Saturday Morning Musings - usage of the term liberal democracies

 

‘Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…’  Winston S Churchill, 11 November 1947

This hard to read image from Google Ngam shows the use of the term liberal democracies in books from 1860 to the present, You can see can see how little the term was used in the past. There was an acceleration during the Second World War and then usage just jogged along before an exponential acceleration during the 1980s. Usage then stabilised before exploding again in the 2000s.  

According to Wikipedia, the term has a long history, but it's also one that I have rarely used. For most of my life I have referred just to democracy with a special focus on parliamentary democracy. Occasionally I have referred to Western democracies, but a search on the blog shows that I have used the term liberal democracies just once in several thousand posts and then in passing. 

No doubt this reveals that I am out of touch. I went to Wikipedia to review the term and was surprised somewhat at the analysis. I felt that the term had become an ideological label whose meaning was in fact uncertain and indeed confusing. 

I then did the Ngam analysis just to check usage, This suggested that the increased usage of the term has been directly bound up with particular events. I'm not sure where I go with this. I just wanted to record the information.   

    

Karl Rove and the rejection of discernible reality

The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." Remarks later attributed to US Presidential Adviser Karl Rove, North American Summer, 2002. 

The excerpt is from a New York Times Magazine piece by Ron Suskind, Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush, 17 October 2004. It came to me via a comment from Johnb on a post on my history blog, .Is technology bringing history to life or distorting it? .I found it quite chilling.

 The comment was made at a time when many in the US did believe that US power was such that they could control events and thus results. We now know that discernible reality was such and should have been seen to be such to indicate the limits of US power. It is certainly true, however, that the actions of the time taken independent of discernible reality created a new discernible reality, one that we are all trying to manage today.  

I think that is true that many of those in power and not just in the US still believe that they can and should be able to control events, to do things, independent of practical limits to their power. I suspect, too, that they believe that they can in fact substitute a new discernible reality along their desired lines.not recognising that their actions will create a new reality that they might not like.

 In his interview,  Mr Suskind refers to enlightenment principles and empiricism. I fear that both are in sad decline, their value rejected on all sides. I am not blind to the underlying difficulties of the very concept of discernible reality.

By its nature, discernible reality deals with the position at a point as seen at that point. It becomes a constraint as exemplified in the words "the reality is". Many of the best things in history as well as the worst   have come about because people have rejected an existing discernible reality and sought to create something different.

Slavery was a discernible reality. Part of that reality was that slavery had been a feature of human societies for a very long time, was indeed seen as part of the natural order of things. That is still the case in some parts of the world even today. Some of the then European colonial powers had benefited greatly from slavery. It was built into the structures of empire. And yet, reformers in the British Parliament were able to begin a process that led to the progressive abolition of slavery in the British Empire that then flowed on. It took time and sometimes violence including a bloody civil war in the United States, but the end result was freedom for many.

Unlike Mr Rove, the anti-slavery movement did not and could not ignore the the existing discernible reality. They did not control the levers of power. They recognised a reality and sought to change it using the constitutional mechanisms open to them. Their success created a new reality, one that the anti-slavery campaigners of today seek to build on. Progress comes from recognising a discernible reality and seeking change, not from denying the presence of the reality in the first place.  

What drives One Nation Voters - return of the middling class

I have yet to get David Marr's full quarterly essay, but I found this long excerpt (Looking back, and angry: what drives Pauline Hanson's voters) from the Guardian quite fascinating  if also very familiar because it fits with my own experiences.

We have discussed One Nation here from time to time especially in comments. I would like to come back to some of those points later. For the present, the analysis set out provides by far the best snap shot of the attitudes of One Nation voters that we have so far seen. Political scientist Ian McAllister cautions that care must be exercised in interpreting the results because the small number of One Nation voter risks statistical error. That is fair enough, but the results do at least provide a framework, a hypothesis, for future review.

University of New England economic historian R S (Ron) Neale spoke of a middling class. This is an unstable group included in the middle or lower middle class but distinct from them. Ron spoke of them in this way:

... petit bourgeois, aspiring professional men, other literates and artisans. Individuated or privatized like the middle class but collectively less deferential and more concerned to remove the privileges and authority of the upper class in which, without radical changes, they cannot realistically hope to share 

Explaining why he rejected the idea of a two class society, the Country Party politician David Drummond wrote that he refused:

to accept the doctrine that society was divided into 2 classes & 2 only. I knew that in between there was a middle class of decent law abiding people, farmers, graziers, small shopkeepers, & to a certain extent professional men. They were either self employed or small employers but largely consisted of people who valued their independence and sought by hard work to build a secure place in society they could sustain .. To the solid core of the "middle class" the unprincipled exploiting greed of employers was as loathsome as the destructive ill-balanced doctrines of extreme unionism.

Drummond used the term middle class, but the attributes he attached better reflect Neale's idea of a middling class.

The distinctive features of the middling class are, I think, a degree of alienation from existing power and social structures combined with a a feeling of insecurity. Through hard work, they have established a degree of security and prosperity, but they feel that this is insecure, likely to be taken away. The middling class are worriers.

Drummond was writing in 1965 explaining the views that he had formed as a young man so many decades before. Despite the passage of time, I think that the idea of the middling class is still by far the best way of understanding just what drives One Nation.  

Australia and the Transparency International Global Corruption Perceptions Index

The release by Transparency International (TI) of the latest global corruption perceptions index has attracted attention in Australia (here for example) because of Australia's slide in the index. The apparent response is that this requires Australia to tighten its anti-corruption legislation. This is quite problematic.

To begin with, the idea that new legislation should be introduced based on other peoples' perceptions is highly suspect in public policy terms. We have far too much legislation as it is based on perceptions of problems as compared to actual problems.

The methodology used by TI to generate the the results is also quite unclear. Maybe someone can help me here. I couldn't find any discussion of methodology on the TI website.

Then, too, I am left with the uncomfortable feeling that Australia's pursuit of corruption from sport to the NSW Independent Commission against Corruption has, of itself, affected perceptions and at two levels. More things are classified as corruption, while the uncovering of problems in its turn heightens perceptions about the existence of corruption. In a way, the more we do, the worse our reputation becomes.

This is not to say that corruption is not an issue, although I would argue that our systems are relatively free of the endemic corruption found in some other countries. However, it is an issue that needs to be addressed in specific contexts. To suggest that we need to introduce new legislation just because our global ranking has slipped on a particular perception index is dumb.

If the slip in our global rankings is perceived to be a problem, then we have to ask why it's a problem. Does it reflect a real problem in this country? If so, we need to identify and act. Or is is just a perception problem? If so, how important is it, noting that Australia still ranks 13, a high number? If we classify perception as a real problem, then we have to look at the way the indices are calculated and their real meaning to define how we should address it..This might include surveys to provide independent validation.

These arguments do not invalidate the broader objectives that TI is trying to achieve. They just say that Australia needs to apply a degree of common sense so far as its own position and responses are concerned.

Mr Shorten is just so 1990s

There was something just so 1990s about Opposition Leader Bill Shorten's remarks (and here) on the question of an Australian republic et al.

"Let us have the courage to ask ourselves if we measure up to more than just a grab-bag of cliches," he said.

"Let us declare that our head of state should be one of us. 

"Let us rally behind an Australian republic - a model that truly speaks for who we are, our modern identity, our place in our region and our world."

Cliches anyone? Really. It gets worse if you look at Mr Shorten's apparent views on Australian history.

The one really important issue that Mr Shorten raised was the need for constitutional recognition of Australia's Aboriginal heritage. This is something that I support as a way of putting one aspect of Australia's past behind us. Sadly, it has all become highly problematic. There is no agreement that I can see within the Aboriginal community, while the non-Aboriginal community doesn't care a great deal and is equally divided. Then to mix the question, as Mr Shorten did, with other issues is to add too division.

 Fortunately, as an historian I do not have to buy into Mr Shorten's apparent interpretation of the Australian past. I don't want to play in the history wars. In writing, my task is to present the evidence and (hopefully) make it interesting.

Postscript

The transcript of Mr Shorten's speech is not yet available, so I have not been able to cross-check my reactions against the actual words.

Mr Shorten was speaking at the launch of a new book, Mateship, by author Nick Dyrenfurth. I am not sure that it is correct to claim, as the publisher's blurb does, that this is the first book-length exploration of Australia's secular creed. I would have thought that that claim actually belonged to Russell Ward's The Australian Legend. However, the place and topic set the context for Mr Shorten's remarks.

One of the difficulties with mateship lies in the in-built tension between mates and the rest, between them and us. The concept does become generalised, made universal as an element of the Australian character, that was the continuing power of Ward's book, but the tension remains and has expressed itself in various ways over time. Mr Shorten refers to this. I quote from the Canberra Times report.

Mr Shorten also said that while Australia Day should be celebrated, it was important that Australians also confronted the lows and tragedies of Australian history, such as the Myall Creek massacre. 

"I don't think shirking it with the great Australian silence solves anything. We need to recognise our history." 

Mateship, he said, "reminds us of a timeless truth: real patriots don't try and justify or excuse their nation's flaws and failings and anachronisms – they get on and fix them. True patriots don't shrink from historical truth – they welcome it, they learn from it. True patriots know that until a nation includes everyone – in its history, in its society, in its economy – then there is always more to do."

The opposition leader said Australians were tired of people "claiming victory in the 'history wars' - as if the Australian story has to be fought 'to the last man and the last footnote'."

"We gain nothing from boiling down our history to a bland mish-mash myth of the Rum Rebellion and Burke and Wills, Bodyline and the stump-jump plough, the Victa Mower and Olympic gold. There is nothing wrong with celebrating those moments and achievements – but it is wrong to pretend that they represent the limit of our national capabilities – or our national ambitions." 

And he criticised Prime Minister Tony Abbott's assertion late last year, when welcoming UK Prime Minister David Cameron to the parliament, that former prime minister John Howard had settled the debate about Australia's place in the world. 

"No leader can 'end' a conversation about our nation's sense of self. No leader can 'settle' the question of Australia's global role and responsibilities. And no leader should take pride in trying.
The book traces the history of 'mateship" in Australia, with Mr Shorten describing it as a "celebration of our national character". 

But Mr Shorten also noted the book acknowledged that Australian 'mateship' had rarely included everyone", noting for example that at the turn of the 20th century, the Australian Workers Union was open to all workers but at the same time say: "No Chinese, Japanese, Kanakas, Afghans or coloured aliens." 

"The fact is, mateship has not always been there when our nation, our people needed it. After all, where was mateship at Myall Creek? Or at Lambing Flat? Where was mateship when governments and institutions worked together to take children from their mothers – because the mother was unmarried, or black?" 

My problem with Mr Shorten's remarks lies in the way he mixes so many things together. The phrase "the great Australian silence" was popularised by the anthropologist William Edward Stanner in 1968, referring to the way in which Aboriginal history including the destruction of Aboriginal society had been effectively excluded from Australian history. 

Professor Stanner was a remarkable man who occupies a special niche in Australia's intellectual history. However, as is so often the case, he coined the phrase at a time of an explosion of interest in Aboriginal culture and history, an explosion that he helped create. I have written a fair bit on that explosion because of the way that it is wrapped in elements of the nostalgia of my own past. It was just fun.

Mr Shorten re-uses the phrase "the great Australian silence" as though it were still current. That's just not true. The whole point about the so-called Australian history wars of the 1990s lay in disputes about the balance in historical analysis between calling a spade a spade or a bloody shovel. In coining the phrase "the black armband of history" in 1993, historian Geoffrey Blainey suggested that we had reached the point that the spade was being called a bloody shovel. Those on the other side argued that the spade was indeed a bloody shovel. The great Australian silence had been replaced by a very rancorous great Australian clamour.

The last paragraph in the report on Mr Shorten's views is a pastiche of popular historical misconceptions. He asks where was the mateship at Myall Creek, at Lambing Flat, in the taking away of children? These are rhetorical flourishes masquerading as history.  

Myall Creek was a rather nasty massacre, not the only one in Northern NSW nor elsewhere in Australia. My fellow student Brian Harrison first documented the massacre in his 1966 History honours thesis at the University of New England. Since then, it has been covered in multiple publications. No great silence there. The historical significance of Myall Creek lies not in the massacre, but in the hanging of those involved, the way that it affected policy towards Aboriginal people and race relations on the moving frontier. 

The Lambing Flat riots were one of a number of race inspired incidents that took place on the gold fields between European and Chinese diggers. Just as the convicts and ex-convicts at Myall Creek displayed mateship, so did the Lambing Flat diggers. Or, and more impressive, so did the squatter who gave protection to a large number of Chinese on his station. But the historical significance of the riots lay in the way they affected policy towards the Chinese, helping lay the basis for later action to exclude Chinese and to finally establish the White Australia Policy at Federation.

Finally, this business of taking children from their mothers has to be seen in the context of the history of child welfare and evolving attitudes towards the protection of children. Sadly. and this is true of Aboriginal policy as well, the greatest tragedies occurred not because of the presence or absence of mateship, but because of do-good attitudes developed by sincere and honest people that took expression in official policy. Many of the wrongs came from the desire to do what was right. 

Mr Modi and the complexities of Australia's current position

This wasn't quite the way I intended to go in this post. So much has been happening that I have had several goes at posts. This is part of Parramatta's Indian community waiting for Indian Prime Minister's Modi visit.

The events of the last few days in Australia deserve serious analysis, but it's hard not to be sidetracked by it all. The financial press in particular has gone absolutely crazy, attracted not so much by the theater as the smell of cash. That's one area where a corrective is required.

Australia's Indian population is around 400,000. Around 16,000 gathered to hear the Indian PM speak to the local Indian population. This shot is part of the 5,000 or so who gathered outside the stadium, they could not fit in.

I wondered how Mr Modi's visit would be covered in India. Quite well, if these stories are any guide - here, here, here.Perhaps Ramana can give us a guide from an Indian perspective.

One of the interesting but complicated things to my mind was just how Australia fits in strategic terms to the geopolitical issues surrounding the G20 and the associated summits.

I am not sure that I can put this clearly, but just at present the country seems to be in a useful but very complicated sweet spot. Not big enough to be a military threat to anyone, but big enough to be a potentially useful ally in a remarkably complex Asia-Pacific strategic mix.

Staying with Mr Modi, these are some of the 200 Indians who came up by train from Melbourne to attend his speech.

I said the strategic mix was complex. It really is,

We have to balance the US and China. Japan and Korea are major trading partners with their own strategic concerns. India has its own complicated relations with China. Indonesia and ASEAN are critical to Australia's immediate interests.

I will write up some of my thoughts on key issues, if only to clarify my thinking. For the moment, it's just interesting watching developments and trying to work out how the bits might fit together,

Postscript

In this post I said:

I am not sure that I can put this clearly, but just at present the country seems to be in a useful but very complicated sweet spot. Not big enough to be a military threat to anyone, but big enough to be a potentially useful ally in a remarkably complex Asia-Pacific strategic mix.

Today's Australian Financial Review mirrors this point.

• Rory Metcalf (Lowy Institute): For better or worse, the region has finally found us
• Editorial: Australia takes on a new standing
• Kerry Brown (Professor, University of Sydney): Hard objectives come wrapped up in flattery

And so it goes on.

457 posturing

Earlier in March, Political bottom feeders in Western Sydney, provided a brief comment on the Australian PM's campaign in Western Sydney. Today I wanted to record Mark Kenny's 'Aussies first' pledge over jobs hits spot with Labor voters' for later reference.

Those dreaded focus groups. All this is just so NSW. Meantime, ABC Radio National's Big Ideas had an interesting session last night: WHAT'S WRONG WITH OUR LEADERS? And no, it's not quite what you might think. It's actually a reasonably academic exploration of the role of leadership in democracy linked to different democratic models. The program summary states:

Leadership by definition offenses against fundamental principles of democracy – John Kane and Haig Patapan discuss the unique character and always fragile legitimacy of democratic leadership in order to explain why we so frequently suspect our political leaders of being less than honest with us.

The discussion draws out some of the complexities involved.

Postscript

This short post must have seemed remarkably obscure to readers outside Australia. Briefly, the 457 visa scheme allows workers to enter Australia for a period to meet particular needs that cannot be met locally. Its quite a complicated process, wrapped up in a lot of rules in part because of the risk of abuse.

Up until the PM's visit to Western Sydney, she and the Government had been defending the program, declaring it a success, as indeed it has been. Now she seems to have switched tracks to an Australian jobs for Australians' first mantra. Who could argue with that?

Well, there are two problems.

The first is that the the 457 visa program is designed to fill jobs for which there are no Australian workers available at a point in time, and it seems to have done that reasonably well. The question of why there are no Australian workers available through lack of skills or choice (choice is quite important) is a different question requiring a different response. The second is that she seems to be using shonky statistics to buttress her argument.

I said those dreaded focus groups, adding that this was just all so NSW. I then added a link to a radio program on the role of leadership in democracy.

One of the symptoms of the NSW disease that has now infected Federal Labor lay in the way that policy responses came to be determined by and targeted at community views at a place and at a point in time; the need was an immediate fix, something that would gain a positive response or at least minimise a negative response in the now; the result was a growing addiction to the short term political rush.

I have consciously used drug language, for that best fits the case. As with certain drugs, the immediate brilliance of the rush faded; the fix had to be repeated; the impact diminished with time, while other health problems grew. In the end, NSW Labor sat alone in a delusional world, aware that it was alone, but unable to fix the problem except by even more of the same.

Leadership in a democracy is complex, never correct, always riven by contradictions.

A little while ago on this blog, I asked a question: how come in the space of a bit less than thirty years such a fundamental political shift, the end of the White Australia policy, occurred with so little social disruption? I will now ask another question: could it occur today?

To my mind, the answer is probably no. How could it, when every one of the market measurement techniques now in use to measure opinions and tailor responses for maximum immediate political effect would have shown White Australia's importance?

Saturday Morning Musings - words, the nature of progress & the Enlightenment

in Is Enlightenment humanism a coherent world view?, Winton Bates has continued his discussion on streams in Western thought. He concludes:

Over time, it seems to me that the values espoused by Enlightenment humanism have developed the status of a coherent world view in the democracies that is often, but not always, supported by public opinion. The process seems to be one in which disparate political philosophies, often going back centuries, act as tributaries to the broad streams of thought that flow into the rivers of public opinion. Enlightenment humanism is one of those broad streams of thought. The colour of the water in the streams and the rivers changes over time, depending on relative contributions from the different tributaries.

Winton's piece is worth reading.

In comment on A note on the idea of progress, Ramana wrote:

Surely, words like civilisation and progress themselves need acceptable definitions before we can arrive at a consensus?

These two words have gained a lot of notoriety because of the heavy slant towards the Western idea of them. That other parts of the world could have different ideas need to be recognised and accommodated.

Ramana's comment bears upon both Winton's discussion and my own musings around concepts like civilisation and progress. I agree with Ramana's point about the importance of definitions, I have argued this myself, although I* am not sanguine about the second point, the arrival at a consensus.

Ramana's second paragraph raises some complicated issues. At least I find them complicated!

The loose cross-blog discussion going on at present is in part about the history of certain ideas, their evolution and diffusion.

Winton's post refers to in part to the difference the British and continental especially French views linked to the Enlightenment. I have always thought of the Enlightenment with its focus on the importance of reason in advancing knowledge as being very French or, to a lesser degree German, and not always rational.

I say the last because I found the theoretical structures erected by the rational application of thought based on certain premises both opaque and increasingly divergent from reality. The great secular religions of socialism and communism can be traced back to European thought associated with the Enlightenment.  

The English and, to a lesser extent, British tradition was different. The industrial and agrarian revolutions that formed the base of the current global economy began in Britain. The loss of the American colonies, the Napoleonic Wars, the demands of managing a global mercantile Empire acquired almost by accident, all tempered English thought. The practical rather than theoretical was in demand.

Earlier I said the difference between the British and continental view. I used the word British rather than English because of the importance of the Scottish contribution. There is a remarkable but little known story here that skepticlawyer (Helen Dale) has traced through in some of her posts.

I first visited Edinburgh straight after Paris and was struck by it's French feel. The "auld alliance"  between Scotland and France exercises influence to this day. In her writing, Helen traced the way in which concepts from Rome and more broadly Europe influenced Scottish thought. The Scottish Enlightenment was one result. Wikipedia describes it in this way. 

Sharing the humanist and rationalist outlook of the European Enlightenment of the same time period, the thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment asserted the fundamental importance of human reason combined with a rejection of any authority which could not be justified by reason. They held to an optimistic belief in the ability of humanity to effect changes for the better in society and nature, guided only by reason. It was this latter feature which gave the Scottish Enlightenment its special flavour, distinguishing it from its continental European counterpart. In Scotland, the Enlightenment was characterised by a thoroughgoing empiricism and practicality where the chief virtues were held to be improvement, virtue and practical benefit for both the individual and society as a whole.

Scotland's population was relatively small, but it was highly educated by then standards, with an estimated 75% of the population literate by 1750. Local opportunities were small, so the Scots were forced to seek opportunities elsewhere. The result was a pragmatic, outward looking, approach. It is no coincidence that Adam Smith was a key figure in the Scottish Enlightenment.

I said that the loose cross-blog discussion going on at present is in part about the history of certain ideas, their evolution and diffusion. Inevitably, that discussion extends to the impact of those ideas. Adam Smith is an example, for non-one could deny his continuing influence even among those who have not read a word written by him! However, the discussion extends further into the continuing validity of the ideas in question. Here I want to reintroduce Ramana's point.

Ramana noted that these two words- progress and civilisation - have gained a lot of notoriety because of the heavy slant towards the Western idea of them. He also said that other parts of the world could have different ideas that need to be recognised and accommodated.

The ideas of civilisation and progress are deeply embedded in Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment thought. They do have a particular impact today because they manifest themselves in the activities of Governments. The constitution of, and approach adopted by, the US is still linked to its Enlightenment foundation.

You can see this if you watch West Wing, a show my family is addicted too. The Democratic Party President and especially staffers express Enlightenment views. But then, so do their opponents, for the Enlightenment was  actually a broad church. Both sides display another Enlightenment position, a certainty that their position is right!

I don't actually know to what extent ideas such as progress and civilisation manifest manifest themselves in different cultures. When Ramana says that they have gained a lot of notoriety because of the heavy slant towards the Western idea of them, I can understand the political context. I am just not sure what the alternative is.

I suppose, and this is a bit of a challenge to Ramana, I need to understand the concepts embedded in alternative views. My feeling is, and I stand to be corrected, that it's actually the way of application rather than the concepts that are the problem. 

Problems with left and right

My main post today is on the New England History blog, Aboriginal New England in the Pleistocene Period. Here just a brief note.

On Club Troppo, Nicholas Gruen posted The intellectual collapse of the right. I commented:

From a purely personal perspective, Nicholas, I struggle to understand what is meant by left or right today or even how I fit in within the spectrum as defined. According to those sometimes popular quizes, I am now left of centre, yet my instinctive reactions to some of the left of centre blogging clearly places me on the right or at least the centre right.

I would argue, I think, that the problem with both the “left” (John Q, Club Troppo, Larvatus Prodeo) and the “right” (Catallaxy)is that they combine responses on values or particular issues with certain analytical models to make judgements as to whether something is left or right. They are also both selective.

To my mind, there is a risk of circular argument. Surely the question of the intellectual poverty of the right, or of the left for that matter, depends on how you define the terms?

I am not sure that the comment is totally fair, but it does capture my own mixed feelings.

Like all of us, my judgements about things reflect my own experiences and attitudes. I don't have time this morning to try to tease the arguments out. Perhaps another time.

People, biography & the New England tradition

In a post earlier in the week, Judith Wright, smoking, pokies, Armidale floods & policy misinformation (26 May), I said in part:

My train reading at the moment is Fiona Capp's My Blood's Country (Allen & Unwin), subtitled a journey through the landscapes that inspired Judith Wright's poetry.

Inspired by that book, I am working on a post for my New England History blog called multi-layered history. This centres in part on the way that the stories of major figures like Judith Wright actually become historical actors in their own right. From a purely personal viewpoint, there is a strange disconnect when people and areas one knows acquire an external independent life.

The post in question is simply called Writing multi-layered history. This post is a follow up muse on some elements of that post .

I am very fond of autobiography and especially biography as genres because they draw me into different worlds. I say biography first, because with autobiography the personal tone can put me off where I disagree with the person. For some reason, the life of an equally repulsive person is more palatable when told told in biographical form.

Very good biography stands on its own. You don't need to have any historical or personal knowledge of the subject to understand the book. It's a self-contained world. The skill involved in doing this is substantial. I stand in awe of the writing skills of some biographers. They are both good researchers and writers capable of creating a real story based on evidence.

While good biographies are self-contained, I do find that they draw me into wanting to know more. I start reading around the topic. I read Harrod's The Life of John Maynard Keynes while at school. This drew me into the world of Cambridge, the Bloomsbury Set and the Apostles. I maintained this interest for over ten years, then I stopped very suddenly and have taken no interest since. Almost overnight, I went from great interest to something approaching detestation.

In the end, the trigger was cumulative exposure through books and letters to what I came to think of as indulgent, self-centred and parochial little Englishness. This was too small, too narrow and too incestuous a world to maintain interest after a certain point. I suppose that I decided that they were not very nice people and I simply didn't want to know them any more.

I know that others will disagree with this perspective. I am just reporting a purely personal reaction. In a way I had become too close to them and their world, a little like living in the same village. Here you can see how local feuds begin. In my case, I had just had enough of Lytton Strachey in particular. Had we actually been living in a village, I think that I would have been very rude!

When I first became interested in Australian history there was very little around in the way of biography or autobiography. I did immerse myself in some things and especially some of the writers and painters, I read omnivorously, but there wasn't the type of depth that would give rise to the Bloomsbury style effect.

I am not saying that I didn't form views, but they were more about patterns than people. They also built on my very wide childhood reading.  I was a bookish child living in a world surrounded by books. I read anything I could get my hands-on, including children's books and popular fiction from both my grandfather's and parent's generation, as well as my own. This included a lot of Australian material, but was not limited to that. 

I was not reading critically, just for pleasure. Still, the sheer breadth of the reading provided it's own corrective. By the time I really became interested in Australian history, I knew a fair bit about differing patterns in society and life between different parts of Australia. I also slotted this into my perceptions of life and culture in other places. This was to affect my approach to Australian history in an odd way; I quickly became dissatisfied with the Australian history I did read because it didn't seem quite to fit with the immediate world I lived in, nor the patterns that had emerged in my own mind. It wasn't quite the same country, so to speak.   

I guess, too, that I just wasn't interested in emerging popular topics such as Ned Kelly or the Lawsons, mother and son.  They weren't especially relevant to the things that I was interested in. I read all of Lawson as a child, but that was Lawson the story teller or poet, not Lawson the man nor the world he lived in.

As part of my interest in Australian art and writing, I started collecting older Australian books and paintings during the 1970s. I also started my first and so far only major attempt at biography, the story of my grandfather. Both coincided with the dramatic increase in publishing on Australian topics that in some ways peaked around the 1988 Australian bicentennial. It's not that the total number of books is necessarily less, just that their range seems to have narrowed.

Writing my biography of the first part of Drummond's life meant looking at people. Now there were two problems.

The first was mechanical, simply keeping track. By the end, several hundred people were mentioned in the thesis, some many times. References to them were drawn from many sources, so there were inconsistencies. This plus things such as consistency in style, how to write per cent for example, had to be checked.

This is before modern word processing with its mechanical tools. In the final drafting stages, each person was recorded on a card to allow for checking, while an alphabetical list of styles was created.

While I have spoken of the thesis and it's aftermath before, I have never properly acknowledged the help I received. I was remarkably fortunate. We all knew that the thesis was a bit of a gamble. I was writing on a topic and about views that were even then increasingly outside the mainstream. The biographical form was seen by many as unsuitable for a PhD thesis. Then, too, I shifted the focus in part from Drummond's public life in politics and as a minister for education to Drummond in his role as a regional politician.

In retrospect, this was quite ambitious. I still had to deal with public life and to the same level of rigour, but I now had to write a regional history centred on the man and his interaction with an area he came to love.

I came back to Canberra from full time study at the start of 1983. Over the coming months, the thesis went through multiple drafts mainly written at night after my busy day as a senior public servant. Professor Colin Hughes, my Canberra supervisor, went through draft after draft with a red pen.

At home sitting in the backroom, my housemate Sue Rosly and her friend David went through the drafts, recording details of people on cards and identifying inconsistencies in detail and style. I wrote at the same time, answering queries as we went along. I cannot begin to say how important this was. The marking imbroglio that subsequently submerged the thesis, an imbroglio that still nags at me even though I know that I should put it aside, was a poor reward for their work. I remain incredibly grateful for their support.

My second problem lay in the fact that I knew or at least knew of so many of the people I was writing about. They weren't just names, but people who occupied a place in my mind based on contact and family stories.

Take Country Party politician Earle Page as an example. Page, for those who have never heard of him, was one of the founders of the Australian Country Party, Deputy Prime Minister and then Australian PM for a very brief period.

I don't remember that I ever met Page, although I almost certainly did as a child given his connections with my grandfather. But he was a figure in family conversation.

In December 1961, my grandfather fulfilled a promise and took my cousin and I on his last election campaign as member for New England. I was sixteen. In Tenterfield we received the news that Page had collapsed. My grandfather dropped everything and left for the Clarence to try to save the seat for his former mentor, while I hitchhiked back to Armidale.

When I came to write my biography, I knew Drummond's views on Page. I read them again in his letters and manuscript autobiography. I also knew some of Page's grandchildren; Australian poet Geoff Page was one, current NSW MP Don Page a second. Geoff went out with the elder sister of two of my friends, while Don and  I worked together on efforts to reform the Country Party. I knew, too, of things like the disputes over the writing of Page's autobiography, while Earle Pages' second wife Jean was good friends with one of my aunts. Then, too, I knew Ulrich Ellis, Page's long standing amanuensis.

My point in all this is that when I came to write about  my grandfather's life I had to filter my already formed views views on Page through the sieve created by the evidence. My views on Page are not the same as my grandfather's. I recognise that Page was a remarkable man, perhaps more remarkable than recognised today, but he had his major weaknesses. Drummond's idealisation of the man blinded him to them.

Now I want to link this muse back to my opening points.

Since I started writing my history of New England I have gone back in depth into the people of New England. Like the Bloomsbury Set but unlike my early experiences with Australian history, the people in my history of New England have become people, not just patterns.

Unlike Bloomsbury, this greater exposure has not alienated me. I am aware of their weaknesses, I dislike some of their views, but they are there as characters. Herein lies problems.

One problem lies in my recognition that I am dealing with people with living relatives who are still alive as people in popular consciousness. The things that I say may hurt or even have practical effects like affecting Aboriginal land claims. This does not mean that I should not be objective. After all, I try to consciously recognise my own family's weaknesses in my writing. However, it does mean (at least as I see it) that I should exercise a degree of restraint so long as this does not interfere with the history itself. I can't write just to grab attention and interest.

A second problem lies in the way that my characters have gained a life of their own in my mind and others. Judith Wright, to take an example from an earlier post, is not just a major Australian poet nor a New England figure, but is now an entity examined and counter-examined by many. You have Judith the person, Judith the historical figure, Judith the writer, Judith the symbol of causes; just so many Judith's!

In dealing with so many New Englanders like Drummond, Page or Wright and the interactions between them, I find that they become like characters in novels, people with lives of their own who dictate the story. I as writer am loosely in charge of a plot of many characters who have their own minds. This is not a problem in fiction, but is an issue in history.

Finally, and this is not really a problem from my perspective, there is the constant desire to bring a New England past alive that has in some ways become lost. I am not alone here.

As an historian, I suppose I write from a right wing perspective.

I need to be very careful in what I say here. I am not right wing in the way that term is often used today. I am not a neo-liberal, nor do I necessarily espouse current right wing nostrums. However, I do write about topics and past issues that are generally classified today as right wing. Further, I write about them from a sympathetic or at least understanding position.

All this comes about because of my role as a regional historian, someone concerned with the history and ideas of a particular area. Scratch a New Englander, and you will quickly find common attitudes that don't quite fit with "mainstream" thought.    

My blogging colleague Paul Barratt would be classified as a left winger. His support for the Greens, his pro-Palestine position, his media appearances including chairing the wikileaks session at the Sydney Writers' Festival, all place him on the left. He would, I think, classify himself as a left winger. Yet scratch Paul and he is a New Englander.

Like me, he has the same love of country. Like me, he thinks that the old Country Party was a good thing. Like me, he understands and supports Tony Windsor. Like me, he is a New England New Stater. Like me, he promotes the history and life of New England. Like me, he complains about the acceptance of currently common nostrums that prevent regional development. Yet we are very different.

People who come from our New England tradition don't easily fit in with current stereotypes. And that's part of the fascination of the writing that I, Paul, and others are now doing. We are mounting a challenge. And that's fun.                             

Populism, people and geography

In a comment on The New England populist tradition, KVD asked what populism was. The on-line dictionary defines it as appealing to the interests or prejudices of ordinary people. The Wikipedia article is not bad.

If you look at the general definition, populism can take many forms. The Tea Party in the US, for  example, is a populist movement on the right, but one with radical and even libertarian tendencies that appear to combine in an odd way with social conservatism.  In Canada, the New Democratic Party (the Canadian equivalent to the Labor Party and now the official opposition) has deep agrarian and populist roots, but  is far more progressive (to use a code word) on social issues such as gay rights than the Australian Labor Party. 

No political movement is perfect, nor immune from inconsistencies. Each draws from its own bedrock, and has to rationalise and codify its political views in light of its changing base and the people it represents.

The idea of the people is common in most populist parties. Yet what people and when?

In the Australian federal Seat of New England, independent member Tony Windsor regularly surveys his electorate, he represents the people of New England, yet when it came to deciding whether to support Labor or Liberal, he voted  for the Gillard Government even though the majority of his people in his electorate were arguably against the idea. Here he overrode one definition of people, those in his electorate, in the interests of a second group of people, country people and, more broadly still, Mr Windsor's perception of the national interest and the need for national stability. This position was challenged by the National's Barnaby Joyce using populist language. Was Tony inconsistent? No, because his position actually fitted directly into the New England populist tradition with its specific constitutional focus.

In part of that tradition, Parliament as the body representing the people was central, the body that represented people against state oppression. When a person was elected, they acquired responsibilities to that body. They had to put aside narrower interests and consider Parliament as an institution. This view was quite deeply held. When late in his life NSW Country Party leader Mick Bruxner was expelled from the Lower House chamber for a period because he tried to uphold a point of principle, his biographer Don Aitkin records that he was white and shaking. It's a bit hard to believe today when periodic expulsion is just part of the party political game.

Most populist parties, indeed all parties, have their images and rhetoric. Central to these is often the concept of the oppressed and the oppressors. Political correctness and the chattering classes is actually an example of this rhetoric in practice, as is the idea of oppression of the workers.

Populist movements often emerge because their supporters perceive that existing political machines tied up with existing economic and social power structures are interested in power for its own sake and not in the interests of people however defined. This was true in Australia in the first decades of the twentieth century when the country movements saw the new Labor controlled by unions, the then equivalent of the Liberals by the bosses and city capital. 

In the case of the Australian Country Parties, the idea of the virtues of farming and grazing, of an oppressed country and an oppressing city, of the virtues of a country life, were deeply held and not without some justice. Here we have the appeal to one set of people (country people) who are oppressed by metropolitan control.

In the New England political tradition, this found expression in the concept of the oppression of minorities. Those who have power will use it. If the majority always controlled the levers of power, they would abuse that power. In the recent ABC Q&A session in Albury, Tony Windsor commented that country people must organise to exert the total power of their vote. If not, their interests would be overridden. This is the old Country Party argument.

The exact form taken by the emerging country movements varied across Australia.

In Victoria,the emerging country party was dominated by the more radical small farmer vote. Discipline was everything. Parliamentary members must be responsible and bound by Party policy. A pledge was introduced, based on the equivalent in the ALP.

By contrast, the country party in NSW emerged with the slogan no pre-selection or pledge. These were the devices used by the other parties to control. Any member of the party in good standing should be able to run for election. The very concept of machine control was denied, as was the idea of workers vs bosses.

Although this view atrophied with time, so long as there was either multi-member or compulsory preferential voting it maintained its supporters. To the Country (later National) Party political machines with their growing professionalisation and focus on power, the old approach was a waste of resources that risked electoral loss. This was reinforced by the decline in the Party's independence within coalition. Even at the end of the 1950s, founding NSW members such as Drummond and Bruxner held the line to some degree, although by then they were seen as increasingly out of touch to the needs of modern politics.

One of the distinctive features of the Country Party in Northern NSW was the presence of parallel new state agitation.  A second thing was the linking of farmers and graziers.

In Victoria, and to a lesser extent the Riverina and south-western NSW, the wealthier graziers stayed away from the Country Party, preferring the status quo. In Northern NSW they combined. Further, the Country Party gained support among the town elites. Support for new state agitation was strong among some of the leading graziers, stronger still among town elites, including especially the local papers. Country Party support for a Northern NSW New State allowed it to capture a much broader support base. Outside the lower Hunter, the Country Party became the natural party of Government.

The Party was still populist in its language and some of its thinking, but it was noticeably less radical than some of the other country parties. The new state movement had another impact as well, for it forced a focus on constitutional issues and principles. If, as both the Party and New State Movement argued, New England people must always be subject to oppression by the Sydney majority, then self-government for New England was the only answer. Since no political entity in history had willingly given up control over part of its territory, this had to be forced. This required those advocating separation to develop their own theories of Government that could then be argued.

Now we come back to the definition of the people.

At the 1967 plebiscite on New England self-government, both the Country and Liberal Parties were officially neutral. Both parties had representatives from different parts of NSW, many of whom were concerned that statehood for New England would leave the ALP in NSW in a strengthened position. However, individual parliamentarians were allowed to campaign for the yes case. 

By contrast, the NSW Labor Party strongly opposed a yes vote and used Party discipline to enforce that position. Statehood, the Party argued, would permanently disadvantage the working people and industrial interests of the lower Hunter, leaving them in a minority in a new Country Party dominated state. This is, of course, another variant of the oppression of the minority argument.

  Now we have three different versions of "the people" in play; the people of NSW, the people of New England and the people of the lower Hunter!

The arguments used by the New State Movement to try to counter the Labor attack drew directly from the New England populist tradition.

NSW lacked the geographic coherence and common interests to form a natural unity. This was what the Movement called the geographic basis of Government. As a consequence, the people of New England had been directly disadvantaged and would continue to be disadvantaged by inclusion in NSW. Oppression of the New England minority was inevitable.

The people of Newcastle and the coal fields had been largely ignored by Sydney. They had more in common with those further north than they did in Sydney. Should a New England state fail to deliver, fail to take into account their interests, then the Hunter would be entitled to seek self-government in its own right.

This post is not an argument for or against new states, although my own sympathies are clear. Rather, it is an attempt to illustrate issues using New England in part as a case study. Because of the particular circumstances of geography and history, and these are always critical to the form taken by populist movements of all types, New England populism has been by far the longest running and most clearly articulated of all of Australia's populist movements.         

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Milliken ruling on the power of Parliament

Hat tip to Christopher Moore on this one.

I have written before on the importance of Parliament. Here for a short example.

One of the central tensions in the Westminster system is the relationship between Parliament and executive government.

Modern executive government wants to govern, just as the English, Scottish and British kings and queens did before them when they were the executive government. However, in doing so, the principle has been established through blood that executive government is accountable first to Parliament and then beyond that to the people through the election process.

In governing, executive government seeks to control Parliament. This includes access to information. Executive government argues that Parliamentary access must be limited for reasons of state and in some cases this is undoubtedly true. Yet a fundamental tension remains.

In a Canadian case, House of Commons Speaker Peter Milliken has ruled that if the Commons insists, the government is obliged to deliver to it the unedited documents on Afghan prisoners that Parliament had requested. You will find a full copy of the ruling here.

In looking at Parliament's power, Mr Milliken looked not just at Canadian precedents, but also at New Zealand, Australian and New South Wales cases.

I think that the ruling is worth a read. It explores the issues in a very clear fashion.

Problems with Citizen Initiated Referenda

When younger, I was a strong supporter of citizen initiated referenda. I saw it as a control on the state, and as a way of getting a minority position heard. That time is long past.

I stand to be corrected by US readers, but I have the strong impression that this approach has been a disaster in places like California. Now we have the very strange decision in Switzerland on minarets.

The problem with citizen initiated referenda is that it makes it very easy for individual groups to block things or, conversely, to push minority positions through. In a representative democracy, Parliament is the final arbiter. This makes it easier for Governments to do things that might be unpopular with some, with the subsequent elections the final arbiter.

What do you think?   

Camarillas and democracy

Having finished Valentine Williams’ World of Action, I am now half way through Edmond Taylor’s The fall of the Dynasties, the collapse of the old order 1905-1922. Both deal with overlapping periods and common subjects, but are otherwise very different.

Published in 1938, Williams writes of the period in Europe before and after the First World War as a journalist who observed events. Published in 1968, Taylor’s book provides a sometimes gripping historical account of much of the same period. Between them, they have introduced me to a new word, camarilla, a group of courtiers or favourites which surround a king or ruler.

Mad, bad and sometimes just plain sordid, the camarillas played a critical role in the events leading up the destruction that was World War One. War was not inevitable, the camarillas helped make it so.

There is something quite frightening in watching events spin out of control. No one really wanted a major conflagration, not even the war parties in Germany, Austria-Hungary or Russia. They wanted a more limited conflict. Yet step led to step and finally armageddon.

I will write a little about this later. For the moment, I want to make just two points.

The first is that one of the strengths of democracy as compared to autocracy is that it provides a structured way of getting rid of those in power. The European democracies - whether constitutional monarchies or republics - had their weaknesses, but were spared some of the power plays that took place in the autocratic states.

The second is the importance of transparency and due process. Camarillas can exist in democracies, we have seen examples in Australia, but their activities and influence are limited where they can be seen or exposed.

Sunday Essay - The beliefs of a New England populist

Those who read this blog on a regular basis will know that I score left of centre on the conventional political tests. Yet they will also know that I feel the need to deny that I am a conservative because some of the things that I write lead to me being typed as conservative under our conventional labelling systems . They may also notice how often I use the phrase outsider-insider or its converse indicating that I know how systems work, but am not part of them.

Like all people, my core beliefs are mixed and come from my family background transmuted through my own life experiences. I have described some of these varying influences, including the way they seem to have carried down through several generations spread across countries.

Helen, my eldest, started with management studies, a very popular topic in today's world. She switched to Economics-Arts because she found management studies too narrow. Last week, dissatisfied with the narrow applied mathematical focus especially in microeconomics, she chose economic history as her third major, adding to development studies and management.

She rang me quite excited to make me guess, unsuccessfully as it turned out, what she had chosen. She knew that I would be interested and pleased and I was. However, she did not realise that she was the third generation on the Belshaw side - the three generations that have been to university - to chose a mix that involved in some way economics, history, development and anthropology.

In describing my beliefs I use the term New England populist as a label to describe the core political tradition to which I belong. This tradition sits somewhat outside the conventional political constructs of left and right, labour and capital, conservative and labor, in part explaining why friends and colleagues sometimes have difficulty in understanding where I fit in the political spectrum. The answer is I don't fit.

What is New England Populism?

The term New England populism is my own label. Given this, what do I mean?

New England populism refers to a set of political beliefs and attitudes that took form in Northern New South Wales. While the genesis of those beliefs dates back to the colonial period, they were first articulated in a structured way the period after the First World War and especially during the first part of the 1920s.

To my knowledge, New England populism is the only sustained separate regionally based political belief system and, arguably, the only Australian political belief system with a claim to being uniquely Australian. In saying this, I am not saying that all the elements are unique. They are not. However, what is unusual is that the form and combination those beliefs took was based on very particular geographic and political circumstances including the fight for self-government.

My use of the term New England is itself a political statement.

New England was originally called Northern New South Wales, the Northern Districts, the Northern Provinces or simply the North. Those living in New England called themselves Northerners.

At its Maitland Convention in 1931, the Northern Separation Movement adopted the name New England, the name of the Tablelands forming the geographic centre of the North, as the title for the whole area. From then until the defeat of the New State plebiscite in 1967, the use of the name New England spread and became fairly universal. While New England is still used in the way I use the term, the terms Northern NSW, the North or even Northern Provinces or Districts have come back into vogue since 1967.

The NSW Progressive or Country Party is the best known political manifestation of New England populism. However, there are problems here at a number of levels.

The various State Country Parties that emerged after the First World War and the Federal Party itself all drew from various agrarian movements. In broad terms, these movements were dominated by small farmers and had a strong radical populist element. The early Victorian Country Party had more in common with Labor than it did with the Melbourne establishment dominated Nationalist Party as the then Liberal Party equivalent was known.

In NSW, the Progressive Party as the Country Party was first known attracted broader support. However, this was patchy. Only in New England did the Party become the dominant political force outside the still Labor dominated Newcastle and Lower Hunter, combining farmers and graziers, town and rural people.

The Party, especially the earlier Party, was still populist. However, this broader constituency together with the need to maintain support from the Graziers' Association, a major funder, also made it more conservative. This conservatism has tended to increase with time.

In his study of the NSW County Party, Don Aitkin pointed to the importance of country mindedness in the development of the Party, the idea of the virtues of country life combined with the sense of an oppressive city, an oppressed country. This survives today, although the term regional has now often replaced country. My use of "metro" as a sometimes pejorative term is an example.

Don also pointed to the importance of separatist agitation in solidifying broad support behind the Party. However, in doing so I think that he failed to recognise the importance of the separatist movement as an ideological and political force in its own right.

During the nineteenth century there were various moves to gain self government for Northern New South Wales, but these remained sporadic. However, agitation resumed towards the end of the First World War and then continued in a largely sustained way for the next fifty years.

This added a further and distinct thread to the New England populist tradition, for the separatists were attacking the legitimacy of existing constitutional structures. In doing so, they had to address issues relating to rights of self-determination, the proper basis for Government and allocation of powers within a Federal system. As part of this process, they forced a number of Royal Commissions and Parliamentary inquiries into constitutional issues.

The relationships between the separatists or new staters on one side, New England's political parties on the other, was a complicated one that is still affecting the New England political landscape today.

Early Progressive or Country Party politicians could easily embrace the cause. They were themselves starting a new political movement and for similar reasons. They saw separation as part of the same process. Led by Earle Page, all the Northern Progressive and Country Party parliamentarians became involved in the separation movement.

Nationalist politicians whose main power base was in Sydney and were under political threat from the emerging Progressive/Country Party were quick to attack the new separatist movement. The need for coalition forced some modification of the Party position. However, the Nationalist/United Australia/Liberal Party hierarchy remained deeply suspicious, in part because of a fear that New England's separation would leave them in a permanent minority position in a truncated NSW.

The Labor position was more complicated.

From 1920, the New England leaders took their cause national, attempting to create separation movements throughout Australia, thus reshaping the Australian political structure. In doing so, they deliberately reached out to the ALP.

While the majority of the New England leaders were now new Country (Federal) or Progressive (State) Party parliamentarians, this was not as bigger obstacle as it might seem today. Political alliances had yet to solidify.

A bigger obstacle lay in the earlier decision by the ALP to adopt unification as a platform item. Despite this, the new state cause did gain some ALP support, including Queenslander Frank Forde who later became Labor Prime Minister for a brief period.

NSW was a different story. The Progressives threatened Labor's country seats. NSW Labor opposition was strengthened a little later by the decision of the Progressives to establish the first coalition agreement with the Nationalist Party, then strengthened again during the political turmoil of the depression.

As the depression worsened and suspicions of the Lang Labor Government deepened, separatist agitation sprang up across regional NSW. These various movement finally merged with the Country Party to create the United Country Movement. The UCM swept country NSW at the next election.

New states were a central UCM plank, and indeed the new Government did appoint the Nicholas Royal Commission to draw up boundaries for areas suitable for statehood within NSW. However, new state support had dropped and, when offered a referendum, the New England political leadership within the NSW Government were reluctant to put the matter to the test.

The New State Movement emerged again at the Second World War, beginning a sustained campaign culminating in the 1967 plebiscite.

Movement activists had learned a bitter lesson from the United County Movement experience. The new movement was firmly non-party political, although Party responses in fact remained the same. NSW Labor, concerned that the Party might find itself in a permanent opposition position in a New England state, campaigned strongly for the no case. The very high no vote recorded in Newcastle and surrounds was sufficient to offset the yes vote elsewhere in New England, although the margin (4 per cent) was not high.

Relations between the Movement and Country Party broke down in the aftermath of the plebiscite. Angry, the Movement redrew the boundaries to exclude the Hunter Valley and then ran New State candidates at the next election. This created a bitter divide within the Movement and Party.

Exhausted, the Movement collapsed. The damage done to the Party was longer term in its effects.

The Party's strength in New England as compared to the rest of NSW had always rested on its capacity to mobilise support across very different groups. Although not clear at the time, this was in fact heavily dependent on the existence of the New State Movement because this provided a separate and unifying political focus that the Country Party of all the parties could best capture.

Today New England is still the National Party's strongest base in NSW. Yet that base has been much eroded by demographic change one side, the rise of the New England independents on the other.

To my mind, it is no coincidence that it should be New England where the independent movement is strongest, best organised and most cashed up. While they may not see it in this way, the New England independents best capture the New England populist tradition. Meantime, the NSW Nationals remain locked into the now conventional political structures in which their only distinguishing feature appears to be a regional focus on the "conservative" side of politics.

What do New England Populists Believe?

I have written at some length on the historical background because you will not find this material in any Australian history book. The New England story has been essentially expunged, reduced to passing references or a few footnotes.

It should also be clear that many different streams contributed to the development of New England populism. As you might expect, this led to different and even conflicting views. Further, those involved were not trying to develop a new political ideology, but were focused on more immediate political and practical concerns. There is in fact a reasonably substantial volume of political writing, but this was written for a purpose.

Given all this, what are the core beliefs of a New England populist?

A New England populist rejects the intellectual, institutional and political constructs of left and right. In old terms, the New England populist does not accept that there is capital on one side, labour on the other. In the middle lie the vast bulk of people, just trying to make their way in the world.

A New England populist believes that those who have power will tend to misuse it. This holds for big banks, Government, unions or institutionalised political parties.

When the Progressive Party first began its slogan was no preselection or pledge. This was designed to break the power of the machine. As part of this, any Party member in good standing should be able to run for election in the Party name. This may have been impractical even in a preferential system, but multiple endorsements were a common Country Party practice for many years.

A New England populist believes that the majority will always tend to oppress the minority in the belief that their views are self-evidently right. Safeguards are therefore required.

This leads to the constitutional stream centered on devolution of power and the geographic basis of Government. In constitutional terms, a New England populist believes that Governments must be representative and close to the people. To this end, entities whether states or local councils should be based on commonality of interest.

As part of this, a New England populist believes that people should be able to leave an entity, create or join another, if the first entity ceases to meet their needs.

A New England populist does not believe that Commonwealth-state powers should be fixed for ever. Powers should change as needs changed. However, constitutional entities must have real powers. Devolved powers do not work because, as with local government, the entity devolving the powers will always over-ride if its interest require it.

While suspicious of Government, a New England populist believes that Government has a key role to play in redressing social ills and in protecting the individual. Individuals must be responsible for their own actions. Government must act where events beyond individual control affect people.

Governments should also act to ensure that all people have equal access to services such as health or education.

A New England populist believes in collaboration, cooperation and collective action. People must organise in their own defence and to achieve joint objectives.

A traditional New England populist would regard the atomistic, individualist position of some so-called neo-conservatives as absurd. Improvement starts from individual and collective action. Governments then, or should, swing in.

This point is worth further development.

A New England populist believes that we have collective responsibilities. When things go wrong, the starting response is individual action. At the simplest level, this is knowing and worrying about your neighbour. If someone is sick, bring food.

Then, if things go belong this, you work through collective action. Fund raising, new programs, all supported by individual action. Beyond this is action through Government.

This is no mere rhetoric. It describes many of the positive developments within New England.

A New England populist respects authority and constitutional forms, especially parliamentary democracy.

Noticeably, New England populism is silent on personal moral issues beyond concepts such as personal or collective responsibility or duties. While I have read comments on personal moral issues from individuals or indeed from parties or organisations, there is no clear common thread that I can attribute to New England populism as such.

I make this point because it is noticeable. One could argue that this reflected a distinction between the personal and public domains. However, while I think that this is probably true, I am not sure what it really means.

In finishing, I remain as I was, an un-reconstructed New England populist.

Common Australian Political Myths - National standards (uniformities) are a good thing

This is the second most popular Australian political myth after having too many politicians. It just sounds so very very sensible. Surely, as one nation, we should have common standards throughout the country? Or the state, for that matter.

The reality is very different. A national approach my help. Or it may hinder. It all depends upon the circumstances. And upon the definitions used.

Australia has been experiencing a minerals boom. Unlike past booms where heavy demand in one sector has led to a wages explosion across sectors, this time wage rises have been quarantined. As a consequence, the boom has continued because inflationary pressures have stayed down.

Both parties have claimed credit for this and for the same reason. Each argues that their approach has destroyed the previous nationally uniform system under which a wage rise in any area was transmitted to the broader economy because of a standardised uniform national system that worked regardless of variations in industry or geographic circumstance.

So here we have a case where there is general agreement that a centralised, uniform, system did not work.

I could give many examples. At this point, I would only argue that every argument on national standards or uniform approaches needs to be tested on the facts, not simply assumed to be a good thing.

The Howard Goverrnment, the polls and puzzled commentators

Australian public opinion polls continue to show the Australian Labor Party with a strong lead.

This has puzzled many commentators who struggle to see why a still disciplined and well run Government presiding over a strong economy creating a surging budget surplus that allows the Government to provide lots of electoral goodies should be in so much strife. I don't think that there is all that much mystery too it.

Governments make decisions. A large proportion upset someone. People forget or adjust, but over time there is a build up of those willing to vote for a credible alternative. Then there is another, more subtle, force at play.

Governments generally come into office with a pretty fair understanding of community attitudes and expectations across the country. This is hard to maintain once in office because day to day pressures, the desire to complete previous actions, commitment to already held positions, lock in to particular interest groups, all reduce a Government's capacity to identify and respond to changing needs and perceptions.

In time, unseen gaps open up between Government attitudes and rhetoric and community opinion across a range of issues. Suddenly these gaps, as appears to have happened now, become yawning fissures in the face of a credible opposition.

Populism - the New England Tradition:Introduction

Graphic: New England Flag

In my post On Populism I said that I came from the New England populist stream. I also said that I would discuss that stream in my next post.

To start with a definition. In writing of New England I am not talking about the regional rump now classified as New England North West by the Sydney Government, but the broader historical New England - the north east corner of NSW - covering the Hunter Valley, North Coast, Northern Tablelands, Western Slopes along with a slab of the Western Plains.

I make this point because this broader New England has to some degree vanished from historical view. Yet it continues to be important.

There have been two broad streams in New England politics, Labor and New England populist.

Even today, that stream represented by the party now known as the Liberal Party - it has had many names in its sometimes unstable history - struggles to achieve New England parliamentary representation. The Party's very narrow victory in Port Stephens gave the Party its first New England based seat in the NSW Legislative Assembly for many years.

The Labor stream forms part of broader ALP history and had its historic base in the mines and factories of the Lower Hunter, the railway workers throughout New England, the pastoral and agricultural workforce, as well those who worked in mining activities outside the Lower Hunter.

The New England populist stream has its own unique character and had its base in a range of overlapping movements and interests centred outside the Lower Hunter. Today the main political manifestations of this stream are the National Party and the Independent Movement.

New England was and to a degree still is Country, now National, Party heartland. Because of the habit of classifying parliamentarians on a state basis, the importance of New England to the Party is not always recognised.

At Federal level, six of the Party's eleven leaders have come from New England including long serving leaders such as Earle Page and Doug Anthony. At NSW state level, six of nine leaders have come from New England including Mick Bruxner who was Party Leader for thirty years. This is a not insignificant record.

The National Party began as a populist, membership based party. Membership of the NSW Party peaked at more than 50,000 in the 1980s, a record that I think no other party can match. The problem for the Party is, at least as I see it, that its institutionalisation and absorption into coalition with the Liberal Party slowly cut it off from its populist base.

I will comment on this a little later. For the moment I simply note that that changes to the Party created an opening in New England for what was to become the Independent Movement. Untrammelled by the constraints faced by the National Party, the Independent Movement was able to capture the New England populist vote, building a core of independent seats in the heart of New England.

At the last NSW election, the key New England battle lay in the fight between the independents on one side, the established parties on the other. While Labor lost one seat to the independents, the National Party held. Elsewhere in NSW, the independents went down outside Sydney and Dubbo, leaving New England as the independent core.

I hope that I have said enough to indicate the continued importance of the New England populist tradition. In my next post I will trace its emergence.

On Populism

This photo by Gordon Smith contrasts the old Armidale police station (front) with the new one just opened. Gordon wonders how all the police fitted into the old station. I wonder why it is that police stations have become such prominent buildings in so many towns, why a new police station is seen as a sign of civic advancement, why police numbers have risen so much faster than the population as have prison numbers.

In my last post I said that I wrote from a populist perspective, and indeed this is true. It colours every aspect of the way I write. It explains why I don't fit neatly into the conventional political divides, why I am "left" on some issues, "right" on others. It explains why I am against some often currently popular changes, while still wanting radical change in other directions.

Populism is not a politically popular phrase in Australia, although all our politicians adopt populist rhetoric when it suits them. Both positions are understandable.

The first arises because most Australian populist movements challenge the established order in some way, while many have been "right" wing. I have put right wing in inverted commas because while this is the way they are typed they do not fit easily into the always evolving definitions of right and left. The second arises because populist rhetoric still resonates.

In 2003 in Down with elites and up with inequality: Market Populism in Australia, Professor Marian Sawyer discussed the spread in Australia of ideas that she sees as coming from the American Neocons.

I have problems with some of Professor Sawyer's interesting analysis, problems that I will discuss later in the context of my own continuing discussion on changing approaches to public administration and public policy in Australia. At this point I simply want to quote an excerpt from the jingle composed by Bryce Courtenay for the campaign promoting John Howard’s 1988 political manifesto, Future Directions:

Never mind the fancy dancers
Plain-thinking men know their right from wrong
Don’t deal with silver tongues and chancers
Keep your vision clear and hold it strong.
I watched as things began to change around me
The fancy dancers got to have their say
They changed the vision, spurned the wisdom
And made Australia change to suit their way
It’s time we cleansed the muddy waters…

This jingle is clearly populist in its tone and pretty accurately portrays the PM's future rhetoric. Now this brings us to the core problem in populism, the fact that it is a stance not a political philosophy, allowing for a wide variety of manifestations. Here the Wikipedia article on the subject provides a good entry point.

The article begins by noting that populism, by its traditional definition, is a political doctrine or philosophy that aims to defend the interests of the common people against an entrenched, self-serving or corrupt elite.

The article then goes on to note that recent scholarship has, however, discussed populism as a rhetorical style; as such, the term "populist" may be applied to proponents of widely varying political philosophies. Leaders of populist movements in recent decades have claimed to be on both the left and the right of the political spectrum, while some populists claim to be neither "left wing," "centrist" nor "right wing". I belong to this last group.

If we look at Mr Howard's campaign jingle, we can clearly see that it is attempting to capture the populist sentiment, telling the people that they must recapture the system from the "silver tongues and chancers."

Now here I do not want to get bogged down in issues associated with Mr Howard and his stance. My point is that populism is a doctrine capable of many interpretations and applications.

So when I say that I write from a populist perspective, I actually need to define that perspective if my statement is to have other than a very general meaning. Here I said in my last post that I belonged to the New England regional populist tradition. I will look at this in my next post.