Australia's election confusions

Election campaign ignores New England, a post on my New England blog, expresses my annoyance at the way the area I come from has been largely ignored in this election campaign. After all, the eleven New England seats deserve as much attention as the eleven South Australian seats or the five in Tasmania.

That's a geographic annoyance. At a purely personal level, however, I still haven't made up my mind how to vote. I don't buy the presidential approach, so I'm not choosing between Julia Gillard or Tony Abbott. I am more interested in the detail of the policies plus the way I think they might be delivered.

I must say that I sometimes get very confused. My problem is that I like to have a feel for the way things might work on the ground. In that sense, I personalise, point and counterpoint between the general and the particular.

I know with the National Broadband Network, for example, that West Armidale is one of the first pilot roll-out sites. I can identify with that. In similar vein, the newly opened Stage One of the Trades Training Centre developed by The Armidale School in conjunction with PLC is tangible. So when I look at the opposition policy on broadband, or the proposed abolition of trade training centres, I ask the question what does it mean for my old home area.

This may sound very parochial, but at the end of the day policy only has meaning measured by its on-ground effects.

The rush by both sides to what they perceive to be central ground means that this election is being fought on a very narrow policy slice. This doesn't mean that there are not important differences. As Neil noted, the use of vouchers in education is one. However, the problem I find is to disentangle those differences in a world made up of apparently similar measures.

Regional policy is one of the areas that I traditionally focus on. I fail both sides here. There is very little here that is new, less that really addresses core underlying issues. That said, I should qualify my remarks in that I have yet to look at all the detail of National Party policies. Traditionally, if the National Party doesn't drive in this area, no-one drives. That is part of the reason why I am still sympathetic to that party, if so often disappointed.

Both sides are still rolling out policies. With such a short time to the election, this is really very silly. How can we voters make judgments when we have less and less time to do so?

Over the next week, I am going to refrain from making election comment, focusing instead on trying to understand the differences between the policies and what they might mean in operational terms. Who knows, I may then be able to make up my own mind.  

Pakistan's Floods

The flood in Pakistan are really quite terrifying in their sheer scale. BBC News has a good map that gives an indication of scale. The original comes with labels pointing to key features; I can't reproduce both the map and the labels at the same time.

According to the UN, more than 13 million people are now affected.

The coverage in the Australian media has not been especially good, far less than the coverage of the previous earthquakes. Further, there appears at time to have been a greater focus on the nature of the Pakistani Government response as compared to the nature of the tragedy itself.

If the newspaper reports are in any way correct, the long term damage done to Pakistan and its people by the floods could be very large indeed. 

Train Reading - the last Nizam

I continue to enjoy Ramana's Musings. Like me, he is addicted to Books. Like me, he often has several on the go at once.

I am not sure when my own addiction first set in. Certainly it was quite early. When I first started to read, I am not sure that I was a very good reader. My recollection is, although memory is an imperfect beast, that I was actually a slow starter. However, certainly from early in third class, my reading took off.

There have been periods in my life when my reading largely contracted to the purely professional on one side, certain limited types of fiction on the other. More recently, it has broadened again, even if with a strong focus on history.

We all read for different reasons and in different ways. My own reading style varies greatly: very focused with an emphasis on speed in the purely professional; sometimes slow and reflective when reading to learn or where I am enjoying the nature of the writing; then fast and sometimes even staccato when I charge through a novel whose plot has caught me.

One test with me is whether or not I want to re-read a book. My wife says to me sometimes, 'surely you are not reading that again? Don't you have something new?' Well, maybe, but there are books that are old friends, that sometimes provide solace for a wounded soul in a crowded world.

On the new side, I have just finished John Zubrzycki's  The Last Nizam (Pan, Sydney, 2007). Subtitled "An Indian Prince in the Australian Outback", this is the story of the Nizams of of the Indian princely state of Hyderabad with a special focus on Mukarram Jah, the last Nizam of Hyderabad. Jah, the English-educated grandson of the last Caliph of Islam on his mother's side, the son of the richest man in the world on the other, presided over the effective dissolution of the family fortunes. Part of these sank without much trace into the sands of the West Australian deserts.

It's an odd book, or at least I found it so. This is not a criticism of the writing, more of the subject. If China had its bureaucracy, India had its princes. This may sound a strange thing to say; India is famous for its bureaucracy; but in China, power rested on the combination of the concept of Empire and the Emperor with merit based bureaucrats; in India, power was more feudal, more personal. This lead to an ever changing patchwork quilt of relations. To a degree, modern India is a British creation.

To do proper credit to the story, I need to go back through it and tease out the back story. While I have a reasonable knowledge of Indian history and geography, I do not actually know enough to properly fill in the gaps. Once I have done that, I will be in a better position to tell the whole tale.  

Cub Gunston?

I spent a fair bit of time on yesterday's post, Reflections on the end of the Housing NSW/AHO Aboriginal mentoring program, so I am not going to say anything substantive today.

Ranga, budgie smuggler, Green Desperados & the Three Amigos was my attempt to provide a somewhat satirical overview of the present Australian election campaign. Since then, former Labor leader Mark Latham's lurch into reporting (here, here) has provided further satirical material. The headline on one of the newspaper reports, Reporter Latham: stories none, apologies one, kind of captures it.

I didn't have a really good nickname for Mr Latham. He may be, as Channel Nine's Laurie Oakes' suggests in an attack on his own station, full of bile. Certainly, he displayed a lot of gall. Borrowed perhaps? But Mr Bile is far too serious.

One option might be Mark Latham cub reporter. He clearly has a lot to learn. However, this is arguable unfair on all all cub reporters! Another option might be Norman Latham after Norman Gunston whose bumbling satirical interviews became something of a cult during the 1970s. Many Australians didn't know whether to laugh or cringe. Norman Gunston's interview with Mick Jagger follows as an example.  

Perhaps I should combine the two, Mark Latham, Cub Gunston? Or Mark Gunston, cub reporter? Perhaps you have some ideas?    

Reflections on the end of the Housing NSW/AHO Aboriginal mentoring program

As I mentioned in passing an earlier post, Tuesday 2 August saw the formal graduation for the mentorees under the Housing NSW/Aboriginal Housing Office 2009 Aboriginal Mentor Program. The photo shows me with Jennifer (Jen) Hails, my mentee.

Jen is a proud woman of the Yuin nation from the NSW South Coast.

Now that the formal program has come to an end, I thought that it might be interesting if I reflected on some of the things that I learned over the twelve months.

Around 6 per cent of the staff of Housing NSW are of Aboriginal descent. Some four years ago, I can't remember the exact date, the Department introduced the Mentor Program as a way of increasing retention of Aboriginal staff, while improving their career prospects. This year, the Aboriginal Housing Office which has majority Aboriginal staff, joined the Program for the first time.

At the time the 2009 Program started, I was doing some contract demographic and policy analysis for AHO. Jen and I knew each other from the office, had talked about the things that she wanted to achieve, so we decided to give it a go. The Program included a number of combined sessions, so I met the other mentorees and heard about their hopes and problems. I was also mixing with Aboriginal staff not just from the AHO, but also from the NSW Aboriginal Land Council; the AHO head office is in the NSWALC building.

I make this point because the comments that follow are general comments that may, but need not, apply to Jen. The mentoring relationship itself is uniquely personal and is necessarily confidential. Further, to the degree that my comments bear upon specific features of Aboriginal society and to the relationships of that society to the broader community, I am talking NSW. I do not know enough about conditions elsewhere to attempt to generalise my conclusions. Even in NSW itself, there is wide variety within the Aboriginal community. My comments should, perhaps, be seen as reflecting a slice.  

The first and most important point is that the pressures placed upon Aboriginal people seeking career advancement, and the barriers to that advancement, are far greater than I had realised. Further, those pressures and barriers are not quite what I had expected.

Aboriginal people do experience prejudice and even racism in a variety of ways. However, even though this exists in specific individuals, it is not of itself a barrier to advancement in the environment that we are talking about. Indeed, there is and has been for some considerable time, a conscious individual and corporate approach from the highest level seeking to open opportunities for Aboriginal people. In my judgement, this is genuine and indeed substantial, measured by effort.

Aboriginal people are also, on average, less well educated than the general community and have had exposure to a more limited range of working and other experiences. This is a real barrier and one that the Mentor Program (among other things) attempts to address. However, beyond the simple fact of less education are a range of quite complicated factors that I did not properly understand.

Non-Aboriginal people looking to career development think and act in individual terms. All they have to worry about at the first level are their own aspirations, abilities and needs. Societal expectations are supportive. The position for Aboriginal people is far more complicated.

Traditional Aboriginal society was collective. Further, it was marked by kinship structures that effectively placed every member of that society into familial relationships with every other member of the society. Fathers, mothers, aunties, uncles, brothers or sisters were kin relations that extended far beyond the simple concept of the nuclear or even extended family. This was associated with complicated systems of reciprocal relationships.

European colonisation broke many aspects of Aboriginal life, but both the collective view of society and basic kinship structures remained. Then, on top, came new relationships and indeed tensions as forced relocations of Aboriginal people moved people round the state and also put different groups together.

While average Aboriginal family sizes have been falling, immediate past families have been very large. An Aboriginal person today may six to thirteen relations on both their father's and mother's side, while each of their grandparents may have six to thirteen siblings, each in turn with a significant number of children. This means that many Aboriginal people have a very large number of blood relations plus broader kinship ties.

Problems within Aboriginal society associated with social deprivation have been well recorded: NSW prison populations have a disproportionate number of Aborigines; roughly one-third of Aboriginal people in NSW live in social housing; social problems in Aboriginal communities abound.

All this is usually expressed in terms of numbers, statistics. Putting it in a purely individual context, given family sizes and broader kinship relations, pretty much every Aboriginal person in NSW no matter how successful is dealing with these issues on a practical, day-today basis in their extended families and kin-ship groups.

Who, then, takes responsibility? Do they walk away and focus on their needs and that of their very immediate family, or do they try to help, to take responsibility for others, including their community?

Some walk, others can burn themselves out trying to help.

Aboriginal people are proud of their culture. They know that their culture has to change, but want (as Jen put it) to control that change. In fact, they have very little control over this because of the way that decisions are made.

They have an added problem as well. Non-Aboriginal Australia places expectations on Aboriginal people that do not apply to the broader community. What other community in the country not only has its problems so constantly featured, but featured in a way that says fix it yourself, mate!? We swing between continued authoritarian paternalism on one side, self-determination on the other.

The pressures placed upon Aboriginal elders are enormous. They have to participate in the ceremonial; they have to promote Aboriginal society and culture; they are expected to solve immediate problems that may be beyond their power to control.

The mentorees I met are, to some degree, caught in this trap. Their history and cultural background makes for a lack of confidence.

I think that the first challenge that every mentor faced was to draw out the strengths of their mentoree, to give them confidence. This was actually pretty easy to do. Universally, those graduating cited increased confidence.

Just to give you another visual, this photo shows the graduating group.

The second challenge was to help the mentorees acquire additional knowledge and skills. Again, and depending on the mentoree, this is not hard. However, it is an area where a mentor as a more experienced manager, a facilitator and as an advocate can play an important role in helping the metoree define skills gaps, identity opportunities and then pursue them.

In Jen's case, one of the many things that she achieved was a Certificate IV in workplace assessment and training. initially she found it hard because the language was different. I knew that this was only a matter of learning to think in new ways and indeed, once she got her mind around this, she sailed through.

Beyond this, it gets hard and at a number of levels.

Before going on, this photo shows Jen addressing the graduation ceremony. 

All the mentorees had to deal in one way or another with problems in their own families and their extended families and kinship groups. All the mentorees had to work out the relations between themselves and their communities. Indeed, one mentoree who was passionate about her community role dropped out because, I think, the conflict between community and personal was too great.

I struggled with this conflict in a different way.

There are a number of Aboriginal specialist positions that focus on work with the Aboriginal community. There are an increasing number of positions in Aboriginal organisations. The problem with this, at least as I see it, is that there is an expectation inside and outside the Aboriginal community that Aboriginal people should go for those positions.

As an example, Jen lent me a book called Paperbark: a collection of Black Australian writings. There is a story in that book about a young Aboriginal man who was told by his Aboriginal girlfriend's father that he should seek a job with an Aboriginal organisation as the best way of helping his people. He finally did so, and it was the right decision in his case.

Yet there is a conflict between the focus on helping the community, on one's obligations to family and broader kinship networks, and on personal advancement. The conflict is not helped by expectations placed on Aboriginal people by the non-Aboriginal community, nor by expectations in the Aboriginal community itself.  

To be continued  

I stopped writing this post yesterday because I was struggling to get the words right. I felt that the tone was becoming wrong, that it might be read as negative, another story of problems. It is not.

I was impressed by the commitment of all the mentorees. I was impressed by the gains made by them all. I thought that the Program and the year was a success. However, what I am trying to do is to give you a feel for the things that I learned and the issues as I saw them.

To continue, I want to return to the conflict as I saw it faced by ambitious Aboriginal people: a conflict between the focus on helping the community, on one's obligations to family and broader kinship networks, and on personal advancement.

Aboriginal young people, and especially those working in organisations with large Aboriginal client bases, are well aware of problems in their own communities; they see them all the time. Many feel a strong sense of commitment. They also have to deal with expectations in their own extended families and communities with their more collectivist approach. This includes a sometimes expectation that they will help or prefer their own.

These are not easy things to manage. Among other things, those who take responsibility may find themselves facing work disruption as they try to sort problems out.  

The immediate career choices Aboriginal young people face include Aboriginal specialist positions, positions in Aboriginal organisations or broader positions open to all. If they seek the broader positions, they may not be able to help their own people in a direct, immediate, sense. If they opt for the specialist positions or for the Aboriginal organisations, they may find themselves locked out of the experiences and networks required for broader career advancement, locked into an Aboriginal work stream.

This photo shows Ivan Simon, Deputy CEO AHO, addressing the graduates. Ivan is presently the highest ranking Aboriginal staff member in Housing New South Wales/AHO.

Normal mentoring focuses on career issues conventionally defined. Advice, personal support, access to networks, assistance in developing career plans. Aboriginal mentoring involves more than this because it inevitably brings in culture, community and family.

When I began, I had limited idea of the complexities involved. As I listened to the mentorees at the first session talk about their experiences, their aspirations and their relations with their communities, I began to get a feel for the challenges. 

What do we do about all this? It's not easy.

As Jen says, Aboriginal culture has to change. However, as she also says, Aboriginal people want to be in charge of that change. Indeed, they have to be. There has been far to much paternalism, far too many non-Aboriginal expectations, placing almost crushing pressure on Aboriginal communities. Effective change comes from within.

It is the younger Aboriginal people and especially those who have already made the break into work who will lead the change. Programs like the Mentoring Program help. I remain worried, however, about the continued pressure and expectations placed upon the Aboriginal young, the future leaders, by both the Aboriginal and broader communities. This increases stress and can of itself act to limit choices.

Finally, my thanks to both Housing NSW and the AHO for organising the program and for allowing me to participate in it. My congratulations, too, to all the graduates.            

Interview with Tony Abbott 1979

I do love the way in which New England connection keeps on coming up. This is an interview with Tony Abbott on UNE student radio in 1979. At the moment demand is slowing the site down, so you might have to wait to get the connection.

You will see that Tony Abbott has been challenged to rejoin the UNE tradition of political debate on the ground, so to speak. I have some sympathy with his comments on courses, but not all.

Ranga, budgie smuggler, Green Desperados & the Three Amigos

There is something so wonderfully bizarre about the current Australian Federal election campaign that it has become political theatre that would, if scripted, risk being laughed of the air were it not presented with the right comedic satirical tone.

On one side we have the Ranga, Australia's first female PM calling an election just three weeks after her sudden elevation. Her make-up glossed face (any form of airbrushing or photoshopping has been denied) stares at us from the covers of glossy women's magazines as she proclaims that we will now see the real here.

On the other side we have the budgie smuggler or Marathon Man, the third Liberal Party leader in two years, who came to his role as a consequence of a Party coup d'état over disputes on climate change. A former Rhodes Scholar who attended Oxford, Mr Abbott is happy to be photographed as he comes out of the surf naked except for his budgie smugglers or to chat lycra clad to reporters as they jog panting along side his bike.

Joining Ms Gillard in her corner is the Silver Bodgie (or is it now Budgie?) former PM Hawke. A famed larrikin, Mr Hawke first came to fame for breaking a sculling (fast drinking) record while also on a Rhodes scholarship at Oxford. What is it about Rhodes Scholars? Or is it Oxford?

Even as he provided support, the media was featuring Hawke the Movie, along with the release of the latest version of his biography written by his now wife. As the story of their steamy earlier affair rolled across the TV to a transfixed audience, a very miffed former PM Paul Keating made it clear that he was not going to accept what he saw as rewriting of history. Mr Keating, also known variously as yes/no, the Teflon man and the Undertaker (among others), took the not unreasonable position that as Treasurer under Mr Hawk he had played an important role, and had indeed held the Government together, during Mr Hawke's depression

Also now joining Ms Gillard in her corner is her predecessor, deposed head Kevin Rudd. After staying quietly at home for a while, Mr Rudd's first day of campaigning in his own electorate took the media spot light away from everyone else; the multitudinous media focused on every element of his almost prime ministerial approach. Then the head was suddenly taken to hospital to have his gall bladder removed. You can imagine the cartoons.

Meantime, the budgie smuggler had acquired some unlikely allies. At times, and especially in NSW, the deeply tribal world of the ALP factions generates a deeply visceral combat whose vendettas would seem quite at home in the mafia or the Melbourne underworld. Leak and counter leak apparently intended to discredit ether the Head or Ranga provided copious copy.

Former Labor Leader Latham did not help by adding a further degree of vitriol about Mr Rudd's alleged role in leaks and his various weaknesses.

Clearly, this could not go on. In going forward, Ranga decided to go back to her real self, to show the true Julia. This confused the budgie smuggler who thought that he had been seeing the true Julia. In desperation, Ranga picked up the phone and called the Head. With his gall now removed, the Head said that he would come to the rescue to try to preserve his legacy. I will campaign with you, he promised.

Time for the budgie smuggler to call in his reinforcements, in this case his own Head, former PM John Howard. After offering his old Head fulsome praise, the budgie smuggler received benediction. Perhaps relishing the chance for revenge on the other Headmaster who had defeated him, old school rivalries die hard, Mr Howard launched a swinging attack on the Ranga.

Mind you, the budgie smuggler did not have things all his own way. Former Liberal PM Malcolm Fraser, also known as Pantless in Memphis, came out swinging against Mr Abbott.

Sometimes our ex and future PMs do not have a lot of luck. Having a drink with a women at the bar while visiting Memphis, Mr Fraser's drink was spiked. He was found wandering dazed in the hotel lobby minus his pants. Since Mr Fraser is a very tall man, this must have been a sight. For his part, Headmaster to be Rudd's visit to a New York strip club where he was allegedly warned against inappropriate behaviour became embarrassingly public. Mind you, this actually did him no harm at with many Australians; he was greeted with thumbs up signs after it became public!

Ex PM Fraser's attacks on the budgie smuggler will probably not have much impact. His long track record on human rights and on refugees is counter to the current Australian centrist position.

In all this, both Ranga and budgie smuggler are suffering from the same problems.

Having reviewed the household budget and inspected the national piggy bank, they have put the hammer aside, leaving the piggy bank more or less intact. This makes it hard to promise really new things.

Worse, they are suddenly facing new and dangerous enemies, a critical media on one side, a critical public on the other. If that wasn't bad enough, the new focus of sometimes satirical interest lies not in policy or ability, but in the way they (the politicians and party machines) are actually trying to work things in PR or campaign terms.

The value of your short grabs designed to get on the TV news loses a fair bit of impact when you grabs are identified, analysed and compared not for the actual message you are trying to get across, but for how good your grab is. In this environment, once your grab makes time relevant TV, it then gets reviewed and analysed. The same thing applies to ads. The practical effect is to increase awareness that the Emperor has no clothes! But who is the most naked?

Watching all this from the sidelines are the Green Desperados and the Three Amigos.

The Green Desperados know that they are likely to get the balance of power in the Senate, but can they get their first lower house seats? To do this, they really need Ranga and budgie smuggler to continue to focus on each other, to largely ignore the Desperado challenge. This is likely to happen. As is usual in most games, winning the immediate game is the primary point, and this involves focus and trade-offs. Ranga must marshal her resources against budgie smuggler, and vice versa.

The Three Amigos are a little different. All three are ex National Party coming from areas with strong regional traditions. All three have established huge margins in their seats, making them almost impregnable. Two of the three are from the New England independents, the only independent movement in Australia that has been able to establish a properly resourced machine.  One of the three has had direct experience as a state member in a situation where an independent grouping holds the balance of power. As non-marginal electorates, none of their electorates have received any of the pork cut for this year's marginal seats.

The Amigos are watching because the polls now suggest that one possible outcome is that they, or they in combination with the Desperados, may control the balance of power in the House of Representatives. That would change things. 

Confusions about Australia's election

One of the truisms in Australian politics is that electors can distinguish between state and federal issues. I think that that's been true. However, things have changed.

I mention this because there was an on-line poll asking whether one's vote would be affected by state issues. I ignored it, then went back and for the first time clicked yes.

I am not saying that my Federal vote would necessarily be affected by poor performance by, say, a state Labor government. I am saying that the intervention by the Federal Government in what have traditionally been state affairs means that the dividing line between state and federal issues has become hopelessly blurred. From health to education to infrastructure, Australian Governments of both persuasions have used their financial muscle to attempt to assert control.

One can argue whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. However, now that the Commonwealth has asserting, or is attempting to assert, primacy in so many areas once the domain of the states, then we have to judge plans and performance on what are in fact state issues. This is actually not easy, because it raises all sorts of practical questions about the interface between state and federal jurisdictions. Here the track record of the Rudd Government was not encouraging.

Another issue that has been concerning me is just where the money is to come from to fund promises on both sides.

This is not the normally expressed concern about the size of Government or the deficit. Both Government and opposition have stated that their election promises will be funded by offsetting savings in other areas. So just which programs will be cut to find the money?

The opposition has provided details of its proposed budget savings. To my knowledge, the Government has not. I don't like to support a new thing when I don't know what I will have to give up to get it.       

Blog performance, reader interests July 2010

I didn't post yesterday. In the morning was the graduation for the Housing NSW/Aboriginal Housing Office mentor program. I took some photos and will write a story in due course, but coming home after the session I found myself with the shivers, so actually took to my bed. Not bad today, but still not feeling especially well, and I also have to go into the city this afternoon.

The graphic shows monthly visits to the blog (yellow) plus page views (yellow plus red)for the year ending July 10. I was conscious that the July numbers were down; so I have two months of falling stats.

Excluding visits to the front page (I do not have this number), the most visited posts over July were:

• Sunday Essay - the importance of quiet time in a crowded world  (283 page views)
• Report of the NSW Aborigines Welfare Board, year ended 30 June 1940 (170 page views)
• Belshaw's Animal Meme ( 113 page views)
• Australian history and the migrant experience (49 page views)
• The Importance of Family History (48 page views)
• Generation One, Andrew Forrest and Aboriginal jobs (41 page views)
• Saturday Morning Musings - a melange (37 page views)
• Threads - death of Jon Cleary, higher education, the Gruen Nation, Will Owen (37 page views)
• Saturday Morning Musings - confidentiality, confusion and Australia's election (36 page views)
• Death of Australian painter and writer James Gleeson (32 page views).

David Henry Drummond 1890-1942

In Why I remain optimistic about Australian politics I linked my optimism about politics to my grandfather. This photo from cousin Jamie's collection shows Gran and Fah from the 1930s.

I have now finished posting the story of the first part of his life. You will find all the posts listed in Decentralisation, Development and Decent Government: the life and times of David Henry Drummond, 1890-1941 - introduction.

There is something of a sense of relief about having finally put the whole PhD thesis minus the intro on-line. Having done so, I would like to thank my supervisors, Grant Harmon, Bruce Mitchell and Colin Hughes for their support.

I would especially like to recognise the work of Professor Colin Hughes during the last critical phase. He read and reread every draft over the first half of 1983 as I struggled to complete while working in a demanding job. Two to three times a week I would drive new material out to ANU for him to look at, collecting previous comments at the time.

Colin was mortified about the problems that the PhD thesis struck with my examiners. He is not to blame. It may be, as Professor Colin Bolton as adjudicator argued, that my closeness to the subject affected my judgement. It is not true, as Professor Bolton also suggested, that there was a a danger that Drummond was of insufficient importance to warrant a PhD topic.

I leave it to you as reader to make your own judgments. Certainly, were I writing now my balance would change. For example, and as Professor Colin Tatz suggested in discussions with me at Sydney airport, I would increase the emphasis on Drummond's role in Aboriginal education. He was Minister for Education at a critical point, struggling to resolve what was in fact the irreconcilable. His then ideas were already dated, old fashioned.

Yet I would not alter the broad thrust.

The next photo from cousin Jamie's collection shows Fah and Gran at Mann Street in 1955.

David Drummond had no idea in 1942 that he would never again be a minister, never again have a chance to put his ideas into effect. None of us can foresee the future. We have to deal the cards we are dealt at the time without foreknowledge.

The last chapter on Drummond's ministerial career deals in part with the establishment of the public library system in NSW. Today, we take our public libraries for granted, yet they are really quite new.

Drummond can be given credit for his support for the cause. As a self-educated man, he knew the importance of access to books. However, he cannot be given full or perhaps even primary credit. Without the work of Andrew Carnegie and especially of the Free Library Movement, the public library system would not exist, or at least would have come much later. Drummond facilitated the work done by others.

This is partly why I remain an optimist about politics and my own work.

Our world is a complex system. None of us can be sure that we have or can have any influence. Indeed, for most of us we can be sure that we do not! Yet when you look at the positive things that have happened, you can see that they all come back to individual endeavour.

Individually, we are not important, but collectively we are. We just can't tell when the the things we do will be important, nor how important they will be. Individually, our efforts are almost certainly bound to fail, but some of those efforts for some will be important. We can only know later.

I think that that's kind of important.

If we all give up, only the worst can happen.   

     

      

Why I remain optimistic about Australian politics

I felt like taking a break from some of the things that I normally write about in my weekly Armidale Express column. So in my current series I am talking about that first election campaign at the end of 1919 into early 1920 that saw my grandfather enter the NSW State parliament. The story will go on line over the next three weeks.

We are all formed by our experiences. In my case, one of the reasons why I am not cynical about politics and politicians, one of the reasons why I still strive in my own way to try to improve things, lies in my  involvement with politics from a very early age.

This photo from Cousin Jamie's collection shows a country election meeting from 1943. My grandfather, the man with the hat, is standing  just behind the speaker on the ute tray.

People have come from a distance to hear the candidate, gathering in an open paddock. There is no mike, no placards. Just a gathering.

Growing up in country politics, I was not blind to bigotry or prejudice, nor was I blind to human frailty. They were all present, if less censured than today. However, I did grow up with certain expectations.

To begin with, I expected the politician whether candidate or member to have personal views. They were human beings. I wanted to know what they stood for. Even fifty years after my grandfather's first campaign when I ran for pre-selection myself, there was still an expectation that I would have my own platform over and beyond that set by the Party. Indeed, I and the other pre-selection candidates were criticised by the Party's General Secretary for treating the pre-selection as though it were something akin to a job interview!

During that first election campaign of my grandfather's, Don Aitkin tells the story of Mick Bruxner, another Progressive Party candidate for the multi-member Northern Tablelands' seat. Bruxner arrived in a small village for a well publicised whistle-stop. No-one was there. After a little while, a young stockman came out of the pub. Bruxner hesitated, then gave his speech to the audience of one. At the end of the speech the stockman came up: "You'll be right, mate", he said. "I was asked to listen to you. You will get the votes around here"!

The point of the story is that politics was not just party, but also personal. They were selecting their member. I actually think that this remains true today, especially in the country, despite the rise of the presidential approach.

On the other side of the coin, my experience with  members of parliament from all parties is that they generally take their duties to their electorate very seriously. Of course there are exceptions, but I still think that the statement is generally true.

Over the years, it has become harder to meet basic electorate needs. Government is larger, more complex, electorates are larger, while boundaries shift all the time. MPs now have staff, but even so the demands of electoral work continue to increase: complex government increases the range of elector concerns; larger electorates mean that there are more electors with concerns; constantly shifting boundaries requires the member to put aside some, while learning the needs of new electors.

I see very little discussion about the actual dynamics of being an MP, about the changing role of the MP at an electoral level. The discussion that does take place is too often expressed in generalities that have little to do with on-ground realities.     

Look back at that first election campaign of my grandfather's, one of the things that stands out is what would now be called naivety.

As today, there were slogans intended to capture the message. Then "Decentralisation, Development and Decent Government", now "Looking to the Future". However, the slogans actually carried a content that is now arguably missing in the sense that people expected them to have a meaning beyond a unifying tag.

As today, various action proposals were put forward. These were not necessarily sensible or achievable. Words like "effective" or "efficient" did not exist. There was also less knowledge than there is today in areas like economics. Further, this was the Party's first ever campaign. As the Party gained seats and especially once it gained office, it began to behave more like the political parties we know today; the past came to constrain the present and the future, as did the need to win or hold power.

All this said, there were certain expectations about parties and parliamentarians that would, I think, seem strange today. Of course the pork barrel was present; but then, what else is the modern marginal seats approach? Yet the people running in that first campaign, the people who supported them, actually expected all the words to mean something. Looking back, we know that some of those expectations were to be dashed, that some of the ideas were simply undoable. Still, the expectations were there and indeed much was achieved.

Now here I want to finish with a broader point, one that goes to the heart of my continued belief in the political process.

By their nature, the historical studies that I have done have had a strong political focus, including politics at an electoral level. They have also had a focus on particular policy and regional concerns.

Necessarily, those studies have drawn out some of the continuing failures in the political process; human failings including blind prejudice, over-ambition and venality; political failings, including bitter fights; policy failings, the failure to deliver. It is sometimes hard not to become cynical when you study a government tearing itself to bits, its members blind to the damage that they are doing to each other and the causes they have supported.

Yet the thing that also stands out is the continuity in the political process, the way in which particular aspirations, hopes and dreams actually do shape the political process. Somehow, with time, the dross gets shaken off, the achievements remain.

In all this, just being a good manager is not sufficient. This is a mantra that has become quite fashionable with the rise of the idea of Government as a service, paralleling the rise of "efficiency" and "effectiveness", of measurable outputs and outcomes. Good management is important, service delivery is important, yet an obsessive focus in these areas can lead to an arid sterility in debate that actually blinds participants to the fact that, in reality, they are still dealing with ideas and values.

Like many, I am frustrated with what passes at present as policy debate. Yet it does help to know that, in the longer term, our process is likely to shake out the dross. Many of the current headlines will be relegated to footnotes or, at best, interesting paragraphs in history books. The things that will remain will be those things that, for both good and ill, are judged to be of longer term importance to the Australia as it stands at the time the history is written. 

Saturday Morning Musings - confidentiality, confusion and Australia's election

It continues to be an odd Australian election campaign. I am not sure that I believe the latest Herald/Nielsen poll; this shows the opposition with an apparently election winning lead, with Labor's primary vote down to 36 per cent. Regardless of the results of the election, you can expect it to be analysed to death afterwards!

While I don't want to comment on the detail of the campaign, I do want to make a few purely professional comments.

The Greens

Regardless of which side wins the overall election, it seems likely that the Australian Greens will hold the balance of power in the Senate. For that reason, The Green's policy positions become more important than they have been in the past. I, for one, do not know enough of those positions. They need to be subjected to the same type of forensic analysis that should be applied to the main parties.

Cabinet Confidentiality and Leaks

The leaks about the workings of the Rudd cabinet make me me very uncomfortable at several levels.

Each minister wears several hats in cabinet. Each has to take into account his/her portfolio interests; this includes making judgments about the impact on the portfolio if other expenditure proposals are approved. Each has to make judgements about both the overall national interest as they see it. Each has to take party and electoral considerations into account.

Once cabinet has reached a decision, once it becomes Government policy, then ministers are bound to defend it.

Ministers change their minds all the time, at least at the margin. They do so for both policy and party political reasons. They have to be free to do so. If not, cabinet becomes unworkable.

Part of the reason for cabinet confidentiality is to provide ministers with the freedom required for sensible discussion. Take this away, and you cut at the very heart of effective government. To my mind, whoever has been responsible is not just striking at the ALP, but at the system itself.

There is a broader issue here, that of the role of confidentiality itself. However, the issues here are beyond the scope of this post.

Policy confusion and post election: trouble for both sides

To my mind, the level of effective policy analysis in this election has been quite low, couched in generalities on one side, responses to specific announced initiatives on the other. In saying this, I am talking as much about the analysts and commentators (I include myself here) as the party leaderships. Let me try to illustrate.

A very high proportion of Government policies and programs are already locked in. Further, the existing government has already announced major changes that are partially underway.

Taking this into account, consider the opposition first. It's announcements combine three things:

• Statements of general principles such as the Coalition Economic Principles. Now what do these actually mean in terms, for example, of regional development or the principles underlying the Australian Federation?
• A range of specific proposed expenditure cuts, totaling in all almost $A24 billion. Many of these are small, some bigger. Some such as the proposed abolition of the National Broadband Network have been picked up, others not. But what do they actually mean? For example, do we really want to discontinue our campaign for a seat on the UN security Council?
• A series of smaller new spending initiatives that have attracted some attention.

In all this, I actually have very little idea as to what an opposition win might mean for, as an example, the structure of health services.

None of this should be construed as an attack on the policies themselves, just a statement that I don't know.

Now look at the Government. Here we have a range of policies and programs already announced that will, presumably, continue. This includes major implementation challenges in areas such as the announced health reforms. Normally with a Government going to re-election, the past is taken for granted. However, in this case one could be forgiven for a degree of uncertainty. So how are present and past meant to fit together?  Again, I'm not sure.

Between now an the election, I will try for my own sake (I do have to vote!) to work out some of the implications on both sides. For the present, I am left with the feeling that both sides are likely to experience some discomfort when it comes to comes to forming a new Government.      

Postscript

It was pointed out to me on the security council seat that the opposition had previously criticised this spend. Fair enough. But that was as opposition. I do remember it, now that I am reminded. I ask again, does the opposition as now the possible government, actually think that Australia should not seek that seat? If so, why not? More broadly, I don't think that either side has really spelt out any foreign policy vision.

On health, it was suggested that the Government already has a framework in place, that there is no need to spell things out. Sorry. As a mere mortal, I actually think I need to be told. After all, I am not absolutely sure which pieces of previous policy are still valid.

These comments may seem a bit sour. I am not at all sour about the suggestions. I am a little sour about the nature of the debate.