On fashion, baggy pants and a thirty year old shirt

Photo: Clare goes bush. I would hate to think that I had brought my daughters up to be wimps. And, yes, the photo does have a very loose connection to this story!

In response to comments from blogging friends on my last post, I do wear baggy pants and do not follow clothing fashions. Rather, I wait for clothing fashions to come back to me.

I wore an old shirt today. Still in good condition, it went with a suit that I bought in Canberra. A 28 year old colleague commented on the new shirt, and I had to explain that it was two years older than her.

Now how on earth does all this link to the picture?

In an over-protective age in which the words "risk minimisation" and "risk management" are all the go, a world in which informed consent procedures associated with a simple school camp now rival those associated with major surgery, I have tried to give my girls continued access to what I see as the real world.

Both girls have been dirty and tired, both have lit fires in the backyard, both have had at least some exposure to the country, both have been allowed to stretch their wings. Dee and I have gritted our teeth sometimes, but so far it seems to have worked.

No-one can give them access to the world I had. That world is gone. Apart from anything else, so many of the things that I did are now illegal or have been removed for fear of public liability. Others have been crowded out by increased population. Today we live in a world of, from my viewpoint, severely limited freedoms.

But children must be given freedom to grow as best they can within the increasingly constricted limits set by modern society. And part of this involves the freedom to refuse to accept current fashions.

Postscript

Lexcen wrote:

I like the pic of your backyard. Very trendy indeed. Native gardens must be back in fashion because of the drought.

This comment struck my sense of whimsey. Think of the problems I must have faced in getting the necessary council approvals to transform my suburban back yard. And the engineering challenges. And all just to give my girls the required outdoor experience!

Bebo, MySpace and Facebook - and a dedicated follower of fashion

I suppose that I am a dedicated follower of fashion. But with a lag!

My daughters started with Bebo. Then they migrated to MySpace. I watched this with curiosity but without any action. Then they moved to Facebook.

In this case, I actually joined Facebook to have a look but with no intention of doing anything. Within five minutes I received an invitation from eldest daughter to become friends. Now which father could resist this? Then youngest did likewise. So now I am experimenting.

During the week there was a newspaper story talking about the growth of Facebook and the progressive aging of MySpace, aging in the sense that older people are making increasing use of MySpace while the younger migrated to Facebook.

This got me wondering about social networking tools and, more specifically, what made them rise and fall.

In part for work reasons, in part personal interest, I suppose that I have experiemented with most of the networking tools from wikis to Google and Yahoo groups to LinkedIn to blogs to Plaxo and now Facebook. Among other things, this has left a sort of electronic profile litter splashed across the web, something that I have to do something about at some point.

Some things have not really worked at all, some have worked to a point, some have worked but then stopped working.

The obvious key is the time/value trade-off. All these things take time. Time is short, so people will participate only so long as they feel that they are getting value for their time.

I know that this seems self-evident, but it does explain why things rise and fall. Certainly among the young I think that it explains the rise in popularity of Facebook.

Facebook has clean lines, so its easy to read and use. It's highly interactive, something that is important to our tribal young - and to some of their elders! It also has lots of gimmicks, although here I think that there is a potential problem because of the rise of clutter.

On the other hand, it is not as good for longer communication. This may well explain why MySpace has become popular among some adults - it is good, for example, in keeping families in touch over distance.

Fashion will always be important in attracting people. But once we extract the fashion element, we come back to the use of these things as tools. Now this is where I stand at present.

As a dedicated if lagged follower of fashion, what do I want to keep across my now very substantial electronic footprint? What is of real value given my very constrained time? How do I manage it all?

Legal Risks of Blogging

There have been a couple of occasions in the last few months when I have felt that comments on this blog were in danger of crossing a legal line. In one case, I gave an explicit warning in response to a comment.

I have a strong free speech policy on this blog. I will never reject a comment just because I disagree with it. But I am also conscious that this blog is a publication and is bound by the laws in the same way as any other publication.

I mention this because The Local has just had a very good post dealing with this issue, including two current law cases against Australian bloggers.

Postscript

Legal Eagle had a very good post in this area that also brought out another issue, comments on bulletin boards etc.

A View from Misrule on the uses of blogging

Interesting post on the Misrule blog about the use (and abuse) of blogging that is relevant to all of us who think of our blogs in part as professional writing.

Morning Musings

I do like the early mornings. There are no disruptions, and I love the changing light. My only problem is the cats, who do insist on sitting between me and the computer screen.

I have decided not to do the follow up post on the reconciliation issue this morning. I want more time to think about it, and in any case I have a number of other things to check and write about.

A little while ago, I started the habit at the start of each week of featuring a new set of my favourite blogs on the side bar. I like this because it gives me a reason for rechecking what people are saying. My only problem is that I cannot remember just which blogs I have so far featured! I suppose should keep a list, but, hey, nobody else is going to remember either except, perhaps, the person featured.

Congratulations, by the way, to Legal Eagle on her fifteen minutes of fame. The Age article she refers to explains something that I had been wondering about, the sudden stoppage in posts on the Junior Lawyers Union blog. I found this blog very useful in giving me a different perspective on things.

A Little Later

Just back from dropping Helen at the Belvoir Street Theatre. No, she is not going to the theatre. It's just the meet point for those taking the girls to a gym competition. On the way back, I actually noticed the Juice and Java Lounge for the first time, the place where Neil spends a fair bit of time.

I have loaded Livewriter to test as Neil suggested. However, all the software I now have on this old machine is making it all very cluncky.

Interesting discussion last night with Helen that shows just how pervasive vocational training has become. Helen has been asked to do her judge's certificate in rhythmic gymnastics to go with her initial coaching certificate. They want her to do this so that she can do a wider range of things.

Helen is a bit reluctant simply because the pay is so low as compared, for example, to bar work. Here too you need a certificate, in this case RSA or Responsible Service of Alcohol. Once you have this initial jobs are easy to find. Then, once you have some experience, you can pick and choose.

All of these entry level qualifications come with a price. This is not high, but is still a barrier for some kids. This is where old golden arches is so good. Their systems allow younger kids to get initial income and also gain some work experience.

I suppose one could ask why so many kids have to work, why modern Australia places so much emphasis on kids working to the point that we have one of the highest school age working proportions in the world. We have to accept, I think, that it's just a reality, one supported by most parents and the kids themselves.

Still Later

Another run, this time to get some panadol. I had set myself a target this morning of getting certain things done by 9am to allow me to do some gardening. It's now coming up on 9, and I am still no where near finished.

Much, Much Later

After another interruption I finally gave up and did my gardening. Now for a beer and to finish this post.

One of the problems with my present life style is that I cannot find the time for things I like. Like cooking and gardening. The garden is a mess, although I am trying to do something.

All I did this morning was to weed the immediate kitchen garden bed, this is just outside the back door and has the herbs. Even when to busy to garden, I do try to keep the herbs alive because they are so useful in cooking. And I love the smell.

Then I transplanted two tomato plants, I have had half a dozen growing in small pots. Then I mulched the kitchen bed. I am a lazy gardener. I always mulch because it reduces weeding and watering. It also helps the soil.

I do not have a lot in at the moment, but enough to give me an illusion of progress.

Herbs: mint, rosemary, oregano, marjoram, thyme, coriander, sage. Some silver beet, enough to give me a few leaves all the time. I love silver beet. Unfortunately I am the only person in the family who does!

A few lettuce varieties at an early stage. I will try to plant another lot next weekend, and then more a few weeks after that. There are so many varieties of leaf vegetables now that regular small plantings mean that we do not have to buy them at all. I also have a few red onions in, again for salads.

Then there are the two tomatoes, with the others still to transplant. My family also wants me to plant Roma and the cherry variety. I hope to do so in due course.

As I said, not a lot. For example, I have not yet planted beans. This is dumb. Again, regular small plantings can keep us in beans all the time. And beans fresh from the garden beat the store variety every time.

Well, enough for now.

Belshaw's Animal Meme

Photo: the Australian Kelpie.

I am still not sure about memes. But just to keep Legal Eagle happy.

An interesting animal I had

Just at the moment we have, I think, eight cats in resident. Two of our own, plus next door's and her kittens. This excludes Grey Tom who tries to live in out back yard (he is here as I write) despite our efforts to chase him away because he chases our lot.

Here we lost our favourite, Jack, who we dearly loved because he was more like a dog. Wanted to go for walks, for example. Jack now lives down the road. We know he is there, but have not tried to get him back this time because of Grey Tom.

Who says cats are bright? They are dumb apart from their ability to manipulate their custodians. Now dogs, dogs are bright. Which brings me to my point

Rover. How do I describe him? Well, to begin with, he was not a town dog.

Kelpies are farm animals, bred as sheep and cattle dogs. They like order, discipline.

Rover fitted this mould. There was nothing he liked more than rounding up our grandfather's chooks into two groups based on breed, then lying (panting) in the centre waiting for one to dare to move.

Fences? Tell me about them. Rover could go over a tall wire fence by jumping, getting his claws in, then scrambling up and over.

We lost Rover while on holidays. He had been sent back to my Aunt and Uncle's place, got bit by a snake, and died.

An interesting animal I ate

Roasted sparrow while travelling as a twenty year old to Northern Thailand on the train. Too bony.

An interesting thing I did with or to an animal

Mmm! Being chased as a young child by an angry goose around the same size as me. They are fearsome!

An interesting animal at the museum

This has to be the dinosaur at the Sydney museum.

An interesting animal in its natural habitat.

Snakes, or possibly bull ants. Not sure here.

On a hot Saturday afternoon many years ago I went for a walk.

We had gone out to a friend's property and I was bored. Snake after snake crossed the track. After a six foot brown I retreated.

Bull ants are smaller, but they have a very nasty bite. I have not been bitten by a snake. I have by a bull ant.

Australia's Confusion with Culture

One thing I have noticed in discussion in Australia across a broad spectrum of issues is the degree of confusion that appears to exist about the meaning of the word "culture". I thought that I would make a brief comment as much to clarify my own thinking as anything else.

When I first did prehistory we were taught simply that culture was nurture, not nature. In other words, all the things that we learned to do. Defined in this way, culture is a very broad concept. Because prehistory is concerned with physical remains - digging through the rubbish dumps of the human past as one archaeologist put it - culture, the differences between cultures, the patterns of cultural change are all linked to material evidence of what we do, how we do it.

This broad meaning of culture exists, too, in management theory. Organisational culture is often defined simply as the way we do things round here.

In teaching groups and teams as part of Frontline Management Training I tried to make the point that every group developed its own culture. In formal curriculum terms this lead to the point that a team was a directed group. However, I also wanted to get across a point that the process of cultural creation and maintenance was a natural part of any group or team all the way up to the huge modern organisation. To be really effective, you have to know how to work the culture.

This type of thinking came through in my role as a change agent, a role inextricably linked with cultural change. Most new brooms in fact fail. Those who are most effective link their approach to the existing history and culture of the organisation, treating this not just as an impediment but also as an aid.

Anybody who has studied culture or who has been involved with it in a practical sense soon learns a few things.

The first is that most human beings are quite capable of combining multiple cultures and cultural allegiancies within themselves. These may even conflict, a conflict that can be ignored until something brings it into prominence.

The second thing is that we all select groups and cultures that we are comfortable with unless events force otherwise.

One of the readings in today's NSW Higher School Certificate English paper was an excerpt from Geraldine Brooks. Reporting on her experiences of living in a small village in Virginia, she said in part:

You live differently in a small place. I had been a city person all my life: my homes had been in the dense urban tangles of Sydney, New York, Cairo and London. Though each of those cities is very different, I was much the same in all of them. People say cities breed acceptance of diversity, but I didn't learn that lesson there. It took a village to teach me tolerance and a measure of tact.

My wife, a Sydney Eastern Suburbs girl, found the same thing when she first moved to Armidale. It was not that Armidale was narrow, just that she had to mix with people with very different views. Certainly I have been forced to exercise tolerance since I returned the favour by moving to Sydney.

Because we select groups that we are comfortable with, it becomes very easy to forget or fail to recognise that the cultural attributes you support may not be shared by others. This was one of the messages I was trying to get across in my post comparing the Sydney and New England electorates.

The third thing is that cultures change all the time under the influence of events. Yes, there are continuities, I will discuss this in a moment, but there is also change. Changes that strengthen the group are absorbed relatively easily. Changes that affect attitudes, values, world views, happen much more slowly. When the pace of change becomes a threat, as happened in Australia during the first half of the nineties, you get a reaction.

This brings me to my last point, the longevity of certain cultural traits.

A US sociological study I read many years ago, I do not remember the reference, compared two suburbs in a US city. One was highly functional, the other highly disfunctional, yet both had begun in an apparently similar way. The study's conclusion was that the difference went back to differences in the establishment process, differences whose influences continued.

Now link all this to the discussion on our relations with Australia's indigenous peoples.

There is no doubt that traditional life was highly sophisticated and organised. Because there appears to be some doubt about this in some peoples' minds, I have started a post on the New England blog discussing Aboriginal economic life in New England at the time of European intrusion.

That life was not static in cultural terms, now was it uniform across the country. So when, as appears often to be the case, people start talking about traditional "Aboriginal" culture I want to know what they mean.

The arrival of the Europeans had a dramatic and adverse effect on traditional Aboriginal life, an effect that varied over time and across the country. Again, I do not think that there can be any argument about this. It is simply a statement of fact.

The first problem that I do have with some of the discussion is that it appears to suggest that the indigenous cultures vanished. They did not, they simply changed.

Now it may be, I think that it is, that the changes meant that traditional life was no longer possible. However, elements of that life certainly continued, now joined by new elements. This links to my point about the continuity of culture.

I feel that this process of change has, at least to my mind, been poorly charted. I need to know more. But I can surmise some things.

To begin with, the kinship, exchange and cooperative characteristics of traditional life carried over. This has many advantages, but it also has problems.

In 1970 I remember studying development economics for my masters in economics at the Australian National University. We looked at Fiji. A key point was the way in which the kinship and mutual obligation systems created fundamental problems for the development of indigenous Fijians. This is true for Australia's indigenous people.

Now here I would make two points.

First, cultures have to change or pay a price. That price is decline and ultimate extinction.

The second is the need for objective observation. Without this, none of us know what we are dealing with.

One of my personal heroes is Raymond Firth. One of that brilliant group of New Zealand intellectuals that made such a contribution to western thought, Firth was arguably the outstanding social anthropologist of the 20th century.

One of his key points as I understand them was the need for objective observation to understand and record. Being objective in observation does not mean being objective in a personal sense. It means simply that you try to prevent your own biases intervening in your professional analysis.

I won't go on at this point, except to note that I do try to follow what I see as Firth's approach on indigenous issues. And in this context I need a lot more information.

Postscript - Saturday Morning 20 October

My word, this post has already generated some useful comments. My especial thanks to Lexcen for pointing me in the direction of the Freeman/Mead controversy. I had forgotten this, and I found the reminder intensely interesting for a number of reasons.

By way of background to readers who may not be aware of this, Margaret Mead became perhaps the most famous anthropologist of the twentieth century because of her writings on sexuality among young women in Samoa. Dr Derek Freeman later challenged her conclusions, igniting a global controversy that spread well beyond the discipline of anthropology itself. Nothing like sex to spark interest!

Without debating the rights or wrongs of the case, the controversy centred on the the relations in anthropology between the observer and the observed in interpreting cultural matters, and hence bears directly upon the point I was making in this post.

Did Mead's informants lie to her? Did she allow her own perceptions and values to affect not just the questions she asked, but the way in which she interpreted the answers? And, in any case, how does the very presence of the anthropologist distort cultural patterns?

Conversely, to what degree were Dr Freeman's observations affected by his own close relations with Samoans now aware of Mead's writings? Did the adoption of Christianity itself lead to another distortion?

These questions are all relevant in an Australian context. As I outlined in a post on the Australian anthropologist Malcolm Calley, Australian anthropologists have been very important in raising interest in indigenous issues when the matter was still being largely ignored by other professions, including historians.

I have another interest, too, the New Zealand connection.

In a short series of posts on the History of Australian and New Zealand Thought blog (first post here) I discussed the remarkable story of some of the early New Zealand economists.

This extends to anthropology, for the two were linked. Here I have already talked about Raymond Firth. Just as in economics there was a people chain that created a remarkable body of work for such a small country, so there was in anthropology.

My thanks to all my current contributors for making my early Saturday morning so very interesting.

World Youth Day, the Jockey Club and the Roman Catholic Church - a very Sydney story

Next year, the Roman Catholic Church will be holding World Youth Day in Sydney. The Pope will be coming, and up to 500,000 people will attend an open air mass to celebrate the event. But here there is a problem.

The plan is to hold it at Royal Randwick, Sydney's premier race track. But the Australian Jockey Club, the lessors, have problems with this. I have been conscious of the dispute between the Church and Club, but I now see from an article in the Sydney Morning Herald that the problem is getting worse.

In Australia racing is a religion. It appears that the leaders of the racing religion and the Catholic prelates are on a serious collision course. In the meantime, the Sydney (aka NSW) Government appears to be sitting on the fence hoping that the problem will go away.

I have no idea of the rights and wrongs of all this. But it is a rather nice story that deserves wider coverage!

Walkley Award Finalists Announced

"Australia's journalists know that winning a Walkley is a reason to celebrate. It is the recognition by one's peers that special initiative deserves a special reward. To the winner it means all those years of training and being barked at by demanding editors were not entirely in vain".- John Hurst, author of The Walkley Awards

This year's finalists for the Walkley Awards have been announced. You can find the full list here.

The Walkley's are Australia's to journalism awards for print, radio and TV but not, yet, for the internet.

The Walkleys were established in 1956, with five categories, by Ampol Petroleum founder Sir William Gaston Walkley. William Walkley appreciated the media's support for his oil exploration efforts. He envisaged awards that recognised emerging talent in the Australian media. Since then, winning stories have chronicled Australia's history, people and events.

I think that very few Australians now remember Sir William Walkley. That's a pity. I must write something on him at some point. Certainly the Walkely's are an on-going memorial.

Postscript

Over on the New England Australia blog I have put up a story about the connection between Sir William and the New England New State Movement. I wanted to write a second story on a different linkage on this blog but could find no information.

Jim North, my father-in-law, was both president and secretary of the Australian Journalist's Association. Because of the linkage between Sir William and the AJA I thought that this might be another story. So I searched. Nothing, apart from one story on the sale of the Journalists' Club. This includes the successor union web site.

I think that this is wrong. There were some fascinating people at Jim's retirement dinner including Bob Carr, yet this man who occupied a niche but special place in Australian political and intellectual history has vanished.

As I said in a passing note on Professor Wheelwright, I find it strange that I should find myself trying to rescue and present those on the left and Labor side of politics when their own people have forgotten them.

Teasing Neil - but with a serious point

I have edited this post a little because I felt that it was not enough of a tease, too much of a serious point.

If anyone knows a simple way of inserting tables into blog posts, please let me know. Statistical data in text form becomes very hard to read.

I often tease Neil Whitfield. It's fun, but there is also a serious point.

One of my themes on this blog is the need to recognise variation across Australia, variation that affects life and attitude. Here the Parliamentary Library has recently released census date grouped by electorate that shows some of the variation.

Now Neil lives and votes in the Sydney electorate. My traditional electorate is New England, although I too in fact lived in Sydney until the recent boundary change. So what are the differences between the two? Does it explain why we might differ?

Electorate Overview

For the benefit of my international readers, Sydney is an inner city electorate covering 43 sq.km of inner Sydney around the central business district, in clockwise order from the Harbour it includes Surry Hills, Redfern, Erskineville, Newtown, Camperdown, Annandale, Rozelle, Balmain and Glebe. The electorate also includes Lord Howe Island.

This is blue ribbon Labor country with a strong Green tinge. At the last election, Labor's Tanya Plibersek (a likely future minister) got 44.7 per cent of the vote, the Liberals 28.5 per cent and the Greens 21.6 per cent. After preferences, this translated in two part terms to a Labor vote of 66.4 per cent.

At 58,463 sq.km, New England is a large regional electorate covering the New England Tablelands and part of the Western Slopes. Main towns from south to north include Quirindi, Tamworth, Armidale, Glen Innes, Inverell and Tenterfield.

This was Country Party/National Party heartland until 2001 when the independent New England populist Tony Windsor won the seat. At tle last election, Tony got 57.3 per cent of the vote, followed by the Nats (Trevor Khan, now a NSW MLC) on 18.7 per cent and the Libs on 10 per cent. The Green vote was just 3.3 per cent.

ABC election analyst Antony Green describes Sydney as a very peculiar seat in demographic terms. I would argue that all our electorates have their own peculiarities. But certainly it is very different from New England.

The Stats

In population terms, New England has a population of 130,789, Sydney 151, 941, so Sydney is a fair bit bigger in absolute terms. I found this interesting because the number of actual votes is roughly comparable.

Part of the answer here lies in the migrant proportion of the population - 34.1 per cent of the Sydney population were born overseas, just 6 per cent in New England.

Interestingly, 17.3 per cent of Sydney's population were born in non-English speaking countries as compared to New England's 1.8 per cent. No less than 22.9 per cent of Sydney's population spoke a non English language at home as compared to 2 per cent in New England.

Sydney's population has also been growing far faster than New England's, up14.2 per cent since the last census as compared to New England's 1.9 per cent.

Sydney's faster growth does not come from natural increase.

Sydney at just 4 per cent has the lowest proportion of people under five of any electorate in the country. It also has the lowest proportion - also 4.4 per cent - of those aged 5 to 14 years. It appears that there are not many young families in Sydney. New England, by contrast, comes in at 6.5 per cent for those under five, 14.6 per cent for those between 5 and 14. So New England people are clearly more active breeders.

These stats are reflected in some other numbers.

At just 21.7 per cent, Sydney has the lowest proportion of couple families with dependent children in the country. At 56.6 per cent. it has the highest proportion of couple families with no children in the country. It also has the third highest percentage of lone person households (36.9 per cent) in the country. So Sydney has lots of couples, lots of people living alone, but very few couples with kids.

Now, as we shall see in a moment, New England has an aging population compared to Sydney. Even so, the New England proportion of couples with kids is 33.8 per cent, couples without kids 41.1 per cent. Very different.

Population aging.

Starting with those people aged 15 to 24 years. In this group, Sydney at 17.5 per cent has the third highest proportion in the country. By contrast, 13.3 per cent of the New England is aged 15 to 24 years. So Sydney is clearly attracting young people.

The position becomes even more clear cut when we look at the proportion of people aged 25 to 64 years. Sydney at 66.2 per cent has the highest proportion in the country. By contrast, New England is the seventh lowest nationally at just 49.7 per cent. So Sydney has fewer young, but attracts many more people of working age. New England, by contrast, loses its young.

There are a lot more old New Englanders. Sydney has just 7.9 per cent of its population over 65. The New England figure is 16 per cent. These demographic patterns are reflected in the median age. Sydney at 32 is the 17th youngest electorate in the country, New England at 39 ranks at 118.

These different demographies carry though into other social indicators.

Sydney with just 39.8 percent of the population claiming to be Christian is the least Christian electorate in the country, but not in fact the least religious. Kingston (South Australia) holds this honour. There 30.1 per cent classified themselves as persons of no religion as compared to Sydney's 25.2 per cent.

By contrast, New England at 78.9 per cent is the fourth most Christian electorate in the country, with only 11.2 per cent classifying themselves as having no religion.

Both electorates have very few Muslims, but the proportion in Sydney at 1.1 per cent is far higher than New England's 0.1 per cent.

The pattern changes when we looking at the indigenous population.

Here Sydney had an indigenous population of just 1.2 per cent. By contrast, New England at 6.4 per cent had the ninth highest indigenous proportion in the country.

Differences continue.

Looking at education levels, at 12.6 per cent of the population, Sydney has the second lowest proportion of people in the country whose education is limited to year 10 and below. The New England figure is an astonishing 33.1 per cent.

Measured by weekly incomes, Sydney is the fifth wealthiest electorate in the country, with 44 per cent of families on a weekly income of $2,000 or above. New England is the sixteenth poorest electorate in the country, with only 10.1 per cent of families earning $2,000 or more per week.

Putting this another way, the median weekly family income in New England is $976 as compared to $1,972 in Sydney. In fact, the New England electorates as a whole are generally poor, with New England itself one of the wealthier ones.

Mind you, Sydney pays a lot more for what it gets.

At 58 per cent, Sydney has the highest proportion of its population renting in the country. The New England figure is 27.5 per cent.

Those renting in Sydney pay a lot more. Sydney is the fourth most expensive rental market in the country, with a median weekly rent of $342. By contrast, New England on $136 is the seventeenth cheapest electorate in the country.

Sydney people are also flat dwellers. At 60.4 per cent, Sydney has the highest proportion of flat or unit dwellers in the country. Only 7 per cent of those living in the New England electorate live in flats.

Finally, Sydney has the lowest motor vehicle ratio in the country, with only 17.9 per cent of dwellings having two or more vehicles. The New England percentage is 50.5.

Discussion

So what does all this tell us about Sydney. Is Neil a typical Sydney person? Based on his blog entries, the answer would appear to be yes.

Neil is a-typically older. But he lives in an apartment, presently lives alone but was in a couple with no children relationship, does not have a car, is presently very strongly ALP but with at least a strong tinge of Green in terms of his attitudes on environmental and social issues. In terms of the Sydney political spectrum, Neil is very much in the centre. He also drinks a lot of coffee at cafes - but not, it appears, latte!

And am I a typical New Englander? Based on my own blog entries, the answer would appear to be yes.

I am better educated than the New England average, but then New England in fact includes the education city of Armidale. I live in what is presently a two car house, I belong to the couple with children category, I still describe myself in political terms as Country Party or New England populist.

In terms of the political spectrum, I am left of centre on the New England spectrum, but right of centre on the Sydney equivalent. And I rarely drink coffee in cafes!

Two electorates, two people, some common ground, but also very different views.

The differences are reflected not just in voting patterns, but in fundamental differences in attitude.

I campaign for New England not just because of emotional attachment, but also because I deeply resent the fact that one of the wealthiest areas in Australia in raw resource terms has been subject to such structural disadvantage.

I make no apology for this. I am an unreconstructed New England populist, if one with some perhaps strange tinges because of my family history and personal experiences. But all this leads me to ask different questions, to focus on different things, than Neil.

Neil and I in fact rub along pretty well because we share a common concern in social justice, are interested in many of the same issues including Australia's culture and history. This allows us to play off each other.

However, there is a broader and more serious point.

Even at this superficial level comparing Sydney and New England we can see that there are significant differences between the two seats. Further, the differences are repeated across the country and are, I think, growing.

We all have a tendency to think that our views are in some ways representative of a broader Australian view. This is in fact far from true.

There are nine in the small group I presently work with. Two were born in the UK, one I think in Hong Kong, one in Bosnia, one in India, three in Sydney. I am the only staff member born in Australia outside Sydney.

They are a nice group and I rub along with them pretty well. But I have to remember that as much as ninety per cent of my interests and a large slab of my attitudes fall outside their frame.

Part of this is due to age. I am older. But a large part is due to different experiences.

If we generalise this to Australia, the things that hold us together are our shared institutions including our political system, our shared experiences and our common culture. This is where I see a risk of things breaking down. Increasingly, Australia is marked by divides, by divisions.

I do not want to overstate this. Anybody who has studied Australian history or has mixed around the country knows that there have always been differences. Further, our common culture has proved very resilient.

On the other side, the limited mixing I do across groups and areas, more the research I do into social and cultural trends across the country, suggests to me that we are insufficiently aware of the increasing divergence within Australia.

Divergence is not necessarily bad. I enjoy the growing variety Australia offers. But it can become a problem should the things that unite us break down.

Why we (Australia) need a new compact with our indigenous people

I concluded my last post with this statement:

One outcome from my research and writing, and this was a position that I did not expect to reach, is that I now believe that the creation of a new compact with our indigenous people is the single most important issue facing modern Australia. In my next post I will try to explain why.

A definitional point first.

I have deliberately used the word compact meaning agreement because I think that we need as a people to develop an agreed position across a range of areas. I am also trying to avoid the problems, legal and otherwise, that have been raised by the use of the word "treaty".

Bluntly, we Australians -indigenous and non-indigenous alike - have stuffed things up.

Back in the dim and distant world of the sixties I had no idea that we would end up where we are today.

Then under the influence of Isabel McBryde I had just discovered the wonder and complexity of Australia's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander past. I watched the civil rights movement in the United States. Listening to Charles Perkins speak at the University of New England I absorbed the view that there was not an Aboriginal problem but a European problem because of our treatment of the Aboriginal people. Oceania taught me about mirroring, the way in which Aboriginal people's attitudes to themselves came to reflect attitudes and prejudices in the broader community.

Brian Harrison was doing his thesis on the Myall Creek massacre, so issues associated with black-white relations and the moving frontier were current. The idea of writing from the other side of the frontier fascinated me.

I took all this very seriously. As someone who loved - still does - alternative history, I experimented in my mind with various alternative versions of the past along what-if lines. I started planning a history of New England that would start with Aboriginal settlement.

In all this, I felt and still feel no sense of personal guilt about European settlement. History was all about the movement of peoples. If the British had not settled Australia, the French would have. In Europe, the previous fifty years alone had seen wars and peace settlements that shifted boundaries and forcibly displaced millions of people.

While I felt no sense of guilt about European settlement, I did believe that issues created by European treatment of the Aborigines needed to be addressed. Here, naively as it turned out, I expected certain things to happen.

First, I expected that our Aboriginal heritage would be integrated - merged - in some way with the history and culture of modern Australia. I thought that Aboriginal linkages would become a matter of personal pride in something of the same way as links to Scottish clans. I expected Aboriginal culture and history to be taught in schools as an integral element of the overall curriculum making it accessible to all.

Secondly, I expected education and economic development to bridge the gap in incomes and living conditions between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians. I did not expect this to happen over night, after all Charles Perkins was the first Aboriginal graduate, but I did expect to see accelerating progress. I regarded this as critical.

Finally, and unclearly, as part of the overall process I was interested in the way in which Aboriginal cultures themselves would evolve. I say unclearly because I did not have a clear picture. However, I did expect to see new Aboriginal forms of expression develop that would then flow on into the broader Australian culture.

I may have been naive, but if you had told me in 1967 that in 2007 Aboriginal conditions in some areas would be no better, in fact arguably worse, that something like the NT intervention would take place, I would not have believed you. If you had described to me the current state of discussions on indigenous issues, I would have been appalled.

As I said, we have all stuffed up. The issue now is just what to do about it.

My view is that we have to put the past behind us so that we can move on. If we do not, then it is going to continue as a poison in the Australian community. I use the word poison advisedly. It's not just the scandal associated with the conditions of some of our indigenous peoples. It's also the way in which the ulcer created by the current position affects the way in which we think and talk about ourselves. Among other things, we pick and pick at the ulcer itself.

So I see a compact as a circuit breaker, a way of starting to put the past behind us.

In my next post on this topic I will suggest what might go into such a compact. However, this will be next weekend because I need a solid slab of thinking and writing time.

Postscript:

Just for the record, I made the following comment on an earlier post on this topic:

Neil, I will read your new material with interest. Looking at the blog posts on Howard Aborigines, I checked them again this morning, it's not going to be easy to get any new thinking up. This where Mr Dodson is wise. We are not going to get anywhere if we keep recycling old positions, and that includes my own.

A word to those on both the right and left of politics. Given that your respective positions have not worked to this point, surely it's time to try something new?

We (Australia) need a new compact with our indigenous people

Aboriginal leader Patrick Dodson.

I think that Aboriginal leader Patrick Dodson is a very clever and wise man. In the midst of the furore on Mr Howard's statement about the need for Aboriginal reconciliation, he made the simple point that we should take advantage of the opportunity now opened up. He also suggested that the matter should be discussed with an open agenda and mind through a process of listening and understanding.

I make this point because I have just been on a tour of the blogosphere looking at the responses to Mr Howard's statement. It reminded me, among other things, why I dropped out of discussion on so many public issues because I could not accept the tone and assumptions of what I used to think of as the soft headed left. All this is still there, and it just bores me. I don't want to play in that sand-pit.

So far as I am concerned, while I am interested in Mr Howard's motives, these are irrelevant to the conversation I want to have.

Over the last twelve months or so I have written something close to fifty posts across my blogs, more than I have written on any other single topic, about issues concerned with Australia's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

This stream of posts has in part been a dialogue with myself, an exploration of my own thinking and feelings about a subject that I first became involved with in the sixties through my university studies. But it has also been an exploration of different aspects of indigenous life and history and of the evolution of policy towards our Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders.

My writing was triggered by a key question: how had we got things so badly wrong? How had we gone from a situation in the sixties and seventies where our Aboriginal peoples seemed to be making huge progress from a position of dispossession and deprivation, where there was an excitement about Aboriginal Studies, to a position where reporting about Aboriginal issues was almost entirely negative?

I found my attitudes and ideas changing as I wrote.

To begin with, I came to a better if still imperfect understanding of the systemic nature of discrimination. By this I do not not mean the headline stuff that our kids are taught today. Rather, I am talking about the way in which individual laws and policies sometimes implemented for the best of reasons created barriers to advancement, encouraged deprivation

In trying to understand this, I became frustrated at what I saw as the absence of proper Aboriginal historiography. By inclination and training I am an historian as well as economist. Insatiably curious, I like to understand things. Here I got more and more frustrated.

My writings on indigenous issues have been spread across three main blogs.

This blog has a strong personal, cultural and policy focus. So when I am writing here I try to dig down into the derivation of things.

To do this, I need statistical data. Where do our indigenous people live? What do they do? I need information about people and trends. What are the main streams in Aboriginal art? Can we in fact talk about "Aboriginal" art? Who have been the main Aboriginal writers, artists, actors? Then I need information about the derivation of things. What are the elements and assumptions built into this policy, how did it evolve?

The Regional Living Australia blog tries to tell and sell the story of life outside the metros. This brings me into contact with indigenous issues in a different way. Again, I need information. In writing the series on the Kimberley, for example, I needed to look at the history and structure of the region.

The third blog, New England Australia, is localised.

Here I want to know answers to questions like these: what is New England's Aboriginal population; what are the main Aboriginal language groups; what is the current position of the Aboriginal people across New England; what are the stories of New England's individual Aboriginal peoples; where do Armidale's Aboriginal people come from; what is happening to Aboriginal people in the Northern Rivers as house prices rise?

Three blogs, different focus, same problem. The information, and especially the historical information, that I need to write is often not there. Bluntly, we in the non-Aboriginal community are all so busy fitting and interpreting Aboriginal issues within our own frames that we forget to talk and think about the Aborigines as people and peoples.

I do not want this post to become too long.

What I think that I should do to encourage discussion is to put down my own personal manifesto setting out what I believe should go into a new relationship between Australia and its indigenous people.

One outcome from my research and writing, and this was a position that I did not expect to reach, is that I now believe that the creation of a new compact with our indigenous people is the single most important issue facing modern Australia. In my next post I will try to explain why.

Postscript

You will get some feel for the problems we face in developing new approaches in this area if you look at this post including comments on Larvatus Prodeo and, on the other side, the responses to Rafe's post on Catallaxy. Sort of the left and right of it.

Near the start of this post I spoke about the conversation that I wanted to have. I used the word conversation advisedly. Conversation involves clarifying issues, getting to understand what the other person is saying.

Lexcen's comment on this post is an example of what I call conversation, as is Andrew Bartlett's initial comment on Larvatus Prodeo. I am going to miss Andrew and indeed the Democrats as a whole. For someone like me who is uncomfortable with the venom that can sometimes be found in the major parties, Andrew has been a force for rational and civilised discussion.

I feel, I may be wrong, that there is a growing group of Australians who want to reach a resolution of the problem created by past relations with the Aborigines so that we can all move on as Australians. I do not want to be writing the same type of posts in ten year's time, assuming that I am still around.