ABC TV's Bastard Boys - a great view

I really enjoyed ABC TV's mini series, the Bastard Boys.

For the benefit of those outside Australia it tells the story of a large and complicated 1997 industrial dispute that helped reshape Australia's water front. The story had everything moving from the docks to Parliament to the courts.

Looking at the complaints since, the dramatic presentation appears to have satisfied none of the original cast. Each, and especially Bill Kelty, may have a point. But looked at as a drama I thought that it was remarkably well done, simplifying a very complex story and also making the participant's human.

Postscript

I failed to pick up that Neil had included a comment on this in one of his posts. I refer to the dispute as 1997. It began in 1997 but extended into 1998.Neil has a link to a site that gives some additional information. Unfortunately many of the links on this site have expired with time, but the links to the various court judgements are still live.

This, the expiry of links, is a real problem that I have been meaning to write about for some time. It links to another broader problem, the preservation/archiving of material.

Climate Change Revisited - very briefly

Those who read this blog will know that while I am cautious about climate change arguments, I am not a climate change sceptic as such. However, I am very cautious about the way in which the now dominant view seems to be twisting analysis.

I caught the tail end of a radio program today that exactly expressed my concerns. The person interviewed apparently participated in the recent expert group process.

These international processes work by discussion and consensus, an apparently democratic process. He described the recent process as being like democracy in a one party state.

He suggested, a view that has apparently also been put forward by the head of the OECD's economics department, that there should be a team B, a scientific group whose role was to be sceptical, to look at alternative views.

I must say that this resonated with me. I would be a lot more comfortable if I could see all the arguments, if I did not feel that a dominant position was twisting the scientific debate.

Note I say scientific. The core of the debate is scientific and must be dealt with in that way.

Postscript

I had to grin.

Now that Rupert Murdoch has decided to take News Corporation carbon neutral, I wondered how the climate sceptics on Mr Murdoch's Australian papers would react. I see that both Tim Blair and Piers Ackerman have reaffirmed their position notwithstanding the News' stance, although I thought that they were both a tad uncomfortable!

Personal Reflections - On Blogs

Back in the dim and distant past, 1 May in fact!, I said that I was taking a short break from posting in part to read other people's blogs.

Looking back, it seems to have been a very short break indeed. But I did get a chance to catch up to some degree at least.

I do enjoy other's writing. It takes me in directions that I would never otherwise go. Revisiting blogging friends has been a great pleasure.

Partially as a consequence, I have decided that I should feature one of my favourite blogs every week or so, as well as some of the stories that I have really liked.

My first story featured David's View Italy blog, one of my continuing favourites. There are many others to come.

I find with blogs that each develops its own style reflecting the varied interests of the writer. This is, of course, part of the fascination of blogging. Long may it continue!

My Favourite Blogs - David Anderson's View Italy

Photo: Agriturismo Casa Caponetti – Wine, Olive Oil, Cooking School in Northern Lazio

What's the point in having a blog if you cannot shamelessly promote your friends?

Seriously, though, David Anderson's View Italy remains one of my favourite blogs because of the way it brings out the texture of Italian life.

One of the features of Italy remains the provincial differences across the country, differences deeply rooted in history and geography. This sense of difference, of history, remains one of Italy's enduring attractions.

Unlike Australia where too many of our regions want to measure themselves in some way against perceived national norms and therefore blur their differences, Italians seem to take continuing pride in their unique regional features. We can see the attraction of this in the way that my wife's own Sydney family has been effectively captured by Tuscany.

David brings these differences out. I especially like the way he sometimes features areas that I know nothing about, areas outside the immediate tourist net.

If I had a suggestion, I would like to see (and this reflects my own biases) a little more history in the posts to help set a context. But this is a minor point. View Italy is simply a great blog.

Return to list of favourite blogs

Introducing Belshaw's various blogs and web sites

Anybody who reads this blog will know that I have a number of blogs and web sites.

They all started with a logical purpose, but have become mixed together to some degree simply because topics and interests overlap. Recently I have been struggling to maintain them properly because of other pressures. As a consequence, I have missed some significant anniversaries and milestones. I thought therefore that I should provide you with an overview, in so doing also consolidating my own thoughts.

My first on-line endeavour was the creation of the Ndarala Group web site. Back of this is an extranet that I also try to maintain.

Ndarala is a cooperative network of independent management related professional practices and professionals. Our mission is to help the independent achieve their professional, personal and business objectives through cooperation while retaining true professional and business independence.

The Ndarala web site links to two management related blogs.

I began Managing the Professional Services Firm on 3 July last year (2006). A significant proportion of my own work as a manager and as a strategic consultant has taken place within this sector, while it is also of interest to my Ndarala colleagues. So we saw this blog with its focus on improving management in professional services as a natural extension of our work.

Since then there have been 133 posts, while the blog has had 7,968 visitors, so should click through 8,000 shortly. The blog has been quite well received professionally, something that gives me personal satisfaction, with click through from links on other sites a major source of traffic.

The second Ndarala blog began on 7 November 2006 as the Ndarala Group blog but has since been renamed Management Perspectives to better reflect its scope.

Initially we saw this blog as a way of encouraging conversation within the Group while also presenting Ndarala material and experience to a broader audience, material that could later be consolidated on the main web site. Fifty six posts, 3,491 visitors, later we are still feeling our way as to best direction.

I have found this with all the blogs. I think that all bloggers start with a very general idea as to what they want to do, then evolve through experience. I think with Management Perspectives that the blog is only now getting to the point that it is starting to take identifiable form.

One particular frustration here is that my colleagues, all busy, have not been able to properly generate supporting content. We presently have fifty seven professionals working across professional fields and and industry sectors in five countries. They are doing some fascinating stuff that deserves greater exposure, but time is always the issue.

The Group web site plus the two blogs form one Ndarala linked management related suite of sites. There is a second, very different, suite.

Back in 2004, Ndarala became a major sponsor of Country Week, a promotion intended to convince Sydney residents of the virtues of regional NSW for work, life and play. We did so because a number of our people worked in regional NSW and were interested in regional and community development.

As part of this process, we identified a major problem with access to information about life in Regional Australia generally.

At first we tried to meet this need through a section on the Group web site, but this was not very effective. This then led to the launch of the Regional Living Australia web site in April 2006 to provide an entry portal showcasing the interest and diversity of life in Regional Australia.

On 23 July 2006 - this was a busy blogging month - I started the Regional Living Australia blog to support the main site. Again, the idea was to use the blog to cover things not suited to the main site and to build up content for that site.

I have found it remarkably difficult to make this blog work. The very diversity that I am trying to promote is also the blog's curse. Part travelogue, part guide to regional living, the wide range of topics makes it hard to keep a clear focus. I also keep being distracted into interesting by ways.

Still, after 115 posts, 3,933 visitors, the blog is starting to take form. Pleasingly, there has recently been a steady increase in traffic.

New England Australia began on 8 April 2006 as a strictly personal blog. I described it in this way in my first post: This blog is dedicated to the history, culture and activities of the New England region of Australia.

I am happy with this blog. So far I have put up 147 posts and have begun to build a solid core of content. I have also built reasonable visitor numbers, with 7,205 visits so far. I have also found a helpful interface between this and the Regional Living blog because of common issues.

One problem that did emerge with the New England blog was that I found that the New England history theme, a core interest of mine, was becoming submerged. This led to the creation on 24 November 2006 of New England's History as a special purpose blog.

With only 19 posts, 228 visits, this is the cinderella blog. I thought about killing it, then decided to maintain it just for my own purposes. Having it there forces me to make posts from time to time, thus keeping some historical focus.

The final blog, this one, is my oldest and most active blog.

I began on 19 March 2006 as an experiment to test blogging, only to become addicted. Since then I have written an astonishing 286 posts, 287 counting this one.

At 12,777, visitor numbers have been reasonable. However, the real joy from this blog has come from the intellectual stimulation and the personal interaction with people that I have never met but now think of as friends. I do not have many regular readers, but I really value those that I do have.

So many sites, too little time.

Recently I have had to think very seriously about just what I can do in the now very limited time that I have. There have been days when the need to keep up has made blogging a chore rather than a pleasure. Then there are the other things that I should be doing, including just maintaining my ordinary email traffic.

I have yet to work out a clear answer here. It's not just maintaining what I have. I know that there are many things that I can and would like to do too build from the current base. So I am experimenting with different approaches just to see what is possible. I will report on those that work.

Activity, Change and a Sense of Weariness

In an earlier post I suggested that Australia and indeed other countries needed to take a cold shower to wake them up from the constant obsession with doing better, going faster. I suggested that the human cost was becoming just too high, the overall results too negative.

It has become a modern truism that we live at a time of great change. There is no doubt that this is true, but it's not the whole story.

The current Australian Howard Government has been in power for twelve years. We know that there have been many changes in this time. Yet if we look back, every equivalent twelve year has been marked by great change. To illustrate.

The period 1900 to 1912 saw Federation, one of the most significant events in Australia's short history. It also saw the worst drought in Australia's history, worse in fact than the one we have just experienced.

Then in 1913 to 1925 we had the Great War as well as a huge worldwide influenza pandemic. 1926-1938 saw depression, 1939 - 1951 War, cold war and the start of the mass migration program, a huge social engineering experiment that would transform Australian society over the following twelve year period.

The period 1952 to 1964 was a period of relative stability. Still, we have a few wars including the start of the Vietnam war, the emergence of flower power, the Columbo Plan and the beginning of the end of white Australia. Then 1965 to 1977 saw Vietnam, the dismissal, oil shocks and world wide recession, the beginning of the end of the welfare state. And so it goes on.

Compared to the past, the Howard years have been a pussy cat. Yet many people feel a continuing sense of weariness, a sense that things are not quite right. Mr Howard himself has tried to capture this, to present himself as a stable figure in the midst of change.

In a post last September, Migration Matters - End of Consensus, I talked about the end of the Australian social contract. I also referred to Toffler's 1970 book Future Shock.

Toffler's key point was a simple one. Each real decision imposed strain. Human beings could only make so many decisions before the capacity to decide started shutting down. So, and this is 1970, the pace of change was outrunning people's capacity to adjust.

Two thing have happened since 1970.

The first is the loss of the traditional verities, the pillars supporting Australian society.

I am not saying that this is right or wrong. Personally, I do not want to go back to some of those verities. The point is that this loss increases strain because it increases the range and complexities of the things on which we must decide.

The second is Government's increased desire to tinker, to change things, thus forcing continual variations in people's responses and day to day life. Leave aside the effect this has on the effectiveness of policy. My point at the moment is that this adds to our weariness.

One of my core professional skills is that of change agent. I know that because change involves personal costs, the process has to be handled with care if it is to be effective. We no longer do this. We simply expect people to adjust to change. And this does not work.

The Australian Budget 2007 - initial reactions

Well, I said in my first post on the latest Australian budget that I was not going to make a detailed comment until I after the dust had settled. That remains true, but there has been so much comment today that I could not resist an initial comment.

This is a very modern budget, one set firmly within the parameters dictated by modern approaches to public administration and policy. This, as those who read this blog on a regular basis will know, is not necessarily a compliment. It is also a very complex and clever budget.

The problem, as always, lies in the detail. Here we can make a clear distinction between what is done and the way in which it is done. As commentators have dug down today, some of the problems have begun to emerge.

Take the future fund for higher education. This strikes me as a good idea, although it is not the fresh, newly minted, idea that the Treasurer would have us believe. After all, the idea that Governments should create sinking funds to meet future needs is in fact very old. That said, there are now some clear problems with the application of the the fund approach.

Let me take just one example.

Funding from the fund will be subject to competitive principles based on criteria laid down by the Government with the final decision made by the Minister. Fair enough perhaps.

But the PM said today, as an example, that one criterion might be the matching funding raised from the private sector. This immediately builds in a bias in favour of older institutions with more alumni and a location near private funding sources. I don't think that this is a good thing.

I will continue to monitor. Then I think that I might focus my comments on the dynamics introduced by this budget.

The Australian Budget 2007 - an international perspective

I have just listened to the Australian Treasurer, Peter Costello, deliver the Australian Government budget for 2007-2008.

The media will be absolutely full of it for the next few days. For that reason, I will leave any detailed comment until after the dust has settled. In the meantime, I thought that I should make a few comments from an international perspective.

In 1964 Donald Horne coined the phrase "a lucky country". He mean the phrase ironically. In his own words:

In a hot summer's night in December 1964 I was about to write the last chapter of a book on Australia. The opening sentence of this last chapter was: 'Australia is a lucky country, run by second-rate people who share its luck.'

Australians took the phrase "a lucky country" literally, something that distressed Donald Horne as it did some others. Something of this comes through in the wording of the link I gave.

I have never accepted Horne's view of Australia's people or those who run the country. But there can be no doubt that we have indeed been a lucky country. Consider this.

We have now had 15 years sustained economic expansion. This has allowed repayment of Government debt to the point that many in the finance sector actually want the Government to issue new securities because they need secure Government securities to underpin, benchmark, capital markets.

The Australian Government has run consistent budget surpluses. Even after this year's election linked spend, the projected surplus next financial year is one per cent of GDP. Compare this to the US where the Government is presently running a a deficit of three per cent of GDP.

The continued growth in Australia's gross wealth has begun a profound change in Australia's power position.

Australia is just two per cent of the global economy, a tiny percentage. Yet the Australian dollar has become of the world's top five traded currencies.

Australian military forces are serving in a variety of theatres, but we still have a budget surplus. We are buying more military equipment and will do so to whatever degree is required to achieve our single most important strategic objective, maintenance of superiority when it comes to the immediate defence of the Australian mainland. So far, we can afford to do this.

Now the Government is investing current funds to ensure that we meet future needs.

The Future Fund was created to meet future unfunded public service superannuation liabilities. With that in place, the Government is creating a $15 billion endowment fund to pay for future higher education capital costs.

I suspect few Australians realise the significance of these moves. In essence, we are behaving like an oil country, saving now to meet future needs once the oil runs out.

Now before anyone thinks that I am making a statement in support of the current Government, although I reserve the right to change my mind here at a later point, I have no doubt that the Labor Party would manage the economy in an okay fashion.

All this sounds great. Why, then, am I worried?

I think that part of my concern lies in what I perceive to be Australian arrogance.

Australia is a big power in its immediate region. We behave like a big firm in a small town, carrying a local arrogance into a bigger environment where it is simply not warranted.

A second part of my concern lies in an uncertainly that we are in fact doing what is required to take advantage of the window we have been given. This is where I need to look at the budget details.

As I write I see that Neil recommends that we listen to classic FM rather than the Treasurer. Tsk, Tsk!

Many of the things announced tonight will set the parameters in just the areas that Neil us interested in. Labor may change things, but they are also going to end up accepting many of the parameters now set. So we commentators need to focus.

Eightieth Birthdays, the Granite Belt and New England

Photo: Bellandean Lodge, Front View

I am still on official strike so far as blogging is concerned. But I will be getting back into it!

I am just back from my wife's uncle's eightieth birthday party. The family decided to hold it in the middle of the Queensland Granite Belt wineries.

For those who do not know this area, the New England Tablelands extends past the Queensland border into southern Queensland. This part of the Tablelands is Queensland's main wine growing area. The place where we stayed is shown in the photo above.

While I had driven through the area a number of times, this was the first time I had stayed there since 1982. I was astonished at the development.

In 1982 there were I think just eight wineries. I visited them all over the weekend I was there. Now there are more than forty eight, of whom some forty have cellar door outlets. There are also all the trappings associated with a significant tourist area.

I have enough material to write half a dozen stories across several blogs and will do so. But I have to regather my strength first!

Australia - and other countries too - need a cold shower

I have had to be very disciplined during my short break from posting not to post. There have been many things I wanted to comment on.

One of the reasons I have taken the short break from posting has been the need to catch up on posts on some other of my blogs and especially Managing the Professional Services Firm. There I have been writing some posts on depression.

One of the things I felt while writing is that Australia and some other western countries at least needed to take a cold shower to wake them up from the constant obsession with doing better, going faster. The human cost is becoming just too high, the overall results too negative.

This actually links across a number of the things that I have tried to write about, from my concerns about performance pay for teachers to broader problems in management, education, public administration and public policy.

We need to stop and take a fundamental look at what we are doing and, more importantly, why we are doing it.

A Short Break

I have decided to take a short break from posting to allow me to catch up on other things. This includes actually reading some of my favourite blogs!

Outcomes - a much abused word

I use the word outcomes a fair bit myself. However, I am finding the misuse of the word increasingly jarring.

The word outcomes acquired its modern usage in the context of the new models of public administration with their emphasis on inputs, outputs and outcomes. Defined in this way, the word is a useful technical term.

My objection to current usage is the way in which outcomes has come to be used as a substitute for that good old fashioned English word results. This is both bad English and sloppy thinking.

Bad English because results is simply a cleaner and shorter word. Sloppy thinking because the results that people refer to when they use the word outcomes are often not outcomes in the technical sense at all but outputs.

I have decided at a personal level to cease using the word outcomes unless the context demands it. The result,I hope, will be some reinstatement of the word result!