Sunday Snippets - NZ earthquakes, Tomorrow when the War began, wild weather

My father was born in New Zealand's Christchurch and I have visited the city many times. The news of the major earthquake there therefore had particular resonance.

In visiting NZ I have always been conscious of the earthquake risk. In 1931, my aunt was teaching at a small one teacher school. She was away for the weekend when an earthquake dumped tons of rubble on the farm house where she had been staying; everyone inside was killed.

Reading the reports, my main feeling was one of relief that, despite the damage, no-one was killed.

Thursday night to celebrate eldest's birthday we all went to see Tomorrow when the War began, based on the first of Australian writer's John Marsden's Tomorrow series of very popular teenage books (over 2.5 million copies sold) that follow the story of a group of teenagers responding to an invasion of Australia.

The first still shows  Corrie and Wllie planning the camping trip that begins the film.

John Marsden's books often have a country and small town background, reflecting his own interests.  In many ways, this runs against current trends in Australia. However, unlike the film Australia, this is modern Australia. His teens are teens, with many of the same types of interests as their more urban counterparts. Further, the country tow/rural setting is central to the plot down from access to farm bikes and equipment to the locale for guerrilla warfare. 

The film has been compared to US film Red Dawn. I hadn't heard of Red Dawn, but don't think that that's an accurate comparison. These are teen books. While adults will enjoy the movie, this is still a young person's film.         

The next still shows the group on the camp.

As you might expect, the film does capture some of the visual beauty and variety of the Australian country. Because I have some knowledge of the country involved, there were a couple of spots where I had to suspend disbelief.  

One of the difficulties with the film for many commentators is that any invasion of Australia necessarily involves one or more Asian countries. The books blur over this a little, but the visual nature of film makes it harder. To manage this, the invading enemy is an unspecified coalition.

Both my girls really loved the books, and I enjoyed them too, although I was sometimes conscious of problems in the back story that I had to put aside to just enjoy the books as books. To add to the connection, youngest also went to a writing camp put on by John Marsden on his farm.

The next shot shows Wirrawee's main street destroyed.  

One of the difficulties the film faced is that John Marsden's readers were potentially very critical, fearful that the film would let down the first book.

Although the film has some weaknesses, we all enjoyed it. At points, the largely young audience broke into roars of laughter at particular side antics during the earlier part of the film.

The suspense is remarkably well done, the cinematography very good.

The next shot shows Ellie, Corrie and Fi fleeing at one point.   

Again, if you stand back and look at it objectively, you can pick holes. However, I wasn't really conscious of these while watching the film.

So far, the film is deservedly scoring very well at the Australian and New Zealand box office. In Australia, it took $A765,830 on its first day. The audience at the cinema we went to was actually a little less than I had expected. I suspect some fans were holding back to see if it would be good.

I do not know the international release dates for the film. It will be interesting to see international takings.

For those who are interested, the stills used in this post come from the film's Facebook page.

Finally in the way of Australia, the latest wild weather across south eastern Australia continues the slow ending of the long drought that has gripped this part of the country. Large areas of Victoria are under water after the state's heaviest single day of rainfall in 15 years. Mind you, under water is a relative concept. We are not talking Pakistan style under water!

In the meantime, purchases of Australian water rights by overseas investors are raising concerns. At $A3 billion, two thirds in NSW, Australia is claimed to have the largest water rights market in the world. That was actually news to me. According to the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, August rainfall across the Basin was very much above average to the highest on record for August. August inflows were in fact higher than those for whole 2006-2007 water year.

Much of the ground is now damp, so that more of the rainfall enters the rivers. It will be interesting to see what happens now. All those water rights purchases may have less value than the buyers had hoped.    

No post today

There will be no post today. I have to go to Newcastle.

Politics, policies and principles

I haven't attempted to analyse all the evolving changes in the drama still gripping Australian politics. There is little point in analysing what it all means until we know the outcomes. The ALP-Green Deal sets out a copy of the agreement between those two parties. Now we have the agreement between the ALP and Tasmanian independent Andrew Wilkie; copy here. Once the country independents make up their minds, we can look at what it all means.

In the meantime, I cannot help being a bit bemused at the way that some columnists have really spat the dummy. Luke Walladge's piece on the ABC's The Drum is an example.

Given that I have a weekly column in the Armidale Express, the second largest newspaper in Mr Windsor's electorate, it was inevitable that I would add my own tuppence worth to all the advice he is receiving. I did so on Wednesday; the columns aren't on line, but I bring them up with a lag on the New England Australia blog. I will publish this one once I have seen the print copy.

Mr Windsor is an experienced politician facing a difficult situation. You either trust him or you don't to make the best judgment he can. I do. So in the first part of the column I argued that Mr Windsor represented the New England constitutional  tradition: he had articulated a set of principles and was attempting to comply with them regardless of immediate partisan positions. To illustrate, I took an example from 1961 when one of his predecessors took action in the House that could have threatened the survival of the then Menzies Government.

I tried to write very carefully here. Really, I was trying to give Mr Windsor a little oxygen, not add to the pressures on him. I know his electorate pretty well after all these years, and there is no doubt that the process has had a polarising effect.

In terms of specifics actions, and based on discussions on my blogs and elsewhere, I began by noting that even including the population growth along the coast, the broader New England had been in structural decline for many decades. No one had addressed this.

My position here won't come as a surprise to anybody who reads my material; I have been hammering this drum for some years.

I then put forward three suggestions based on the discussions that have been taking place among the growing number of new state supporters.

First, we would like him to support the holding of a new constitutional convention to look at the distribution of state and commonwealth powers, as well as ways of facilitating subdivision within the existing Federation. Again, this won't come as a surprise. I have expressed my growing concerns about constitutional problems within the Federation many times.

One of the practical difficulties here is that there is no real consensus: people agree that there are problems, but then go off in totally different directions. A second difficulty is that there is very little discussion on constitutional principles. Rather, there is a series of gut reactions. For example, the Green/ALP agreement provides for the holding of a referendum that wouls, among other things, give local and regional government some formal recognition in the constitution. No-one knows what that really means.

Secondly, we would like him to support the holding of another new state plebiscite within Northern New South Wales. As I wrote, we new staters want this. However, it would also force a focus on New England issues that has been missing since the New State Movement collapsed in the infighting after the 1967 plebiscite loss.

This is a state issue outside Mr Windsor's direct control. However, support from him would help create momentum.

Finally, I suggested that we would like both Mr Windsor and Mr Oakeshott to apply a key test to any specific policy initiatives that might be considered: will the proposal have any real longer term impact on New England development, or is it just a band-aid? We have seen too many of the second, too few of the first.

In asking this question, we would also like both MPs consider broader New England needs.

There are many shared problems across the North that would benefit from being addressed in an integrated way, instead of the fragmented and itsy approach that has applied. Again, this is something that I have written about a fair bit, about the way that current structures and approaches fragment, preventing coordinated action.

In writing, I did not attempt to discuss the Parliamentary process issues that all the country independents have focused on. My own views are unclear here. I would prefer to wait and see. Nor did I put forward any specific spending suggestions, although some of the newspapers in the electorate have,

The regional development policies put forward by both sides in the run-up to the Federal election were quite featherweight. As a specifically New England (Northern NSW) level, they were likely to have very little longer term impact. Further, the generalised policies put forward were likely to have quite differential but hard to determine on-ground impacts.

Given this, it seems best to suggest general tests that Messrs Windsor and Oakeshott should apply.

This is not to imply, however, that these tests should be the only ones applied.

Part of the New England constitutional tradition is effective representation by the MP for his or her electorate. Country voters expect things from their MPs in a way that city folk do not. They are ours regardless of party, and we expect them to remember that.

Part of the tradition, too, is that once elected, MPs become members of Parliament and are expected observe the traditions and values of Parliament. This may have been much tarnished by party politics, but it remains true. Parliament is our first protection against oppression by the executive, whether that oppression is expressed via the divine right of kings or the modern equivalent, the “national interest” as defined by the ruling party.

This means that in their roles as Parliamentarians, MPs must take broader issues into account. They cannot be bound just be the interests of their electorates. This is not easy; conflicts can arise.

If you look at the views expressed by Mr Walladge referred to earlier, you can see one of the difficulties. I quote:

Oh, aren't they charming, these "Independents"? Aren't they just your local, neighbourhood, friendly chaps? With their homespun wisdom and folksy ways, their big hats and suntans and malapropisms. The hicks from central casting. Mr Smith goes to Canberra, indeed, and all them big-city folk are shown up for the treacherous, lecherous, greedy sods they are. Politics is changing, the paradigm is shifting. Demands, demands, demands.

Charming? Friendly? Refreshing? Tell 'em to get stuffed.

Another quote:

This is politics though, after all, and a little bit of intellectual and moral flexibility should surprise none of us. But the flexibility that allows our major parties to bend over backwards to accommodate the views of bigots and lunatics and the politically fraudulent goes far too far.

I am sure that Mr Walladge is writing for effect, to stir. However, his bile does not help sensible discussion. Instead, he has become part of the background static that makes sensible discussion about choices and principles hard to achieve.   

Memories: Brian Birchall, George Crosslé

There were two stories in recent weeks linked to people from my past.

The Sydney Morning Herald carried the obituary of Brian Birchall (1941-2010). Born in Newcastle, Brian worked first as a PMG technician before studying at Newcastle University College and then going to Sydney University to complete his PhD, the first awarded in Philosophy. In 1971, he accepted a position as lecturer in Philosophy at the University of New England; he was to spend the rest of his life in Armidale.

Brian was something of an eccentric who, as the obituary notes, became "a vibrant figure in the UNE landscape. Rather than being aloof, he cultivated friendships with students and contributed both an intellectual vigour and an informed sense of mischief to the university." I think that's pretty right from my own experience. 

In 1981 I went back to UNE to work full time on my PhD. With fond, somewhat nostalgic, memories of student life, I found a much shrunken campus. Somehow during the growth and social change of the 1970s, the dynamism had been lost. Looking around, I found that the Philosophy Society was one of the few remaining student societies, so started attending meetings. This brought me into contact with Brian. Like me, he felt that student life had contracted compared to that he found in 1971. I think that he consciously used his personality and reputation for eccentricity as a tool to try to stimulate thought and activism among students.

In Alex Buzo on George Crosslé, Paul Barratt reprints Alex Buzo's 2000 obituary of Robert (George) Crosslé. I am glad that he did, for George was a remarkable figure. Proudly Irish, he was also an anglophile and a political conservative who wrote regular letters to the Armidale Express in support of causes including the Country Party and New England New State Movement. Yet, when it came to teaching, he was remarkably balanced, concerned to present various views and encourage discussion.

Part of George's impact came from his physical presence. Blind in one eye, he varied a glass eye with an eye patch, something that was fascinating to the young. Part of George's impact also came from his enthusiasm. Concerned, for example, about poor general knowledge in the school, he handed out a voluntary general knowledge quiz requiring a fair bit of work to answer, offering prizes for the best results.

I absorbed my love of history from George, but it was more than that. He also taught me to look at alternative viewpoints. One that stands out in my mind, one that I have mentioned before, is when he set an essay topic on the White Australia policy. I suppose I wrote a fairly safe and conventional response. I still remember George praising one class member who had taken a strong stand against the then policy for his ability to take an alternative view. I learned, then, that it was okay to challenge. 

The ALP-Green Deal

The Australian Greens & The Australian Labor Party (ʹThe Partiesʹ) – Agreement
Between:
The Hon Julia Gillard MP Prime Minister, MP Lalor, Leader of the Australian Labor Party
The Hon Wayne Swan MP
Deputy Prime Minister, MP Lilley, Deputy Leader of the Australian
Labor Party
And
Senator Bob Brown
Senator Christine Milne
Senator for Tasmania, Leader of the Australian Greens
Senator for Tasmania, Deputy Leader of the Australian Greens
Adam Bandt MP ‐elect MP Melbourne, Australian Greens representative in the House
1. Purpose
1.1 This agreement establishes a basis for stable and effective government.
1.2 The Greens will vote with the ALP government to ensure supply.
1.3 The Greens will oppose any motion of no confidence in the government from any non‐Greens
member.
2. Principles
The Parties agree to work together to pursue the following principles:
a) transparent and accountable government;
b) improved process and integrity of parliament;
c) policies which promote the national interest; and
d) policies which address climate change.
3. Goals
The Parties will work together and with other parliamentarians to:
a) Establish a Leaders’ Debate Commission
b) Seek immediate reform of funding of political parties and election campaigns by
legislating to lower the donation disclosure threshold from an indexed $11,500 to $1,000;
to prevent donation splitting between different branches of political parties; to ban
foreign donations; to ban anonymous donations over $50; to increase timeliness and
frequency of donation disclosure; to tie public funding to genuine campaign expenditure
and to create a ‘truth in advertising’ offence in the Commonwealth Electoral Act.
c) Seek further reform of funding of political parties and election campaigns by having a
truly representative committee of the Parliament conduct a national inquiry into a range
of options with the final report to be received no later than 1 October 2011, enabling any
legislative reform to be dealt with in 2012.
i. The Parties note that the Greens are predisposed to a system of full public
funding for elections as in Canada.
d) The Parties note that Senator Bob Brown will reintroduce as a Private Members Bill the
Commonwealth Electoral (Above‐the‐Line Voting) Amendment Bill 2008. The ALP will
consider the Bill and work with the Greens to reach reforms satisfactory to the Parties.
e) Refer issues of public interest disclosure, where the Senate or House votes on the floor
against the decision of a Minister, to the Information Commissioner, who will arbitrate on
the release of relevant documents and report to both Houses.
f) Hold referenda during the 43rd Parliament or at the next election on Indigenous
constitutional recognition and recognition of local government in the Constitution.
g) Agree that this Parliament should serve its full term and further agree to investigate
legislative proposals, which are within the terms of the Constitution and give greater
certainty to the Australian people about the Parliament serving full three year terms.
4. Improved processes and integrity of parliament
4.1 The Parties agree to work together and with other parliamentarians to implement
parliamentary reforms.
4.2 The immediate reforms include:
a) Improving Question Time in the House of Representatives by setting fixed time limits
for questions and answers with supplementary questions given at the discretion of
the Speaker.
b) A fixed and fair allocation of questions for independent and minor party members
with the first question no later than the 6th question in each Question Time.
c) At least 2.5 hours dedicated for debating and voting on private membersʹ bills
including a fixed and fair allocation of time for independents and minor party
members in every full sitting week in both houses.
d) In addition to clause 4.2(c), dedicated time for voting on motions from independents
and minor party members in every full sitting week in the House of Representatives.
e) The House of Representatives will debate and vote, during Government Business
time, private senatorsʹ bills as passed by the Senate within 6 sitting days of the
message being received by the House.
f) Amending the Standing Orders of both Houses so that there can be a recommittal of
any vote within one sitting day where a member was absent from that vote due to
inadvertence.
g) Agreeing that in the House of Representatives, ʹpairsʹ may be made by private
arrangement during votes, similar to the arrangements which currently occur
between Whips in the Senate or that another arrangement to facilitate Members who
cannot attend due to ill health, family circumstances or performing Government or
electorate business be agreed.
4.3 Further reforms include:
a) Establishing within 12 months a Parliamentary Budget Office within the
Parliamentary Library with the structure, resourcing and protocols being the subject
of decision by a special committee of the Parliament which is truly representative of
the Parliament.
b) Establishing within 12 months a Parliamentary Integrity Commissioner, supervised
by the Privileges Committees from both houses to:
i. provide advice, administration and reporting on parliamentary entitlements
to report to the Parliament;
ii. to investigate and make recommendations to the Privileges Committees on
individual investigations, to provide advice to parliamentarians on ethical
issues; and
iii. to uphold the Parliamentary Code of Conduct and to control and maintain
the Government’s lobbyists register.
5. Working relationships
5.1 The following arrangements will govern the working relationship between the Greens
and the ALP for the duration of the 43rd Parliament. These arrangements may be altered
by mutual agreement.
a) When Parliament is in session, the Prime Minister will meet with Senator Brown and
Mr Bandt each sitting week, principally to discuss and negotiate any planned
legislation.
b) When Parliament is not in session, the Prime Minister, or her delegate, will meet with
Senator Brown and Mr Bandt, or their delegate, at least once each fortnight,
principally to discuss the upcoming legislative agenda.
c) The Government will endeavour to give at least six working days notice of the
introduction of legislation to the House.
d) If the Greens Party Room has not considered legislation, the vote of Mr Bandt on
legislation to facilitate its promulgation should not be interpreted as reflecting or
determining the final position of the Greens in the Senate.
e) The Parties will ensure that the ALP’s budget is subject to an exchange of information
and views between the Parties as follows:
i. The Greens Treasury spokesperson and Mr Bandt receiving economic and
financial briefings from the Treasurer and the Minister for Finance and the
Secretaries of the Departments of Treasury and Finance and Deregulation at
regularly agreed times.
ii. The Greens Treasury spokesperson and Mr Bandt having regular discussions
with the Treasurer and the Minister for Finance on economic circumstances, fiscal
strategy and budget preparation.
f) Should Senator Brown, Mr Bandt and other Greens Senators with portfolios, wish to
propose new policies, these proposals may be formally submitted to the Office of the
Prime Minister and forwarded to the appropriate Department and Minister for
analysis. Where the proposal is likely to involve costs, it may also be sent to the
Department of Treasury, and the Treasurer, and the Department of Finance and
Deregulation, and the Minister for Finance, for costing.
i. The number of proposals that may be considered in this way is not limited in
number but the Parties will ensure that the workload arising is reasonable
ii. Every endeavour will be made to provide required advice within ten business
days
iii. The Parties acknowledge that during the six week period leading up to the
Federal Budget, the turnaround time may be greater than ten business days.
g) The Parties acknowledge that the above mechanism can be used to have any of the
Greensʹ policies for the 2010 election considered.
h) The ALP notes the Senate resolution on appropriations bills which contain matters
which should have been the subject of separate legislation. To prevent this occurring,
the ALP agrees to work with Greens to resolve the matter prior to the introduction of
the bill.
i) Senior staff members of the Prime Minister’s Office and Senator Brownʹs Office will
liaise to ensure that Senator Brown, Mr Bandt and other Greens Senators with
portfolios have access to Ministers, key public servants and the Prime Minister, as
outlined above.
j) The Greens will ensure best possible access for Ministers to be informed about
Greens‘ legislation and will endeavour to give at least six working days notice before
bills are introduced.
6. Policy
6.1 The Parties agree on the following policy issues:
a) That Australia must tackle climate change and that reducing carbon pollution by 2020
will require a price on carbon. Therefore the Parties agree to form a well resourced
Climate Change Committee which encompasses experts and representative ALP, Greens,
independent and Coalition parliamentarians who are committed to tackling climate
change and who acknowledge that reducing carbon pollution by 2020 will require a
carbon price. The Committee will be resourced like a Cabinet Committee. The Parties
will, by the end of September 2010, finalise the structure, membership and work plan of
the Committee.
b) That Australia needs urgent further action on dental care and that proposals for
improving the nation’s investments in dental care should be considered in the context of
the 2011 Budget.
c) That an implementation study for High Speed Rail should be completed by July 2011.
d) That there is a full parliamentary debate on the war in the Afghanistan.
7. Administration
7.1 This agreement will come into effect on the day Government is established.
Signed on this 1st day of September 2010.
The Hon Julia Gillard MP The Hon Wayne Swan MP
Prime Minister Deputy Prime Minister
Leader of the ALP Deputy Leader of the ALP
Senator Bob Brown Adam Bandt MP ‐ elect
Leader of the Australian Greens Australian Greens Representative in the House
Senator Christine Milne
Deputy Leader of the Australian Greens

The importance of community activism

We community activists are stubborn folk. We know that the chances of success are often slim. We know that Governments in the name of efficiency and effectiveness will over-ride us or, worse, destroy the things that we have worked for. Yet we go on.

Up in Bellingen, the community is still fighting for its hospital. I haven't written on this for a while, but the campaign continues. The Facebook page now has 3,515 supporters. I think that the Government simply hopes that it will all go away, that the system can outlast the campaign.

Down south in Wollombi, Peter Firminger is using the intenet to unite the Wollombi community. After 36 months, Wollombi Valley Online has over 380 members and attracts over 50,000 visits per month (currently averaging around 1,633 visitors per day viewing 3,552 pages per day). This is just one of a number of community sites that Peter has developed.

At our Hunter Valley new state lunch I asked Peter why he did it. After all, he has yet to make any money from it. The reverse, in fact; he has to subsidise the sites from his own business earnings. Not only that, he is on the committee of many if not most local organisations. He does so because he considers it to be important.

We community activists are not always right. Sometimes we support causes that are very local, very specific, very much nimby (not in my back yard). Sometimes we win when, arguably, we shouldn't. Yet these failures, if failures they are, are more than offset by the long term gains to community and country.

Our very democratic processes depend upon the activists. Not so much the career activists like Tony Abbott or Julia Gillard who go from University politics through the union and/or party machines to parliament, but to the thousands who turn out each election to pass out the how to vote cards or to scrutineer. Without them, our system would collapse.

Then there are the tens of thousands of volunteers who man our fire brigades, our emergency services, who provide meals on wheals, who run the fund raising BBQs and stalls for a variety of local causes. As we go to vote at the schools and halls around Australia, we collect our how to votes and then pass the BBQs and cake stalls raising funds for the local P&C.

The contribution of any single person may be small. But, in total, these activists are in fact absolutely central to Australian life. Without them, our community would be impoverished. They mark the difference between a successful and failed society.

The thing that stands out to me when I look at the warp and woof of life at a local level is not so much the successes of party and politics in meeting needs, although this can be important in individual cases such as Henry Parkes and public education in NSW, but the way in which community activism provides the base for later developments.

Today we live in a measurement world. Yet when I look at the huge variety of performance indicators, and I spend a lot of time doing this, most don't matter a damn in a long term sense. The most that they can do, and most don't do this, is to improve performance at the margin. To my mind, the real changes to Australia in twenty years will actually be determined by what community activists are doing now.                 

Blog performance, August 2010

Stats time again. The chart shows visits (yellow) and page views (yellow plus red) to this blog over the last month. After a decline over June and July, numbers in August were up again. Mind you, there were 31 days in August.

The ten most popular posts over the month were:

•  Sunday Essay - the importance of quiet time in a crowded world 269 page views
• Report of the NSW Aborigines Welfare Board, year ended 30 June 1940 208 page views
• Belshaw's Animal Meme 112 page views
• Interview with Tony Abbott 1979 92 page views
• Australian history and the migrant experience 72 page views
• Three Amigos and the future Australian Government 60 page views
• Cub Gunston? 56 page views
• Northern Daily Leader: Second-term support a must 54 page views
• End of the Nats? 49 page views
• Reflections on the end of the Housing NSW/AHO Aboriginal mentoring program 48 page views.

So, in all, a mixture of past posts and current events; the top two seem to remain relatively constant.

Postscript

As part of my monthly review, I also looked as the stats for my other blogs. I was surprised  at the spike in traffic in August on New England Australia (Blog visits take off) and New England's History (Blog Performance August 2010).

In fact, in August on the New England Australia blog, the number of followers, visits and page views all passed this blog for the first time! While I am obviously pleased at the increases on the other blogs, I found myself with mixed feelings. My overall personal interests attracted less interest than my more specific interests!

I have felt for a little while that this blog is becoming a little stale. I need to do something about this.    

Managers, Myer and the rights of shareholders

A few days ago, there was a press report that really riled one of the regular commenters on this blog, KVD. I won't quote the private comments that he sent to me, but indeed he has reason to be riled. 

In a story in The Australian, Bernie Brookes regrets Myer public listing, the CEO of this recently re-listed Australian Department store is reported as complaining about the time spent in briefing investors. Two quotes from the story will give the flavour. 

The chief executive ... said life was better when Myer .... was a private company.

Mr Brookes told a business breakfast in Perth today that the management team was now forced to spend "an excessive amount of time" talking to investors and briefing market analysts.

"It's like herding cats, you've got a diversity of shareholders all with different needs." he said.

Then a little later:

"Unfortunately, the structure of the way in which the system works from an equity market’s point of view means that you move from being a retailer to a finance manager and to an equity market manager - and that’s I think quite a pity, particularly to myself who loves to spend most of his time in stores, just walking the stores."

The story raised a number of concerns in KVD's mind. He was annoyed at the apparent assumption that dealing with shareholders was a waste of time; after all, it is their company. He was also annoyed at what he saw as the way that certain occupational classes - those in business or politics or the media - acquired apparent rights associated with their occupation independent of their real responsibilities. They all, my words, become game players; corporate games, political games, reporting games.

KVD has been concerned with problems of management, responsibility and control in the corporate sector for some time: Sunday Essay - Opes Prime provides an earlier example of our evolving conversation.

Mr Brookes' comments obviously reflected a degree of frustration. However, the difficulty I had with them lay in the way he actually mixed so many things together in such a short comment. I thought that I night unpick this a little.

The shareholders own the company. At the end of the day, Mr Brookes is responsible to them. The decision by the previous owners to list as a way of unlocking cash may have complicated Mr Brookes' life, but that's tough.

Mr Brookes reports to and is directly accountable to the Board. In theory, the Board is accountable to the shareholders. In practice this does not properly happen and for three reasons:

• shareholders are often diverse and may have conflicting interests
• some many external obligations have been placed upon Directors that, sometimes, the poor shareholder is really the last thing considered. Consider, for example, the need to keep the market informed via a whole series of reporting obligations. Here, among other things, boards can face a conflict between protecting the position of existing shareholders and informing prospective future shareholders.
• Boards and management join together in playing their own games. As an example, in the Qantas case, the then CEO and certain board members combined to try to sell the company. While justified in terms of "unlocking value for the shareholder", this really had nothing had nothing to do with shareholders.

I accept that the concept of responsibility to the shareholder is a difficult one, especially since so many shares came to be controlled by funds managers who are, in turn, responsible to those investing the funds. This creates practical difficulties of the type referred to by Mr Brookes, including the way shareholder value can be affected by things that actually have very little to do with the value of the company. Still, I would argue that a focus on shareholder needs and ownership remains important.

Certainly, as a sometimes small shareholder, I would argue that the way the system has evolved makes individual share investing far more risky and uncertain than in the past.

We live in a world whose focus on growth and the achievement of short term targets means that the totality of companies cannot achieve target because the total targets are unachievable. This creates instability. Further, targets are set in such a way that they generally reflect relatively narrow metrics. We also live in a world where the combination of regulation with modern corporate management approaches builds in conflict of interest.

When I first began to invest on the stock exchange, things were actually pretty simple. The first question was the likely yield compared with fixed interest. The second question was the extent to which dividends might increase over time, since this would increase return and also the value of the shares. Then, too, there were returns from rights issues and the issue of bonus shares. Bonus shares were important because they allowed cash to be realised, while maintaining an interest in the company. Then, too, there were irregular returns from takeovers.

As today, there was a trade-off between income and capital gain. As today, companies did crash. However, for the ordinary investor, the main thing was the stability and management of the company. So long as the management was okay and the business sound, returns were built in.

In this world, it wasn't hard to beat the index. Here I looked at the returns on my mother and father's portfolio, as well as my own. The reasons were mathematical. Investors placing the greatest emphasis on yield and for perfectly sensible reasons, would invest in companies offering greater cash now. However, these companies tended to offer lower capital gain.

The overall move in the index combined different types of companies. Any reasonable combination of cash now and growth later was likely to beat the index.

How things have changed! The idea of index based funds whose sole purpose was to match long term index trends through a very diverse portfolio would have seemed a bit incomprehensible then. Why bother? In fact, risk averse people then did do something similar by investing in fixed trusts that offered security in combination with a dividend stream and modest capital gains.

To my mind, the dividing line came with the collapse of Australian Fixed Trusts in, from memory, 1987. Unable itself to resist corporate games, AFT went down. As it fell, it wiped out those elements of the family portfolios that, to my father, had seemed most secure when he invested in them all those years before.

I may seem to have come a long way from KVD's original point. I have not. To my mind, Bernie Brookes' comments are symptomatic of the problems that we have built into our corporate systems.        

New states

My main post today is on the New England, Australia blog, A new state for New England.

It's hard for me to be objective on this one. My grandfather was one of the leaders of the Northern or New England New State Movement. My father, while not a new stater, launched a regional councils movement at the end of the Second World war. When it became clear that NSW would never give the councils any power, the regional councils movement turned into a reformed New England New State Movement. Convinced that existing approaches would not work, my father turned to the concept of selective decentralisation, something that later appeared as the Whitlam Government's growth centre approach.

I grew up thinking of myself as a New Englander. I still do. I was sixteen when I acted as an usher at the Armidale Convention that launched Operation Seventh State, the campaign that led to the 1967 plebiscite. At nineteen, I was a member of the executive of the New England New State Movement representing the University of New England New State Society.

After my move to Canberra and the defeat of the plebiscite, I put the new state issue aside as no longer relevant. It wasn't until I came to write a biography of my grandfather for a PhD thesis that the whole thing came surging back. Then, looking at the evidence through a prism created by my experience as a relatively senior public servant, I suddenly concluded that the arguments for New England self-government were right after all. More, I concluded that systemic problems in policy and politics actually precluded any effective regional development.  That began something of a campaign that has continued to this day.

Looking back, it is hard to re-capture the simple certainties that I held as a sixteen year old. Then, in the world that I lived in, the views that I held were in fact the majority view. Now they are a fringe view. It's actually quite hard to hold to a view when that view is alien to pretty much everybody one meets.

Some time ago, I formed the view that the only way to overcome the loss of history and all the supporting arguments was through writing. Since then, I have written more than 1,000 blog posts on New England, 86 newspaper columns, then this year so far two academic papers on New England history, with a full history on New England about a third of the way through.

All this has come at a cost. I won't bore you with the details, beyond noting that all this writing, this obsession, has been at the expense of things directly related to my professional career.

I guess that I am a stubborn cuss. For much of the time, my writing has taken place in isolation. It's only in the last two years that I have felt that my writing has started to gain some traction.

I don't want to overstate this. I am talking about a person here, a person there. Yet, or so it seems to me, there comes a point at which the critical mass required for organic growth is achieved.

For the moment, I simply take pleasure in the fact that whether it be New England's Aboriginal languages, the history of the New England New State Movement or New England public policy, I now have someone to talk too.

A minor thing perhaps, but once you have a couple of people interested in any topic, then growth in interest is possible.

Quite a bit of my time now is spent in linking and responding. This takes away from both writing and my professional interests. Yet it is very important in building things; just getting people interacting is an advance.

Where will all this go? Realistically, I don't know. I have my own objectives, of course, but experience to this point shows that action triggers responses in ways one cannot predict. So we shall see!         

Musings on the changing world of blogging

I hadn't intended to post today, but this morning I did my usual blog round-up.

Looking back over the blogs plus Facebook and Twitter feeds left me with a feeling of fragmentation: it's partly that I have more blogs on my list; more that so many of the blogs that I used to read have become irregular or even vanished; more still that Facebook and Twitter have developed as alternative mechanisms; most, my feeling that the little village that I used to talk about a lot has somehow morphed into a more anonymous urban sprawl.

I think that this is partly my own fault. Writing on a daily basis is quite hard, harder still when blogging is one part of a spreading writing load. I spend less time interacting with other bloggers, more time just writing. The pleasure drops. However, it's also a symptom of genuine fragmentation.

The best independent blogs combined thought with a dash of the personal. Some of these blogs have become Facebooked or Twittered to the detriment of the blogs. Sure, I read the Facebook or Twitter streams, but they don't compensate. Further, I often see the same short form material repeated. The length of time it takes me to scan Facebook or Twitter is actually falling despite the increase in the number of items. To make matters worse, some favourite blogs have simply vanished.

I have told this story before.

I long time ago local retailer Joe Hanna complained that Armidale was getting smaller. I blinked, because the city had been going through a growth phase. When I asked what he meant, he said that whereas it used to take him all morning to get the mail, it now took half an hour. The difference lay in the conversation along the half block from the store to the post office and back. He used to spend lots of time seeing people and yarning, now there were very few people to talk too.

More people, fewer conversations. That's what's happened to blogging. As one symptom of this, links to this blog from other blogs have really collapsed. Whereas I used to get several links a month, I haven't been able to get to an average of one link per month over the last eight months. Further, this includes a small number of blogs with multiple links.

Of course, and I accept this, it may be just that I have just become a boring old fart! However, I think that it is really more than this.

I write quite a bit about the decline of country Australia because it is important to me. One feature of that decline is the movement of people to new centres. To my mind, this is what is happening to blogging. We have gone to the latest big city lights.

But what to do? I can only respond at a personal level.

I do want to continue to write about the things that are important to me, to continue to use my writing and reading to clarify my own thinking.   However, I also really want to rebuild the sense of the village. A village is not bound by the presence of dissenting views. Villages just have to deal with that. Rather, a village focuses on conversation and even gossip, as well as ideas.

As part of this process, I spent multiple hours checking, re-sorting and, in some cases, deleting blogs. This was a bit like an archaeological excavation into my own past. It was both strange and a bit sad.

So many things have changed! What do I do with my old favourites that no longer exist?  In some cases, they are writing in new guises. In others, they are people that I liked who have left the village. Then there are some blogs that mark old interests now swamped by the present.

One pleasure in all this was moving blogs from, say, weekly checks into current. I had almost 30 blogs in my current category, 100 in the weekly check list. Now I have 12 in current, 31 in weekly. Of course, this is a little misleading in that I have more subject categories that are in fact daily or weekly checks. Still, it is much easier to control.

So what, in all this, is my personal response to rebuilding the village? I suppose, simply, that I want to spend more time responding and interacting, refocused on those who take the time to write or to respond.

Short break in transmission

Because of other pressures, it will be Monday before I can post again.

Principles vs rules in Australian electoral reform

In a comment on Independent conundrums - a chance for change, Kangaroo Valley David wrote:

Election reforms I would like to see include: set terms; an absolute limit on the amount of radio and TV minutes advertising; no new policy launches within two weeks of the election date; unlink electoral campaign funding from ‘campaign launch’ - i.e a set cut off date to which taxpayer money is available; Treasury costing on all major party policies to be mandatory, and to be released no later than a week prior to election. These would require much goodwill on all sides to be effective, so no doubt will never come to pass.

On the Independents, while I respect Mr Windsor, I think that Messrs Katter and Oakeshott provide several good reasons why non-aligned candidates should be disregarded when calculating parliamentary majority. Their votes on declared matters of importance (which needs definition) should automatically flow to the government of the day, leaving them free to influence most policy areas, including of course the position and angle of the pork barrel.

Finally, (sorry for length) I think the idea of a cabinet composed partly of unelected members does not fit with our form of parliament, just as I thought Ms Gillard’s 150 citizen congress on climate change was unrealistic. Idealism (and I include the Greens in this) is a very fine thing, but has little to do with stable government of any flavour. Meanwhile the GFC rolls on, and our troops continue to mark time.

I found myself confused and to a degree conflicted when I came to look at his comments. I can see various ways of improving the Parliamentary process, but my thinking about electoral reform is quite muddy. Part of this lies in the distinction in my mind between rule based and principle based approaches.

By rule based, I simply mean specific rules intended to control actions. By contrast, principle based approaches allow for a variety of outcomes so long as the core principles are observed. Of course, both approaches have their weaknesses.

Once you set a rule, then people are meant to comply with that rule. In practice, human ingenuity soon leads to the practical outcome that while the letter of the law is complied with, people work around it to achieve their ends. Electoral funding laws are an example. New rules are then required.

For their part, principal based approaches can fall over when people either ignore or even reject the principles. Further, their nature allows plenty of room for alternative views. Yet they can be quite powerful because they provide a broader guide to action and to judgements about action. This may sound abstract, but a fair bit of our constitutional system is not written down but relies instead on the acceptance of general principles.

Rules based approaches may be introduced when principle based approaches fail. More often, rule based approaches come into effect because people want action to fix something that they perceive to be a problem without addressing the basic principles at all. See problem, fix problem. The difficulty is that as rules expand, principles tend to decline.

One of the reasons why my thinking is so muddy lies in the interface between practice and principles, between rules and principles.

We are all influenced by our own experiences. I grew up in a world in which Parliament was central. This was also a world where the role of the local member was seen first in terms of effective representation, if constrained by Party and, more importantly, by obligations to Parliament. Then, too, it was also a world where the views and causes that I might espouse were generally minority positions in a state or national sense even when majority positions in a local sense. Most times, the problem lay in getting action despite the views of the two major parties.

This was also a world where, and especially in the 1960s and 1970s, the battle of ideas was sharply tinged by battles with the far right. Supporters of Eric Butler's League of Rights and its various out-riders were active.

Much of the commentary in this area at the time and later focused on particular aspects of League of Right views perceived to be anathema in broad terms. Less attention focused on their constitutional principles. Here they argued, and with force, that the local member must be bound by the views of the electorate. Of course, they also argued that they represented that view! There is, in fact, no difference between League of Rights' views in this area and some of the arguments put today in The Australian about the need for the country independents to do as their electorates say as measured by the public opinion polls. They are both majoritarian positions

The defence developed to this type of attack lay not in party, but in the combination of two broad principles.

The first principle was the need for effective electoral representation that took into account needs and views across the electorate, as well as your own values. This then linked to a second principle, the importance of Parliament. Once you became a Parliamentarian, you accepted a broader obligation not just to other parts of Australia, but to Parliament as an institution. Like all principles, these two could conflict. You just had to work your way through as best you could.

Let me give an example from my own experience. In 1961 the Menzies Government had a majority of one and was on a knife-edge. In pursuit of its two airline policy, the Government placed pressure on East-West Airlines to merge with Ansett. When Don Shand as chair of EWA said this, the Minister for Civil Aviation denied it.

The then Member for New England knew that pressure had been place on EWA. Despite the wafer thin majority and the pressure placed upon him to desist, he rose in the House to confirm what Don Shand had said. In doing so, he represented not just his electorate, but also the role of Parliament and the parliamentary member in holding the Government to account.

There is not room in this post to trace the decline of the local member. However, key to that decline has been a decline in both the conventions and principles that used to apply to local MPs. I guess I can see it just because I have been involved at a personal level since I was a kid.

None of this should be construed as an attack on KVD. I think that his suggestions are worth pursuing. Rather, consider the post as an opening shot in an effort to clarify my own thinking.