there to permit leaders of 21 nations enjoy a regional meeting without being harassed. It is part of the security measures that are now necessary in the face of increased threats from Islamist terrorists and from a rent-a-rabble which brainlessly incites violence wherever public figures gather. That these leaders cannot enjoy Australia's legendary hospitality and Sydney's magnificent environment is shameful but it's not our shame. The ratbags have to carry the shame. While it is fascinating to note the belated concerns of the CPA for democracy, they, and others who may wish to protest APEC, have been given permission to indulge themselves. But despite the CPA's disquiet over democratic process there is no evidence that those wishing to protest can guarantee that their demonstrations will be peaceful. If anything, the reverse is true, with various groups committed to ensuring that a record is kept of any over-reaction on the part of the police charged with maintaining order but that no responsibility for the actions of the protesters will be taken by demonstrators. The protesters have missed an opportunity to use the APEC meeting to make a positive contribution to debate on the issues which they claim cause them concern. So, too, has the Federal Opposition for that matter. Multi-millionaire former rock star Peter Garrett, the Opposition Environment spokesman, made some rather churlish remarks on Sunday about his opinion of the US President George W. Bush which exposed the shaky nature of the ALP's commitment to the US-Australia alliance upon which our defence policy rests, and Opposition leader Kevin Rudd, was in no hurry to correct him. But Mr Rudd revealed the hollow nature of his policy on the global environment with his renewed commitment to ratify the all-but-extinct Kyoto agreement should Labor be elected and his ridiculous posturing on the need to use APEC to adopt a carbon target. It is as if he was ignorant of the series of incremental advances on climate change policy that will take place beginning with APEC - a summit to be held by the US later this month and a UN meeting in Bali in December. Australians have a number of reasons to be proud of APEC, not least because the forum was to a great degree the initiative of former Prime Minister Paul Keating. It was also the gathering which permitted Australia to gain Asian acceptance for the liberation of East Timor, with Prime Minister John Howard securing both Indonesian acquiescence and quiet but critical US backing during the conference held in Auckland in 1999. As the leaders of some of the world's greatest nations, China, Japan, Indonesia, the US and Russia meet in our premier city to discuss some of the most important issues facing the globe we should remind ourselves that the views of the miserable remnants of the CPA and those of their fellow protesters are quite irrelevant to those hoping to establish closer economic relations and advance discussion on issues of genuine importance.