Saturday Morning Musings - lessons from the Paris terrorist attacks

I had to turn off the news coverage of the Paris attacks. There was so much repetition, so much breathlessness, so many talking heads. In the end, the twitter feed from the various news organisations and others gave me a more up to date feel.than the actual coverage from any one news source.

I claim no special knowledge nor indeed wisdom. But I do want to make a few observations while events are still unfolding.

Inevitably, the initial coverage focused on the fear factor. Would they strike again? We saw something similar with 9/11. Then came the inevitable question, what went wrong. How do we prevent this happening again? And then came to positive rallying words.

In considering this, I want to focus first on the personal fear factor. This is the scene of the April 1993 Wormwood Street IRA bombing in the UK. This is a list of the major bombings that took place during the what has been called the Northern Ireland troubles.

I am not comparing these events directly with with the Paris events. Neither side in the Northern Ireland troubles normally aimed to kill the maximum possible number of civilians. Rather, I would make two points. The first is that, finally, the Northern Ireland troubles came to an end. The second is that life went on regardless.

I was in London on two occasions during the troubles. Both times one was conscious of the troubles and indeed of the risk of bombing. The statistical risks of being hurt were, as is true today, very low but they were real.

The Brighton Hotel bombing came very close to killing Prime Minister Thatcher and her husband. However, life went on. The fear factor did not seem as great as it is today.

I  am not sure why this should be the case. The twenty four hour media cycle is more intense now. Western society has become  more risk averse and indeed somewhat less tolerant of difference.  These things help explain the apparent change, but are not (to my mind) a sufficient explanation. Recognising that there is a chicken and egg problem, which came first, a key problem would seem to be the shift in rhetoric and perception that flowed from 9/11 and the War on Terror.

This leads me to my core concern, the way in which official responses to current terrorism events are progressively eroding tolerances and attitudes that we have taken for granted.

The 1974 Birmingham pub bombings killed 21 people and injured 182 others. Like the current Paris attacks, the bombings targeted innocent civilians. The rush for justice that followed led to the wrongful conviction in 1975 of what became known as the Birmingham Six. It would be 1991 before the convictions were quashed.

We have already seen how the War on Terror has led to polarisation and injustice that of itself has fed back through a vicious circle into the creation of that which was most feared, a genuine war of terror. There has been a kind of moral funk in the West, an unwillingness to accept the costs that can follow from genuine adherence to liberal principles, that has begun to undermine the very principles on which liberal democratic societies are based.

I guess that's my real worry from Paris. What lesson or lessons are we all, governments included, going to draw? And what will it cost us?

Henry Wallis, George Meredith, Mary Meredith and The Death of Chatterton

This post is dedicated to Evan, 2tanners and kvd, inspired by a short comment stream on That Australian life - the Lamberts inspired by this remark of mine: "Growing up, I was attracted by the concept of the artist in the garret. It seemed kind of romantic. Certainly I wasn't put off by minor things like the cold! Now, older, I wonder a bit. There is a lot to be said for comfort and at least a degree of stability".

This photograph, the Death of Chatterton, is by the English Pre-Raphaelite painter Henry Wallis (1830-1916), I quote from the Wikipedia entry:.

Wallis is best remembered for his first great success, The Death of Chatterton, which he exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1856. The painting depicted the impoverished late 18th-century poet Thomas Chatterton, who poisoned himself in despair at the age of seventeen, and was considered a Romantic hero for many young and struggling artists in Wallis's day. .... He (Wallis) used a bold colour scheme with a contrasting palette and he exploited the fall of the natural light through the window of the garret to implement his much loved style at the time, chiaroscuro. 

So the painting captures the idea of the romantic but unrecognised artistic hero dying alone in his garret. In one of his comments, 2tanners took a very modern and prosaic view of the artist in the garret.

The artist in the garret implies mediocre commercial success (and therefore critical acclaim). Sometimes this can make you hungry in ways that don't involve food, and keep you there. Success can make you more casual about what you do. This isn't restricted to art, the saying "Stay hungry, or success will kill you" is a business mantra. 

*Starving* in a garret is a different thing, IMHO. To any self respecting artist, you do need to stay alive and feed your family (or contribute). I have two writer friends who thank their lucky stars for retail stores like JB Hi-Fi. They can work there to get through the lean times and are valued by their employers for their stability, lack of retail ambition (they don't want to join the managerial ranks) and knowledge of the product range. But they are writers, first and foremost.

Oh dear.It quite takes the romance out of it all. But where did the garret phrase come from. According to Victoria S Dennis, an English writer called Samuel Foote (1720-1777) summarised the life of an author as "Born in a cellar.and living in a garret".Foote was talking about writers, not painters.

In the 18th century the figure of the literary man living in poverty because his ideas were too unfashionable or politically unsafe to sell well was, according to Victoria, a familiar cliché. By contrast, during the same period the painter was seen as a craftsman who by definition worked for the rich, and therefore should make a comfortable living if he were any good. "The idea of the painter as a rebel genius who is poor because he only paints what inspires him and refuses to prostitute his gift by painting pictures people want to buy"  is, Victoria says. "a creation of 19th-century Romanticism."

Victoria did not know at what date the cliché came to be "starving" rather than just "living" in the garret. Her guess was in the second half of the 19th century. In the 18th century everyone knew that people only lived in garrets if they were too poor to afford anything better. "After the Romantics had made the idea of a delightfully bohemian life in a garret fashionable (in theory and in novels, at any rate), it became necessary to stress the idea of poverty."

Oh dear once again! I am clearly a romantic.In all this, there is a twist that does fit with popular images of the artistic life.

This is the painting of the English writer George Meredith painted in 1893 by George Frederic Watts.  In 1856 Meredith posed as model for The Death of Chatterton. 

In 1849,  Meredith had married Mary, a widow with one child. In 1853, a son (Arthur) was born to the couple.

Mary has been described as beautiful, intelligent, outspoken and ambitious. The marriage was apparently troubled. .Around the time that The Death of Chatterton was painted, Mary began an affair with Henry Wallis. In 1858, pregnant, she ran off with Wallis shortly before giving birth, leaving Arthur behind. It was a short relationship, with Mary dying in 1861.

Like many writers, Meredith seems to have drawn from his experiences in his writing. The collection of "sonnets" entitled Modern Love(1862) emerged, as did The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, his first "major novel". I haven't read the book nor indeed any of Meredith's writing, yet another gap in my knowledge! However, the novel's opening has been described in this way: "Sir Austin Feverel's wife deserts him to run away with a poet, leaving her husband to bring up their boy Richard. Believing schools to be corrupt, Sir Austin, a scientific humanist, educates the boy at home with a plan of his own devising known as "the System". This involves strict authoritarian supervision of every aspect of the boy's life, and in particular the prevention of any meeting between Richard and girls of his own age."

I don't think that Meredith believed in the principles involved, the book is in part a conflict between harsh principles and reality leading to apparently to an ultimate happy ending, but I was left with a strong impression of possible conflict between the serious self-focused Meredith and Mary's own strong personality.

In all this, after researching this post I was left dissatisfied. What happened to Mary's first child? What happened to the child born after Mary left to join Henry Wallis? How did Mary die? I would like to know more.

Update

Thanks to leads supplied by kvd, we have more information on Mary Ellen Meredith. This is a pencil drawing of Mary made by Henry Wallis around 1856.She was clearly an attractive woman. 

A piece by Elvira Casal in The Victorian Web provides more information on Mary and the various relationships, with a little more added in the text attached to the pencil drawing..

George Meredith met Mary through London solicitor  Richard Stephen Charnock who was active in literary activities. Meredith was in fact apprenticed to Charnock who encouraged Meredith's literary endeavours. 

Among the people in Charnock's circle, were Edward Peacock and his beautiful sister, Mary Ellen Nicolls. Mary Ellen Meredith was the widow of Edward Nicolls, captain of the HMS Dwarf, who died in 1844 while trying to rescue a drowning man in the Shanon Estuary in Ireland. All accounts agree that Mary had the lively intelligence and wit that was to characterize many of Meredith's heroines. Even though she was 7 years his senior and he was in no position to support a family, the couple married on August 9, 1849.

According to, Casal both were intelligent, demanding and impatient. Meredith may have greatly admired witty women as social companions, but did not find in Mary Ellen the uncritical support that he craved. For her part, Mary Ellen, needed more from the marriage than a self-absorbed husband who could not even earn a living. Frequent pregnancies and miscarriages cannot have added to the Merediths' happiness. Their one child, Arthur, was born on June 13, 1853.

Continued deterioration in the Meredith marriage culminated in Mary's 1858 elopement Wallis. While Meredith never forgave Mary, his books suggest that he seems to have understood what drove her to elopement. In 1861, Mary died from what was probably a form of Bright's disease. Despite his resentment over the desertion, George had grudgingly allowed Arthur to visit his mother, especially during her last days. 

US launches rugby union pro-league

This post returns briefly to an old theme that I have been meaning to come back to, the progressive evolution of world rugby union. The  trigger here was an interesting piece by Scotty Stevenson in the Spin-off: Pro Rugby Comes to America – and it Might Just Work

Both Canada and the US have been competitive in global rugby for some time, but both countries suffer from the absence of a professional competition in a rugby world where professional We saw this in the World Cup where the absence of professional competition did impede the minnows in competition against the fully professional sides.

The game evolves. We now have the European national competition with fully pro teams in individual country leagues. In the Southern Hemisphere, the Rugby Championship has expanded to include Argentina, while next year's Super 18 includes teams from Argentina and Japan. The logistics including travel arrangements in this competition are simply mind-blowing. I'm not sure that they are sustainable.

In Europe, Georgia is pressing for involvement in the top level nation competition. Spain is attempting to build its strengths via the sevens, with sevens now included in the Olympics. If a professional league gets underway in North America, then that's another gap filled.

I don't know whether  rugby will ever match soccer as a global game, but its reached the point now where it is a truly global game.

That Australian life - the Lamberts

Today's post is just a snippet. I was determined to finish my post on the Scanlon report, but just ran out of time and indeed enthusiasm. So back to art.

This is a self portrait by the Australian artist George Washington Lambert (1873-1930). I have mentioned him before especially in the context of Australian artist Thea Proctor with whom he had an intense relationship. Sexual?  One doesn't know, although it's often implied.Certainly he is a sensual looking chap.

Today is Remembrance Day. In this context, Lambert was also an Australian war artist from the First World War.

I have ambivalent feelings about George Lambert, partly because of his art, there was bad as well as good, more because of a feeling (perhaps unjustified) that he overshadowed Thea Proctor, preventing her achieving her full potential.

Things run in families. It seems hard for us to escape our pasts. Interests and sometimes abilities and indeed weaknesses recur down the generations.This may not be comfortable for those of us sitting on our perch in the family tree, unable to escape our own pasts, but it does appear to have a sad inevitability to it whether we like it or not.

This is Constant Lambert (and here), George's son. The cigarette has been replaced by a cigar. Constant Lambert was a gifted musician and writer, a man of charm but great inconstancy who occupies a distinct place on British cultural history.

Constant was 45 when he died, two days before his 46th birthday.. His father had died at 56. Constant's son, Kit Lambert, British record producer, record label owner and the manager of The Who, also died at 46 and was buried in the same grave as his father.

Maurice Lambert, Constant's brother, also died quite young. In his case 63. Like his father and brother,

Maurice also became a significant artistic figure, in his case sculpture

One of the things that I don't properly understand is why the boys ended in London. The Wikipedia entry on Constant says that he never visited Australia, although he was always conscious of the Australian connection.

Lambert's wife Amy was Australian. They married in 1901. Both boys were born in England. When Lambert returned to Australia in 1920, Maurice would have been 19, Constant 15. They were already entrenched in London.

It is not clear to me from the biographical material that Amy came back to Australia with George. Certainly she was in London when he died. Perhaps she just wanted to be close to her boys.

 The artistic thread that followed down through three Lambert generations could not have been easy. We benefit from their work, while the colour in their lives adds interest. Yet there is also a price to be paid

Growing up, I was attracted by the concept of the artist in the garret. It seemed kind of romantic. Certainly I wasn't put off by minor things like the cold! Now, older, I wonder a bit. There is a lot to be said for comfort and at least a degree of stability.    

Ending the corrosive effects of Australia's current immigration policies

The death last week of Australian artist Judy Cassab ended a remarkable life (here, here). I first saw one of her paintings many years ago at a showing Chaney Coventry had in his motel room at Ruschcutters Bay. However, it's only in the last few years that I rediscovered her and became interested in her life. I gained considerable pleasure from her art and from discovering more about her.

In a post a week back, Saturday Morning Musings - The Turnbull Ascendancy?, I said in part:  

The first thing to note is that Mr Turnbull was a senior figure in the previous Abbott administration, jointly responsible with others for the decisions of that administration outside Mr Abbott's personal captain's picks.This includes those decisions that have eroded Australian's personal freedoms, that have given the Government an authoritarian flavour. This includes the evolving mess resulting from recent changes to the Migration Act. These provide, among other things, that any foreigners who serve a prison sentence greater than 12 months will automatically have their visas revoked, a change previously defended by Immigration Minister Peter Dutton because it targeted people who were detracting from Australian society, not adding to it. 

In the three years July 2011 to July 2014, 372 people had their residency revoked, itself a not insignificant figure. However, since the legislation changed in December 780 have had their residency revoked of which 151 have been deported. The rest are apparently held in immigration detention. On Christmas Island, refugees are being replaced by former residents awaiting deportation, including some very bad eggs indeed. 

A core problem with the legislation is that the twelve months is bringing within the scope of power people guilty of relatively minor offences who have spent most of their life in Australia. Apart from tearing families apart, this is a severe form of double jeopardy.

As I write, the Australian and indeed global media have been covering the latest disturbances at the immigration detention centre on Christmas Island, while the country has come under criticism at the UN Human Rights Council. Many Australians would and indeed have simply said piss-off in the face of criticism. Many Australians too, and with some justice, have pointed to the patchy and inconsistent record of the UN Council itself. However, the erosive and corrosive effect of the continuing troubles should not be underestimated.

The latest public opinion poll show a further slight strengthening in the Government's position, if with a slight decline in Mr Turnbull's personal popularity. At 56% approval, 24% disapproval, it's still very high, but it's also the first decline since he became PM.  Unless Mr Turnbull can find some way of at least humanising current policy, the drip-feed of negative stories flowing from current immigration policies will continue to eat away at the Government.

This is, I think, an objective judgement. It's not just the local effects, but also the damage done to Australia's international reputation and credibility. You have to ask just how long all this can continue. Perhaps the worst outcome that I can see is one in which current policy continues with majority Australian popular support. This would, I think, do considerable damage not just to our reputation, but to our own sense of fairness and justice. It would also play into the hands of those seeking to use fears about immigration as a weapon in attempts to create a populist right. Not a pleasant prospect.     .

Science, Innovation and all that jazz

This morning's reflections and Monday Forum is loosely linked to innovation, that presently popular topic. As always, feel free to go in whatever direction you like!

In a piece in the Wall Street Journal  (23 October 2015), The Myth of Basic Science, British peer Matt Ridley concludes:

 The perpetual-innovation machine that feeds economic growth and generates prosperity is not the result of deliberate policy at all, except in a negative sense. Governments cannot dictate either discovery or invention; they can only make sure that they don’t hinder it. Innovation emerges unbidden from the way that human beings freely interact if allowed. Deep scientific insights are the fruits that fall from the tree of technological change.

To get to this point, he argues that the old linear model dating back to Francis Bacon now encapsulated in the idea of pure research feeding into applied research into useful technology is misleading. In fact, in most cases, technology, innovation feeds into, drives, science. Technology has, he suggests, become a self-replicating, self-steering system that will give best results if left alone. Politicians should stop believing that innovation can be turned on and off like a tap. Governments should stop funding basic research, do away with patents and get out of the way. This drew a protest from (among others) Don Aitkin - Should the public funding of basic science stop? Don is clearly impressed by the view of Mr Ridley in a general sense, but this was a bridge too far.

Without research, I do not remember when systems approaches first emerged. I do do know that I was arguing in the 1970s that the now popular systems approaches could be fruitfully applied the archaeology and Australian prehistory to provide insights. This followed work that I had done attempting to use economic constructs to analyse Aboriginal economic life, work that seemed to yield fruitful results. However, what we might think of as modern "systems" approaches suffers from severe weaknesses.

With the exception of marxist and some socialist theorists who always wanted to make the evidence fit the model, system approaches were simply another way of analysing evidence. Considering a system as a series of interconnected parts, a systems approach led you to ask questions about possible parts and the relationships between them.  Today, the old normative approach adopted by some on the left has sadly become universal, with the dominant right imposing its own particular orthodoxies on the evidence. It's not just the right of course, for normative systems approaches have become deeply embedded in policy debate. Still, economic models have a lot to answer for in, among other things, keeping thesis and antithesis alive!

Mr Ridley is correct, of course, in arguing that the pure, applied, useful technology model is flawed. To use his own thinking, technology feeds into science, science feeds into technology. It's a system. However, and those involved with systems know this, systems involve multiple flows and interconnections. It seems to me that Mr Ridley wishes to impose his own conclusions on the system. using selective evidence to support his thesis. Damn, thesis and anti-thesis again! 

Network economics focuses on the way networks, systems operate, Network economics suggests that under certain defined conditions, networks will lead to monopolistic or oligopolistic outcomes.We have seen this in the higher technology areas so beloved by Prime Minister  Turnbull. A fair bit of economic and policy analysis has been concerned with overcoming this problem. Apart from recognising the way in which patents can be used to protect market power, Mr Ridley ignores this problem. He implicitly assumes that the technology system will give best results. He does not test this, nor recognise that it may lead to undesirable outcomes such as under investment in basic research. It may not, but the question has to be addressed.

I now turn to another topic, the present conflation between innovation and science and technology. It's deeply embedded, and it seems to affect all our thinking. Certainly it affects Mr Ridley's thinking, even though he is clearly influenced by Adam Smith, surely one of the great innovative thinkers of the 18th century measured by his continuing influence.

In a discussion in one of the comment threads, I suggested that innovation meant change. It's a little more than that, of course. Innovation means something new, something that is outside the current box. It is not the same as productivity improvement, nor of cost reduction, nor of improved efficiency and effectiveness. although all these things may be an outcome. It is also not the same as science or technology. Adam Smith was an innovator, the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter was an innovator. Indeed, the phrase "creative destruction" that he coined has suddenly now become very popular jargon. 

The imposed linkage between innovation and science and technology is an example of the mental blindness created by definitional ambiguity, These ambiguities, the lack of  clarity or of questioning, act as blinkers: they force us to gallop down one track when we might be better on another. Our very obsession with innovation blinds us to the real possibilities of innovation. That is why I have doubts about Mr Turnbull's emphasis on innovation. He does not ask questions, he feeds us his pre-determined answers. 

Finishing by returning to the funding of basic research, during the 1980s I was an active proponent of the need for greater linkages between industry and universities, of the need to effectively commercialise research carried out in the university sector. By the early 2000s, I thought that the focus and process, however imperfectly carried out, had gone to far, far too far. I was particularly concerned with what I saw as the collapse of curiosity based research in all disciplines, not just science. How, I wondered, were new ideas to come through, how were existing structures to be challenged, how were issues to be clarified, when everything had to be justified by outcomes linked to pre-determined questions and measurable results, usually with a dollar sign attached?

Since then the position has got worse, especially but not only in Australia's "top" research institutions. The proliferating buildings and institutes based on special applied research areas are, to my mind, a sign of failure. Staff no longer have freedom to pursue questions just for curiosity. Adam Smith himself was able to think and write because of access to patronage. Very few people have that luxury today. 

Updated blog list for Personal Reflections

Having updated my separate history blog list, I have now largely finished the task of transferring book marked blogs from my aging and collapsing internet explorer to my blog list page on this blog., although I still have a few to go and some checking and tidying up to do.

I now have some 43 blogs listed along with a brief description of each blog. This will make it easier for me to do my rolling blog checks and to properly resume my regular round the blogging traps reports. Bit sad though just how many of my old favourites have dropped out.    

Saturday Morning Musings - The Turnbull Ascendancy?

In a number of recent posts one of the issues discussed is just what we can expect from Malcolm Turnbull, how might a Turnbull ministry shape itself? In doing so, I have indicated some of my own reservations about Mr Turnbull.

Looking back, similar threads seem to be emerging in casual conversation, in comments on this blog and in some of the polling. One is simply a sense of relief at the departure of Mr Abbott, even among many Coalition supporters. In the end, the Abbott Government was too inflexible, too unstable to survive, lurching from crisis to crisis. There seems to be a common view too that Mr Shorten and Labor having locked themselves into policy positions effectively defined by Mr Abbott's slogans are now left bereft, at sea without a rudder, to use a maritime analogy of the type that now seems to be favoured by Mr Turnbull.

Mr Turnbull has also enjoyed a remarkable media honeymoon, one reminiscent of that enjoyed by Mr Rudd in the first period of his prime ministership. All this has translated into improved polling for the Coalition quite dramatically illustrated in the attached chart from William Bowe's The Poll Bludger. Red is Labor support, blue coalition support. You can see how the two lines have switched.

This is reflected in the betting odds.Here regular commenter 2tanners advices that currently *one year out* Sportsbet has Coalition paying $1.15 for a win and Labor $5.50.

Malcolm Turnbull's recent speech to the Melbourne Institute has been well received, even treated as a landmark speech. This is one example, this a second also from the ABC. I have taken the liberty of reproducing the speech below in full so that you can read it for yourself following my comments.

The first thing to note is that Mr Turnbull was a senior figure in the previous Abbott administration, jointly responsible with others for the decisions of that administration outside Mr Abbott's personal captain's picks.This includes those decisions that have eroded Australian's personal freedoms, that have given the Government an authoritarian flavour. This includes the evolving mess resulting from recent changes to the Migration Act. These provide, among other things, that any foreigners who serve a prison sentence greater than 12 months will automatically have their visas revoked, a change previously defended by Immigration Minister Peter Dutton because it targeted people who were detracting from Australian society, not adding to it.

In the three years July 2011 to July 2014, 372 people had their residency revoked, itself a not insignificant figure. However, since the legislation changed in December 780 have had their residency revoked of which 151 have been deported. The rest are apparently held in immigration detention. On Christmas Island, refugees are being replaced by former residents awaiting deportation, including some very bad eggs indeed.

A core problem with the legislation is that the twelve months is bringing within the scope of power people guilty of relatively minor offences who have spent most of their life in Australia. Apart from tearing families apart, this is a severe form of double jeopardy.

Turning now to the speech and leaving aside the twee use of she for sailor instead of a gender neutral phrasing, the speech continues the distancing process from the Abbott Government while also trying to present the good points, a difficult balancing act The government, Mr Turnbull says, is "not trying to reduce complex issues to slogans." Ouch Mr Abbott, take that. Instead, the Government is charting new directions.

In this context, Mr Turnbull attempts to address two concerns. One is the widely held view that the Abbott Government was unfair, inequitable. Here My Trumbull suggests that we all want Australia to "continue to be a high wage, generous social welfare safety net, first world economy. A nation that is as fair as it is open to opportunity." By the way, like Mr Abbott, Mr Turnbull likes short paragraphs. However, unlike Mr Abbott, some paragraphs actually contain two sentences!

The second concern Mr Turnbull addresses is that of lack of trust in Government. Here he makes suggestions linked to his broad objectives about the policy process itself. This is where I found myself saying yes, yes yes please. How could I not, for these are things that I have been arguing for some years?

The first is that all things should be placed on the table, not just those after everything else has been ruled out The second is that policy should be subject to open discussion .The third that policy should be flexible, should change as events change, should change in light of experience. This directly attacks the shopping centre, mandate approach that I have so criticised. The third suggestion is that Governments should explain why they are doing things, including why they have changed their mind.
All this makes life diabolically difficult for Mr Shorten and the ALP, for they have to try to respond in a far more fluid environment without the clear goal posts previously provided by Mr Abbott. Now in fairness to Mr Abbott, he did set up processes that were intended to achieve longer term policy discussion, but those processes were either too constrained in terms of acceptable answers or were simply submerged by events.

Inevitably, the speech included references to new technology. There was something almost breathless here in Mr Turnbull's words. I am skeptical. While I accept and respect Mr Turnbull's business experience, there hasn't been a new Australian policy idea in this area for twenty years. I wait to see if things have changed.

Mr Turnbull's speech follows:

"Economics is often said to be the dismal science.

Well, there should be nothing dismal about today's discussions.

And that's not just because we are in marvellous Melbourne – somewhat damply glowing with joy and pride at the way in which Michelle Payne gloriously despatched first another glass ceiling and then her detractors with a pithy candour politicians can only envy.

We are living in the most exciting times in human history.

Free markets, globalisation, long periods of peace and above all the acceleration of technological change has produced economic and political transformations at a speed never seen before.

In the lifetime of almost everyone in this room, China has gone from barely contributing to the world economy to becoming the single largest national economy.

In just a generation we've seen the Internet and the smart phone connect most people in the developed world and before long most people in the entire world to each other and potentially to all the knowledge mankind has accumulated.

The first iPhone was released only eight years ago; Google was founded 17 years ago; Facebook with 1.5 billion active users - and YouTube with 1 billion users - are ten years old, Twitter is nine years old and Airbnb and Uber are seven and six years old respectively.

Most of the companies reinventing our world would still be at school if they were humans.

And the venerable elder statesmen of the digital age - Microsoft and Apple - are 40 and 39 years old respectively. Think about it.

In the midst of all this change - economic, political, technological - the opportunities for Australians have never been greater or the horizons wider.

But how do we seize those opportunities, how do we ensure that in the midst of this dynamic region, in the midst of so much growth and change, we are able successfully to transition our economy to one that wins and keeps on winning.

We talk a lot about reform, especially here, but that's just a means to an end. Let's talk about where we want to be - a big national goal.

Surely it is that we should continue to be a high wage, generous social welfare safety net, first world economy. A nation that is as fair as it is open to opportunity.

And how do we do that?

Clearly as an open market economy in a much larger, more competitive world, we must be more productive, more innovative, more competitive.

Across the board, we must acquire not just the skills but the culture of agility that enables us to make volatility our friend, bearing fresh opportunities, not simply a foe brandishing threats.

So reform, since that is the topic of your conference, should not be seen as a once in a decade or two convulsion, accompanied by a hyperbolic scare campaign.

Rather it should be seen as a change of political culture that sees us like the sailor, surrounded by the uncertainty of the sea and the wind, who knows only two things for sure - where she needs to go and that she has the skill to get there..

Sometimes the sailor reaches the mark with rapid ease, her sails big bellied in a following wind; sometimes with slow and deliberate tenacity, sails close hauled, tacking into the teeth of a gale.

But her vision is as clear as her destination is certain. How to get there and how quickly is the measure of her skill.

As we focus on our future course, it requires us above all to be open and honest about our circumstances, understanding and explaining both the challenges and the opportunities.

It is fair to point out where mistakes have been made and being only human inevitably concentrating on those made by our opponents while treading lightly past our own.

But over the years I've noticed the public, on whose goodwill all hope of reform depends, is impatient with the blame game.

The first step in persuasion is to understand and respect the intelligence of your audience - in this case that is the Australian people.

We need to explain that every vector, every sinew of our government's policy is designed to deliver better jobs and greater opportunities - in short a more prosperous and secure future for them and their children and grandchildren. And above all that one that is fair both to those who want to get ahead and those who, for whatever reason, are not able to do so.

That is why good open discussion and consultation aids the task of reform. Because it is not enough to persuade the public that your motives are good - you also have to demonstrate that you've taken decisions in a thoughtful, open, consultative way, that you've carefully weighed up the various options and arguments.

And that is why we are not trying to reduce complex issues to slogans, why we are not playing the rule in rule out game, that's why we welcome every contribution to this debate.

So, across government, business, the labour movement, the wider community, we need to have a grown up discussion which first clarifies the policy goals and then identifies and removes any obstacles that may be hampering our capacity to generate growth, productivity, investment and jobs.

We need to work practically and in partnership, to anticipate economic opportunities as they emerge and to be brave enough and smart enough to make the most of them.

If a particular policy approach doesn't deliver as required or anticipated, we have to be ready to reappraise it, reset as and when needed so objectives can still be met.

If a policy doesn't work, chuck it out, if you see somebody is achieving your objective in a better way remember the sincerest form of flattery is plagiarism, copy them, take it over. Adjust, tweak, agility is the key, the objective is what we're all about. Remember we are like that sailor of whom I spoke, we know where we want to go. We are surrounded by uncertainties and we have to adjust our course, our tactics, our policies to get there. Agility in today's world, in a world of volatility is absolutely key and that requires a very significant change to the political culture and political discourse.

This new discourse, this new culture that embraces change, which is by the way no more than what the business world does all the time, I mean we have, what we are seeking to do is to talk about policy in the same way practical men and women in the business world have been doing forever. What we need to do is embrace change, be adaptable, flexible, innovative.

Structural shifts in today's global economy are not dissimilar in scale and scope to the transition from the agrarian to an industrial society, but it is the velocity of change that is unprecedented.

It is the velocity of change, the rapidity. The changes that used to take centuries are now taking years, maybe a decade.

Right now, for us in Australia, there is also the challenge of making the transition to the post mining boom era. As you know at the beginning of the last decade, the rapid industrialisation of emerging economies led by China and in particular by China's massive stimulus response to the Global Financial Crisis, drove unprecedented demand for raw materials like coal and iron ore.

Prices rose sharply, they delivered a massive windfall gain to Australian incomes and a boom in new resources projects globally. In Australia alone, mining investment rose from less than two per cent of GDP in the early 2000's to a peak of over seven a decade later.

As this new supply has come on stream, as China is rebalancing to have more consumption, move towards - still a long way to go I might add - move towards a more conventional share of GDP than it is today.

We've seen a sharp fall in our terms of trade. This was always going to happen by the way, this was always going to happen. We can't rely on rapid growth in commodity prices to fuel future income growth.

But there are enormous opportunities available to us and to his great and enduring credit, Andrew Robb, fellow Victorian has opened up the doors to these markets and in particular the China market with the Free Trade Agreement.

It's not so long ago I was in this very room of this hotel with a Chinese online business JD Worldwide, the largest in China which was opening up its virtual doors to Australian businesses. Did you know that the Chinese online commerce market is already larger than that of the United States? The rapid growth of this economy at the consumption level is remarkable. For the first time in 300 years, if you believe Angus Matterson's work, which of course we must, the number of Asian middle class consumers equals the number in Europe and North America combined.

Our services exports have been growing by nine per cent over the last five years which has seen rapid growth in agricultural exports, food and drink and so forth, education, tourism, design - right across China you see the work of Australian architects.

Now these are enormous opportunities. How do we equip ourselves best to take advantage of them? A key focus of our Government is innovation. I said earlier, we need to be more innovative, we need to be more technologically sophisticated. We will deliver next month an innovation statement, a set of policies that will focus on how we attract and retain talent, how we support and encourage start-ups. How we, across the Government and the country, encourage a culture of innovation, ensure that our children are requiring the STEM skills that they need, that they have the understanding or familiarity with machine languages that they will need in the future.

Let me say a little about tax, it is much in the news but the Treasurer will be speaking later. The object of the taxation system is plainly to raise the revenue the Government needs for its services it provides. But it must do so in a manner that backs Australians to work, save and invest, that backs them in rather than holds them back. That has, in the language of the Melbourne Institute, the minimum dead weight loss, the minimum handbrake on economic activity.

Now of course any set of tax reforms must be fair which is why picking off one of the by now very venerable reform proposals, I am waiting to see one that hasn't been around for a decade or so. We need a new idea here. I am looking at Chris Richardson, in particular. Surely there must be one!

They have been kicking around for a while and there is no harm in that. That is why picking off one of these by now venerable proposals in isolation to others is always going to be misleading. I think you understand the point I am making there. A reform package must at the very least, raise the revenue we need, share the burden fairly across the community and do so in a way that incentivises employment, investment and innovation. Fairness I repeat is absolutely critical. Any package of reforms which is not and is not seen as fair will not and cannot achieve the public support without which it simply will not succeed.

There are many other elements of reform in this field and I'll just touch on one of them the Ian Harper report – that will not gather dust. It poses important challenges for all Government, especially, or including if not especially State Governments. There are very big - still very big structural breaks on growth. I heard the Chairman of the Productivity Commission talking this morning on the radio about the supply side constraints on development and planning. The Federal Government's arms are a long way from those levers. Nonetheless, it is something we have to recognise.

It is one of the reasons why we have a Minister for Cities and the Built Environment, why we are engaging with cities, with States on matters of infrastructure in a thoroughly non-ideological manner. Why we will support and indeed invest in infrastructure based on what it delivers, analysed in a rigorous, cost benefit manner and without discriminating between one type of infrastructure or another.

I have outlined a few ways here where we are seeking to deliver those goals. A high wage, generous social welfare net first world economy, one that is more innovative, more competitive, more productive.

That is the goal of the Government. That is what we are seeking to do in this field. We will use every measure that we can to achieve that. Everything we do will be assessed by that test.

Is this making Australia more prosperous? Is this making us more competitive? Is it enabling us to compete more effectively? Is it enabling us to seize the opportunities of the future rather than, as some would have us hiding under the doona, shuddering at the changes around them.

We are living in the best times in human history. There has never been a more exciting time to be an Australian. The challenge for our Government is to do everything we can, with your help, with all of the ideas and the advice, with all of the consideration and thought that you and so many other Australians can muster, to do all we can to ensure that we enable Australians to do their best, enable them to realise those opportunities, seize that future, confident, optimistic, proud and strong. This is a great era of opportunity. We are a great nation with a great future. Thank you very much"

ENDS.

Updating history blogs - and computer frustrations

This is inside the old moat and bailey castle that forms part of Cardiff Castle.

I have been updating my history blog list.Painstaking process checking individual links and then making sure that they open in new windows. The idea is that people should be able to browse, click, look, close and move on.

I do find computers and the internet frustrating sometimes.So time wasting. This came via Facebook

Windows vs Ford...

For all of us who feel only the deepest love and affection for the way computers have enhanced our lives, read on. At a recent computer expo (COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated,

"If Ford had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon."

In response to Bill's comments, Ford issued a press release stating:

If Ford had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics (and I just love this part):

1. For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash.........twice a day.

2.. Every time they repainted the lines in the road, you would have to buy a new car.

3... Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason. You would have to pull to the side of the road, close all of the windows, shut off the car, restart it, and reopen the windows before you could continue. For some reason you would simply accept this.

4.... Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.

5..... Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, five times as fast and twice as easy to drive - but would run on only five percent of the roads.

6...... The oil, water temperature, and alternator warning lights would all be replaced by a single "This Car Has Performed An Illegal Operation" warning light.

7....... The airbag system would ask,"Are you sure?" before deploying.

8........ Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key and grabbed hold of the radio antenna.

9......... Every time a new car was introduced car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.

10.......... You'd have to press the "Start" button to turn the engine off.

PS - I'd like to add that when all else fails, you could call "customer service" in some foreign country and be instructed in some foreign language how to fix your car yourself!""

Reflections on the British Museum

One of the things that amazed me about the British Museum was its sheer size. Yes, I had been there before, but I had forgotten the scale.  You really need to come several times, tasting on the first visit, then coming back in a targeted way.  Sadly, we didn't have the time on this trip.

The main thing I realised this time is just how little I know. I didn't properly recognise this on my last visit all those years ago. My immersion in history since makes it easier to see relationships, to recognise gaps, to be struck by the scale of things that I do not know.

The sheer size of the collection may be overwhelming, but this is also a plus for it makes it easier to see patterns, similarities and differences. This is aided by the provision of descriptive material that is such a feature of modern museums everywhere..

 .When I first studied history at school, so much less was known about the detail of life. Who knew, for example, that one's vision of Greek statues as featureless white was wrong, that they were painted in bright colours? We also didn't have easy access to the great museum collections, having to rely on a limited number of books.

I am well aware of modern arguments about cultural imperialism as exemplified in things such as the debate over the Elgin Marbles.Whatever the arguments, it's just so nice that things survived that can be enjoyed.

This time I passed the Elgin Marbles with a passing glance.I guess that I'm Greeked out. It's interesting, though. The more recent things become, the more descriptions in museums carry an overload of current opinion as opposed to a description of what was. Not that the Elgin Marbles are recent, but the current debate is very much connected with current views. It also reflects the British (and descendants) long obsession with things Greek, something I have written about. You don't get the same obsession with, say, Egyptian or Middle Eastern artifacts.

 My own view? I think that they should be returned because they would make more sense in a Greek context with the Parthenon nearby. But I don't regard it as a great moral issue. It just makes more sense.  

Postscript

For JC from comments.  The Gayer-Anderson cat. I had no idea how famous it was when I took this photo!

Michelle and Stevie Payne - a truly remarkable Melbourne Cup

It's hard not to go past the Melbourne Cup. It was a complete fairy tale that had absolutely everything.

I almost didn't watch. the Cup. I have drifted away during the years when I worked so much alone. The Cup is a thing to be shared. This year a friend put me in her work sweep. I watched. So glad I did.

This was a total fairy tale combining elements that, in total, would be regarded as totally implausible in normal circumstances.

Big racing family, early death of mother, triumph in the midst of hard luck, down syndrome brother, horse rank outsider. first female jockey to win, pretty and articulate, question of whether or not she should ride, woman backed by men and family who believed in her made it possible, earlier life threatening injuries, a total fairy tale package. A story that combines just so many things. I had tears in my eyes.

I really don't know how one could combine so many things in fiction. No one would believe you. Take Stevie Payne, obviously loved and loving whose simple enjoyment in the success of his horse and sister shone through the coverage. This was his triumph as much as hers. I felt so pleased for him. Or the joy of the Payne family members present. For a moment, the industry that is modern racing was totally personalised.

Yes, the world will move on. But we are all better for yesterday's  Cup.  

Turnbull, honours and the irrelevance of the republican debate

The decision to once again abolish knights and dames from the Australian honours system came in the form of a very short press statement:  "The Cabinet recently considered the Order of Australia, in this its 40th anniversary year, and agreed that Knights and Dames are not appropriate in our modern honours system." Later, the PM amplified his position in a brief doorstop comment.

PRIME MINISTER: Knights and dames. Look, can I say to you, I'm glad you’re, yeah ok, knights and dames. Look it is a long way from being the most important issue in Australia today. But it is a change as you know, removing knights and dames from the Australian Honour System has been, is a decision the Cabinet has taken. Her Majesty's agreed to amend the Letters Patent which are essentially the rules of the Order of Australia and this reflects modern Australia, knights and dames are titles that are really anachronistic. They're out of date, they’re not appropriate, in 2015, in Australia. Thank you very much.

Tim Mayfield from the Australian Republican Movement gloated,  

Goodbye knights, hello possums: The republican dividend in the honours debacle, 

seeing it as an opportunity to re-start the republican cause. Monarchist David Flint took a different view. 

Well I was not surprised that this should be the first significant policy change of the Turnbull Government. The change of government of course was hardly to do with any policy problems, it was more about personal ambition...... I've no doubt that Mr Turnbull wishes to impose a Republic - a politicians Republic on Australia at some time when he deems that he thinks that it would be victorious.

I was surprised not so much at the decision as its form and timing. It wasn't necessary at this point since new appointments can only be made on the Government's recommendation. It did continue the process of distancing Mr Turnbull from Mr Abbott, but also reinforces suspicions that many Australians have about Mr Turnbull.

It is no secret that I support Australia's current system of government. I am frankly puzzled by the deep often a-historical views held by certain groups who support the republican cause. They seem to be still fighting old wars that didn't actually make a lot of sense at the time. I think that this helps explain the virulence, as well as the continued sense of disappointment when the broader public dismisses their views.

I don't think any of this matters a great deal, except to the degree that shows light on continued confusions about Australia's history. Australia is not going to become a republic any time soon. There are frailties in the current constitutional system that may make a republic inevitable in the longer term. But no system survives for ever.

Perhaps ironically, the confusions and debates in the broader Australian community are reshaping the narrative among Aboriginal activists. I haven't attempted to write about this yet, although I have referred to it in passing from time to time. For the moment, one element might be summarised as boat people go home !