Foreign policy note - Ladakh

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang is on a state visit to India. The visit follows a recent stand-off between India and China in disputed territory within Ladakh. This was resolved prior to the visit. The two countries fought a war in 1962 over the disputed territory.

The dispute and visit are a reminder of just how complicated Australia's immediate environment is becoming.

The 1962 war seemed relatively remote to Australians. There was also limited sympathy here for India at the time, despite fears of Chinese communism. Indian-Australian relations had unravelled in the period after independence. Now Australia cannot escape the complex evolving relationship between two of Asia's big powers.

When did atheism become a religion?

Yesterday, I went out shopping in the morning, walking up past the Greek Orthodox Cathedral. There must have been a major religious festival, for the church was just emptying. I didn't have my camera, so I couldn't take a crowd shot. But here is an earlier shot of the Cathedral.

My area in Sydney was the location of Greek settlement in Sydney after the Second World War. Many Greeks have died or moved on, but it remains a centre.

There is an old Greek woman, I think that she is Greek, She has lost her English, that's often a problem with our older migrants, but we always say hello. Tuesday night on my way to tennis, I said hello. She pressed a number of sweets into my hand, said goodbye in heavily accented English, and then walked on.

looking at the crowd thronging the pavement outside the Cathedral, I thought how nice it was. There were old woman alone in their black, older couples talking to their friends, young people with their families. An older man, well he was certainly older than me!,  hugged his daughters and then, cupping his granddaughter's face in his hands, gave her a kiss on the top of the head. I smiled, but it took my thoughts in a different direction.

When did atheism become a religion? That may sound an odd question in the circumstances, but let me explain.

I have noticed through the feeds I get and some of the blogs I read, an increasing an increasing stridency in atheist propaganda. The following is an example of what I mean.  Now its perfectly rational to conclude, on the balance of probabilities, that God doesn't exist and that, consequently, you are an atheist. However, when you use images such as the above, you have adopted an especially unpleasant faith that were you anyone other than an atheist would be roundly and rightly condemned.

The existence or otherwise of God or Gods, of a divine being or beings, cannot be proved or disproved. That is why it is a faith. When atheists concluded that god does not exist and seek to persuade others, they too have accepted a faith, a belief in the non-existence of the divine. That's fine, but when they use images such as the above in the attempt to discredit the views of others, when they selectively point to all the evils created in the name of religion. they have entered a new religious domain much loved by those they criticise. I am right, therefore you must believe.

Now the actual theological issue captured in that image has been much debated. How can an all knowing, all powerful god allow evil or indeed natural disasters to exist?, There isn't an easy answer. In the Christian tradition, it comes back to the question of nature and free will. Man has the freedom to make his choices and must suffer the consequences. That's actually very hard, for the innocent suffer.

Would the world be better off nobody believed? I don't know. I suspect not. The evidence of human history is that we all have a deep need to believe in something beyond ourselves, something that might help explain, to make sense of. the apparently unexplainable, 

As knowledge has expanded, the domain of the unexplainable has shrunk. And yet, we still feel the need to believe. That need has created some of the worst moments in human history, but also some of the best, the finest. I don't think that we should lose sight of that.        

Budgets, the Aussie dollar, a passing reference to vaccination

Measured by the general tone of commentators as well as initial opinion poll results, the latest Commonwealth budget has been quite well received in the general community. Opposition Leader Abbott's response was, not unexpectedly, highly political but has still helped set the frame for discussion.

The interesting thing now is just what happens to the Australian economy, for that will affect the exact form of discussion. While I expected the decline in the value of the Australian dollar to occur sooner than most people expected, it has come a little earlier than I expected, while the exact transmission mechanisms were a little different. I had expected the decline to be associated with the end of global quantitative easing. In fact, the present decline is due in part to the prospective, not actual, ending of QE in the US.

I don't make precise economic forecasts. When I do I am always wrong! However, analysis can reveal broad trends and something about possible alternative outcomes, even if we cannot actually pick turn points. Here the next twelve months are going to be very interesting. Forget hedge funds, by the way. 

On a completely different matter, the debate over vaccination has become a real issue in NSW. Should pre-schools be allowed to ban un-vaccinated children?       

Sunday Essay - a ride from school

As a young kid, gravel rash was an occupational hazard. Many of Armidale's roads were unpaved beyond a strip of tar in the very centre, while the footpaths themselves were pretty rough.   Those unpaved road sections were quite useful, actually a good source of clay that could be used to make many a misshapen object.

We seemed to run everywhere. Most of our games seemed to involve sometimes violent exercise.  British Bulldog 123 was popular, especially in scouts where we played on a cement floor, while another variant, Red Rover Cross Over, was also generally popular. Chasings, yes it is a valid scrabble word, was popular, as was hide and seek and later wide games, another scouting influence. After I was given a stop watch for a present (I can't remember whether it was for Christmas or my birthday), we used to time ourselves running around the block. This was exactly 880 yards.

Later when we got bikes, we used to ride all over Armidale and into the country around, often with Rover, our red kelpie. Rover was a working, not show, dog and really most unsuitable for an urban environment. Still, he did get lots of exercise, something that can be a real problem today when dogs are meant to be so controlled. Poor Rover. He survived the inevitable accidents with cars, he did like to bark at the wheels, only to die from snake bite.

I suppose in those circumstances prangs were inevitable. I was a slightly clumsy child, so when my feet somehow got entangled, the gravel and I would collide. I don't know that I minded so much, although picking the gravel out of the grazes was sometimes unpleasant! Later with the bikes, risks increased, although there were remarkably few accidents.

Looking back, it's hard to remember just how fit I was. During the football season in my last years at secondary school I played two full eighty minute games of Rugby per week, trained two afternoons a week, and walked, ran or rode everywhere. On boring Sunday afternoons when friend David came across on exeat (he was a border at my school), we would sometimes go for very long walks just to see how far we could get in the time. From memory, our record was eighteen miles.

You would think in all this that I would like cross-country runs, something that was popular at the school. In fact, I hated them. To do something for fun was one thing, to do it because you had too was quite another thing. 

I was reminded of all of this by a rather nice tale told by Denis Wright - Five-ex, blood and the zebra twins, Five-ex, blood, and the zebra twins 2. I won't tell you the story, beyond noting that in my world kids no longer rode to school on horses. That stopped with the school buses. And yet, in stories of Australian country life, that ride to school often features very heavily.

The photo, I have used it before. shows a gaggle of us on a horse. I am the tall one. Brother David is just behind, hanging onto me. Its a very placid animal. Note our bare feet.

Despite the photo, I wasn't good on horses. My grandfather sold Foreglen, his property, when I was very young. After that as a townie, I lost all contact with horses. Years later when I came to get on one, it seemed so bloody big, I was a long way from the ground, and I had forgotten what to do. I didn't enjoy the experience.

It would be many more years before youngest took up riding and I learned to ride again. Then the years fell away and I found that, with gentle reminders, I could remember what to do. Mind you, they were placid old nags!

Still, even though I wasn't riding, I did understand those early rides to school that I read about or heard described. I think that you will enjoy Denis's recollections.      

Saturday Morning Musings - innocence, respect, the invisible person with a dash of money

This morning's post is a round-up, a muster, of things talked about on this blog and elsewhere. For the sake of simplicity, I am using headings to separate multiple topics.

Respect, informality and the art of listening

In The importance of the Aboriginal concept of respect,  I expressed my concerns about what I perceived to be a decline in respect in current Australian society and contrasted this with the Aboriginal sense of respect. In response, Winton Bates commented that the use of surnames alone did not constitute disrespect. He also wrote: "In my view respect is a basic human need. I remember a person who had an official role in an American prison telling me that respect was the basic requirement survival. "It is all about respect, man"."

I agree with Winton that the simple use of surnames such as Gillard or Abbott does not constitute disrespect; it's the way the names are used that concerned me. Winton's comment was followed by a short comments thread on the rise of informality. Formality and respect are different concepts, both linked also to manners.

I like the less formal Australian approach as compared to, say, England or Germany. By Australian standards, the world I grew up in was relatively formal with complex overlapping social hierarchies. I once tried to explain the naming conventions, the way you addressed others, to a Chinese friend. He was astonished at the complexity!

That world is largely gone, swept away by Australia's economic and social changes. I write about it now from time to time because it was important to me in in a personal sense, more because it is interesting and very different from other Australian worlds. While I regret some aspects of the changes, I also welcome the relative informality that replaced it.   

In terms of Winton's prison comment, I think that the need for respect for us as a person is deeply imbedded in all of us, more so for those who are in some way dispossessed or marginalised. Here Evan wrote: "I am wondering if respect has to do with honour/shame." I think that's accurate.

Evan also wrote: "My feeling (based on hugely limited experience) is that the aboriginal sense of respect has a greater feeling of being personal than our idea of 'respecting the office not the person'." I'm not sure that that is absolutely right. However, I do think, and should have drawn this out, that the Australian Aboriginal concept of respect does incorporate a listening component, a respect for person, that is lacking in the broader Australian society,

The importance of the reader or listener

In recent discussion in various fora, I have said that I try to write for people, A fair bit of my writing has particular individuals, sometimes just one person, in mind. In my mind's eye, I am talking to to them. You can see this in the start of the respect post, That post was written with very particular people in mind, as was my current New England Aboriginal language series in the Armidale Express. 

While I enjoy the craft of writing, this personal focus and the response it gets has proved to be by far the most satisfying aspect of my writing. Here I quote from a Facebook comment. I have deleted names because it was a personal message.

I also mentioned to XXX, that I enjoy reading your articles, because it feels like you’re having an actual conversation with me. So I’m pleased to be a part of your audience. As far as being energised, I must thank you and XXX for motivating me. I am so eager to learn more and have decided to do a BA in History, majoring in Indigenous Studies.

To say that I was flattered and pleased would be a gross understatement. I went dancing round the kitchen (my computer is presently there). One of the messages that I have tried to get across to my fellow writers and especially my fellow bloggers, is that we do have an influence. Of course, I am trying to keep them motivated, I am trying to slow the thinning of the blogging world, but its also true!  

The Invisible Man

In a comment, Ramana reminded me of one of his posts, The Invisible Man. I had forgotten it. Its a very simple post, not long, but I found it to be a very good post directly relevant to the concept of respect. Have you ever felt like the invisible person? I know I have.

Real vs Nominal Economy

Turning to the more mundane, in a comment on Budget conundrums - real vs nominal growth, kvd wrote:

Now you've really got me confused. I thought that in order for 'real growth' to exceed 'nominal growth' you would have to be in a period of deflation. As I'm not aware that we have recently been in such an environment, I'm wondering what report you have read which suggests we've just experienced such an effect?

One of the simplest explanations here is provided by the Sydney Morning Herald's Ross Gittins, Rising damp: why nominal GDP is so flat. It all comes back to the way we measure things!

In responding to kvd's comment. I realised that what was really puzzling me was why this should have affected the estimates. How come Treasury got things so wrong, underestimating tax revenues on the way up, overestimating on the way down? I guess it has to do with the econometric forecasting models and the way that real growth is built in. I should add that I don't know, I'm just guessing.

If that's the case, it strikes me as a bit dumb. Still, it appears that Treasury is promising to focus more on "nominal" growth (ie the normal money measures) to get things better!

Loss of Innocence

In response to Loss of innocence, Ramana wrote:

Paranoia about children's safety. Society has gone bonkers everywhere Jim. I have young nieces and my daughter in law who are frequently seen with me and on more than one occasion I have been called a dirty old man! For exactly the reasons that the grand father could not understand, I have stopped making friends with young children in our local park as some parents think that all of the oldies there are perverts.

So it's just not an Australian problem. As I said in the post, I don't have a solution to this. It just is.

As I write, there are multiple paedophile inquiries running in Australia, while the Anglican Bishop of Grafton has resigned over his treatment of allegations about abuse at the North Coast Children's Home in Lismore. It's really all too hard,

Maybe it's time to bring in some hard rules.

No male can be seen in public with a child, male or female, unless a woman is present. No male may speak to a child of either sex unless he can demonstrate under later investigation by the police that the child is relative and that, further, he can prove that he has done no damage to him or her. No person at a public beach, male or female, may undress a young child to wash him or her under the public shower. No male taking a young female child to the beach on his own (not on, see rule one), may take her into the male changing rooms because she needs a shower or he does and doesn't want to leave her alone.  

  Seriously, it's become all too difficult!  

The importance of the Aboriginal concept of respect

This post is for my Aboriginal friends including Callum and Susan. I was emailed about a proposed Aboriginal monument in Armidale. I will do a post on that in another place. Following the email, I put a status report up on Facebook to test what I might say in response. There I said in part:

If it aids Aboriginal advancement, respect, pride and things like the rediscovery of language and the education of the broader community into Aboriginal life over the millennia, and especially if it reinforces other initiatives to encourage people to explore and learn, then it would be worthwhile.

A little later, I added:

Thank you, Callum. Just focusing on the word respect, maybe at some point I should do a post on the Aboriginal concept of the word respect. In my contact with Aboriginal people and especially communities, I have learned to use that word in a very particular way. It fits with aspects of Australian culture, but it is also very Aboriginal. The word comes up all the time, in every meeting. Its use reflects traditional Aboriginal culture, but also the treatment of Aboriginal people. I haven't actually seen anybody write on it, but I suspect that it's important. What do you think?

Both Callum and Susan liked this comment. This post is a response. It's not a long post. I'm just making a few simple points.

I have written in the past about what I perceive to be the decline in respect in Australia.

We talk about Prime Minister Gillard or Opposition Leader Abbott as Gillard or Abbott. We may have no time for either. But in talking in this way, we are disrespectful of and denigrate the positions they hold. Would anyone deny that those position are critical to our democracy and hence deserve respect regardless of the person who holds the office? 

Take another example, the sometimes use by commentators of the word punter to describe voters. This is disrespectful and indeed contemptuous. I feel like throttling the speakers.

The word respect is central to Aboriginal society, past and present. Respect for elders, respect for traditions. This doesn't mean that you have to like the elders or even the traditions, but they deserve respect.

Over recent years I have been privileged to meet many Aboriginal people and to sit in on community meetings. When talking about the social disruption that has taken place in certain places over the last few decades, a common complaint is that the young have lost respect. They respect neither the elders nor the traditions. In so doing, they have lost their pride.

To a society in which respect is central, the sometimes contemptuous treatment of Aboriginal people by other parts of Australian society, public as well as private, is deeply hurtful. It hurts at a personal level, it hurts at a group level. I am not talking here about ethnic or racial prejudice, although that exists. Rather, a far more deeply ingrained unthinking that actually denies the validity of the Aboriginal experience.

Respect does not mean blind acceptance of existing structures or the past. It does not mean accepting gross wrongs . It does mean manners, politeness, thought for the other person. recognition of roles, traditions and institutions.

I think that Australia would be a lot better off if we as society adopted a little more of the Aboriginal concept of respect.          

Budget conundrums - real vs nominal growth

Today's post explores one of the questions raised in my mind by the latest Australian budget. I am not addressing the budget directly. For those interested, you can find the full budget papers here.

A key questions raised by the budget can be summarised as credibility. Can you believe the numbers?  Opposition shadow treasurer Joe Hockey was quite scathing on this point, calling the budget dishonest. Was it? I don't think so, although it arguably contained some of the tricks so beloved by the previous NSW Labor Government in the way the numbers were presented.

Of more interest, was the question as to why previous budgets got the numbers so wrong and what that means. The problem here lies not so much on the expenditure side, governments have a degree of control there, but on the revenue side. Why has projected revenue fallen so short?

  To begin with a simple point, the revenues from both the mining and carbon tax were embarrassingly short of the projections. Now this need not have mattered so much except that the Government committed to spend based on the projections. So you had expenditure up, revenue down. Basing expenditure decisions on taxes whose final return is dependent on a set of complex assumptions is not wise. To my mind, this was actually the worst error made by the Government.

In the budget speech and in the subsequent commentary, there was a lot of discussion about the difference between movements in the nominal and real rates of economic growth. Put simply, real economic growth has risen faster than nominal growth, so tax revenues that depend on nominal growth have risen more slowly than expected. Confused? Well, I was and am now!

What does nominal economic growth mean? It appears to mean movements measured in terms of money. My income this year will be X dollars, next year Y dollars. The dollar difference is nominal economic growth. Price levels rise. So one dollar next year will be worth a bit less next year. To work out whether I am actually better off, I have to adjust my income by movements in prices. My income has gone up 3%, prices have risen by 2%, so I am one per cent better off. That's real economic growth.

But how can real economic growth rise faster than nominal economic growth? If money incomes remain the same and inflation is negative, I am better off. I have experienced real economic growth despite the zero increase in my money income.

Now Australia has experienced some inflation and yet real economic growth has been higher than nominal growth. So the total dollars in my pocket are actually worth more than a year ago! Obviously they are not, so there is a problem. The answer appears to lie in the way we calculate national income, adjusting it for the terms of trade and the value of the currency.

If we look at what I can buy overseas, the dollar in my pocket is (more or less) worth more than it was a few years ago. So it's real value measured in this way is up even though my income hasn't increased. Of course, that's not really relevant to me unless I buy a lot from overseas. I still have the same dollars in my pocket, and in domestic terms they are worth less.

It appears that the Government is a bit like me. Its tax revenue depends on nominal dollars, what is actually earned or spent from which the Government takes its cut. So how can a variation between nominal and real growth affect tax revenue? It can't! The problem lies elsewhere.

I might be very dumb here, but it seems to me that the only way that an unexpected variation between real and nominal growth can affect revenue projections is if those projections are based in some way on real rather than nominal growth. Surely that's dumb?

Of course real growth is important, but what the Government is concerned about is cash in its kick, and that depends on money incomes and expenditure. You see why I am confused. Perhaps one of my economist colleagues might explain!                 

No post tonight

I'm not going to attempt to post tonight. I played tennis and then listened to the Australian Treasurer's budget speech and some of the subsequent discussion. I will try to make a sensible comment tomorrow.

Loss of innocence

I found Eamonn Duff's story Age of innocence lost forever as trust clouded by paranoia dreadfully sad. As I have said before, it fits with my own experiences in bringing up girls in a primary child care role. I was yelled at only once, accused of being a paedophile -  it was a primary school break-up and all the kids wanted to be swung around. That was a nasty experience, but it reflected shifting attitudes, including sometimes subtle discrimination against men looking after children. 

I don't think that we can do anything about it. It just is, an example of the way that social pressures in combination with shifts in the law work in practice. Sometimes you have to accept that, accept the losses involved.

Has any of this made children safer? In some cases, maybe yes. As I write, the number of charges against Father F, someone I know, has been increased. Without commenting on his guilt or innocence, the type of systemic abuse revealed by some past cases is, I think, less likely to happen  or more likely to be found out. 

Do I think that my children would be any safer were they born today than in the second half of the eighties?  Do I think that those social attitudes portrayed in Eammon Duff's story, that the experiences of Leo and granddaughter Emma, of Newcastle dentist Andreas Schwander, of Uncle Lachlan in the Coffs Harbour supermarket, would make my children safer? 

Just the opposite, in fact. In a society marked by certain types of paranoia, children actually become less safe. They can be hurt by the very social attitudes and laws designed to protect them. In NSW, mandatory reporting of certain types of suspected offences against children brought the entire child welfare system to the point of collapse. Those who suffered were the kids, as well as the staff who had to try to operate the system.

As I said, I don't think that we can do anything about it. We can fight against certain restrictions, but others we have to accept. It would be a brave person, especially a man. who would argue for a wind-back in child protection legislation, a braver person who would challenge or fight back against the social moral mafia.  

Sunday Snippets - walks, books, the Aborigines with a dash of defence

This morning's blog round-up starts with a scathing attack in GeoCurrents, Do “Ultraconserved Words” Reveal Linguistic Macro-Families?, on recent claims about the long term preservation of certain key in language over 15,000 years. It's worth a read.

In Aboriginal Art & Culture: an American eye, Living on Country reviews Melissa Lucashenko’s new book Mullumbimby (UQP, 2013). Set in the Northern Rivers district of the broader New England, the book is part straight story of romance, hard work, friendship, and family, but it also entwines the Aboriginal story. I quote from Will's review:

Land and law are two of the pillars on which Mullumbimby reveals itself; the third in language.  The novel is saturated with Bundjalung and Yugambeh vocabulary, along with more familiar Aboriginal English.  All the animals that inhabit the land are named in language.  The reader quickly learns that jagan means land yumba means home, and gwong means rain; relationships are parsed in Aboriginal terms as well: jahjam (child) and bunji (friend).  Jo thinks and speaks in multiple linguistic registers, just as her relationship to land is sung in multiple scales that span octaves of meaning.

I suspect it's a good book. I plan to buy it for that reason, but also to add to my growing stock of New England books. The reference to language caught my eye as well, for in my weekly history column in the Armidale Express I am presently completing a series on Aboriginal languages,

The columns are not on line and my subscription to the paper is their e-edition. However, Callum (an Aboriginal friend) kindly sent me a scanned version of the first in the series. I thought I would reproduce it as an example of my writing elsewhere. 

One nice thing about my research and writing is the way it sometimes supports other things. Caullum and Susan are interested in reviving Anaiwan or Nganjaywana, the Aboriginal language spoken in the Southern portion of the New England Tablelands, so some of my current writing supports that aspiration.

Now if you want to try your knowledge of the world, here is a Google maps based game that will give you your chance. It's harder than it looks. You have to spend a little time looking at the detail. For example, based on Spanish language signs, I put one photo in Spain when it was in Paraguay! The game came to me via the Lowy Institute blog whose Defence White Paper round-up provides a very useful list of responses to Australia's latest Defence white paper.

Over at Ramana's place, Ramana has had an interesting series of posts on interfaith marriage. I am not going to list them now. I want to pick them up later in another post.

In terms of the Aboriginal theme earlier in this post, Neil Whitfield's Two hundred years ago: Blue Mountains NSW looks at an iconic event in the post European settlement of this country from a different perspective. I would like to do that walk, although I got picky on points of detail!

Speaking of walks and historic places, this is a photo of part of the obelisk in Sydney's Macquarie Place. All of the road distances in early colonial NSW were recorded from this point. The distance to Bathurst records the route Neil talked about. The obelisk is meant to mark the start/end of the the Great North Walk to Newcastle. You know, for such a major walk I could not find a single descriptor in or near the obelisk! Maybe I'm just dumb, but I felt quite annoyed!

Well, I have so much more to write, but I fear that I am out of time this morning. I have other things that I must do.       

Saturday Morning Musings - conversation with a busker

The regulars on the 343 get to know each other, at least by sight, often through conversation. I had been on an excursion to Circular Quay and the Rocks. Coming home on the bus, I got chatting to a busker. He was lumping this huge suitcase. It was old but still relatively recent because it had wheels. Despite that, it was still cumbersome.

"What's in the case", I said. "My amps", was the reply. "I need to charge them."

We chatted on. I mentioned that I had been watching buskers around Circular Quay. This lady is a contortionist warming up.

And this is her equipment.  I thought of my youngest daughter when the performer said she was into extreme performances. Just what can you do with that, I wondered?

"Do they make much money there?", I asked my friendly busker. "Its a good beat", he replied, "but you must have $10 million public liability insurance, and that costs $320 per annum. That puts people off." I wondered about that. It certainly stops the casuals, and that may explain why there are fewer buskers now, why the place is less interesting.

By the way, do you know what circular breathing is? I didn't. It means that you breath in through the nose while breathing out through the mouth. It's absolutely critical to the playing of things like the Aboriginal didgerdoo. This player is explaining the technique to a member of his audience.  

We chatted on. "Where's the best beat?", I asked. "You can make $400 per night at the Cross", my informant explained. Kings Cross is red light and entertainment district about 2k to the east of the CBD. He went on: "But you have to be careful not to be rolled. What I do is to grab an on-looker, promise them some beers, and get them to watch while I play." 

The bus had arrived at the Kingsford roundabout. We got off, still chatting. It had been an interesting trip.

The world is awash with money

A very, very short post tonight just to record an impression that I want to write about later. I have been following global policy developments reasonably closely, including quantitative easing and the currency wars.

The thing that is making me increasingly uneasy is the feeling that the pre-conditions are being set for an economic crash. What makes perfect sense for one country, becomes a mess when multiple countries do it. What I'm trying to work out in my mind is a scenario that would allow multiple quantitative easing to be unwound without tipping the wheelbarrow  over and us all onto the ground.

I can see how one country might do it, but not economies making up, what, more than 50% of the global economy if they all start doing it around the same time. That's my problem.