Introspection on the start of a new year

As with many of my fellow bloggers, the year's end brings a degree of introspection. I am not, in fact, sure just how introspective I want to be, for this year has been a bit of a dog's breakfast.

I continued my personal writing - 717 posts across blogs, 52 Armidale Express columns, one academic paper, the first of a new column in a national business magazine, one feature for on-line opinion. That's quite a lot of writing.

My reader response during the year was quite good. The graphic shows visitors (yellow) and page views (yellow plus red) to this blog over the last six months as recorded by sitemeter. The Google figures are somewhat higher.

The numbers bounce around, but if you compare December on December, you can see some increase in traffic. Of more importance has been the continuing pleasure I get from various forms of reader feedback.

And yet, I don't seem to have made a lot of progress over the year, especially so far as my major writing projects are concerned.

I am not making any new year resolutions this year, beyond a few health related ones. Rather, I have set two very general objectives.

The first is just to have more fun. The second, to make measurable progress on my aim to be a writer.

I mean nothing special by measurable, nor am I setting targets. All I want is progress when I come to look back.

To all my blogging and reading friends, may you have a good 2012. You keep me going in ways that you may never understand. I hope that I can help you in return as the year proceeds.

Musings on photos past 5 - Leaving Lancashire

It is, I suspect, something of a curse to be blessed with an interest even obsession in family history. It is more of a curse to find that one's own agendas have in fact been set by a family past, agendas reinforced by the very act of discovery.

To set a context for what follows, a modern shot taken in September 2011 showing me beside the big Maori war canoe in the Auckland Museum.

I am probably one of the few people who have sat in this canoe, at least in modern time.

I mentioned Uncle Vic Fisher in my last post, Musings on photos past 4 - Puhoi & Tahekeroa. He was curator of ethnography at the Auckland Museum and took my brother and I in one Sunday when the museum was closed and allowed us to sit in the canoe. I must have been around eight at the time. 

In an earlier post on family history I said that the Belshaws were an Imperial and Commonwealth family. Doesn't that sound grand?  Well, it's not quite like that. We weren't an imperial family like, say, the Murrays. Rather, we were a family to whom the Imperial and Commonwealth connection opened up opportunities, a small family that spread across the dominions.

This photo was taken in, I think, 1935 or 36. The inscription on the back reads "You are quite welcome to two cups of tea at 103. when you come over ER." I think that it was sent to Dad just before he left for England on scholarship.

Walthew Lane is one of the Belshaw streets, Platt Bridge along with Ince and Abram are places where the Belshaws lived. All are suburbs of Wigan.

This is the gritty world of industrial England. The card was sent just before or around the time writer George Orwell stayed in Wigan in February 1936, researching the book that would become The Road to Wigan Pier.

By now, my part of the Belshaw family had broken out of the industrial poverty trap. Emigration and education were central to that. The next photo taken in Auckland (New Zealand) in 1943 shows three generations of Belshaws. In front is grandfather James Belshaw, behind him Uncle Horace Belshaw, then Horace's son, cousin Cyril. By now, my father was living in Armidale.

James Belshaw was born on 6 February 1867. He started work at the pit head and went below ground at eighteen. He was the third generation of Belshaws to do so. He remained working there until sometime after his marriage at the age 30. His wife, Mary Pilkington, was a weaver in the mills at the time of her marriage.

Today we are used to mass education. We forget that this is quite new. My great grandfather James Belshaw's likely wedding certificate (27 June 1850) has only marks, no signatures. When my father visited his Aunt Ellen in 1936, his father's elder sister explained that her inability to write meant that she had lost touch with her family.

Grandfather James Belshaw could write and seems to have been ambitious, as well as strongly religious. He left the mines and became a greengrocer.     

On Monday 3 April 1905 he stood for the Abram Council as a candidate for the new Labour Party . A leaflet produced by him stated:

Reasons why you ought to vote for Belshaw.

1. Because he is a life long resident among you.
2 Because he himself is a working man.
3. Because he goes in for Direct Labour Representation.
4. Because he is the choice of workers.
5. Because he Disbelieves in Cliqueism.
6. Because his Principles and interests are identical with yours.

In July 1905, a bit over thirty years before Orwell visited Wigan, James Belshaw sailed for New Zealand. This family photo was taken in 1905 before his departure. In front is Uncle Horace (b1898), with Mary holding Aunt May. (b1904).

The family followed a little over twelve months later. My father was born in New Zealand in 1908.

I have always wondered a little if the family would have broken out of the poverty trap had they stayed in industrial England. I suspect they would have, but I doubt that they would have had the opportunities that opened up in New Zealand.

Given their backgrounds, my Belshaw grandparents had a strong belief in education. They also focused on security. All three children initially became teachers, a secure job. When Horace as eldest wanted to give up a secure teaching position to become a WEA (Workers Educational Association) tutor, his parents were distressed. Later, they opposed my father's desire to become a journalist.

I can understand my grandparents' concerns. They knew industrial England, whereas the children had grown up in the more open environment of early New Zealand. They had a different perspective, although my own father's concerns about job security were deeply entrenched.

I am out of time today. I will continue this post tomorrow.

Musings on photos past 4 - Puhoi & Tahekeroa

In my last post in this series, Musings on photos past 3 - James Pilkington Belshaw, I mentioned that my father played provincial Rugby in New Zealand.

The little village of Puhoi lies 50km north of Auckland. The area was settled in 1863 by Bohemian settlers and retains its Bohemian character today.

The early settlers had to clear the thick Kauri bush, with timber being cut and floated down the Puhoi River.

The farming district of Tahekeroa lies not far to the west of Puhoi along a winding dirt road. It is a pretty area.

Tahekeroa lies on the North Auckland Railway line and used to have its own siding and school. Dad was posted there as a teacher in the 1930s. 

The school itself was located in a railway carriage, while the school teacher lived in a fettler's hut.

The photo shows the hut with Dad sitting outside to the left. The conditions could hardly be called luxurious!

Dad was completing external masters at the time time.

He got one first class MA, first in New Zealand, but it was not sufficient to give him the scholarship he needed to study in England. There was just one full scholarship for all of New Zealand providing travel, all fees and a reasonably generous living allowance at any English University.

He therefore did a second MA, again gaining first class honours and first in New Zealand. From memory, the first MA was in history, the second in economics. This got him his scholarship. Because brother Horace had studied at Cambridge, my father chose to do a PhD in economics at Manchester instead.

The advantage of living on a railway line lay in the way that books could be sent up from the university, essays and thesis material sent back.

In the 1970s I visited Tahekeroa with Aunt May (Dad's sister) and Uncle Vic Fisher. Dad and Vic had met through the Worker's Educational Association. There Dad introduced Vic to his older sister.

May could remember visiting her brother at Takekeroa, although no obvious sign remained of the fettler's cottage when we were there. However, we called in to see the Straka family, one of Puhoi's Bohemian families, to see if anyone remembered Dad. As it happened, Mr Straka did indeed, remembering his football and also the fact that they tried to marry him off to a local girl. He was seen as far too serious for his own good.

In September while Helen (eldest) and I were in New Zealand for the weekend to see Australia play Ireland in the Rugby World Cup, we found our way first to Puhoi and then to Tahekeroa.

With the passage of time since my previous visit, I found it difficult to locate things. However, I was at least able to show Helen the area where her grandfather had taught!

Maybe on another trip we will have more time.              

Musings on photos past 3 - James Pilkington Belshaw

I am absolutely awash with paper, photos and memorabilia of one type or another.

Over on the New England Australia blog, New England's Air Wars records one piece I found.

This first photo here is one taken of my father at Mayfield in 1926. He was then 18. I had to look Mayfield up. It is a small farming settlement about 35k from Ashburton on the Canterbury Plains in New Zealand's South Island.

One of the difficulties I face is simply organising the material to make sense of it. For the moment, it's still all very scatter gun.

 

The next photo comes from a post of Paul Barratt's, New England University Rugby Team 1939. Comments follow the photo. 

   Dad arrived at the newly established New England University College in 1938, the first staff member to do so. He had played Rugby at provincial level in New Zealand and became, among other things, foundation coach of the Rugby team.

Paul identified those in the photo as:  

Back Row: Lewis Border, Consett Davis, Max Hartwell, John Rafferty, Jim Belshaw (Coach), Alf Maiden, Les Titterton, Frank Rickwood, Ken James
Middle Row: Ralph Crossley, Paul Barratt, Pat Thompson, Alan Sutherland, Peter Durie
Front Row: Ed Scalley, Harry Savage

Paul's post includes details on the players. His father is second on the left in the middle row.

The next and final photo is a studio shot of Dad taken at Solomon's Studios in October 1942, so three years after the football team photo.

You can see what I mean by scattergun. I really need to spend more time organising the material before rushing to post.

In organising material, I am sorting by time, but also by country and particular family line.

I am also trying to add notes so that the photos make more sense.

Musings on photos past 2 - English Belshaw Christmas 1952

We all had a very happy and relaxed Christmas. Now I am back to sorting photos.

In my first post in this series, Musings on photos past, I commented that a photo without a context was often just a piece of visual wall paper.

In 1952, Dad went overseas on a Fulbright Scholarship for a year, leaving the family in Armidale. Before he went, he chopped a year's supply of wood for the kitchen stove and the two open fireplaces that provided a measure of heating during the cold Armidale winter. As kids, we stacked and re-stacked those wood piles to create forts and other constructions.

In England, he spent Christmas 1952 with some of the English Belshaws. At the back from left to right people are listed as Arthur, John, Bob, Joyce, Jim (my father). At the front from left to right Andrew, Alice, Mother, Self, Gwyn. Comments follow the photo.  

This photo is unusual because it actually has names attached. When in 1906 my Grandfather Belshaw and his family emigrated from Wigan in Lancashire  to Canterbury in New Zealand in search of a better life, they did retain contact with those remaining in England. When Dad did his PhD at Manchester in the the 1930s, he visited them. So contact continued.

We have lost contact since. Of those in the photo, I knew only Bob and Joyce (Meade), for they sent my brother and I Christmas presents as kids and in fact Sue and I stayed with them when we visited England in 1979. However, I lost all contact after Bob and Joyce's death.

All this means that I have a box of fading black and white photos from my father that presently sit there without context, frozen in time. So, for the moment, I cannot tell a proper story that might bring them all back to life.    

Belshaw's Christmas thanks

Today is the usual chaotic Christmas Eve.

I am not going to mention individuals, but I just wanted to say thanks to my readers, my commenters and my fellow bloggers. You have enriched my life, and I am truly grateful.

It's difficult for me to explain just how important you have been. You have been there when I was down. You have provided stimulation and friendship. You have been central to the very texture of my life.

As we track into the new year, I look forward to working and sharing with you. I am, I suppose, something of an idealist. Yet it is also an idealism based on personal experience. I believe that we start with the individual and then broaden. I believe that sharing is central. I believe that we we can make changes to ourselves and to broader structures and events that can make a difference. My experience tells me that these things are true.

Regardless of faith or belief, regardless of circumstance, I wish you and yours a very happy Christmas and a peaceful and successful new year. I look forward to 2012 and our interaction.         

Musings on photos past

As we enter the Christmas period, I feel very disinclined to be too serious. I can also see from the stats that the usual December traffic decline is already in effect.

Over the Christmas break I want to indulge myself here just on those things that interest me personally without serious intent of any type.

One thing that I want to do is to complete sorting and digitising photos.

Photos are funny things. A photo without a context is often just a piece of visual wall paper.

This is an official Departmental photo of me taken in 1984. Obviously it has meaning to me, but taken as a photo on it's own, it's just a bloke. If you think of it as one of a series of photos taken at the time of SES (Senior Executive Service) officers in the Department it has a little more meaning, but not much more unless you have some reason for being interesting.

This next photo is a shot from the 1970s of a bloke reading while leaning against a car in what appears to be a suburban backyard. In fact, this photo is full of stories, but again they have special meaning to me or to others connected with this period.

This is the backyard of the Ross Road house I was living in in Queanbeyan at the time the official photo was taken. Those who know Canberra will realise that this could not be a Canberra shot. You won't, or at least wouldn't, find that type of garage in Canberra.

The photo in A PhD student, 1983 was taken in the back room at Ross Road.  I mentioned Sue in that post.

I shared this house with Sue for the best part of fourteen years, the longest time I have lived in one spot outside the Marsh Street family home. This was also the first house I owned.

Later I sold my share in the house to Sue after I moved back to Armidale. 

I was heavily into gardening at this time. You can just see in the foreground the little low glass house that I used to grow early stage seedlings. It was very effective.

The red car is the Datsun 180B that I owned for a number of years. The previous car, a Datsun 1600 fell to bits when I was campaigning for Country Party pre-selection for Armidale.

On thirteen weekends in a row I drove from Canberra to Armidale, leaving straight after work on Friday and then driving through the night. Saturday and Sunday were spent driving around the electorate, driving back to Queanbeyan Sunday night to get there in time for Monday work. I added 56,000 miles to the speedo over the whole pre-selection campaign. The car collapsed as a consequence.

I have written on some of my pre-selection experiences. This photo brought them back. I wonder how I managed!

Richard Hield is the bloke in the photo.

I have been truly blessed, I think, in the people I have known. It's not just the friendship, but also the variety and indeed eccentricity that now provides fertile if often disguised material for my writing! Richard is one such.

I remember Richard and another friend, I think that it was Barry Hess, describing the firing characteristics of the US M16 rifle. I was curious, and asked where they had used one. As I remember the story, they were touring Vietnam during the Vietnam War and ended up at an ARVN (South Vietnamese) hill fort. The Vietcong attacked while they were there. The Vietnamese lieutenant gave them each an M16, pointed down the hill, and suggested they take action!

  Richard joined the Australian Foreign Service as a diplomatic cadet. I met him the following year when I became an administrative trainee. Richard's flat on Northbourne Avenue was a major hangout out. It was there at a party that we learned of Australian PM Holt's disappearance as some of our colleagues were called back to work.

I had already had significant exposure to Asia, something that was still a little unusual in the 1960s and 1970s, although not as unusual as people think today. In fact, I think we probably had more real exposure.

Richard's then girlfriend Louise was Vietnamese, while others in the group had Vietnamese linkages. We helped the girls prepare Vietnamese food, still my all time favourite Asian cuisine. As the South was falling, It was in that flat that people planned campaigns to try to get the Whitlam Government to admit those to whom Australia had obligations. As I have written before, my limited role was to use my Country Party linkages to enlist Ian Sinclair's support.

In many ways, Australia is a very small world especially for those of us drawn together in Canberra at the time from all parts of the country. Another in the immediate group was Stephen Grenville who later became Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank. I suspect that if you ask Steve you will get another linked but very different slice.

Time passes, but overlaps continue. Richard married Sarina who was in the same cohort as my wife at Sydney University's International House. Last year, Richard and Sarina's son was in the same UNSW mixed netball team as my eldest, although neither knew of the parental connection!

To a biographer, photos are the staff of life because they give physical appearance to the characters we are trying to understand. However, they do more because they hint at linkages, at texture, at personality.

Yes, most photos inevitably decline to visual wall paper, pieces frozen in time without personal context. Yet they retain a fascination as we try to understand them.  

Review of the Fair Work Act announced

Yesterday, Bill Shorten as Commonwealth Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, Financial Services and Superannuation announced a review of the Fair Work Act. This act governs industrial relations in Australia.

The review was foreshadowed at the time the legislation was originally introduced and will be conducted by Reserve Bank Board Member John Edwards, former Federal Court Judge, the Honourable Michael Moore and noted legal and workplace relations academic Professor Ron McCallum AO, the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations. If you follow the above link, you will find the terms of reference of the review.

In an opinion piece in today's National Times, former Treasurer Peter Costello takes a swipe at Europe over their failure to follow Australia's earlier industrial relations lead. I think that he is probably right in that lack of labour market flexibility has impeded structural adjustment within Europe. However, it's not as clear cut as that.   

I normally don't comment on industrial relations issues as such because I lack specialist expertise. I am also not especially interested in a day to day sense. Still, at some point it might be worthwhile providing a non-rigorous historical overview of the broad issues involved.

On daddies & daughters

Some time ago eldest won a competition prize, a professional model shoot to create her own portfolio. Not that she wants to be a model, at least I don't think so, but the young are into this sort of thing.

Out of this process, I collected a small photo that might fit in my wallet, although I think that it is in fact too good for that.

As anybody knows who reads this blog, I am very proud of my girls.

The relationships between dads and daughters is a special one, as it it is between mums and daughters. However, it is different from that relationship.

I while back, one of the girl's aunts who has only boys commented that she missed not being able to go shopping and talk about female things. Listening to the girls and their mum talk reminds me just how different men and women are. They chatter in ways and on topics that I cannot.

You would think that being married would give you an understanding of women, and in a way it does. Yet for many men, me included, the relationship with daughters, the interaction between daughters and their mum, provides far greater insights into the female psyche.

The relationships between men and their fathers are often complicated, far more complicated than relationships with mums. Often mum just is, a source of accepting love. By contrast, in the relationship between sons and fathers, there are often real issues of authority and acceptance as the sons attempt to carve out their independent roles and personalities.

Women may be bitchy and sometimes downright vicious. Yet they also understand the need for emotional support in a way that men do not. They are far better at articulating and acting on emotional needs. It is no coincidence that in most marriages, women provide the social glue.

I think that one of the special features for men in their relationships with their daughters lies in the way that daughters provide the type of accepting love that men crave, but are often unable to articulate properly. Accepting love does not mean unquestioning love, just love that is in some ways simpler and uncomplicated.

The love between fathers and daughters is forged from birth and grows through experience of the natural stages in a girl's life. Not all fathers experience this, or not to the same degree. Some are just too busy, others too protective, some don't have daughters.  But for those men such as me lucky enough to experience the process, it is a wonderful thing.  

Galilee coal & Australia's mega developments

I was fascinated by a short report in the Australian (Paul Cleary, 16 December 2011) on Clive Palmer's China First coal development in Queensland's Galilee Basin. You will find another story by David Wroe (SMH, 19 December) here.

Before going on, this map shows the distribution of the Queensland coal fields. The Galilee Basin is marked by the light brown on the left. The China First Coal project itself is about 400 k inland from Gladstone.   

The scale of these developments is enormous.  In this case, the project will apparently:

• cost $A7.5 - 8.8 billion (estimates vary)
• generate 6,000 jobs during the construction phase, 1,500 during operation
• boost coal exports by 40 million tonnes per annum worth approximately $A4.6 billion dollars
• occupy some 55,000 hectares.

Unusually, the First China impact statement includes modelling suggesting that will cause a "considerable decline" in manufacturing because the extra coal exports from July 2013 will put upward pressure on the exchange rate.

Modelling produced by the consultancy AEC group says the project will cause the loss of 2215 manufacturing jobs in Queensland alone between 2013 and June 2018, and a further 1666 jobs over the next 18 years, with some job losses elsewhere in Australia as well.  Agriculture will also lose about 450 jobs.

At the same time, and this is not referred to in the newspaper reports that I have seen, the project will create its own jobs beyond the direct employment numbers.  

This is actually about what you would expect during a process of fundamental structural change since this means basic shifts in economic activities. The recent Australian Bureau of Statistics National accounts figures contained some remarkable statistics showing the scale of the changes now underway. The following table shows the increase in state final demand seasonally adjusted over the last twelve months ranked by the percentage size of the increase.

 

State, Territory	% increase final demand year ending Sep 11
Western Australia	16.4
Queensland	9.3
Victoria	1.8
ACT	1.3
NSW	1.2
Tasmania	1.0
South Australia	0.1
Northern Territory	0.1

The numbers bounce around, with part of the Queensland increase due to recovery from the floods. Even so, you can see what I mean. That WA number must be one of the highest growth rates in the world.

Meantime, Greenpeace is worried that the development of mega coal mines in Central Queensland will destroy the world's chances of keeping global warming to 2 degrees. According to newspaper reports, calculations made by the Institute for Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology, Sydney, on behalf of Greenpeace conclude if the proposed mega-mines in the Galilee Basin run at full pace, by 2035 they would be eating up 4 per cent of the world's carbon budget and 9 per cent of the emissions set aside for coal.

The weakness in the Greenpeace analysis lies simply in the assumption that if the Galilee mines do not proceed, things will be different. If the demand for coal is there, production will expand. Remove Central Queensland, and other mines will expand in their place. 

Problems with swimming pools

Somehow yesterday escaped me, at least in a blogging sense. There were just too many domestic things I needed to do.

When we moved into our current house last March we inherited a swimming pool. It became the bane of my life, always green. Over the last few days with some professional help we have at least made it swimmable.

To finally fix it, I dumped two entire lots of chlorine in, then painfully cleaned the bottom and water. The water was tested, leading to the addition of acid, and will be tested again Tuesday with further chemicals to be added.

During the peak Sydney water restrictions, I complained about the way in which pool owners were given preference over gardeners. Having now gone through the whole process of pool fixing, I wish I had known those details at the time. I had no idea just how much pool water gets put into drains, nor the technical complexity of it all.

I really don't feel comfortable dumping all these chemicals into water just so that I can have a swim. The prices are also somewhat horrendous. Had I known what I know now about private swimming pools, I could have been far more sarcastic and indeed targeted in my attacks on water restriction. That's life, I guess.  

Is Federal Labor finally NSWalesed?

I wonder how many of us have been in situations where our own desire to improve things, to respond to events, actually makes things worse? Certainly I have in both my work and professional life.

In a relationship, for example, situations arise where one partner is upset, has grievances, where the other responds in ways that hurt and complicate despite best intentions. Similar situations arise at work where our attempts to do things, to respond to challenges, actually blows what we want do out of the water.

These types of problems are common and normally pass. However, sometimes a pattern of behaviour (a pathology) is created that leads to a reinforcing downwards path. Pecking away at the problem, we make it worse. 

I have put this in a personal sense, but similar processes happen with organisations, including Governments and political parties.

I don't know if I was the first person to coin the phrase the New South Wales Disease, although it was original to me at the time I first used. Similarly, I don't know if I was the first person to talk about the NSWalesing of the Federal Government, although again it was original to me when I first applied the term.

By the New South Wales Disease I mean simply a political and government world that was increasingly disconnected from reality, a world in which the internal games came to dominate. This was also a world in which the increasing disconnect was accommodated by constant shifts to try to adjust to perceived public opinion, to respond not by some central compass, but by what might sell best immediately.

As things got worse, there were constant changes, responses to external events, to symptoms. By the end, the only thing left were the internal games.

I applied the term NSWalesing to the Rudd Government early because its style was so reminiscent. In saying this, I am not intending to doubt Mr Rudd's energy, to doubt that he had ideas, to doubt his integrity. I am talking about a pattern.

Mr Rudd's initial problems were largely personal, a failing in management. However, he also inherited two things from NSW.

The first was what I call mechanistic management, an approach to public administration that centred on simplistic targets wrapped around in big words. The second was a political culture that focused on the game, on the need to package for immediate advantage. We use words like spin or focus groups, but they are simply symptoms of a broader pattern.

As problems emerged, the Labor Party responded by selecting a new leader, a very NSW things to do. That addressed the specific issues associated with Mr Rudd's management style, but left other elements unchanged. Consequently, similar problems emerged. These were exacerbated by Opposition Leader Abbott's ability to simplify, to go for the jugular.

Despite all the problems, it seemed to me as the year moved to an end that the Government had established a certain stability. Things were being done, while Mr Abbott had begun to lose his ability to set the terms of debate. Since then, the wheels seem to have come off and in a very NSW way.

I do not pretend to understand the full dynamics of the Australian Labor Party. What does seem to be clear is that the internal machinations within the Party, the games now being played out, have again put the Government on the back foot. This time the focus is on Julia Gillard's leadership style, on her failure to mention Kevin Rudd at the ALP's National Conference, on the fall-out from the ministerial changes.

Anybody who has been involved in a storm, in a downward spiral whether in personal or professional life, will know that the hardest thing is to find a point of calm, a flat space. Without that point of calm, that flat space, it becomes impossible to establish any form of equilibrium. You end by running desperately across the shifting sands, veering from one point to another in response to changes in the sand. Finally, the in-coming tide swamps you.

Politics is no different. I do not understand why the PM felt it necessary to reorganise the ministry just before Christmas, apart from very minor changes to accommodate one departing minister. She had nothing really to gain at this point. The consequence has been further destabilisation.

I do wonder if Federal Labor has the capability anymore to stop the rot, to find that quiet space required to regroup. If not, the NSWalesing of the Federal Government will be complete.