Problems with Kiki

I couldn't resist sharing this one. Locals will have seen it, international readers may not.

The NSW Roads and Traffic Authority sent Newcastle lawyer Kristen Perry a please explain letter over her Kiki number plate.

Kiki has been Ms Perry's nickname since she was a child, and the plates were purchased for her some time ago by her husband. 

Personalised number plates are not meant to be obscene or to cause offence. In this case, someone complained because Kiki apparently translates to vagina in the Philippine language Tagalog.  

The matter attracted considerable media attention and the RTA has hastily backed off!

If you would like to know more, Dan Proudman's story in the Sydney Morning Herald provides more details. The photo comes from that story.

Postscript

I hadn't realised that I had missed the link to Dan's original story. Now inserted. My apologies.

Shave a sheep!?

This photo was sent from Copenhagen for the entertainment of Clare and myself. I blinked.

To Australian or New Zealand eyes this must be one of the most bizarre game titles in history.

For those who don't know sheep, they are quite large, heavy, wooly animals!

When I was a kid out in the paddocks trying to help my uncle or friends, I found them very large indeed! Merinos at least also have somewhat wrinkled skin.

Given all this, the photo created this bizarre image in my mind of standing by a sheep with my shaving brush plus razor trying to give it a shave!

It's not a bad shot of Helen (eldest) by the way. 

The point of history

I see from Living in the Seventies that Neil Whitfield (Ninglun) enjoyed Paper Giants : The Birth of Cleo as much as I did. In my piece I provided a little bit of history because I thought that it might help interpret. I hadn't seen the second part which canvasses more years.

Talking to Sam at work today who enjoyed the mini-series as much as I, I found that while her school age daughter enjoyed the film, she did not know who Gough Whitlam was. The turbulent politics of the period have indeed receded into the mists of the past.

Sam was surprised at her daughter's lack of knowledge and asked her what she learned in Australian history at school. Apparently all about the Aborigines to the point that she felt that it was thrust down her throat. I think that's a pity. 

In another of his posts, This may well be the best Australian history book I have EVER read!, Neil reviews Grace Karskens’ The Colony: A History of Early Sydney (Allen & Unwin, 2009).  I haven't read the book and normally I wouldn't. I don't have a special interest in early Sydney, I was out Sydneyed a long time ago! Neil's comment  on his first post, "Jim will be pleased to know I had a New England visa in those days…", rather neatly captures my present historical focus. However, after Neil's review I will do so. It is clearly a very good book because of the way that it tells a broad story interweaving a variety of material.

In his review, Neil said in part: 

The history itself is a thing of beauty too.  It breaks free of many straitjackets: more than perhaps any other history of Australia that I have read it interweaves Aboriginal history, archaeology, women and environmental history throughout the book.  Not content with the almost obligatory “before” chapter dealing and then dispensing with “the aborigines”, she asserts that Sydney remained an Eora town- that Eora people continued to live within Sydney on their own terms, with their own geography and in resistance to christianizing impulses, into the 1830s and 40s. Indeed, they have never left…

Neil is, of course right. I guess my point in all this is one I have tried to make before, that in our focus on what was done to to the Aborigines we have actually lost sight of the Aborigines themselves.

This not meant to be a heavy post, nor is it another post on the Aborigines. Really, my point is that history doesn't need to be written or taught to prove a point.

Honestly written, history is the point, because it brings out the good as well as the bad in the human experience. The weighting placed upon elements in the story - the writing of history obviously involves selection - is always affected by the historian's perception and focus.

The thunderers and fulminators - Neil mentions Robert Hughes' The Fatal Shore - may have their place, but to my mind the best historians are those who have the delicacy of touch to allow the evidence as well as the analysis to touch the hearts as well as the minds of their readers.

The historical posts that I have written that I enjoy most, posts such as Problems with literature & locale, are ones where I am using a variety of material to try to bring a story alive in the reader's minds. The problems that I face in doing so and that I referred to in that post are just those that Grace Karskens appears to have mastered. 

Correction

In a comment, Neil pointed out that while he agreed with it, the quote was not from him but from an earlier review, ‘The Colony’ by Grace Karskens, by the Resident Judge of Port Phillip. Although I do follow this blog, I hadn't seen the review because it was back in November 2009.

The birth of Cleo

Last night was the first part of the ABC teleseries, Paper Giants: the birth of Cleo. You will find the web site here. If you click in now you can watch last night's episode.

I thought that the first episode was one of the most enjoyable pieces of TV I have watched. Asher Keddie's portrayal of Ita Buttrose is remarkable.

Now before going on, a warning to some of my international viewers. If you visit and watch the show, there are sexual elements that may be unacceptable to some. I should also note that while the story is based on facts, some elements have been changed for dramatic purposes, while this is just one interpretation of events. I am not saying that the totality of the picture is wrong, simply that the story should be treated as drama.

The story begins in 1972. Australia's social and political climate is changing as the cultural and social changes that began a decade earlier work their way through society.  Here the film uses a mix of real past and staged shots plus music to capture feel.

Ita Buttrose is an ambitious thirty year old, married with one child and a second on the way. She works for the Packers, one of Australia's real media dynasties. Frank Packer, known as God, overshadows the empire including his son Kerry. Buttrose and Kerry Packer combine to launch a new women's magazine Cleo that reflects (among other things) the changes taking place in society attitudes including sex and the role of women. 

All this is factual, I don't want to say too much more about the film - you have to watch it and make your own judgements, beyond adding a little more factual background:

• Frank Packer had built a business empire based on the daily Sydney Telegraph. He loved that paper, and used it to promote the political causes he supported.
• 1972 was the year that the Labor Party under Gough Whitlam finally defeated the Liberal-Country Party coalition that had ruled Australia since 1949. In many ways, the Labor campaign was the first professional campaign of what would become the modern political era.
• This was also the time that I was a Country Party machine official and ran for pre-selection, so I have very particular memories. I have written on some of this.

I hope that you enjoy. I did.            

Sunday Snippets - a crabby Sunday morning

I suspect my regular readers have probably had just about enough of discussions on Aboriginal issues and indeed long posts for the present. So this morning's post is simply Sunday Snippets in place of the normal Sunday Essay.

First of all, a post on the New England Australia Can you help us find Captain Thunderbolt? updates the search for a full copy of this missing film. David Donaldson who inspired the search in the first place is getting frustrated at the apparent lack of action. Can you help?

Here in Australia both PM Gillard and Opposition Leader Abbott are talking about the need for welfare reform, to get people off benefits and into work. Adele Horan had a thoughtful piece in the Sydney Morning Herald, Reform needs to break the cycle, that points to some of the difficulties involved.

I said yesterday in Saturday Morning Musings - Aboriginal identity that I seemed to be in a cranky, irritable, mood at the moment. You can see this in my writing. But we do seem at present in Australia to have a whole series of issues running that are in fact interlinked but are dealt with as though they occupy separate silos.  

Tony Burke's bullshit, another piece on the New England blog, discussed Minister Burke's reported approach to regional development. For those who don't know Mr Burke, he is Commonwealth Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities.There, that's a mouthful.

The original report said in part:

Mr Burke, who is approaching his 12-month anniversary in the portfolio, said the country was at a unique stage in its history because the mining boom meant the growth in regions was commercially driven rather than led by government.

"We have a really different opportunity because regionalism is being market-driven," he said.

I normally don't use words like bullshit, but Mr Burke's remarks as reported annoyed me, in part because they were historically inaccurate.

Mr Burke wants to take action that will remove impediments to increased housing supply in fast growing mining areas, while Opposition Leader Abbott wants to move unemployed young people to those areas. The two are obviously linked in that severe housing shortages and high rents in certain places mean that the ordinary worker can't actually afford to live there. So we have the phenomenon of FIFO, the fly-in, fly-out worker, something that PM Gillard has also been complaining about.

  The problem with policies expressed in terms of generalities such as the "country was at a unique stage in its history because the mining boom meant the growth in regions was commercially driven rather than led by government" is that it acts to conceal reality.

The mining boom itself is concentrated in particular places with their own features. To make sense of Mr Burke's comments we actually need to know just which areas he is talking about. We need to localise.

In fact, not all fast growing areas are mining areas, but that's another story.  

Another gripe post during the week on the New England blog was Sydney's past asset grab, now electricity prices go sky-high. I wrote that post from a purely New England perspective, however there are broader issues. 

According to the report in The Sydney Morning Herald:

Many low-income families in NSW will be forking out 10 per cent or more of their disposable incomes on electricity bills after increases of up to 18.1 per cent announced by the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal yesterday. Its chairman, Rod Sims, said the electricity price increases would be difficult for many families.

The huge increase in electricity prices is partly associated with past poor maintenance, but is also linked to the way the renewable energy targets worked in practice. I don't properly understand the second. When the problem first emerged in NSW, it seemed to me that there had been a fundamental failure in policy design that should have been avoidable. That would still appear to be the case.

The difficulty now is that the very size of the increase is creating major flow on effects. For example, it makes the task of welfare reform just that much harder since it reduces the real disposable incomes of lower income earners. Problems here are compounded by rising food prices.

Rising food prices are a major global concern just at present because of the way they are pushing more people into abject poverty. This is not just a personal tragedy for those involved, but has significant political repercussions. Most Australians are wealth enough to absorb the increases without real pain, but for those on lower incomes rising food prices add to difficulties.      

At present, a single unemployed person gets $A237 a week. In many parts of Australia, you cannot find a place on the private rental market place for that price.

Friday night's ABC Stateline program carried a story - its not on-line - on the systematised rip-off of some overseas students living around Macquarie University. Youngest, who watched it with me, was really upset because Macquarie is her university.

Essentially, the story said that the tight rental marketplace around the university meant that private operators were creating illegal boarding houses that allowed them to cram up to ten or so students into a three bedroom house charging each student $180-$200 per week for very poor conditions. This is not unique to Macquarie University, but applies elsewhere as well.

Unless a single unemployed person has some form of family backing, they are in a very similar position. Unless they can get social housing, the only real choices are the street or some form of what used to be called doss house accommodation. 

The whole thing also makes it harder for the Government to craft and sell its proposed carbon tax since this will add to prices. Yes, there will be some form of compensation, but this is hard to sell in advance.

Again localising, the reports suggest that the relative immediate increase in NSW electricity prices will be greatest in regional NSW, that is in the electorates of Messrs Windsor and Oakshott, the country independents on whom the Government's survival depends. These are also electorates with strong anti-climate change movements. In all the discussion around the carbon tax, a final result could well depend on a simple equation - how it affects certain people in Port Macquarie, Armidale, Manila or Tamworth.

To my mind, there is a certain delicious irony in the possibility that decisions made in NSW in 1995 about electricity upon the recommendations of the NSW Treasury, decisions that dismissed local concerns as irrelevant in the broader scheme of things, now risk failure of a major national initiative.

In Web 2.0, people talk about the long tail. The same is true in public policy.

And in all this as Australia focuses on how best to use the mining cornucopia shimmering on the horizon in the heat haze, the Australian dollar reaches heights not seen for many years. Non-mining exports are down, imports up. Consumer spending is soft, company profits down. Economic growth is slowing. The Australian Government faces a major budget problem because tax receipts are down.

in my presently crabby mood, I cannot help noticing the apparent gap between the froth and bubble of political discourse at the top and what actually appears to be happening on the ground.

It may well be that Federal Labor would have been better off losing the last election, letting the Coalition flay away. Certainly, I don't envy Ms Gillard in her current task.    

Postscript

The Australian has a pretty good report by Sid Maher, Cool climate in Windsor's heartland, that captures the range of views in Tony Windsor's New England electorate. The economy including prices and health are top of mind issues.

Interestingly, on another current national topic, Armidale is the site for the initial mainland NBN broadband roll-out. An article in the Armidale Express on rising house prices - Armidale house prices are rising somewhat faster than in Sydney - attributed part of the rise to treechangers attracted to the city by the broadband.      

Saturday Morning Musings - Aboriginal identity

This Saturday began very badly because of computer problems that stopped me doing just about anything! Grrr, and I had a fair bit to say!

I seem to be in a cranky, irritable, mood at the moment. The computer crash did not help.

I woke up this morning still  stewing over the issues raised in The Australian's Aboriginal broadside. I was trying to work out how best to present the issues. Then I could do nothing because of the computer. 

When I write, I always have my small group of regular readers in mind. Beyond them, I do get the occasional link - usually 3-4 per month - drawing traffic to specific posts. I also gain traffic from other's tweets and facebook posts. This is quite patchy. Sometimes when I labour over a serious post that I really care about  I feel like the person who threw a dinner party and nobody came!

Over eighty per cent of my traffic comes from web searches, and here I am very conscious of my responsibilities as a blogger. Those searches pick up posts across my blogs and the years that I have been blogging. I cannot go back and edit or update every past post. However, I can be aware when I write that I am writing for a future audience, that I have obligations to that audience.   

This may sound egotistical. Perhaps it is. But it helps me because it provides a balance and perspective in my writing.

The issues raised by the Australian and especially in the editorial are complicated. They are important in their own right, and because they fit into a campaign that the paper is running across a number of dimensions. 

I am not unsympathetic to all aspects of that campaign. Like the paper, I believe that the dominance that has been achieved by certain "soft" left views is quite dangerous. I have put soft in inverted commas because I find that the practical application of those views is far from soft. It is just as bigoted, as certain of its own ineffable rightness, as the other side.  

Unlike the paper, I also believe that neoliberalism as expressed by the paper, its correspondents and some other commentators is well past its use by date. I was and am sympathetic to elements of that view. I find, for example, that I nod more reading Catallaxy posts than I do reading Lavartus Prodeo. Yet neoliberalism has, to my mind, been an abject failure.

Now at this point I am, arguably, just as guilty as the Australian. Certainly I have managed a shot at the left and right of Australian politics, thus introducing a distortion into discussion. I did so with intent, for one of the problems in discussion is the way in which ideology and values is imposed upon debate. It is a constant case of black and white, either or.

I don't know about you, but I find the whole discussion constantly confusing.

I am told that the Aborigines must be recognised in the constitution, but which Aborigines? I am told that Aborigines should not be taught in their own language at primary school, but then all primary school children should be given access to an Aboriginal language. I am told that the British settlers were responsible for genocide, but then they were not. I am told that the the only real Aborigines live in Northern Australia, but then I walk down the Mall in Armidale and see people who do appear to be Aboriginal.

I am told that action needs to be taken to be taken to fix problems in certain Aboriginal communities, then I am told that this breaches racial discrimination provisions and consequently can't be done or, alternatively, that it can only be done if applied to all Australians. I am told that the NT intervention was a good thing or, perhaps, a very bad thing.

I am told that we must bridge the gap, but really what gap and between which groups? I am told that Aboriginal deaths in custody were a disgrace, but then someone else says that proportionately they were no worse than those holding in the rest of the prison community. I am told of the stolen generation, but then the Australian Government has to issue an apology to all the stolen generations regardless of race.

I am told that the paternalistic policies of the Aboriginal Protection and Welfare Board in NSW were bad, that assimilation as expressed was a very bad thing, and then I see current Government policies actually following down the same path. Only the word wrap has changed. 

I won't go on, although I could for some time. We have just created a mess that makes it almost impossible for the ordinary person to sort through the confusion. The thing I find most unpleasant at a personal level is that we seem to have created an environment that is so conflicted, so partisan, so value laden, that it requires constant attention not just to what is said, but the way of saying it.

I find this especially unpleasant in my historical writing. It is actually quite hard to research and write when everything I say may be taken and used in current discussion and, worse, may hurt Aboriginal people who have come to believe a particular thing. Worse still, my research may actually have a tangible effect. What happens, for example, If my conclusions can be used to invalidate a land rights claim? 

This is not abstract stuff. As a person, I don't like confrontation. I can manage it when required in a professional sense, although its far harder when its just me, Jim, the person, dealing with a personal issue.

Last July in Armidale I was actually quite nervous when delivering a paper on New England's Aboriginal languages to a group that included local Aborigines.

Armidale's Aboriginal community is split. There were actually divisions over who should deliver the welcome to country for me. Language is central to identity. Language distribution central to claims over country. Jen, my Aboriginal mentoree who was present by happenstance, said that I should not worry and she was right. Yet I was concerned.

I remain concerned. One of the things that I am trying to do in my writing is to bring Aboriginal New England alive. Yet when it comes to the detail, that country is not necessarily the same as that often presented. This can strike at the heart of the most important thing, the identification that specific Aboriginal people have formed with the country that they have come to call their own.

Country is important to Aboriginal people in a way that many urban Australians don't understand, although many country Australians do. It's not just the relationship to land found in traditional Aboriginal societies. It's also the desire among a disrupted people, disrupted in family and culture, to link back to a place that they can think of as uniquely theirs.             

Now bringing all this back to my opening points about the audience for this blog.

I don't think that its presently possible to have a sensible discussion on Aboriginal issues: there are too many conflicting values, too many fixed views on both sides, too many divides.

My recent posts are an attempt to contribute to current discussion, to clarify. Yet to the degree that those posts have value, the greatest value lies in the way that future readers may be attracted and absorb some of the arguments over time.

In the meantime, I come back to the advice of a long standing consulting colleague, Tim Russell, who developed the Microskills communication program. In difficult situations, part of the best approach is often to give information, give information, give information. I will try to continue to do that.       

The many faces of Clare

Well, what do I say about my youngest daughter? Here are some shots.

This is the cast shot of the 2011 MAHA (Macquarie Ancient History Association) review. Clare coordinated. Or should that be produced?

I really didn't do much!

Sometimes art demands agony.

 

Or violence.

or just strange stuff.

My daddy taught me to play with fire.

Sometimes a girl just has to get her feet of the ground.

Sometimes I just feel demure.

And there is always my sister.

The Australian's Aboriginal broadside

I hadn't intended to return to the issues I discussed in Issues raised by Bolt, Aboriginal culture & the nature of Aboriginality. However, the entire thing has turned quite nasty.

Consider today's Australian. Here we find:

• Who tweets for Aborigines? (editorial)
• Aboriginal sophisticates betray bush sisters (opinion piece by Marcia Langton)
• Larissa Behrendt repents for Twitter slur on black leader Bess Price (report by Patricia Karvelas)
• Integrity is in shifting shades of black and white (Talking Point)

Subheaded A BITTER struggle for authority in indigenous Australia, the editorial begins:

The comments were crude in the extreme but the real import of the Twitter commentary about indigenous leader Bess Price is how offensive it is to thousands of Aboriginal men, women and children living in regional and remote Australia. When Larissa Behrendt wrote that Price's appearance on ABC TV was worse than watching "sex with a horse" the city-based legal academic exposed the deep divide in the indigenous community.

Behrendt, who belatedly apologised yesterday, may portray her words as a throw-away comment about Price's performance on Monday's Q&A but there is more going on here. The Twitter exchanges reveal the split between urban and remote Aboriginal leaders over Canberra's intervention in dysfunctional communities. Behrendt's comments are made against the background of a bitter struggle between these two groups for power and the authority to speak for Aborigines. Behrendt and those who joined her on Twitter oppose the intervention but that is really a proxy for a fight over turf, resources and the direction of indigenous politics. Those on Behrendt's side elevate rights and legalities over everything else. But The Australian is on the side of those who believe housing, education and jobs are the pre-eminent steps towards equality.

That Behrendt is herself involved in a racial vilification case against News Limited columnist Andrew Bolt adds irony to her comments. That action has people across the political spectrum concerned because of its implications for free speech. At its core is the identification by Behrendt and others as Aboriginal. This is not the place to argue the merits of the action, but Behrendt's professional career is central to the split exposed on Twitter. Like others who work in the urban indigenous industry, she has built a career on indigenous issues and policy. Like others, she argues against the 2007 intervention initiated in response to appalling levels of violence, addiction and child abuse. Difficult as it is to believe, this newspaper has been lobbied directly by Aboriginal leaders in Canberra to stop reporting on the despair of communities in the far-north, central Australia and the Kimberley, and to focus on success stories of urban Aborigines. In essence, these leaders have urged us to ignore the shameful state of affairs in so many areas and boost the good-news quota in our pages. Such a view is not just out of touch with the needs of remote Aborigines, it casts them as unworthy of attention. These urban dwellers are prepared to risk the health, education, physical safety and futures of other Aborigines in the cause of an out-dated, leftist agenda which privileges "rights" above well-being. There is a "let them eat cake" touch about it all.

The Australian can argue and with some justice that it has reported on Aboriginal issues more than any other paper. I have been reading all the papers on these topics for a number of years and have found that the Australian has provided the greatest coverage. However, to my mind today's paper has really gone over the top in a way that is simply not helpful, that mixes so many issues together that the result is likely to be more confusion.

It is quite difficult to know just where to begin in untangling all the issues involved.

I am not going to attempt a discussion this morning, but will come back to it later.  

Why Andrew Wilkie may fail

Just at the moment here in Australia gambling and poker machines are a big issue. In the negotiations leading to the formation of the Gillard Government, critical support from independent Andrew Wilkie was conditional upon the Government taking action to curb problem gambling on poker machines.

The Government's plans here have become yet another problem for it, with Clubs Australia launching a reported $A20 million dollar advertising blitz against Mr Wilkie's proposals. However, the Government's real problem is not this but a far simpler issue, one that means that independent MP Tony Windsor is highly likely to vote against the legislation and may be joined by others.

Many smaller country communities have seen loss of jobs and services through centralisation. In all cases, the justification has been that lower costs to consumers as a whole or higher profits to firms outweigh the local costs. Many communities complain as well that new structures mean that local savings cannot be invested in local projects.

In many of these communities, the local club has become not only a significant employer but also the main, in some cases the only, source of facilities such as restaurants and sporting facilities as well as donations to community activities. The viability of these clubs has been under pressure for some time as state governments seek to milk the gambling cash cow through taxation, while also imposing controls on clubs that increase costs.

All this acts to reduce local benefits. Now, the new proposals are one step too far. One result has been protest meetings throughout Mr Windsor's electorate. It's fine to argue that the greater good justifies adverse results to the few, but that really doesn't wash if you are one of the few.

In theory, those adverse effects could be remedied by the provision of some form of compensation to those affected or, alternatively, by some quarantining mechanism. Here I have long argued that the costs imposed by decisions should be specifically accounted for and, where appropriate, compensated for. In practice, this is hard to do in part because it is seen as special pleading or subsidisation. There is, in fact, no mechanism available for this type of approach.

In his role as an independent, Mr Windsor has already demonstrated that he is prepared to take a broad view even if it creates local anger. I don't think that he can in this case, because the costs are specific and local. Unless the Commonwealth Government can work out some form of compensation package, Mr Windsor will have to vote no, and the legislation is likely to fail. Mr Wilkie will then have to decide what to do.

I have read or listened at length to the debate on this issue on media. I have also listened to discussion around me here in Sydney. Get real, chaps. As they say in legal documents, chaps included the female gender. If you don't at least recognise and account for adverse results, then you cannot expect your desires to be acceded too where, unusually, those adversely affected actually have some political power.     

Death of a remarkable man

Every so often I see a blog post that pulls me up short. W H Chong's Death of a giant (blak soul white skin: Ulli Beier) is one such post.

What a remarkable man. Do read. You will see what I mean. 

Can you spin with the best?

Back in June 2010, Kevin Rudd’s family history provided a quite entertaining parody of political spin. Inspired by this post, our fellow Indian blogger Ramana has issued a challenge in  All For A Laugh. Spin Blogger Award.

Do you feel inspired enough to accept the challenge?

Bringing New England's Aborigines alive

Thinking about the issues I discussed in Issues raised by Bolt, Aboriginal culture & the nature of Aboriginality and its precursor posts I keep coming back to this fact, at least fact as I see it: people simply don't know. They see things in terms of abstracts - symbols, problems, responses. They don't see things in living terms.

I am especially interested in the Aborigines of Northern NSW, my New England. This is my country. I am also interested in the Aborigines as people. I want to bring the complexity of Aboriginal life in my area, present as well as past, to life.

Introducing New England Aboriginal life marks the start of a new series. Given the way that the normal pressures of day to day life keep stopping me delivering, it would be absurd to launch major new writing. I won't deliver.

What I can do is to take some of my past writing plus material that flows across my screen and use it to tell you some stories, to try to create a living picture.

Like NSW itself, New England is a European construct. However, New England has the advantage of possessing a certain geographic unity. This makes it easier to tell an integrated story.

The target audience for the new series is non-Aboriginal, although I hope that Aboriginal people will find it of value. I commend it to you.