Last days on Rhodes

Greek Trip, Day 16, Sunday 3 October 2010, Rhodes continued

Continuing the story of our Greek trip from Lindos & its acropolis, we drove out of Lindos in the late afternoon to return to Rhodes. As I said at the end of my last post, I am annoyed that I did not visit the acropolis myself. Looking at Clare's photos reminded me of just what I missed in terms of overlapping history.

This shot shows the classical influence:

This shot shows the much heavier Frankish remains. I don't know whether or not its prejudice, but I think that the gradation in fineness from the more delicate Greek or Hellenic through the Roman to the Franks (the generic name given to those from the west) reflects character!

 

The run back to Rhodes took us through country we had already see.n I was again struck by the barren nature of the countryside, as well as the hints of historical remains. 

Back in Rhodes, we dropped the car off and walked back though the walls into the old city. After cleaning up and a drink, we walked down to a local restaurant for dinner.

I haven't spoken a lot about food on this trip, largely because I am not really enamoured of Greek food.

That night we had decided to go to a place that we had seen before and had got chatting to the owner. I was the one who pushed us into it, for the owner had been quite helpful. Talk about a disappointment! The food was poor and overpriced.

Greek Trip, Day 17, Monday 4 October 2010, Rhodes

The next morning dawned bright and hot. After breakfast, we walked downtown. The girls decided to get a drink, while I went off to try to find an internet cafe.

One of the things that you notice about old Rhodes as compared to the other Greek Island towns is that it's bigger and just so much more spread out. You don't have quite the same concentration of shops or cafes or indeed sometimes people. You need to know where you are going and have to walk longer distances.

I chose this photo to illustrate the point simply because it shows somewhat lost and confused tourists!

I walked and walked in search of my internet cafe. It was bright sunlight, very hot. Finally I found a cafe that advertised internet connections. When I asked the price, they said that it was free if I ordered something. It was hot, I was going to be there for a while, so I asked for a large beer. Silly me!

The beer arrived in due course in a very large glass boot. As best I could work out, it contained at least three full bottles of beer. Talking to the girl beside me who was drinking from a very large glass, I asked her what she had ordered. A medium beer she said!

My new friend was not a happy chappie! Apart from the beer, she had also asked about printer connections to be told that they had them. They did, but no one thought to mention that the printer was out of paper!

I drank some beer, checked Facebook and emails, then wrote a short post. By then I had drunk half the beer, but could not manage more without getting far to tipsy for a hot Monday in the middle of the day. I asked for the bill, eighteen euros!! This was a bit of a disaster for someone whose already tight budget was badly  overstretched.

I walked outside feeling very silly. It really was a con, but my own fault for not doing the proper checks first. Outside I paused to take a photo, creating some concern among the proprietors. Don't visit!   

After this experience I walked back to the hotel and had a rest. After writing up some notes rejoined the group for dinner. We had been going to go to a French restaurant for a food break, but found that it had closed two years earlier following the death of the owner. Instead we chose to go to Taverna Mama Sofia's for our last evening meal on Rhodes.

Mama Sofia's was just up  the road from our hotel. We sat in the roof garden overlooking the street and had a very pleasant meal.

I was still cranky about the morning's internet experience. However, under the influence of food, wine and conversation I gradually relaxed and ended up thoroughly enjoying the evening.

Tomorrow Athens and a new phase in my exploration of Greece's past and present, the classical world, the Peloponnesian Wars and current economic troubles.        

Generational Change and the 1970s

Neil Whitfield had a rather wonderful photo from Cronulla High School (Sydney) supplied by Marilyn Markham (Berriman)that I am going to take the liberty of reproducing in a moment. An explanation first.

One of the things that interests me as an analyst and historian is the process of social change and the way this moves in generational waves. Sometimes the process is slow, then at other times you can get sudden shifts.

One way of understanding the process is to look at particular individuals or groups from different points in time and then compare.

This photo shows the 1968 English class from Cronulla High School in 1968. They all look very prim and proper.

I am guessing ages, but I suspect that they are around  eighteen, so born in 1950.

Keith Leopold was born on 30 July 1920, completed the NSW Leaving Certificate in 1937, then entered the newly established New England University College in 1938 as a seventeen year old. His Came to Booloominbah: a country scholar's progress 1938-1942 (University of New England Press, Armidale 1988) provides a picture of school and especially university life at the start of and during the early Second World War period.

I am not sure when Professor Don Aitkin was born, probably 1936, given that he did the Leaving Certificate at Armidale High School in 1953. His What was it all for? The Reshaping of Australia. (Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, 2005) is a social history exploring social change in Australia through the eyes of the Armidale High School Leaving Certificate class of 1953.

Now how does this all fit with the Cronulla High School Class of 1968? Well, this class was right on the tip point of the changes that would make the 1970s such a significant decade from the viewpoint of Australian social history, the ending of a more formal era that had began in Australia around the middle of the nineteenth century.

John Ferry's Colonial Armidale (Queensland University Press, 1999) provides a picture of social life in one locality. In doing so, he traces the rise of respectability, the establishment of social order to replace the disorder of the previous pioneer, frontier society. This creation of what are now called Victorian values was not unique to Armidale, nor to Australia.

The big shocks of the first part of the Twentieth Century - the First World War, the Great Depression and the Second World War - shook that respectability, but it re-asserted itself. Part of the reason for this lay in the size and timing of the shocks themselves.

An Australian born in 1890 immediately experienced the 1890s' depression including a great drought, twelve years later came the First World War, ten years after that the Great Depression, a depression that was just easing as the Second World War began. By the end of the Second World War, our now fifty five year old Australian would have experienced some eleven years of full scale war, twenty plus years of depression or recession and, at best, twenty four years of economic growth. While each major shock brought about changes, there was also a conscious desire among many to return to a preserve stability.

I recognise that I am generalising, and that there were always groups within Australia that had different views. However, if you look at John Ferry's history of colonial Armidale, at Keith Leopold, at Don Aitkin, you can see what I mean. It wasn't just attitudes towards sex or gender roles, but the very formalities of manners themselves.

To the eighteen year olds of the Cronulla High School Class of 1968, the world was a far more prosperous and peaceful place than that their parents had known. There had been periodic downturns and crashes including that of 1961, but they had never known a period of severe unemployment, while the increased supply of, and reduced real price for, consumer goods made for a previously unparalleled material wealth. They still lived in a world where the old formalities of manners applied including gloves for girls, but the world was already changing.

When I did the Leaving Certificate some years after Don, the secondary school I went to in Armidale (THe Armidale School) still had structures, formalities and manners that would have been familiar to the various generations of boys that had gone there since its establishment in 1894. The University of New England, too, when I became a student in 1963 would have seemed familiar in many ways to that Keith Leopold found in 1938 or Don Aitkin in 1954. Yet the University I found in 1963 was already in transition.

Don Beer was a lecturer in history at UNE when I was there as an undergraduate. The abstract to his The Holiest Campus', its Decline and Transformation: The University of New England, 1946–79 (Journal of Religious History, Volume 21 Issue 3, Pages 318 - 336) summarises one aspect of then UNE life in this way:

In the mid-1960s and possibly earlier the University of New England (UNE), located at Armidale in rural New South Wales, was reputed to be 'the holiest campus' in Australia. The article finds a considerable body of evidence to give credibility to this view. It argues that UNE was relatively religious because it drew more of its students from the most devout social groups in Australia than other universities and because those students were then proselytized by religious societies that operated effectively and with strong clerical support in a small, cohesive institution. The ethos of UNE was broadly Christian, perhaps more so than that of metropolitan universities.

This fits with my own experience. I was a member of the Methodist Youth Fellowship and Student Christian Movement and had friends involved with the Evangelical Union and with the Roman Catholic student group. Yet change processes were already clear along a number of dimensions: within religious groups themselves, there was much debate about new theological ideas; students wanted less formality, less rigid rules; while in practice most girls were to follow the traditional routes of marriage and family, there was considerable discussion about gender roles; while attitudes towards sex and sexuality were clearly changing.

These changing attitudes affected the broader community. 

Kenneth Dempsey's Conflict and Decline: Ministers and laymen in an Australian country town (Methuen Australia, North Ryde, 1983) is a sociological study of the changing relationships between ministers and lay people in a Methodist community (Uralla near Armidale) in New England from 1905 to mid 1967, written by a man who lived in the community to carry out the study. The 1967 end date is significant because it predates the very big changes that were to come.

The period after 1950 was one of growing conflict and decline in the Uralla Methodist Circuit directly associated with broader cultural change that affected the ministry.     

Increasingly, minister's wives were no longer prepared to play the traditional pastoral roles expected of them. Increasingly, the ministers themselves came to Uralla in part to advance their studies at the nearby University of New England, creating conflict with their much older and less well educated senior laity who were suspicious that their circuit (and financial contributions) was being used simply as a means to the end.

Perhaps most important of all, the new ministers were affected by and reflected the waves of intellectual and theological change sweeping the Church. An aging, conservative, country congregation found themselves dealing with younger ministers who wanted to substitute reading from the newspapers for bible readings, who wanted to debate the moral issues of the Vietnam war, who wanted to energise their congregation to go out and convert.

The results were a disaster on both sides.

Of the ten ministers who served in Uralla between 1950 and 1967, no less than six resigned from the ministry immediately or soon after leaving Uralla. This disaster for the Church was finally matched by the abolition of Uralla circuit, leaving the Uralla laity as part of an Armidale circuit whose whole tone was set by its proximity to the nearby university.

The overall pace of change accelerated from the late sixties.

At The Armidale School, the headmaster (Alan Cash) found himself dealing with a rebellious student body who challenged school rules and dress codes. Cousin Will who was at the school then has some fairly graphic tales of the conflicts that took place. The old uniform was abolished and rules altered.

Similar events took place at UNE. Some of the issues and tensions are recorded in Mathew Jordon's A spirit of true learning: The Jubliee History of the University of New England (University of New South Wales Press, 2004 pp 180ff). One small side-effect was the abolition of student gowns.

A more telling statistic is provided by Don Beer: whereas in the first half of the 1960s over half of the student body was highly religious, by the late 1970s the proportion had fallen to one-fifth to one-quarter. Associated with this, was a transformation of religious activity marked by the reassertion of Christian denominationalism and the emergence of a non-Christian spiritual sensibility.

In some ways the 1973 Aquarius Festival held at the small Northern Rivers village of Nimbin marked the symbolic height of the 1970s' change process.

In 1972, scouts from the Australian Union of Students came to the village and persuaded the Nimbin Progress Association to allow a festival to be held there. The result in 1973 was a ten day festival -  a celebration of the dawning of the `Consciousness' and `Protest' movements in the heady days of the Vietnam war, free love and marijuana - a festival of discovery. The photo shows domes at the Festival.

Nimbin entered Australian popular culture as a potent symbolic marker. Yet I think of it as the peak because of changed economic conditions.

In 1973, the same year as Nimbin, the first oil shock marked the start of a period of economic turmoil that led to radically changed conditions. For the first time in almost thirty years, young people faced real unemployment. By 1979, undergraduate students on the campus at the University of New England had largely withdrawn not just from political activities, but indeed from most student activities other than the social.

However, they left a changed world. 

'The Holiest Campus', its Decline and Transformation: The University of New England, 1946–79

I have just spent a frustrating half hour trying to find a particular article by Don Beer that I had seen before looking at changing student attitudes to religion at the University of New England. The article is relevant to my own experience, but also provides a snap shot of change during the seventies at one place and along one dimension. I decided to post it to ensure that I can find it again.

I have mentioned before that held strong religious views at University, views that influenced my attitude to the Vietnam War. In town I was an active participant in the Methodist Youth Fellowship. On campus I was a member of the Student Christian Movement and had friends in the Evangelical Union.

By the time I returned to Armidale again in 1981, my own views had shifted while both campus life in general and religious life in particular were less active. The abstract follows:

"In the mid-1960s and possibly earlier the University of New England (UNE), located at Armidale in rural New South Wales, was reputed to be 'the holiest campus' in Australia. The article finds a considerable body of evidence to give credibility to this view. It argues that UNE was relatively religious because it drew more of its students from the most devout social groups in Australia than other universities and because those students were then proselytized by religious societies that operated effectively and with strong clerical support in a small, cohesive institution. The ethos of UNE was broadly Christian, perhaps more so than that of metropolitan universities.

After 1965 there was a substantial decline in religious practice, belief and influence at UNE, as apparently at other Australian universities and in Australia as a whole. In the case of UNE, secularization was more than a decline in civil or social religion, more than a process of decline through differentiation: in the first half of the 1960s over half of the student body was highly religious but by the late 1970s the proportion had fallen to one-fifth to one-quarter. Associated with this decline was a transformation of religious activity marked by the reassertion of Christian denominationalism and the emergence of a non-Christian spiritual sensibility."

Beer, D. R. (1997)'The Holiest Campus', its Decline and Transformation: The University of New England, 1946–79.Journal of Religious History 21 (3), 318-336.doi: 10.1111/1467-9809.00042

The Fourteen Day Meal Challenge

My mother used to complain just how difficult it was to put varied meals on the table that would satisfy the picky eaters in her family. I know just how she feels.

At the weekend I decided to do something new. I announced to my family, daughters in particular, that starting Saturday I was beginning the fourteen day meal challenge.

The challenge is simple enough. For fourteen days I am not allowed to repeat a meal. Each meal - we are talking dinner here - has to be different.

My family was happy with this, recognising that they might get some meals they do not like. There was only one veto from my daughters. I have to continue providing the traditional roast chook on Sunday nights.

Why such an extreme step? Well, partly because I was getting bored. It's very hard to stay motivated when cooking has to be squeezed in at the end of a day. The traditional meat and two vegetables or meat and salad is very easy.

It's especially hard just at present because of added daily travel time associated with changing work location, a move from a home office base to on-site working. While I have worked out the best standard routes down to the best lane change points, in so doing cutting driving time quite a bit, I have still lost an hour a day in additional travel time. So I needed something to keep me motivated.

Last night daughters and I (Denise is away on business) reviewed progress. Helen in particular is very keen on the whole thing because she likes not knowing what the meal will be. We had some difficulty in fact remembering as far back as Saturday, so we agreed that I should blog progress as a way of keeping a record.

Saturday, election day, was lasagna. Here David Anderson of View Italy fame will not be pleased to hear that I bought a large frozen one. But Saturday was crazy. Denise was working on the booths and then scrutineered in the evening. Helen and Clare also had a variety of things on that had to be fitted in.

Sunday roast chook as per tradition. This comes with stuffing and all trimmings. This time I varied it a little by buying a fully organic bird. I usually just buy free range because the price difference - around $10 - is just too much for us to afford fully organic fowls all the time.

It's interesting, my girls can pick the taste difference between corn fed, they don't like and we don't have, the ordinary mass produced fowl, and free range.

Monday I tried chicken breast marinated in lemon, oregano and then rubbed with pepper and salt and olive oil with Mediterranean style baked vegetables (egg plant, zucchini, capsicum in particular) using an idea pinched from Jamie Oliver. This was a great hit with Denise, less so with daughters. I got the taste right, but the girls don't like egg plant. This is actually odd, come to think if it, because they love Lebanese food.

Tuesday T bone stakes were on special, less than $3 each. So that provided the starting point, rubbed with pepper and salt just before cooking Florentine style. Here I reverted to three veg, but tried a variation by using "baby" potatoes - real chats are actually hard to get where I normally shop - with sour cream.

Last night was crazy. I left Ashfield a bit after 4.30 to pick Clare up from school at Waverley. Then to Bondi Junction for quick shopping before picking Helen up a bit after six from SCEGS Darlinghurst where she coaches some of the juniors in gym.

Then to Moore Park for Helen's netball training. They are just switching training days, so we waited to see if training was on that night. It was not, so then home getting here about 6.45, over two hours after leaving work.

At that point I had a beer and quickly checked emails, then started cooking, in this case rack of lamb together with the potato dish the girls really like, sliced potatoes in layers with pepper and salt, Parmesan cheese and cream cooked in the oven.

After eating I sat down with the girls to watch the Chasers War On Everything only to fall asleep in front of the TV. Those who read this blog will know that I get up very early, usually around 4am, because the two hours between then and six are really the only quiet time I have. But if I then have wine in the evening, something I like, I fade very quickly.

Food tonight I don't know. Thursday is the week's craziest day.

Clare has English coaching at Rose Bay. She gets herself there, but I pick her up a bit after five. Home so she can change, then to Little Bay for hockey training at 6.30. Clare is a goalie and has just tried out for the UNSW teams since she does not get all that much hockey at school.

I think that they were a bit sceptical initially at a seventeen year old trying out and certainly Clare found the shots a lot faster. But it appears that she is good enough - and this was one of the reasons she wanted to try out, to test herself - to make one of the senior grades in either the Eastern Suburbs or Metro competition. We will find out tonight. And they also have specialist goalie training, something that Clare really likes.

Anyway, back to the driving. Having dropped Clare off I then drive to Heffron, fortunately this is on the way home, to pick Helen up from the netball courts where she is coaching one of the junior teams. Then home. Clare then has to be picked up at eight, but Dee usually does this while I am cooking.

It is a crazy life style. Coming home in the car tonight Clare said that she was missing her sister, that she would like some time with Helen. The two are very close.

The problem is that Helen is doing university, coaching gym (paid) and doing her coaching certificate, coaching netball (unpaid), working at the pub just down the road and still pursuing an active social life. Then add in Clare's activities, and the two don't really coincide. The girls agreed that they would set a day aside in the upcoming school holidays to do things together. This has to be done in advance so that Helen can keep the day free.

I think that my working colleagues are a bit surprised at the way I obsess about time and organisation, but it's a natural outcome of the way we live.

Pubs, daughters & the Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels

As someone fascinated by the idiosyncrasies of human life, I love the sometimes randomness of it all.

I have mentioned before that eldest works on a part time basis at the Newmarket, a hotel not far from where we used to live in Rosebery. Those who live in Sydney may well know the pub and the bowling alley next door - it's owned by the same people - because it's on the corner of two main drags, Botany and Gardeners Roads.

It's a very busy pub with a significant local clientele. The tour buses from the Blue Mountains and outer suburbs visiting the factory outlets that dot the area also call there for lunch, making for a very busy bistro. Helen has been working there for several years now, part time during term, more during holidays.

My work as a management consultant means that I have had to learn to watch and listen. To improve things, you really have to understand how things work in the first place. If, as is so often the case, you change things without really understanding what actually happens on the ground, then mess results.

   I don't spend a lot of time at the pub. However, I do sit at the bar sometimes when waiting for her.

Helen is one of the still small but growing number of urban young without a driver's license, put off by the time, cost and hassle now involved in getting one. This worries me from time to time, for absence of a license can be a significant problem in an emergency.

Monday night was a case in point.

Helen plays netball two nights a week. On Monday, one of her friends (Grace) took Helen to netball in her car. During the game, Grace fell heavily, so another girl drove Helen and Grace to hospital in Grace's car. Helen then rang her mum who drove across to Royal North Shore Hospital to stay with them until Grace could be seen and then bring Helen home. It turned out to be a late night. Then early the following morning, I drove Helen to Mosman to collect her mobile on the way to work. Grace's mobile battery was flat, so Helen had left the phone in case Grace needed to contact her parents.

A small story, but it does illustrate the importance of driver's licenses. Mind you, I don't mind driving Helen. It actually gives me at least the illusion of the usefulness I once had when the girls were still at school!

Sitting at the bar nursing a light beer with my management consulting hat on while Helen finishes up is quite interesting. Dear that girl's efficient. There is no wasted effort. It's not just a question of pouring a beer or serving another type of drink. Some customers pay in cash, some with EFTPOS. Most have membership cards that need to be swiped. These cards provide special benefits. All this is mixed with transactions from the Sportstab area.

From a pub viewpoint, turnover depends upon fast service. It also depends upon courteous service, especially to keep the regulars happy. 

Serving up to five people at a time, mostly regulars, Helen has the process down to an art form with no wasted effort.

I said that I was fascinated by the randomness of it all. Yesterday, I was due to pick Helen up at six. She rang me a bit after five to say that the Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels were visiting the pub, and I might like to come and watch. She didn't have many details, but knew that I was interested in the history. I hopped in the car and drove off. In due course, the Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels appeared and danced.

Now there is a back story here that took me a little while to put together.

Most Australians know the Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels as the Papuan villagers who helped the Australian troops in the often dreadful fighting against the Japanese along the Kokoda Track in 1942. One of the most iconic photos shows one of the Angels helping a wounded Australian soldier.

While the work of the Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels was well known in this country, it took a long time for the Australian Government to formally recognise their help. That recognition was aided by the growing interest in Australia in the story of Kokoda Track and the opening of the Trail to walkers. The terms Track and Trail are used interchangeably.

This year 3 November, the date in 1942 on which victory was unofficially declared on the Track, was officially dedicated as Kokoda Day. To mark the event, a group of dancers from Kokoda village plus one of the original Fuzzy Wuzzies, the son of a second,were brought to Australia with support from QANTAS. As part of their visit, they were also involved in the unveiling of a commemorative statue at the Kokoda Track Memorial Walkway at Rhodes in Sydney's Inner West.

It was this group that was to perform at the Newmarket. Now sitting at the bar, I had no idea of all this background. Indeed, I had no idea what to expect at all!

The main bar at the Newmarket has a small stage in the corner, with an open area in front. As I waited, chairs were place on the stage, and a group of dancers came out dressed in traditional costumes including bare breasted girls, accompanied by three Papuans in suits who sat on the stage.

The dances began, accompanied by hand held drums and singing. I was quite fascinated, as were most of the other patrons.

I hadn't seen Papuan dancing, nor heard Papuan singing. I suppose that I had expected it to be like the Aboriginal equivalent, but it had a more African feel because of the drums and rhythms.

I was also struck by the small stature of those involved.

The Papuan and New Guinea people I have known (a number started coming to my old school on scholarship as boarders during my last years at TAS) were generally shorter than some of the taller local students, but I have actually never been to PNG.

I suppose my eyes have been conditioned by the big boned Polynesians who have a significant presence in Australia and especially in Rugby Union.

At the end of the performance, the group leader introduced everybody and explained the significance of the visit. It was then that I realised the importance of the back story. Me being me, this led me to go off and check details, and then too write this story.

I still have no idea how the group came to perform at the Newmarket. Presumably someone knew someone. I do feel honoured and grateful to have been there.     

In search of Reschs' Pilsener - Bob Q replies

At the start of my post In Search of Reschs Pilsener I recorded my despair at the fact that my local bottleshop had sold out. I also made a passing reference to Bob Q. Now Bob has responded.

In this case such a full response that I thought I should respond by full post as part of my consumer revolution series. So Bob's comment follows with my comments inserted.

Jim,

A tragedy indeed, at least from your POV. Worse, it indicates a number of things:

1. Your bottleshop doesn't sell much in the way of the old Silver Bullet either if one customer can buy out the whole stock.

Too true, I fear.

2. Such one-off mega purchases are not the answer - it doesn't encourage regularity of supply.

3. [snark] Most people agree with me on the taste of this beer. [/snark].

Ouch!

"But what can I do, Bob?" I hear you cry, your anguished tones echoing even in my farflung corner of the former Empire? One of four things leaps to mind:

1. Drink locally, act locally. Talk to the bottleshop owner and literally ask that s/he continue to stock your brew of choice, explaining that you will in future eschew the evil that is Woolies' shelf stocking policy in favour of his her establishment. Problem if the bottleshop is a chain. BIG problem if it is BWS, owned by ...

This I have done. The local bottle shop - Cellarbrations Rosebery - is part of a chain, but the stores are independently owned. I know them, and they know me. So they will stock to suit my tastes, at least within reason.

2. Drink locally, act even more locally. As a South Australian, I have been very pleased to see the comeback made by various Coopers beers. They went through a period of being a niche product and one result was that you can still buy beer making kits which produce a relatively OK facsimile of the real thing. Maybe Reschs' does the same, or one of the standard pilsener kits would result in a tasty brew. It's cheap and costs about four hours (two x two hour slots) and makes an absorbing hobby. Homebrews actually mature and improve in the bottle. I know however that time is not your friend - never has been, that I recall.

Too true, Bob, so far as time is concerned. I have never attempted home brew, at least not since ginger beer when the bottles exploded! Oh, and my one attempt to create a home still when I was a kid. The thought of getting the bottles clean puts me off.

3. Patience is a virtue. Wait for resupply. If it's hot at the moment, I'd recommend a bottle or two of Clare Valley Riesling to see you through. If the weather is cooling off, move to support your local winemakers with a Hunter Valley red.

This, supporting my local wineries, is something of a sore point. There are now a number of New England wine areas, not just the Hunter. In a very crowded wine marketplace, I find it hard to buy regional. Further, the growth of the big wine companies has created a problem because they focus on just a few brands, dropping others.

4. If at first you don't succeed, hide the evidence that you ever tried. Switch brands again. Surrender to the power. Ugly, but an option. Moving to Coopers might see you safe as it is a family concern which fought off a takeover recently. Shareholders refused to take quite a generous offer.

I do in fact drink Coopers from time to time, and for the reasons you cite. Maybe I should do more so.

Dee sends her regards, Bob.

Australia's economic fragmentation

All figures in this post are $Australian.

A report from Deloitte Access Economics, commissioned by Google, puts the direct contribution of the Internet to the Australian economy at $50b, the wider benefits through productivity increases at $27b and the value of the benefits to households at $53b. You can find a full copy of the report here.

Yesterday the Australian Bureau of Statistics released estimates showing Australian sales rose a meager 2.6 per cent during 2010-11 - the worst result for half a century, since the 1961-62 recession. NSW was especially hard hit. Reporting here, ABS data here.

Yesterday, too, the ABS released trade figures showing that Australia had an estimated surplus on trade of goods and services of around $2 billion in June. Imports of consumption goods were down, imports of capital goods up.

Then the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries released figures showing that the July sales total of 80,991 cars was down almost 2 per cent on the same month last year, compounding a string of negative results that mean 36,000 fewer cars left showrooms this year compared with 2010. The Chamber blamed consumer uncertainty and the flow-on effects of the Japanese natural disaster in March.

Finally, the NSW Government released State Treasury estimates suggesting that the proposed carbon tax would hit NSW harder than any other state on the mainland and cost at least 31,000 jobs, particularly in regional areas.

The analysis suggests the carbon tax could cut $3.7 billion from the annual output of the NSW economy by 2020, rising to $9.1 billion by 2030.

The confidential cabinet document estimates the federal tax will result in the loss of 1850 jobs in the Hunter region and 7000 fewer jobs would be created in the Illawarra. The central west would lose 1000 jobs.

Five stories, all linked to change in the structure of the Australian "economy". I put the term "economy" in inverted commas because, increasingly, the concept of an Australian economy is becoming little more than a statistical construct.

It has always been the case that patterns of economic activity varied across the country. However, for a considerable period those variations were largely ignored because the large Eastern states population centres - Sydney, Melbourne and, to a lesser extent, Brisbane - that dominated key statistics were actually doing okay as a whole.

Back in the late eighties and early nineties my then Aymever consulting and research team argued that fragmentation of the Australian economy was inevitable. Our conclusion was based in part upon the decline in the importance of the Australian customs union.

One part of the Federal compact that formed Australia was the imposition of tariff barriers that rose with time. This created a dual economy: an inwardly focused manufacturing sector serving a domestic marketplace and that supported a variety of service activities along with an outwardly looking agricultural and mining sector servicing international markets. The progressive redistribution of economic activity that followed the creation of the customs union favoured the domestic over the international, and also favoured those areas servicing the domestic.

By the time we were writing, the opening up of the Australian economy to global competition was well underway. Our then view was that this must inevitably lead to some fragmentation of the Australian economy since its varying constituent parts would be increasingly and varyingly affected by  global rather than domestic change. We were also monitoring other changes such as the patterns of internal migration that were already clear and were likely to affect both economic activity and political power.

We got some things wrong. For example, the process of change was actually slower than we had forecast. That's quite an important error because it affected the value of our advice to clients. At the same time, we did get the broad pattern right.

Within Australia, the process of fragmentation has been most pronounced in NSW. Up to the 1970s, you could still talk meaningfully to some degree of a NSW economy. As late as 1960, a considerable proportion of economic activity was still state based, from ice cream to beer to professional services.

Starting in the 1950s, state based economic activities were increasingly replaced by national based activities. This started first in manufacturing and then spread as companies looked to expand activities. The process accelerated during the 1980s, aided by new technology that facilitated centralisation of services.

Sydney and Melbourne as Australia's major corporate headquarters benefited most.  Other areas suffered.

I have plotted this in most detail in New England as part of my study of economic and social change in the period 1950-2000. To illustrate the scale of change, in 1950 all the New England media was locally owned. By 2000 local ownership had shrunk to a handful of independent papers. In 1960, retailing was predominantly locally owned. By 2000, retailing was dominated by the chains.

I have given a local example. More broadly, the capital cities outside Melbourne and Sydney saw a transfer of previous state headquartered business activities to Sydney and Melbourne, The exact effect varied, but the overall trend was clear.

One side effect of this was a growing disconnect between economic activity in Sydney and the rest of NSW. Global Sydney as the city came to call itself became less dependant on, less affected by, economic activity in the rest of its traditional economic activity.

This trend was reinforced by other changes - from the 1990s, the rise of South East Queensland in the north, renewed growth in Melbourne in the south, the growth of Canberra, all drew increasing proportions of NSW within their economic spheres. Today, NSW consists of a myriad of regions and sub-regions, each with very different economic drivers. The economic statistics for NSW actually say little in real terms beyond the extent to which they act as a proxy for Sydney as the largest economic entity.

If you look at the NSW Treasury report on the impact of a carbon tax, the state element is the impact on revenue from lower dividends on electricity generation. Everything else is essentially expressed in sub-state regional terms. 

What has happened in NSW is an extreme example of a broader trend towards economic fragmentation as Australia continues through a new period of change. What can we say about this change?

One element can truly be described as a national economic trend. The desire of Australians to save more, to reduce debt, is a broadly national phenomenon. However, the consequent impact on retail sales varies greatly across the nation. Australians will not spend more until they feel more secure, until household budgets have been rebuilt. Yet the degree of insecurity does vary between places.

This graph from ABS shows the variation in retail sales across Australia by state and territory in June, You can see how varied the pattern is, even ignoring variations within states such as NSW. We don't know this.

The rise of the internet can, again in broad terms, be thought of as a national phenomenon. Some of the bricks and mortar retailers suggest that part of their problem lies in the increasing volume of on-line sales.

It's not just the substitution of on-line for store purchases, but also the substitution of international for domestic purchases.I am not sure if anyone has a proper handle on this. However, as a small personal example, my wife buys shirts for me in London at half the price including freight that I would pay in Australia. I still buy certain shirts in Australia, I love my R M Williams double pocketed country style shirts, but I have only brought one business style shirt in Australia in the last two years.

I haven't had time to properly review the Access Economics report on the Internet, but for present purposes I think that we can say a couple of things.

despite the hype, I don't think that we can assume that the overall economic affect of the internet will be as positive as presented from a narrow Australian perspective, nor can we make any real judgments about tits distributional affects taking Australia into account. We just don't know.

We can be sure, however, that the internet will, is, having two quite different effects.

First, it actively encourages size and centralisation in certain activities. The wild enthusiasm of a thousand flowers bloom has been replaced by oligopoly based upon the hard realities of network economics. As a test, can you name any of the Australian search engines that appeared in the early days of the internet? While one big player may replace another, the number of real players remains quite small.

Secondly, it has replaced one set of network economies with another.

The internet itself is centralised in infrastructure terms, but activities based upon it have challenged and are now replacing other networks. Sometimes the affect here is further centralisation. Job searches or real estate are examples. In other cases, it allows the small to challenge the big. We just don't know how these various influences will work out.

In the meantime, we can be sure that Australian economic activity over the next decade will be dominated by the physical act of digging things out of the ground. We can also be reasonably sure in the absence of change that the narrowing of the Australian economy will continue. Finally, we can be sure that the distribution of economic and political power in this country will be very different in twenty year's time.

As a measure of this, over the last five years the increase in the value of stocks on the Australian stock exchange has been very heavily influenced by WA mining companies. If you take these out, increases in returns have been quite modest.

I think that's enough for now.

Postscript

The Australian Productivity Commission draft report into retailing was released this morning.  The Commission summarises its conclusions this way:    

• There are almost 140 000 retail businesses in Australia, accounting for 4.2 per cent of GDP and 10.7 per cent of employment - the industry is one of Australia's largest employers.
• The retail industry exhibits great diversity by: size of companies, region, format, competition within sectors and in the range of goods sold - from food to furniture to footwear. While current trading conditions are challenging, longer term trends tell a larger story. Over the last three decades, retail sales growth has trended down; consumers are spending more of their rising incomes on a range of non-retail services including financial, property, travel and entertainment.
• This diverse industry has met many competitive challenges in the past and online retailing and the further entry of new innovative global retailers are just the latest.  This intensified competition is good for consumers, but is challenging for the industry which, as a whole, does not compare favourably in terms of productivity with many overseas countries. And the productivity gap appears to be widening.
• Australia also appears to lag a number of comparable countries in its development of online retailing. The Commission's best estimate is that online retailing represents 6 per cent of total Australian retail sales - made up of 4 per cent domestic online ($8.4 billion) and 2 per cent from overseas ($4.2 billion). In some other countries, online sales figures are higher and seem set to grow further, as will also happen here.
• Retailers operate under several regulatory regimes that reduce their competitiveness. Major restrictions which require improvements are:
  • planning and zoning regulations which are complex, excessively prescriptive and often exclusionary
  • trading hours regulations which interfere with the industry's ability to adapt and compete in a more globalised market
  • constraints on workplace flexibility such as obstacles to the greater use of enterprise bargaining and the adoption of best practice productivity measures.
• The current level of the low value threshold (LVT) for exemption from GST and duty on imports is $1000. The exemption is judged to be a minor part of the competition story, but GST is a broad-based consumption tax, and the LVT in principle should be reduced to a low level to ensure tax neutrality.
• The current processes for collecting taxes and duties at the border are not efficient.  As the threshold is lowered, costs of collection increase significantly - at very low thresholds (for example $20), the costs of collection would exceed tax revenue by over three to one. Such a cost impost on both importing businesses and consumers is unacceptable even without considering additional costs such as delays.
• The processing systems for incoming parcels to Australia need to improve, as has occurred in other countries. The Government should investigate this with a view to then reducing the LVT in a cost effective way.

This is the first best guess of the size of on-line retailing that I have seen. It is smaller than i would have expected.

The comment about planning and zoning regulations is interesting. There is anecdotal evidence, I can't give links, to suggest that just as as Australian house prices and rents are high by global standards, so are shop rents and for similar reasons. The development process is complicated and expensive. 

Saturday Morning Musings - Australia ranks first in national pride

To cheer me up after A fit of depression, Ramana pointed me to a a story in the Economist.

Apparently Australia ranked first our of 33 countries in a survey on national pride.

Now without commenting on the validity of the survey, I thought that you might be interested in reader comments on Australia in response.

The comments that follow are from oldest to newest.

-Jared, September 29, 2009 16:02

It is mildly amusing that the picture used as a background is of Australians dressed like Elvis (a American icon) drinking Heineken (a Dutch beer).

wack-intelligence, September 29, 2009 17:08

Jared,
Interesting observation, an ugly Elvis that would make Elvis fans fainted. And aren't they supposed to drink Foster for pride? Canadians certainly would not drink Budweiser (snip).

craigie, September 29, 2009 20:07

Does this mean another year of that awfull Okker refrain "Ozzy Ozzy Ozzy, Oi Oi Oi"

tirralirra , September 29, 2009 21:05

Australians have a lot to be proud of... just now we are the only OECD country to have avoided recession, we have the lowest govt debt (proportional to GDP). Australia is a very egalitarian society, with the highest immigration rate in the world (as a % of population). And the weather is pretty good. Yes, we get a bit loud about sport, but then, it's only sport, isn't it?

RDF KEMR, September 29, 2009 22:15

ahh positive feedback loops... upon seeing Australia at the top of the ladder, I have become even fonder of the great southern land :)

AUSSIE AUSSIE AUSSIE OI OI OI!

Toby_C,September 30, 2009 0:42

It's a myth that Australians actually drink Fosters. We just export it. Where's North Korea? Surely 99.99% admire their country.

Australian Girl, September 30, 2009 7:03

All I can say is...

AUSSIE AUSSIE AUSSIE
OI OI OI

adrasteia, September 30, 2009 7:10

Speaking as an Australian, is it impossible for a foreign journalist to take a picture of an Australian without a beer can in their hand?

I for one know I've gone whole mornings without being drunk, it can't possibly be that hard.

Chris Bell, September 30, 2009 9:23

I know that Aussies love Aussie. They're all over here in England telling us how great the place is.

Still, without them there would be no-one to serve us any drinks, so Go Aussie!

intorox, September 30, 2009 9:41

I love Canada though I live in Australia. The high rating Canada gets is surprising given the generally subdued nature of Canadians and the French sovereignist movement in Quebec which represents about 30% of the nations population. I would have expected US and Australia to be battling for first place in the battle for self-admiration.

Strasbourgeois , September 30, 2009 13:11

What happened to the Fosters or VB - they're drinking Heineken!

sicakes, September 30, 2009 13:14

the reason most Australians love there country is that reported 60% live outside of the country! so hey we all love the place we dont really live in!

as for India well most Indians are proud of their achievements but they are also realistic about the problems they face politically (Hindutva,extremist islam, Dalits nagaland) and socially (caste, over populated, population density etc)

but my choices are my home Britian and my familes homes of Australia and India!

adrasteia, September 30, 2009 13:25

Strasbourgeois, Fosters is an export beer

rs79, September 30, 2009 17:03

Note also that the top two also have the two most stable economies in the world.

TikMustang, September 30, 2009 23:36

Australia at the top of the list? Most likely they all think that it's better than the old country their forefathers were shipped from.

Thucydides, October 1, 2009 0:05

What about places like Egypt, Cuba, Israel, Zimbabwe, Norway and Afghanistan?

Each in their own way is as chauvinistic as Canada and Australia. There's something wrong with the survey.

Bernoulli, October 1, 2009 1:13

There is a lot here in Australia to be proud about. The huge amount of income the government receives from natural resource export allows this country to live above it's income tax/VAT means.

This has helped successive governments ignore health care, lack of water, pollution, aging population, mass transit, etc. Infrastructure is decades behind population needs. Governments here have learned nothing from their past failures.

As an U.S. citizen living here, I am appalled at the Big Brother attitude state and national governments have here. No freedom is too small for government entities to think that they should limit it.

Ozdog, October 1, 2009 10:14

Tikmustang,

You are correct! Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, oi, oi, oi,. Come to the land down under, we have beaten the global financial crisis and have one of the most picturesque countries in the world.

Nicholas Folkes, October 1, 2009 10:53

Ozdog, we do not need more foreigners in Australia. Australia accepts over 140,000 permanent residents plus another 100,000 per year on study and temporary visas and it is creating chaos. I have noticed the quality of life in Sydney deteriorate over the past 20 years due to excessive immigration. Australians are generally happy people but I can say we are not as happy as we were 20 years ago. We work the longest working week in the developed world, have high taxes, poor infrastructure, bloated weflare state, crime perpetrated by foreigners is very high, high property costs, high rents and deflating wages.

Bernoulli is right when he states,"This has helped successive governments ignore health care, lack of water, pollution, aging population, mass transit, etc. Infrastructure is decades behind population needs. Governments here have learned nothing from their past failures"......so true. Australia is very fortunate to be resource rich but it has dowsides as Bernolli has mentioned.

tempescribe, October 1, 2009 11:29

I guess it's predictable that a survey like this would unleash such a lot of chest thumping and derogatory comments about other people's countries, but as an Australian I have to take issue with Nicholas Folkes' sadly xenophobic observations - I presume he's amongst the 15% of those who lack national pride. His comments about infrastructure and the working week are fair enough, but as a resident of Sydney of over 20 years I can only say I have seen the quality of life improve with the city's growing diversity and the availability of a largely highly skilled immigrant workforce - without which we would have been struggling to fill critical jobs in health, IT and other important service sectors.

The data on crime 'perpetrated by foreigners' is limited, but what there is shows that there are both higher and lower rates of crimes per 1000 people among people born overseas than among the Australian-born. More tellingly, there are very high and increasing rates of crimes perpetrated against foreigners, and especially hate crimes against Australians of Arabic or Muslim background, undoubtedly fuelled by opportunistic politicians (former premier Bob Carr rarely missed an opportunity to scapegoat the Arabic community for any number of social ills). Their words clearly resonate with the likes of Mr Folkes, helping to distract us all from the truly critical issues of water and land management and a creaky infrastructure. Unless perhaps Mr Folkes is suggesting that all those foreigners coming over here, filling up their backyard swimming pools, sending their kids to lavishly subsidised private schools, taking advantage of the Howard government's generous middle class welfare schemes, swanning about in fuel guzzling 4WDs and building unsustainable water draining agrcultural projects such as cotton and rice growing industries along the Murray-Darling watershed is the source of all our woes?

happyfish18, October 1, 2009 12:19

Self respect means that you have to respect the rights of the other countries. The Ozzies on the top of the list tend to behave like blatant bully in the Indonesian archipelago and ride roughshod over the Pacific island midgets.

Wommy, October 1, 2009 14:20

1:0 for temperscribe! Mr Folkes disqualifies himself with his racist rantings. Of course, there is some tension in Australia between various racial and cultural communities. Of course, some of the crime is committed by recent arrivals (not even sure if this distinction really works for Australia - in one way or another nearly everyone living Down Under is an immigrant). But that is the case in all rich countries (I have lived in Switzerland, Australia and the UK and in all these countries people tend to blame crime on foreigners and are suspicious of other cultures). Crime is strongly related to socioeconomics rather than with race/religion.

As long as rich countries are dependent on poor immigrants to look after their sick/frail and to do the dirty jobs - and aging populations will increase this dependency - they shouldn't try to stem the flow of immigrants too hard but need to improve integration and work harder to ensure that population segments are not left behind.

michaelbwalker, October 1, 2009 23:07

As someone who works in the Third Sector in Australia, this has left me wondering why I need to get up in the morning. Great.

No Time Like the Future, October 2, 2009 0:26

Australians, for good reason, tend to trust their government and the system (especially since the last change of government here).

This well-earned trust is possibly the greatest asset of the nation and it leaves us free to 'get on with living'.

With a free media, good education and health system and great weather, things are pretty good down here.

About these house prices though.

Guy Shaw. October 2, 2009 3:01

@Wommy, Nicholas Folkes is making some good points.

I was under the opinion that some Australians are racists, but what I learned is that majority of the Australians hate diluting their cultural identity by importing foreigners. You could argue that they arrived only about half a century back, but that does not mean they can't control who gets in.

Their Govt. is inducting a massive immigration from other countries, and the numbers from Asian countries are high, which is causing a lot of problems there.

It is true that immigrants are the ones started the crime there. Most of the recent violence towards Indian students were perpetrated by the Labanese youths, who were the immigrants.

There is racism in Australia, that I don't deny. There is racism everywhere, but it is possible that Australians are more racist than their first world counter parts.

The fact is, if you want to be happy in Australia, you should be from one of the cultures they are welcoming. You got to be a British or Europeans.

To learn more about real Australia, go here ->

http://australianidentity.net/

Over commited, October 2, 2009 3:25

Pride in place and product! Just look at the uprising caused by recent tampering with the Lovemark Australian brand, Vegemite. Wonderful display of patriotism.

onthepulse, October 2, 2009 3:32

I'm a first generation Australian and can tell you Guy Shaw, that Australian's, though once not wildly accepting of other groups due to their geographic isolation, now embrace many cultural groups (>136 groups in Sydney). Our immigration intake is huge, but in my view having lived in other countries like the US and UK, don't believe we are more racist than those countries. In Sydney, Europeans/British are in the minority. There's a huge Chinese population followed by other Asian groups. The country's face is changing - and obviously a small group of loud patriotic racists are worried. But unfortunately, for any crime afflicted towards Asians, namely Indians like to point the finger at whites as being the problem. But hey - in Sydney at least, there's less and less people of Anglo or European background around. I have plenty of wonderful Asian friends. Few Europeans/Poms though....As for that survey... big deal.

Go Go, October 2, 2009 17:38

Never been to Australia or met an Australian in person for a significant amount of time but I guess the results of this poll shouldn't be too surprising given that a bunch of Australians got together and had the gumption to make a movie called Australia and expected other people to be enthused enough about it to watch it and, given the publicity during award season, acclaim it.

What do you think?

Nanny state - Hugos closes

It seems that Hugos in Sydney's Kings Cross has had to shut its doors.

The alcohol restrictions in the city of Sydney were introduced with the best of intents, the desire to reduce alcohol fueled violence in the city. They were always a blunt instrument whose consequences were uncertain.

I don't think that Hugos' closure can be attributed just to the alcohol restrictions.The decline in Kings Cross and nearby Oxford Street as night venues began before the restrictions and reflected in part the rise in alternatives elsewhere. Sydney has just become bigger, more complex. Still, I find the decline sad, in part because I knew both Kings Cross and Oxford Street quite well.

By all accounts, Hugos was a well managed venue without serious alcohol problems. It's demise is best described as collateral damage. The blunt rules will change because of their imposed costs, but in the meantime they have triggered changes in the geographic patterns of entertainment and social life that will not be easily reversed.

On a different but related matter, the Darwin Beer Can Regatta is now, apparently, being challenged by the medical lobby on the grounds that it encourages drinking.

Don't get me wrong. There have been a couple of occasions when I have had to be present in emergency departments on a Friday or Saturday evening watching staff deal with drunken patients. It's dreadful. However, resolution of this type of problem requires a subtlety of approach that cannot be dealt with by rigid rules based approaches.        

Tuesday Blogging Perspectives - a meander

Lat night I did my usual end day housekeeping, looking at the things I had achieved (or not) during the day, what I had to do tomorrow. As part of this, I look at the blogs and my blog publishing plan. Yes, I do have one. I just don't follow it most of the time!

First, a gentle reminder that comments on Lunch with Noric - and a request for advice are still open. While this blog is a personal blog, I also like writing with people in mind, so your advice as to what you like and don't would be very welcome.

As part of my review I looked at the traffic stats on this blog. This will never be an A list blog, but I am pleased at the way I am now steadily scoring over 100 page views, over 80 visitors, per day. I have had weeks with very high individual traffic in the past, but this has always been due to particular stories. Now I seem to have stabilised at a higher level independent of spikes. I am also going to pass 40,000 visitors this week.

In one of our discussions on Kondratiev Cycles, long economic waves that may or may not exist (I find the concept useful, Bob's view is rubbish), Bob Q suggested that my blogs were themselves an example of the new economy model in that I provided free content and a service, aiming to get my return from other things.

This is true at a very micro level. My problem is what return, and what do I do with it if I get it!

I was reminded of this yesterday. A short post that I wrote on a particular issue, in this case I won't give the details just at present, led to a request as to whether or not I would mind a paper running it as a letter to the editor. I did not mind because I thought the point I was making was worthwhile. Now they have decided instead to run it as a full story, and have asked me for a high resolution photo!

Then there was a request flowing from another story, Musings on Australian food and wine, suggesting that I might like to take part in a global story on kitchens to mark a major anniversary for an overseas firm. My feeling is that this one won't fly - you should see my kitchen! Still, it was nice to be asked.

Back in February in Beer brands and the start of a personal consumer revolution I declared war on the supermarket chains. One side effect (Bob Q will smile) was a focus on my local independents.

As a direct result, last Friday I was invited to try a very special bottle of red wine supplied by Shaun from Cellabrations Rosebery, while Alan from the next door Rosebery IGA deli supplied the cheese. I brought my camera, and will do a full story.

I keep telling them both that they are VERY BAD MEN because of their influence. My cheese spend has trippled. I won't comment on the wine! Still, the two of them have already been the indirect source of a number of stories. I will not give further details now, but I will run a full story later this week.

So you can see that my blogging does get a response, even if sometimes I am not sure what to do with the response.

In all this, I am conscious of the fact that in their own small way my blogs have become publications, parts of the media, in their own right. I do not overstate this. I am just aware that this places obligations upon me in terms of accuracy and focus.

Anybody who reads my blogs will know that I am a village person. I like to know and be known. Sometimes this has its downsides, but it is still worth it.

One of the nicest if sometimes the most difficult thing is responding to comments, even when negative. Village is conversation, even if this takes time.

My biggest frustration with comments lies in people who make a worthwhile comment, but then do not come back. I want to go and grab them, to say where have you been, please say some more.

Still in village mode, I have slowly formed the view that one of the best things that my blogs might do is to link people together, to break isolation, to link people back to their past.

At a personal level, the blogs have brought me back in contact with people I have known, people that I might otherwise not have met again. The blogs have also played a role in creating new linkages. Beyond this, I see a constant pattern in searches of people looking for information about things that have been important to them. I see this, too, in some of the comments I get.

I can only do so much here. I struggle with what I am already doing. However, I have begun to slant some of my writing to areas where there seems to be a need that I can fill within my current interests. In doing so I write posts as a test, recognising that interest can only be determined by search interests over time. As an example see UNE's Overseas Student's Association.

I say posts as a test.

The world in which we bloggers operate is very crowded. Further, our visibility depends upon things like the exact definition of search engine algorithms. I suspect that we have all been frustrated by the way in which a Google search on the same topic can deliver different results each time.

Some bloggers put a lot of time into raising their internet profile on things like Technorati. I do not. My feeling is that a focus on content is the only rule. Get content, and other things will follow.

This is where the test comes in. I know that results from stories that I write today are likely to come over an extended period. So I write and then wait.

Postscript

Interesting. This post was prepared in advance for publication today because I was going to be busy. In fact, it came up last night!

For those that are interested and want to comment on the current economic position, the comment stream in The international financial crisis - the ANZ pre-emptive strike is still open.

Visiting Vancouver - 2: first impressions, a steak at Mortons

10.20 am Vancouver time, Tuesday 23 June.

Friday we took a taxi from the airport into the city to find our hotel, the Pan Pacific on the waterfront.

On first impressions, the thing that struck me about Vancouver was how New Zealand it felt, sort of Auckland, Christchurch and Wellington rolled into one. This was partly due to the light, partly architecture and lay-out, partly the physical surrounds themselves.

Prior to arrival I had not realised just how young Vancouver was. The first European settlement dates from 1862, and the city itself did not really start to grow until the transcontinental railway was completed in the 1880s. This railway was the price for British Columbia's entry to the new Canadian confederation in 1871.

As an aside, I had not properly realised just how different Canada's history is to that of Australia or New Zealand. Far more complicated. I don't think that you can understand Canada without understanding that history.

The second thing that struck me was the small number of Chinese. Vancouver was an early settlement point for Chinese, and has been a major entry point in recent years. Yet I saw very few, far fewer than you would see in the Sydney city area. As we shall see, this visual impression proved to be quite misleading.

I was also struck by the number of tall apartment blocks, as well the building activity.

Unlike Sydney where the new tall apartments in combination with the office towers crowd out the sun to create cold concrete canyons, Vancouver blocks are somewhat lower and and are mixed with smaller medium density developments. I was to learn that this was due to conscious planning policy. All this creates a visually spectacular sky-line without creating a desert at street level.

I took some photos to try to draw this out, so expect a later post! I think that Vancouver is a civilised city in the way Melbourne is but not Sydney.

The ever-present building activity is directly linked to next year's winter Olympics. The city is refurbishing itself in advance.

Having decanted ourselves at the hotel, we went for a walk to look for a convenience store as well as somewhere to have dinner.

Convenience stores or small supermarkets, along with what Australians call bottle shops, are very important. Prices at the big hotels are so high that purchase of a few supplies not only adds to the enjoyment of life, but also saves a fair bit of money.

We have followed this approach from Paris to Florence, Rome to Shanghai. Here I give Vancouver a fail. We finally found them, but there were not very many in the immediate area.

On dinner, D. and I were quite unsure as to what we wanted after the plane trip. We finally settled on Mortons, a steak house not far from the hotel.

Now this was a new experience. We had just wandered in off the street. We had no idea that this was the local branch of a very successful US chain.

The prices took a little getting used to; a glass of Konunga Hill cost $C12.50, perhaps $15 Australian.

For the benefit of international readers, Konunga Hill is a mass Australian wine. It provides good value at a moderate price - $A11-$14 a bottle, depending on where you buy it. So $C12.50 struck us as high.

Like all chains, Mortons has a mass produced air, but is high quality mass produced. And so it should be at the prices!

There was not a table, so we went to the bar first. There was a long cocktail menu; the US places weight on a cocktail before dinner in a very different way. D. had a cocktail, I a Canadian beer. No beer on tap though, and that was to my mind a weakness.

To the table, and our helpful waiter brought around a trolley with meat, fish and vegetables set out on it to explain the menu. Grain fed and aged beef, cut in large sizes. I am a grass fed beef person, and also find that I can no longer eat huge slabs of meat in the way I would have done in the past. So we both chose the smallest cuts we could find.

The food was good, but really nothing out of the ordinary. The service, on the other hand, was superb and worth a visit just for that.

On the wine, we chose a British Columbia pinot noir. The Canadian wine industry is quite new, something that surprised us, given the French influence. After trying now at least a dozen different bottles, when in Rome drink what the Romans' make, I can also say that it's pretty good.

It was still light when we emerged to go back to the hotel and bed. Because Vancouver is a long way north, it has long daylight hours in summer.

Exhausted, we collapsed into bed!

A full list of posts in the visiting Vancouver series can be found here.

An opening muse on just what is Australian food

Today’s post is really an aide memoire to myself, triggered in part by Monday’s post Monday Morning Forum – Australian native food (and other things).

I am not a natural foodie. While I enjoy cooking when I am doing it for others, I am fairly hopeless at just cooking for myself. I also struggle a little with those who salivate over particular dishes. Sometimes, I just don’t get it.  I struggle a lot, too, with what is called modern Australian cuisine. Too often, it can best be described as a fusion mess. Shows like Masterchef don’t help because they lack any unifying element.

The Wikipedia entry on Australian cuisine is fairly non-descript. It’s useful, but pedestrian. An outside reader would be forgiven at the end for failing to grasp just what Australian cuisine is.

I really enjoyed my visit to the Uralla Food and Wine Fair, Tastes of New England - A day at the Uralla Food and Wine Fair, but I would also ask what was distinctive there. What distinguished it apart from the fact that it was all local produce? If you go to any local or regional food or wine fair you will find a broadly similar product mix.

There is nothing necessarily wrong with that. It is driven by popular tastes and the availability of local ingredients. Yet, to my mind, the sameness is a problem. Mind you, perhaps that sameness is itself an answer to the conundrum that is exercising my mind. Does the sameness indicate what Australian cuisine truly is? If so, then we can say that it involves olives, wine and beer and various type of pates, cheeses and dips. These seem to be common elements at all the food and wine shows.

I said that this post was really an aide memoire to myself.  I am just laying the base for an idea at the back of my mind.

Michaelia Cash and Productivity in Wonderland

As you might expect, the Canberra Times is by far the best newspaper on things happening in Australia's Commonwealth Public Service.

On 16 October, the Canberra Times headlined a story Public servants are not living 'in the real world': public service minister Michaelia Cash.On 19 October, the paper reported that Rejected pay deal likely to result in more job losses at Australian Border Force. These two stories are examples of stories that have been running and running for several years now on pay and other disputes within the Commonwealth Public Service . In this post I want to briefly reflect on those stories, for to my mind they are examples of the mess created by the blind application of particular approaches.

The old Commonwealth Public Service was marked by four key features:

• It was non-party political and existed to serve the Government of the day. Objectives were set by the Government. The Public Service provided advice, but was then responsible for for implementing Government decisions, including the management of on-going programs. Particular agencies were responsible for particular activities, but did not have formal objectives outside the framework set by administrative and policy responsibilities.     
• Reflecting this approach, the overall focus was the ministerial portfolio.As portfolio responsibilities changed within Governments and between Governments, agencies were subject to relatively constant change as new functions were added, existing functions moved within portfolios or between portfolios. 
• It was a career service in which officers moved between agencies. To assist movement and also avoid the risk of nepotism, there was a common position hierarchy that applied to all agencies with jobs advertised within the Public Service. Variation was accommodated by some variations in position level between agencies, but always within the common structure.
• Terms and conditions of employment including pay were set centrally and were uniform across the Public Service. Again, variation was accommodated by variations in position structure between agencies.  

Perceived problems with the old system led to a number of changes. Of particular relevance to current disputes:

• Agencies acquired lives of their own through the adoption of corporatist approaches with their own plans, mission statements, goals and performance indicators. Technically, if not always in practice, these were meant to be subordinate to, to fall within, parameters set by Government policies.
• Government became more centralised and to a degree rigid. More control was concentrated at the centre, reducing the power of ministers. Within agencies, new decision structures were created that had the effect of centralising decision making, focusing advice and decisions within the frame set by corporate mission, objectives and performance indicators. One side effect was a reduction in the range of advice available to the Minister. 
• Certain HR and payroll functions were delegated to agencies in the name of flexibility and better management, leading to the creation of agency specific enterprise agreements whose terms and conditions could vary between agencies.
• Agencies placed greater weight on uniformity and consistency within the agency. Common and sometimes expensive communication and branding strategies emerged to reinforce the framework set by mission, values. plans and KPIs. Risk assessment and management became more important partly because of increased size, more because centralisation of authority focused the risk on a smaller number of individuals.
•  The new processes were computer dependent and were associated with investment in various IT systems used for management within agencies and in communication processes between agencies and the central coordination and decision processes. IT systems linked to agency structures, management and purpose became more divergent. .       

On coming to power, the Abbott Government made major changes to administrative arrangements, in so doing highlighting problems with the current  system as well as in some elements of Government thinking. .

To begin with, agency mergers brought together staff under varying enterprise agreements with different features, requiring complex negotiations to create new enterprise agreements. As the same time, a number of existing agreements were expiring, requiring the negotiation of new agreements. To manage the process, the Government attempted to establish common principles that would govern all negotiations. Central to these was a requirement that any pay increase be offset by savings elsewhere. To further complicate matters, agency budgets were being cut at the same time.

Under the old approach, the Government would simply have stated that pay increases could not be justified at this time and provided reasons. There would have been industrial trouble, but the process would have been relatively clear cut. Now its far more complicated.

The process is further complicated by the Government's mindset. This combines cost reduction with a desire to improved productivity. To this end, the offsetting savings required are encapsulated under a productivity improvement rhetoric. The confusions inherent in this approach are captured rather well in the views expressed by public service minister Michaelia Cash.

Ms Cash is a former industrial relations lawyer from the big end of town (Freehills) and it shows. I quote:

Federal public servants are not living in the "real world" of Australian workplace relations, according to public service minister Michaelia Cash. 

Senator Cash says the idea of a worker getting a pay rise without offering a productivity offset is "frankly unacceptable" in the "real world" where "Australians live".

The comments, in Senate question time on Thursday, indicate the government is digging in, with most of its 150,000 public servants well into the second year of a wages stalemate. 

Tens of thousands of public servants at key departments have rejected pay offers containing "productivity offsets", but Senator Cash told the Senate that was not how things were done "out there in voter-land". 

Answering a question from ACT Labor Senator Katy Gallagher, the newly minted minister said wage negotiations "in the real world" were conducted differently to the Australian Public Service. 

A combative Senator Cash said the government had been upfront about what it wanted in the wage negotiations. 

"It has required some wage moderation in this bargaining round," she said. 

"The government's offer has been on the table: it is a 1.5 per cent pay increase over three years.
"But what we have asked in return for the 1.5 per cent pay rise is productivity gains. 

"In the real world, where Australians live, where people open businesses and risk their own money, in the real world, you don't actually get a pay rise if you don't give a productivity gain. 

"I think out in voter-land, out when you're having a coffee in a cafe, when you're having a beer at a pub, when you're having a sandwich at a local sandwich shop, the idea that you would get a pay rise and not have to offset that pay rise with a productivity gain, quite frankly, is unacceptable."

There are a number of problems with Ms Cash's analysis. 

First, I doubt that most Australians would accept the idea that all individual rises must be offset by individual productivity gains, although they might accept that across the economy as a whole, the capacity to pay more  might be linked to productivity improvement broadly defined. I very much doubt that Ms Cash herself would have argued when she was a Senior Associate at Freehills that her pay increases should be limited to improved personal productivity on her part. I suspect that she would have been more inclined to point to changing market rates, although her charge performance would certainly have come into play.

It is correct, I think, that in large organisations pay rises are often linked to productivity improvements, especially during times of increased financial stress. However, and as we saw during the mining boom, when times are good competition for resources bids up wage costs. Wages increased at a time when measurable productivity seems to have been in decline because profits were there to support the wage increases. 

Looking specifically at the Commonwealth Public Service, the Service has already been subject to (and remains subject to) progressive efficiency dividends extending over considerable periods. It may well be that these have had limited effects on productivity, I have suggested that they may in fact have had negative effects. However if (as Governments have argued) the cuts have improved productivity, then that provides a base for a pay rise on Ms Cash's own arguments.

 More importantly, perhaps, productivity is quite hard to measure. For that reason, all the proposals placed on the table involve some increase in working hours combined with some reduction in costs through changed entitlements, things that can be valued. Now this is where a degree of unreality enters the debate. A 1.5% pre-tax pay increase over three years is so small in post tax terms that most public servants are likely to be worse off as a consequence of the required trade-offs. Why bother?

In the way of the world, disputes will drag on. In the end, market forces are likely to sort things out. As has happened a number of times in the past, a period of pay suppression will be followed by pay expansion as the Service finds difficulty in recruiting the staff it needs. .

Postscript

It seems from the Canberra Times that some form of break-through has been achieved on the pay dispute. The problem with the previous doctrinaire approach was summarised in this way:

Senior executives negotiating on behalf of agencies had complained privately about a lack of flexibility in the rules, which required that any proposed pay rises be funded through administrative savings or "cashing out" benefits, such as asking staff to work longer hours. 

Senator Cash said the revised framework would give agency heads more flexibility to strike deals, though the costs of any wage rises would still need to be met within existing budgets.

By increasing the maximum annual pay increase from 1.5% to 2% per annum while relaxing the obligatory offset conditions, the Government has created a better base for negotiation. Real public service salaries will still drop based on expected inflation rates and are likely to be below rates of increase in the private sector, while agency budget caps mean that pay increases automatically flow to lower head count in the absence of other savings. I don't have a problem with this, although there are some longer term issues.

On a related matter, the brief discussion in comments on productivity in professional services including law highlighted in my mind the way I am still struggling to come to grips with the concept of productivity improvement as applied to services.The confusion in my mind lies not so much in the concept of productivity improvement at firm level, but in the relationship between that and productivity improvement as measured by economists and expressed in statistical indicators. Quite simply, I am still confused!    .