Section 44 of the Australian Constitution - clouded issues with a dash of moral bigotry

Chaos, confusion and the evolving Section 44 mess provides an update to this post. 

The theatre that is Australian politics continues. with a by-election underway in the Federal seat of New England and now a full state election in Queensland. This post concentrates on the issues surrounding the New England by election.

I first wrote on Section 44 of the Australian Constitution on 2 November 2016 in How far does Section 44 of the Australian constitution actually stretch?. This section reads:

 44. Disqualification
Any person who:
(i) is under any acknowledgment of allegiance, obedience, or adherence to a foreign power, or is a subject or a citizen or entitled to the rights or privileges of a subject or a citizen of a foreign power; or
(ii) is attainted of treason, or has been convicted and is under sentence, or subject to be sentenced, for any offence punishable under the law of the Commonwealth or of a State by imprisonment for one year or longer; or
(iii) is an undischarged bankrupt or insolvent; or
(iv) holds any office of profit under the Crown, or any pension payable during the pleasure of the Crown out of any of the revenues of the Commonwealth: or
(v) has any direct or indirect pecuniary interest in any agreement with the Public Service of the Commonwealth otherwise than as a member and in common with the other members of an incorporated company consisting of more than twenty-five persons;
shall be incapable of being chosen or of sitting as a senator or a member of the House of Representatives. 

But subsection (iv) does not apply to the office of any of the Queen's Ministers of State for the Commonwealth, or of any of the Queen's Ministers for a State, or to the receipt of pay, half pay, or a pension, by any person as an officer or member of the Queen's navy or army, or to the receipt of pay as an officer or member of the naval or military forces of the Commonwealth by any person whose services are not wholly employed by the Commonwealth.

At the time my focus was on Senators Day (Section 44 (v)) and Cullerton (Section 44(ii), both of whom were disqualified. Those clauses haven't gone away (there are cases looming here), but it was section 44(i) that was about to bite the Australian Federal Parliament on a sensitive part of its anatomy.

The trigger here was WA barrister Dr Cameron who began investigating the citizenship position of various Parliamentarians.He established that Green Senator  Scott Ludlum was classed by New Zealand as a New Zealand citizen, something that Senator Ludlum was not aware of. Senator Ludlum then resigned from the Senate. Green Senator Larissa Waters then checked her own position, found that she technically had Canadian dual citizenship and then resigned from the Senate as well. This was a considerable loss to the Greens and indeed the Senate itself.

I wrote on this on 18 July 2017 in Senators Ludlum, Waters and the emerging Section 44(i) mess. There I said in part:

.The problem now can be simply put: something like 28% of the Australian population was born overseas, while almost 50% of the Australian population has one parent born overseas. Perhaps as many as 4.5 million Australians are or may be eligible for dual citizenship depending on the laws in the other country and hence not be eligible to stand for the Australian Parliament on a strict interpretation of the wording of Section 44(i)........ 

One of the arguments in the current debate is that people should renounce their alternative citizenships and that they have only themselves to blame if they have not done so. There are a number of problems with this argument. You have to know exactly what your position is. Further, you have to be able to do so in some meaningful way given the laws of the other country. This actually makes membership of the Australian Parliament dependent on other countries' changing laws, something of an absurdity.  

I also commented that a fair bit of point scoring from all sides had gone on around  the question of  Section 44 as they seek to use it for immediate political advantage. At a low level, this included Mr Turnbull's comment on Senator Ludlum:

 "Obviously Senator Ludlam's oversight is a pretty remarkable one when you think about it - he's been in the Senate for so long," Mr Turnbull said.  

"Anyway, there it is, he's ineligible, and so there'll have to be, I assume, a countback ordered by the High Court to produce a replacement for him."  .

Maybe that's fair, I wrote, but it ignores the way this issue has been developing and the implications it has for the operations of Parliament. Do we really want to place ourselves in the position that more than 25% of the Australian electorate may be excluded from running for Parliament?

These were throw away words that Prime Minister Turnbull would come to regret. Even as I was writing that post, Senior National Senator and Minister Matt Canavan discovered that he might be a dual Italian citizen, something I added in a postscript. Senator Canavan took leave from his ministerial position but did not resign from the Senate. Instead, the Government announced that it would test the matter in the High Court,.seeking to clarify the interpretation of Section 44(i).

This was quickly followed by the announcement that first National's Leader Barnaby Joyce and then Deputy Leader Fiona Nash, a Senator, might be dual citizens. This was a serious blow because three of the most senior National Party figures were now under a cloud. Acting on advice from the Solicitor-General, both Joyce and Nash chose to remain in Parliament and as ministers pending the High Court case.

Fall-out continued. Upon checking, Senator Nick Xenophon from the Nick Xenophon Team discovered that he had an obscure form of British citizenship. He stayed in Parliament pending High Court consideration, but later resigned his seat to re-enter South Australian politics. Meantime,One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts came under increasing pressure over his citizenship status and was finally joined in the referral to the Australian High Court, making seven in all.

The Court handed down its decision on 27 October 2017 (decision here). The Court found that five (Ludlum, Waters, Roberts, Joyce and Nash) had been dual citizens at the time of nomination and had therefore not been validly elected, while two (Canavan and Xenophon) were classed as validly elected if on somewhat different grounds.

 While High Court proceedings were getting underway, I tried to tease some of the issues out in Why Barnaby Joyce may not be a dual citizen under Australian law (14 August 2017). The argument with marcellous in comments on that post extended the discussion. There marcellous stated issues that in fact were later reflected in the High Court decision. After the decision, marcellous wrote: "Jim. You were very stubborn on bJ. I'm going to say "I told you so."" I had to laugh. Touche!

In considering the Joyce case and indeed my own, my father was born in New Zealand, I struggled to see how either Mr Joyce or I could be classified as New Zealand dual nationals in circumstanced where we had actually to apply to become so. That still left the entitled problem, that we were entitled to become so by descent. I also struggled to see why the High Court was bound to accept the position that the question of whether a person was a dual citizen or not was to be determined by and only determined by the laws of another country as interpreted in that country. This seemed to me to open a can of worms.

As the case proceeded, it seemed clear that the case was going to be determined within the framework set by the previous High Court decisions since there was limited counterargument. The only question was whether the Court would relax elements of its previous position. In the end, the Court adopted a very literal black letter law position.

I will leave it to others to analyse the full legal implications of the decision. However, to me three things stood out bearing upon the wisdom of letting our interpretation of our constitution depend upon the laws of other countries.

The first was the way that national citizenship laws globally have been been in a state of flux over many decades, with consequent flow-on effects for Section 44)i).

The second was the difficulty that could arise in interpreting particular national laws. In the case of Senator Canavan, the Court could not determine whether in fact he was an Italian citizen based on the advice they received. He was given the benefit of doubt as a consequence,

The third linked issue was the meaning to be attached to the concept of citizenship itself. In the case of Senator Xenophon, the case turned on the question of whether his particular form of British citizenship was in fact citizenship at all set within the frame of current British law, Based on advice, the Court concluded (rightly to my mind) that he was not.

There appears very little appetite for changes to Section 44 in general or 44(i) in particular, with responses determined by immediate political needs as opposed to principles.I note here that while I am sympathetic to Mr Joyce, my position on the importance of the issue, of the potential need for change, was set well before I had any idea that the National Party would be caught up in furor. Most recently, I was especially sympathetic to Senator Waters' position. I thought that was a bit of a travesty,

Ironies abound. The Labor Party, a party that prides itself on its multicultural pluralist stance, is locked into a no change position because that offers the greatest immediate benefit even though it contradicts its stated values. The Coalition, and especially the Liberal Party that has been arguing for a tightening of Australian citizenship laws, now finds itself in a political bind. Even the Greens, another multicultural pluralist supporter, appear to be arguing for the status quo.    
 
There is a strange moral bigotry in all this, one that I find difficult to express really clearly  Satisfied it has procedures in place that will guard it from damage, the Labor Party has adopted a high moral ground purist position that focuses on compliance, not the underlying issues. It is also conflating issues that are not related.

Changing Section 44, Mr Shorten suggest, is a secondary issue to changing the Australian Constitution to achieve indigenous recognition. That may be right, but the two issues are not connected. I agree that indigenous recognition is very important, but it has nothing to do with Section 44. Linking them clouds discussion on both. But does that matter when you are trying to achieve the moral high ground?

Postscript

In breaking news, Senate President Stephen Parry (Liberal, Tasmania) has advised the Senate that he may be a British dual citizen. His UK born father came to Australia as a child.He has asked for clarification from UK authorities. There is something a little demeaning in Australia's politicians having to rush to another country to try to establish their citizenship status.

One discomforting thing about the Parry case (sample coverage here, here, here) is that he did not seek to clarify his position, but instead waited for the High Court decision before acting.   
 

Updating China's Belt and Road project

The ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) had an interesting story,  
One Belt, One Road: Australian 'strategic' concerns over Beijing's bid for global trade dominance (23 October 2017), about earlier Cabinet discussions on Australian participation in China's "One Belt, One Road" project. Apparently, the heads of Immigration and Defence strongly advised that Australia should not participate because of strategic risks, while the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade was split with Trade officials in favour of participation, Foreign Affairs officials against.

"The economic case for Australia formally joining simply wasn't made," a senior government figure has told the ABC. 

"We saw very little in additional economic benefit for signing up, but a lot of negative strategic consequences if we accepted Beijing's offer."  

The project, a signature project of Chinese President Xi Jinping, was first announced in 2013. So far, 68 countries including New Zealand have signed up.This 14 May 2017 ABC story, China wants 'new Silk Road' One Belt One Road project to help it dominate world trade, provides additional information, while this earlier piece from the Commonwealth Parliamentary Library provides a useful overall summary.  

I wrote of the initiative in Sunday Essay - is this the Eurasian century? (14 June 2015). There I concluded:

Considerable doubts have been raised about the geopolitical problems facing the Chinese initiative. I think that these miss a key point. We are talking relatively long time periods, several decades. As the roads and railway lines spread, so will trade. In a way, I also think that the Chinese are hedging their bets here. If the recreation of the southern Silk Road with all its various projects lags, they still have fast routes to Europe via Russia. 

No where so far as I have seen, I may well have missed something, will you see references to the rise of Eurasia as a continent.We are used to thinking of Europe and Asia as separate continents. They are not. They are a single land  mass that has never been fully integrated because of distance. This is changing quite quickly. 

I think that this is important. In Australia. we like to talk of this as the Asian or Asian Pacific century.What happens if this is actually the Eurasian century?  What does Australia do then?  

In August 2015, I recorded Great Silk Road - first eastbound Polish train leaves Lodz for Chengdu.In January of this year an English service was announced. In April, the first train left England for China.

These trips are hardly fast. I quote from Forbes. "The journey is as much an engineering challenge as a logistical problem. Freight must swap trains along the way, as railway gauges vary between the connecting countries. In its 18-day journey, freight will span 7,456 miles of railways, crossing Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Poland, Germany, Belgium, France and the UK."

It will be some time before the trains provide effective competition to either sea or airfreight, but the process has begun.

Since I wrote that first story in 2015, I have noticed references to Belt and Road everywhere from travels through the Stans to African stories to stories about ports and investments. I am not talking here about specific Belt and Road pieces, rather stories in which the Belt and Road connection is incidental. I haven't attempted to track them, although perhaps I should. The sheer scale and diversity is a little mind blowing. Herein lies a problem.

Belt and Road combines economic and political considerations. Just considering economic issues in particular,  I am left with a feeling of incoherence, of fragmentation, of failure to prioritise. The project may or may not deliver on China's political objectives, but I have a feeling that it's going to leave a lot of economic white elephants in its wake.

The IPA report on the teaching of history - all piss and wind?

In October, Dr Bella d’Abrera from the Australian Institute of Public Affairs released a report entitled the Rise of Identity Politics: an audit of history teaching at Australian Universities in 2017. Under the heading left is Parading Social Science as History, the IPA supporting story begins:

The history and substance of Western civilisation that are essential to understanding our present and shaping our future are not being taught to history undergraduates. 

Instead, the focus of a typical undergraduate history degree has shifted from the study of significant events and subjects to a view of the past seen through the lens of the identity politics of race, gender and sexuality. 

The Institute of Public Affairs’ audit of the 746 history subjects offered in 35 universities – The Rise of Identity Politics: An Audit of History Teaching at Australian Universities – has shown that the movement that sought to infuse the humanities curriculum across the Anglosphere with identity politics has come to ­fruition. 

Identity politics encapsulates two main ideas. 

The first is that an individual’s political position (and many other things, such as moral worth) is defined by their identity. The second is the way in which a person is to be treated is decided according to that person’s identity. 

The suspicion that history as an academic discipline has been successfully hijacked by left-wing cultural theorists is no longer hearsay or speculation. The audit reveals that at least 244 of the 746 history subjects belong to the social sciences. History departments are replete with subjects that examine the study of human society and social relationships, not historical events or periods. Take for example Gendered Worlds: An Introduction to Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of NSW; Masculinity, Nostalgia and Change offered at the University of Western Australia; Monash University’s Nationality, Ethnicity and Conflict; and the University of New England’s Being Bad: Sinners, Crooks, Deviants and ­Psychos. 

None of these subjects belongs in a history department. 

In comparison, of the 746 subjects on offer, just 241 explain the material and technological pro­gress and belief systems of Western civilisation. 

That there are fewer subjects devoted to what can be termed as the essential core topics of Western civilisation than social science topics is evidence the humanities have been captured by the left-wing exponents of identity politics.

I have quoted at length because it captures the tone of the report. In essence:

• The IPA believes that an understanding of the history and substance of Western civilisation is important in understanding our present and shaping the future. 
• The IPA has defined what it believes to be the core components that should be included in the study of history if the first is to be achieved, these are set out in the report, and has a program to promote its ideas.
• The IPA has analysed course titles and summaries. The methodology used is actually unclear, but appears to to be based at least in part on a computer analysis of the frequency of words
• This is then compared to the IPA's desired model to generate conclusions. 

I happen to agree that an understanding of the history and substance of Western civilisation is important. I agree that many of those teaching since the early 1980s do so from a left of centre perspective. I agree that identity politics, more broadly current fashionable ideologies, is a current issue and that it affects course structure and content. I agree that university history teaching has become fragmented, submerged and that needs to change. But dear oh dear, this report sets back all my arguments for change and different directions. This is not helped by Senator Cory Bernardi's support for its conclusions.

To start with two smaller examples both drawn from the University of New England where I have a degree of knowledge.
.
A UNE course entitled Being Bad: Sinners, Crooks, Deviants and Psychos is specifically identified a a course that should not be taught at university level. The title is designed to grab student attention. The actual course outline reads:

This unit will examine the development of our attitudes and approaches to law and order through a study of some of the most infamous crimes and criminals in the British world between 1700 and 1900. A series of case studies ranging broadly over space and time, will be considered from both historical and criminological perspectives. This will reveal both changing patterns of deviance and criminal behaviour and the evolving efforts to regulate and prevent it. Students will learn how to find, use and evaluate evidence about crime and use it to understand the development of modern society.

That is clearly a university level course. However, the second. UNE course mentioned in the report,  Professor Howard Brasted's Women in Islam, does appear more problematic at first sight. Here the course outline reads:

This unit is aimed at understanding the complex world of Muslim women today. Among the themes are: the Islamisation of women in Asia, women in politics, both at grass-roots and elite levels, Muslim women in the workforce, feminist perspectives both western and Muslim, the role of the media in defining Muslim women, stereotyping, Muslim women and religious participation and Muslim women and seclusion in a modern world.

You can see how this description might lead you to conclude, as the IPA appears to have concluded, that this is an example of the type of fashionable identity/fashionable cause course that they (and indeed I) complain about.

A friend recently enrolled in this course. It is one of the most intellectually challenging courses I have seen, not one for the faint hearted. It begins with the emergence of Islam, the way power, politics and survival  in those early days created different beliefs. It looks at the different interpretations of the Qur'an (students are advised to get several translations so that they can compare) and the various beliefs that emerged around the basic document. All this is traced through to the present time to help delineate current attitudes. The focus is on women, but you can't understand that without the rest. This is a truly genuine university course of the older type,  By the end, you will have had a basic education in Islamic studies, not just women in Islam.

I was fortunate enough to do university level history in a past age, one of fewer choices but greater capacity for depth, one before the vocational and the need for immediate return became so dominant. All my courses were full year courses, not modules.

In first year, History I covered prehistory to the fall of the Western Roman Empire.In second year, my pass course covered European History from the fall of Rome to the Council of Trent. My honours course covered the English Reformation. In third year, my pass course was Modern European history, with the honours course focused on the American Revolution. In my honours year I took prehistory, philosophy of history  and Australian history plus the obligatory thesis, in my case on the economic structure of traditional Aboriginal life.  So I have done just the type of broad studies IPA wants.

Sadly, or so it seems to me, those days have gone and will not come back. Here the IPA report is a hindrance, not a help, to those seeking change, for it does not address the real issues.

History is no longer seen as a core discipline.  As a consequence, and as Professor Trevor Burnard points out:

 History gets funded, along with English and Philosophy, at a lower rate than any other subject as a result of Australia’s peculiar policy of funding subjects at different levels depending on supposed cost of delivery and perceived social benefit. The government and student funding per university history student is $12,165. Funding for a student doing Politics is $16,591 and for Media $18,979 – much higher than for History even though how students are taught is similar. 

It was the federal government under John Howard that first introduced this funding system, ironically given his supposed enthusiasm for History as a subject. And Simon Birmingham has shown no sign of wanting to rectify what the Howard government did, in order to provide the resources to teach history effectively.

History Departments and their staff struggle with increasing loads, with the need to reduce costs at a time when overhead costs are rising. They face constant threats as resources are progressively redeployed within corporatised institutions to gain the greatest financial and prestige yield for those institutions.

In a market system within and beyond institutions, they have to attract students to do at least some of their courses, hoping that some of those will be encouraged to go on.  That means packaging courses to attract at least some of the students doing other degrees seen as being more useful or financially rewarding. I may disagree with student or official assessments, I think history and the study of history, is a fundamental and useful building block for just so many things, but few agree with me. To my mind, the remarkable thing about many of the historians in academe that I know is that they still hold to the faith, to the preservation of standards, to a belief in the value of history within the academy.

This, then, is my charge against IPA following this report. At a time when the academic history patient is on life support, the IPA is simply picking over the carcass, wishing to re-arrange the limbs. If the IPA, or Senator Bernadi for that matter, wish to see more studies relevant to the history of Western civilisation, then they need to campaign for more money for history in general. Otherwise, it's all piss and wind.

   

Round the blogging tracks - China Financial Markets, Club Troppo, Darcy Moore's blog with a dash of Milk Maid Marion

I remain bogged down in other writing. I will give a report here when I have a little more progress to report. For the moment, I took the day to revisit my blog list. I really, really need to update this.

On China Financial markets, Michael Pettis asks the questions Does Cutting Taxes on the Wealthy Lead to Greater Growth?.His conclusion:

 Policies that increase income inequality can in some cases lead to higher savings, higher investment, and greater long-term growth. But, in other cases, such policies either reduce growth and increase unemployment or force up the debt burden. What determines which of these outcomes takes place is whether or not savings are scarce and have constrained investment.

I have to say that this strikes me intuitively as very sensible. I wonder what Winton might think? Mind you, to get an answer we might have to drag him a way from his current consideration of Aristotle and happiness!

On Club Troppo, Nicholas Gruen has begun a new series on the use of wellbeing frameworks in policy development, starting with What have wellbeing frameworks ever done for us: Part One. I must say that I was puzzled when the Australian Treasury adopted, or seemed to adopt, this approach, something that Nicholas discusses in his first post. I just couldn't see what it might mean in any practical way.

On his blog, Darcy Moore's MyData: Personalising the Curriculum addresses the question of the use of personal data in teaching or of teaching about personal data. I actually found the post a little confusing. Its quite an interesting post, but seems to me to mix quite different things together: one was the need for students to be aware of and educated about their personal data and the way in which it might be used; a second thread was the use of that data and the issues surrounding it as a broader teaching tool.

The post left me a little depressed. There are some important issues here, but it reminded me just how complex life has become in general andfor young people in particular.

Changing directions, over at The Milk Maid Marion, Marion complains Don’t call me a “female farmer”, I am just a farmer. She wonders about the prevalence of women only agriculture groups.

What am I missing? Why do women flock to special female-only groups and why do so few of us turn up to broader industry events? 

What do you think? Are female-only ag forums important to make women feel comfortable expressing ourselves or do they simply reinforce a perception that we’re somehow not able to perform in mixed company?  . 

I actually think she has a point, although the comments picked up the other side. One of the things Marian expressed reservations about was the Museum of Victoria exhibition, Women of the Land that displays "objects and audio-visual stories that collectively make up the first official documentation of women's contribution to Australian agriculture." The exhibition is an outcome of the Invisible Farmer project subtitled "The invisible farmer: the forgotten history of Australian country women". The ABC story on this project begins:

Australian farming women have been on the land as long as men, but they’ve been largely ignored by the history books. This is despite their significant contribution to the rural economy

I bristled a little at all this. Before going on, this is the photo used to illustrate the ABC story. Comments follow the story.

This 1944 photo of a woman riding is used to illustrate women in agriculture. But if you look at it closely you will see that it does nothing of the kind. It's actually a very gendered posed shot. Look at the sandals and the tie.Now consider her riding the mower in that outfit.

This shot of Aunt Kay picked almost at random was probably taken a little later but certainly in the 1940s. It's a more realistic shot

Roles in agriculture were gendered as were inheritance patterns. However, the idea that farming women were in some ways invisible strikes me as a bit of a travesty. They certainly weren't invisible to me growing up. In fact, they struck me as fiendishly practical and competent.

Nor were their roles limited to "domestic duties". They did whatever was required to support what were in most cases family businesses. Far more women managed properties than their equivalents in other sectors of the economy.  

There is a balance issue in all this, of course. In agriculture as in other parts of Australian life, there have been shifts in roles and attitudes. However, I do wonder if the particular focus in this exhibition and the preceding Invisible Farmer project is partly a reflection of how much has been forgotten in an increasingly urbanised city focused Australia, as well as current preoccupations.

Its not possible to research and write in the areas that I do without being very conscious of the role of women in agriculture.The material is all there.  

This last sidetrack has exhausted my time. I will have to finish here.

Sydney's growth problems - how do we create a focus on the local

Greater Sydney with the three proposed metropolitan centres. To the north the megalopolis is merging with the growing Lake Macquarie Newcastle conurbation, to the south Wollongong, while to the south-east  the Sydney and Canberra growth spheres are increasingly entwined.  . 

By its nature, Sydney is dominated by the big. Big infrastructure projects such as WestConnex or Sydney Light Rail are are required to shift people across a sprawling  megalopolis that just keeps extending its reach. Big developments are the most profitable way of  housing the growing population. Big institutions are required, or seen to be required, to deliver services in the most cost-effective fashion. Big planning is required to create, develop and maintain the three metropolitan centres seen as required for the growing megalopolis.

I have argued for many decades that we need effective decentralisation to ease population pressures on Greater Sydney and other major metropolitan centres. That remains my view, although I think that failures in Government policy and action over the last six decades means that the horse has bolted to a substantial degree. We need to focus as well on what makes cities liveable in the face of growth.

In a piece in The Conversation,  This is what our cities need to do to be truly liveable for all, Julianne Rozek and Billie Giles-Corti outlined their prescriptions for what made for liveable cities centering on walkability, public transport and public open space. They also suggested that a liveable city was greater than the sum of its parts. I don't disagree in broad terms, but I thought that the thing that the things that they missed from their analysis were people and locality.

They spoke and modelled the capital cities, and they only addressed those cities, as if they were in some ways organic wholes. They are not, or at least the bigger cities are not. They are agglomerations of different parts. People move and focus on different tracks and areas depending on their locality, work,  life style and transport availability.

Macro spatial modelling of the type provided in the Rozek/Giles-Corti piece is useful in guiding higher level policy development, but does not not of itself assist you in drilling down to more local patterns.

To illustrate, if you map the movement patterns of someone living in Sydney's Eastern Suburbs, you will find that their movements are actually quite constrained with the exact pattern depending upon residence and their stage in life.They rarely go over the Bridge, rarely go south of the airport, rarely go beyond Olympic Park. This type of pattern is replicated in other areas.

These patterns are also reflected in the customer patterns for local businesses.Some businesses are purely local, others draw traffic from wider areas. The second generally but not always depend upon the local availability of parking.

But the Eastern Suburbs itself is a large area made up many localities each with its own patterns. It is also a descriptor whose boundaries have been shifting with time, reflecting social, economic and demographic change, something that I explored in a 2008 post, Saturday Morning Musings - everchanging Sydney. That post also explored changes in adjoining areas, providing a snap shot of the changes then taking place within parts of Sydney.

All this means that you can't just say Eastern Suburbs or treat it as an entity. If you are to understand the changing texture and pattern of local life you have to drill down further, to look at localities and their changing patterns.The same conclusion holds for other parts of the Sydney  megalopolis.

Site of the Green Square development. By 2030, Green Square is expected to house 61,000 new residents, 22,000 new workers. 

The only way to do this, to actually understand patterns, is to walk the streets and observe at different times of the day.

When I wrote the 2008 post, the Victoria Park development on the eastern edge of  Green Square (there are at least two Victoria Park developments in Sydney) did not exist. Now  youngest lives in a high rise that forms part of evolving residential complexes that includes major supermarkets, gym, convenience stores and a variety of food outlets.

This is metro territory suited to those who like the density on metro living, the convenience of just popping downstairs when they need something. The human streetscape is younger, predominantly Asian in appearance. Dogs abound, crowding the limited green space. It's quite a vibrant landscape, although you don't have to walk far down adjoining streets before the people largely disappear from the street.  

How all this will evolve is unclear to me. Schools are already overcrowded, while the road connections are struggling to carry the increasing traffic.There is one railway station (Green Square) on the western edge, over a kilometer from the present furthest points which tends to favour bus usage. The related developments that now extend into Rosebery with their downstairs shops are effectively separated from Victoria Park and Green Square by Epsom Road. The new Green Square town centre will be large, but I can't get a real feel at this point as to how it might actually work in dynamic terms. The descriptions seem to me to be too academic, too abstract. I can't work out what this new community will look like in twenty years' time, how the flows might work.

 Green Square is one example of the change processes underway. Thursday night I went out to Homebush to watch the Australian women's and men's hockey teams play. That drive took me in part along the route I used to travel to work in 2008. Signs of WestConnex construction were in many places along the route. I hadn't actually realised what a big project it was, nor the extent to which it was creating disruption and changing local patterns. Then on Friday night I went to a belated celebration for eldest's thirtieth at Walsh Bay in the city . She was in Copenhagen on her birthday. This time it was the Sydney Light rail construction that was everywhere.

In Sydney's growth problems - light rail, Kingsford, Pagewood and Daceyville, I spoke of the changes taking place as a consequence of the light rail. Here we are again dealing with fundamental changes to local life brought about more macro policies. Change is inevitable, sometimes it can be good, but it does break down the cohesion of local life.

One of the related problems is that the perceived need to have larger local government areas for more effective service delivery is creating entities that no longer reflect their localities or indeed community of interest. This problem is especially acute where council boundaries subdivide actual or potential communities.

In  NSW Council elections: the strange case of Bayside I looked at that strange amalgam, the new Bayside LGA. If you look at the map there, you will see that Rosebery is now in Bayside. Just to the south, Green Square now lies in the City of Sydney. To the east, the expressway to the airport separates the City of Sydney from Randwick City Council. To the south east, Gardners and Bunnerong Roads separate Randwick City and Bayside Councils.

This must all be eye-glazing stuff for some one who does not know Sydney. However, my point is that community in the Sydney  megalopolis is affected by local government with its changing boundaries that actually divide local communities of interest. Further, the mechanisms for cooperation between councils appear fragmented. My own area does have an umbrella local government grouping, the Southern Sydney Regional Organisation of Councils, but this is so large that it really has little relevance to more local concerns.

Trying to amplify a little, I live in Bayside, but my daily activities take me into Randwick and Sydney City Council areas, so I am affected by three Council as well as State and Federal Government decisions.

The discussion in comments on Saturday Morning Musings - the obike challenge triggered the thought that there was a large area of flatter land covering most of Pagewood, Daceyville, Kensington, Eastlakes, Mascot, Rosebery, Alexandia and Surrey Hills that could be logical local travel bike country. There are some problems with the major drags, but it wouldn't take a lot of infrastructure work in areas such as signage and places to park bikes to make it physically possible. That would then add to the texture and civility of local life. The difficulty is, however, that it would require cooperative action from three councils plus the State Government, each with their own plans, priorities and decision making processes. I can't see that happening.

So pulling this discussion together, if we are to enhance locality, livability and the texture of life in megalopolis's such as Sydney, we have to find a better way of focusing on the smaller areas that make up the core of life which are presently neglected in the big is better institutional approach.    

Saturday Morning Musings - the obike challenge

Photo Southern Courier: bikes. Coogee, Sydney 

A month or so back I suddenly noticed these yellow bikes sprinkled around the area where I live. They literally just appeared. One day they were absent, the next day they were everywhere just sitting on the pavement Each had a helmet attached in some way; safety helmets are presently obligatory in Australia. A little later, a red variety appeared.

Over the next few weeks, I saw them spread around adjoining streets, just parked on the footpath or leaning against a power-pole or a bus shelter.  I even saw some Asian students from the University actually riding them.

Investigating, I found that they came from two companies, obike and Ready Go. The dockless business model was a simple one. To use the bike, you needed to download an app and pay a small deposit. Then you could select a bike, use the app to communicate with the company. They would send a signal unlocking the bike. When you reached your destination, you parked and locked the bike there. You were then charged a small fee for the time used. The GPS function on the bike allowed the companies to track the bikes.

I found the concept attractive, somehow beguiling. It would be nice to hop on a bike and go for a ride or pick one up at the shopping centre and use it to bring my shopping home without worrying about the hassle of actually owning a bike.

When I went to Copenhagen on my first visit to see eldest I saw a real bike culture of a type I hadn't seen since childhood. I became enamored with the idea, although I wasn't blind to the practical realities in Australia with its differing geography, streetscape and regulatory landscape that effectively discourages bikes.

Incidentally, even eldest has succumbed to the Copenhagen bike craze, buying a bike in June.

I was curious as whether she she had actually ridden much since that first wobbly start. She has been back in Australia briefly, so at dinner last night I asked her. She has indeed kept biking, pedaling most days to work, a process that takes less time than public transport.

Copenhagen is different to Australia. Its flatter, you can apparently ride without a safety helmet, while bikes are parked everywhere. There are problems with bike parking and abandoned bikes, but they appear relatively minor.

In the weeks after I first saw the new bikes, they spread into the side streets. I saw bikes just dropped on the nature strips. I saw at least one case of a bike being vandalised as a person smashed the lock. I didn't know what was happening, it was just somebody banging at the bike, until he got on and rode away. Walking over to where the bike had been, I found the smashed lock on the ground.

I also noticed that the bike helmets were vanishing, presumably stolen, making them illegal to ride. I had wondered on this once once I saw the helmets loosely attached to the bike.

Photo Southern Courier: bikes. Coogee, Sydney 

Bikes concentrated in spots.It's a downhill run from Randwick to Coogee. The cost of bike hire is cheaper than the bus. People would take a bike down and then take a bus back, leaving a growing concentration of bikes at the Coogee end.

I saw an increasing number of media stories about problems. This is one example, this a second. Councils (and not just in Sydney) started to become very concerned.about dumped and sometimes vandalised bikes as well as bike clutter, seeking new regulations and controls.

Today when I went for my walk I saw only three obikes, two vandalised. I really would like the obike system to succeed, although the odds are against it. It requires too many cultural, infrastructural and institutional changes.
.      

Byzantium or Constantinople revisited

I came across this reconstruction of the city of Constantinople or Byzantium, later Istanbul,  in 1200 AD via Vivid Maps. I hadn't seen this site before, but it is worth a browse because it does contain some interesting maps. The original map comes from the Byzantium1200 website. The Byzantium 1200  project aims to create computer reconstructions of the Byzantine Monuments located in Istanbul as of the year 1200 AD. This, too, is worth a browse.

By 1200, Constantinople (the capital of the Byzantine or Eastern Roman Empire) was reduced in size, but it remained the largest and wealthiest city in Europe, a position it had occupied since the mid fifth century. The city was protected by massive walls that remained unbreached for 900 years before the city was taken in 1204 by the Crusader armies of the Fourth Crusade.

Looking back at past posts, the following is a somewhat random selection linked in some way to the city or the Byzantine Empire:

• March 1, 2008 Saturday Morning Musings - Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian
• December 18, 2008 Byzantium, Turtledove and the power of imagination in history
• December 20, 2008 Saturday Morning Musings - Byzantium, ARIA and Australian public policy
• December 29, 2008 Cultural change and indigenous Australia
• January 21,  2009 Byzantium finished
• January 22, 2009 Byzantium, agriculture and the movement of peoples
• October 29, 2010  Rethymno and the complicated history of Crete 

Update on the New Zealand elections

It is eleven days since my last post, one of the longest gaps in the history of this blog even when I have been travelling.

The almost final election results in the New Zealand election confirm Winston Peters and New Zealand First as king-makers.  Either National or Labour/Greens in combination could form government with New Zealand First support. Australians would find this position unstable given the apparent belief in this country that stable government requires one party to have a clear majority. Even here that's a bit silly since the Liberal Party generally can't rule without National Party support.

In The New Zealand case, some form of coalition or power sharing is the norm. This can create instability, but New Zealand Government has been noticeably more stable than the Australian equivalents in recent years. Wayne Mapp has an interesting piece on the coalition process in the New Zealand Herald.

 Looking back, the last full post I did on the New Zealand elections was in 2008, Sunday Essay - New Zealand elections 2008.

There were several interesting features about that election. The first was the then electoral decimation of New Zealand First. Now Mr Peters is back with a vengeance. The second was the success of the Mäori Party in winning all the Mäori seats. This election saw Labour take all those seats. The third was the commentary that the election had seen the collapse of the minor parties with the primary exception of ACT New Zealand and the Greens. Exactly the same comments have been made this time,

In 2008, seven parties got at least one seat, this time it's down to five, with ACT just hanging on to one electoral seat. Labour and National remain as the lead choices for primary governing party. The Greens are unable to win electoral seats, but retain enough broad support to just hold their position in the mixed proportional system. I say just hold because their electoral support in 2017 seems no different from 2008. I haven't checked all the results since. Then there is scope for another populist party.

Interestingly, only the main parties now seem able to win electoral seats with the one ACT exception. The others depend upon their capacity to attract a national vote at 5% or above, the minimum necessary to get list candidates into Parliament without an electorate seat.

This creates very different dynamics to Australia in that the strategic aim is to get that 5%. There is less point in maximising your electorate vote if it comes at the cost of a lower national vote.