Saturday Morning Musings - White people & the Aboriginal struggle

I have seen this type of message before from Aboriginal activists, but haven’t responded. I first saw it in a replication of a more detailed list originating from Canada and repeated in Australia. While there were more steps, the core of the message was the same. Sit down, shut up and do as you are told.

While I understand the point, one has to listen to learn and there is and always has been a lot of telling Aboriginal people what to do, it’s actually quite dangerous.

I am not Aboriginal. If I go to an Aboriginal meeting specifically concerned with Aboriginal issues I do shut up unless I have a specific role or am asked for advice. That’s no different from what I would do if I went to a Rotary meeting as a guest. I am not a member of the group.

I also respect the desire of Aboriginal people who wish to control  or manage the evolution of their own culture or society, although I am also very aware of the continuing divides within the Aboriginal community, including the way that activists seem to lecture or wish to dictate to their own community. In that sense, they are no different from anyone else. Activists of all stripes are always inclined to do this.

All this said, why do I think that its dangerous? 

First of all, its actually very rude. My experience of Aboriginal people is that while prepared to make blunt comments, they are also naturally polite. Sometimes this impedes communication. They make blunt comments to each other afterwards, but don’t express them at the meeting. The  way the message is expressed is, to my mind, a breach of Aboriginal courtesy.

I guess that you could say that that’s a style thing. Of more importance, this type of message risks being divisive and, in the end, self defeating. The Aboriginal community is a small percentage of the Australian community. Achievement of certain Aboriginal objectives requires support from the broader Australian community. You don’t get this by ramming this type of message down non-Aboriginal throats. Oh, and by the way, a significant and growing proportion of non-Aboriginal Australia is not white. Does the message apply to Chinese Australians as well?

A further difficulty is that there is no uniformity of view among Aboriginal Australians. Their views vary widely and are very mixed. Some of the most bitter fights are over divisions within the Aboriginal community, divisions that are played to by non-Aboriginal interests from Greens to miners to achieve their own objectives. These varied views are the reason why many Aboriginal activists are actually engaged in a fight for acceptance of their views within the Aboriginal community itself. Their real aim is to capture and energise the Aboriginal community to their view of the Aboriginal struggle.

Beyond all this is a very particular view that only Aboriginal people are really entitled to comment on or engage in Aboriginal issues defined broadly as anything about or affecting Aboriginal people. That’s plain silly.

In the end, all this makes it hard for a non-Aboriginal person to participate in the Aboriginal Struggle however defined. Why bother? I continue to try because I have defined a limited range of things that I think are important and where I can actually make a contribution. Beyond that, I tune out as (I think) do an increasing proportion of the Australian population. 

Still, I do try. In this context, have you ever heard of Eliza Dunlop’s The Aboriginal Mother?  Bet not.

Published in The Australian on 13 December 1838, it was a reaction to the 1838 Myall Creek Massacre. It was then set to music by Isaac Nathan for performance at a full orchestral concert in Sydney in 1841

Eliza Dunlop was an interesting woman. A poet, she was deeply interested in the Aborigines. At Wollombi, she recorded the Aboriginal dialect and the Aboriginal songs given to her by Wallati which she translated into English. One begins:

Our home is the gibber-gunyah (cave in a rock)
Where hill joins hill on high
Where the turramu  and berambo (weapons)
Like twisted serpents lie.

I really, really, don’t want to get involved in some of the current discussions about the Aboriginal Struggle, although I retain my general policy interest in Aboriginal issues. It is far more interesting and, I think, useful to continue to focus on recording what was and what happened in the areas where I have most interest.

Postscript

There was a quick and rather nice comment from Legal Eagle on this post. It’s worth reading in full, But I thought that I should bring up the last part of the comment in the main post. She wrote:

YES, it is really important to listen. And, I would suggest that before you decide to "speak for" Aboriginal people, you should at least meet some and preferably meet a variety of Aboriginal people. BUT I don't think that means I should shut up and not give my view where appropriate AFTER I've listened. Some of my own experiences may give me insight into resolving issues.

Actually the fundamental thing I learned from tutoring Aboriginal people was that you can't fix things for people: but you CAN give people tools to help themselves, and you can form a productive relationship where you learn from each other and listen to each other.

The last sentence captures something I have learned and try to practice. Even where I disagree, I do believe strongly in giving people the tools and information they need to argue their case. I am not thinking just of the Aborigines here. I also find that when I do this, it acts to temper views.    

Introducing NPM or New Public Management

I knew that there had to be a name for it. I was reading this report from the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute - Assessing management costs and tenant outcomes in social housing: developing a framework – when I came across it. There it was, NPM or New Public Management. I had always just thought of it as corporatist models, if with a strong dash of New Zealand.

You have to remember, I only came back into a public sector environment in 2006. Prior to that, I had been working in the private sector. In my last period as a strategic and business improvement consultant, I was becoming increasingly concerned with what I saw as growing distortions in management created by some of the very things that I had promoted in the past.

Take professional services as an example. It was pretty easy to get better financial results in areas like accounting or law by simply introducing better time keeping methods. It was low hanging fruit. Do it, and profits increase. That made us all look good.

The problem was that this focus on a simple measurable variable, billable hours, had quite dangerous results.

In my last consulting assignments, my focus was business development. Another consultant was concerned with financial performance and profit maximisation. I was concerned with giving staff the space they needed to perform well. The firm had to grow, and that required staff to be enthusiastic, to enjoy their work, to sell the firm and its services. If that happened, we could refine our approach, look to improvements in financial performance at unit and individual level.

It didn’t work that way. I would talk to staff and partners, develop ideas, start to plan new things. Then staff would come back from their monthly performance review with the other consultant. Why are your billable hours down? How come your time write-offs have gone up? You must do better. There was a fundamental inconsistency between what I was doing and that approach. My approach failed. In the end, so did the firm in that it failed to achieve the objectives set.

  Coming back into the public sector environment in 2006 was a real culture shock. The people I was dealing with had become acculturated to the “new ways” of doing things. I had not. I still remembered the old ways, My problems were further compounded by my changing perspectives on management and management failures, for this made me very critical of the things that I saw were now built into public sector management, if in a somewhat distorted way.

On Monday, John Netheccote had a rather nostalgic piece in the Canberra Times, Forty years on: the Coombs royal commission on government administration. John was on the Commission’s staff. He makes the serious point that, to paraphrase, that the rise in the emphasis placed upon “evidence based” public policy has been inversely correlated with its practical application. Mind you, there is a certain irony here.

At the inquiry, the then public service mandarins expressed the traditional role of the government department with great clarity.

Asked about the objectives of his Department, Sir Lennox Hewitt replied:

I have not previously encountered the suggestion of objectives for a department of state. The Royal Commission will presumably not need anything more from the department than a copy of the administrative arrangements.

Sir Frederick Wheeler's response to the same question was:

The function of the Treasury is to advise and assist the Treasurer in the discharge of his responsibilities. The objectives of the Treasury are, in essence, to carry out this function as effectively and efficiently as possible.

One outcome from the inquiry and the subsequent changes over the next eight years was that all Government agencies suddenly had to have their own statements of roles and objectives, of visions and later values, their own plans, independent of their traditional roles. To take a relatively benign example, this is how the Commonwealth Treasury currently describes its role.      

Today, as a central policy agency, the Treasury is expected to anticipate and analyse policy issues with a whole-of-economy perspective, understand government and stakeholder circumstances, and respond rapidly to changing events and directions.

The Treasury is engaged in a range of issues from macroeconomic policy settings to microeconomic reform, climate change to social policy, as well as tax policy and international agreements and forums. The Treasury also has a program delivery role in supporting markets and business, and providing Commonwealth payments to the State and Territory governments.

Note that there is no reference in this statement to Treasury’s traditional role as defined by Sir Frederick Wheeler. However, if you dig in a little, it is still there, more or less.

In the Treasury’s Strategic framework 2012-13 you will find this statement:

The Treasury's mission is to improve the wellbeing of the Australian people by providing sound and timely advice to the government, based on objective and thorough analysis of options, and by assisting the Treasury ministers in the administration of their responsibilities and the implementation of government decisions.

This combines the traditional role with the idea that all this is being done to improve the wellbeing of the Australian people. Then follows an attempt to define what Treasury means by the wellbeing of the Australian people linked to what Treasury does.

In reality, the broad continuing role of Treasury is captured in the first sentence of Sir Frederick's’ definition: The function of the Treasury is to advise and assist the Treasurer in the discharge of his responsibilities. This is what Treasury does. Everything else is subordinate to that. To suggest that the Treasury’s primary mission is to improve the well-being of the Australian people is actually a breech of of the fundamental principles underlying the Westminster system.

Of course, Treasury does not provide advice in a vacuum. It is perfectly appropriate to debate how Treasury carries out its role, what is important in forming the advice provided. Not, mind you, that this is helped by the statement of outcomes attached to attached to the various Treasury groups. As an example, the outcome for the Fiscal Group is defined as Effective government spending and taxation arrangements. Do you know what this means? I don’t. Effective for what?

Linking all this back to my belated discovery of NPM or New Public Management, the practical effect of current approaches with their focus on jargon driven structures and processes is confusion and constipation in decision and delivery. It just doesn’t work very well.   

Postscript

Sometimes I just don’t feel strong enough. This is one of those time. I just just quote kvd’s comment:

NPM is not on the LOA maintained by PMC. Suggest you contact the functionary involved, who I'm guessing will be in either CABSEC or MSMLCG.

Then, of course, there's the question of whether the PMC LOA is appropriately interfaced, synchronised, with the equivalent functionality maintained by Treasury - for that, I'd suggest going through ECOTFSWR in the first instance.

And I didn't make any of those up:
https://www.dpmc.gov.au/accountability/filelist/acronyms_abbreviations.cfm
HAND *

kvd
* Have a nice day

m

Scams & cuddles – all the lonely people, where do they come from?

Interesting piece by the ABC’s Felicity Sheppard Scams: Trickling into the mobile phones, email accounts and personal lives of Australians.

We have all experienced them. They really are a persistent bunch. It’s pretty easy to spot and ignore most. I don’t have a lot of sympathy for those caught, for example, by variants of the Nigerian letter scam. The offers made are generally obvious breaches of the law, although the charity scam is a new variant.

The really dangerous ones are those that take place within an apparently safe environment. The romance scams are an example. One can safely ignore those unsolicited remarkable offers that come from a variety of Russian ladies. Are there equivalent offers for women from good looking Russian men, or is this scam a particular male thing?

The big danger lies in the operation of con artists within the dating sites. Lonely women appear to be specially vulnerable, although there have been enough male cases to suggest that all lonely people are vulnerable.

Dating sites have really exploded in recent years. Is it just technology capturing an existing need, or have western societies actually become lonelier places? This is from the Beatles.

  
My personal view is that the world has become a lonelier and more fragmented place despite the linkages offered by the new technology. People need physical interaction.

Some years after the death of her husband, an Aunt said to me that the thing she most missed was the loss of cuddles. Her husband, she said, had been a very good cuddler!

I think that this need for cuddles, to hold, is central to the romance scams. Even where a person has considerable interaction with others, the need remains. People will go to considerable lengths to meet that need.

Security is a related need. This is often expressed in economic terms, but emotional linkages are more important. The local histories and memoirs that I am presently reading highlight this. In the big emotional events, the death of a child or partner, people are always there. They are there,  too, for the small daily events, a cup of tea and a chat. The people who are alone, who die alone, are recognised or commented on by exception.

I think that this is less true today. People’s needs for emotional security and for cuddles makes them vulnerable to the emotional scammers able to play on that need. The result is heartbreak on one side, considerable profit on the other.   

The wonders of the internet

Chatting with a friend at work today, I thought how interesting my life had become, if just a little tiring. It’s also impeding my ability to post somewhat!

Monday following the release of the terms of reference for the white paper on the future of the Australian federation, I did a radio spot for ABC New England North West on the history of the New England new state movement. I was followed by Barnaby Joyce. This was the second on-line bit I had done for them. You will find the first here, the second here; this includes Barnaby’s interview. 

I did the interview in the open plan office where I am currently dong some contract work to fund my writing addiction. That was an interesting experience in itself! I was actually a bit scared that the background noise would be broadcast live. Then over Monday there were a number of tweets and re-tweets; membership of the New England New State Movement Facebook page suddenly jumped from 159 to 306!

Monday night dinner (Peking Duck; a tradition) with eldest where we talked about her visit to Copenhagen. She has been working on a large IT project with Maersk. It would be inappropriate to talk about the conversation, but I was fascinated from a management perspective. Maersk has something to teach Australia.

Tuesday, the University of New England alumni office advised that Come to New England would be launched in Armidale on 25 July prior to the UNE Council meeting. This is the book that was to be published last year to commemorate the 85th/75th  anniversary of the Armidale Teachers’ College, University of New England, but was delayed; I have two chapters. Now it’s finally coming out. I can’t wait to get it in my hands.

I hastily emailed youngest. There is a degree of rivalry between us so far as writing is concerned. So I will be out there, but C has also re-edited the book (Blood Cross) she wrote when she was fifteen and sent it off for professional editing. Maybe I’m not as far in front as I would like to think!

Tuesday, too, Armidale Express Editor Lydia Roberts was enthusiastic about my proposed new six part series on the history of the Northern (New England) Separation Movement. I am going to try to write it so that it acts as a resource as well. In her reply, Lydia wondered if we might promote my new book Travels through New England: Journeys in Space and Time. Yes please! But my problem is that its simply not far enough advanced. Can I speed up?

Today I have been focused on risk stuff for a particular program. Over the last week I have actually, finally, achieved some work objectives I set in February 2012. I am quite anal about my objectives. I let them go, but I don’t forget them. I come back at them in many different ways. There is a story here about the way to properly identify and handle risk, but I have to think how to disguise it all so that I can write about it, 

Also today, email re the New England Regional Art Museum debate. This is a reproduction of a Tom Roberts from one of the latest NERAM exhibitions.

The debate topic is Without art there would be no science. It is to held on Saturday 9 August 2014 at the TAS Hoskins Theatre. No guess as to which side I am on!

Then, Friday, I go to Armidale for a meeting of the Board of the New England Writers’ Centre.

Now, I sometimes get asked, why don’t you go back to Armidale since you are so involved there?  That misses the point. I need to be in Armidale sometimes, but that is not how I stay involved.

I am still involved in Armidale and the North because of the wonders of the internet and modern communications technology. I don’t need to be in Armidale to stay in touch, nor do I need to be in Newcastle or South Grafton. I can keep across the whole area and beyond because of the wonders of the internet,

It used to be the case that, as you got older, your world diminished. That’s no longer true, unless you choose that path.

This is another piece from the current NERAM exhibitions, a Russell Drysdale.

I can look at the pieces on-line and then visit NERAM to look at them in the flesh. I am not bound by age. The internet frees limitations of age, culture and space.

Consider a few cases.

I have never met Ramana or kvd, although now our intent exchanges are added to via email exchanges; I know both.

I have a very soft spot for Winton because we were co-editors of the UNE student newspaper. He is part of my young past, so I have multiple memories of him. I can shut my eyes now and see him as he was. Actually,I’m not sure that he has changed that much! But we met again through the internet.

I also met geologist Rod Holland through the internet.  Turns out, his brother worked for me. Rod is part of the New England group, joined by our love for place. When Ursh found that the Clarence Valley Council was removing two historic jacarandas, she appealed to me.There wasn’t a lot I could do at a distance, but I was involved. I think, I’m not absolutely sure, that I met Ursh on-line via Lynne Sanders-Braithwaite. 

To support Ursh in a general sense, I’ve added some historical stuff to the We Love South Grafton Facebook page.

I don’t want to rattle on too much. I think that the point is, at least for me, that I am just so grateful for the things that the internet has given me. Yes, I have worked at it, but the results are quite astonishing!

Monday Morning Forum – whatever you like!

Feel free this Monday to go whatever direction you like. A few snippets first.

For those who follow twitter, the British Foreign Office is live time tweeting the cable traffic that began with the assassination of the Archduke.   This is an example of the material. Mr Jones was pretty accurate!

The Australian Government has released the interim report on the restructuring of the country’s welfare system. A six week consultation period has now begun. I haven’t had time to read the document properly. I do agree current welfare benefits need simplification.

On the Bank for International Settlements’ annual report:

In its annual report, the Swiss-based Bank for International Settlements (BIS) expressed serious concern that global share markets had reached new highs and the interest rate premium for many risky loans had fallen.

"Overall, it is hard to avoid the sense of a puzzling disconnect between the markets' buoyancy and underlying economic developments globally," the bank wrote.

The BIS says the disconnect is largely due to continued monetary stimulus in the form of money printing and record low interest rates by many developed economy central banks.

In the US, the latest GDP figures showed a contraction in the US economy. Economists do not appear too worried, attributing it in part to a harsh winter. I must admit that I am worried about the quantity of money sloshing around. A long time ago, I said that I could see no easy exit path for the US Fed’s quantitative easing. That remains my position.

The Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s troubles over its financial planning arm continues. I am not a great supporter of more regulation because of the costs. I do think that the CBA need to be held accountable.

In the Middle East, ISIL has apparently declared the establishment of a new caliphate. Meantime, Iraq has acquired some second hand jets from Russia, while trouble continues in the Ukraine.

Proper cheer up session, isn’t it?!

Still, down on the Amalfi Coast, the tourists will shortly be joined by eldest. Just back from Copenhagen, she flies out again in just under two weeks. Half her luck!

Post script

kvd does not like the topic. To explain his position, he provided a link to this contribution by the Boomtown Rats:

Sunday Essay – objectivity and balance in the writing of history

Just at the moment, Al Jazeera is running a special series on Australia called Immigration Nation. It is, in fact, the SBS series of that name. This ran three years ago. I reported my reactions in a series of increasingly negative posts:

• 10 January 2011 Personal Reflections: Issues with Immigration Nation
• 17 January 2011 Personal Reflections: Musing on Immigration Nation part two
• 24 January 2011 Personal Reflections: Sunday Essay - Immigration Nation fails the test
• 27 January 2011 Personal Reflections: immigration, words and concepts

Seeing it again on Al Jazeera as an Al Jazeera  special, my heart sank. This time my reactions were far more negative, for this is broadcasting to the world. 

Here is an Australian response at the time from the other side of the fence in Australia, John Izzard’s piece in Quadrant, The Deceit of Immigration Nation. Izzard’s piece, too, is special pleading, but it is a corrective.

My second example of distorted history is a piece on ABC by Jennifer King and Lucy Sweeney, Archduke Franz Ferdinand: The man whose assassination is blamed for triggering World War I. Like the first example, it twists history to mould with current perceptions and biases. David Marr’s rather sneering piece in The Saturday Paper, The centenary of Archduke Ferdinand's assassination, is tarnished with the same brush.

Think that I am unfair here? Well, skim read both pieces, jot down the perceptions that you are left with and then compare that with the wikipedia entry on the Archduke.

I, too, grew up with the perception of the Austro-Hungarian Empire as something of a comic opera state, of Franz Ferdinand as something of a dull buffoon whose death triggered a war. They were the conventional Australian stereotypes of the time, although I had done enough history to know that the causes of the First World War lay in complex power rivalries, that the assassination itself was just a trigger. However, in a history world coloured by Australian and British perceptions, I actually knew very little of the complex history of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Put aside an excessive love of shooting. I now think of Franz Ferdinand as a brave if difficult man concerned to preserve the integrity of the Austro-Hungarian Empire by recognising ethnic and cultural differences in a pluralist state. I don’t think that I would have liked him, but I can respect his strengths.

And the Austro-Hungarian Empire? I can give you a simple measure here. Compare that Empire with post First World War European history to the present day. If the First World War was the war of the dynasties, we can characterise the subsequent history as the wars of ethnicities. The Austro-Hungarian Empire was a pluralist empire. Whatever its weaknesses, its management of ethnic difference, of the tensions that resulted, was far better than the ethnic slaughter that was to follow.

Franz Ferdinand’s constitutional vision may have been unachievable, but I am uncomfortable with sneering at a man who at least had a vision intended to accommodate difference while maintaining the integrity of the state.  

My point in these examples is not to attack the works in question  although I am doing that, but to use them as an entry point for a reflection on the way that this type of reporting affects my own writing when I am writing as a professional historian. Put simply, it twists it, moving it in new directions. Sometimes this is good, but it also risks introducing another set of distortions.

Take the White Australia Policy as an example. My disagreements with some current interpretations led me to research the policy, to try to understand the course of events. It also led me to focus on the experience of some non-European groups in New England and especially the Chinese. In doing so, I came across some of the exceptions in the application of the policy that John Izzard refers too.

This is one example of the writing that followed, in this case recording something Janis Wilton had written: Family counts: glimpses of Chinese life in New England in the first half of the twentieth century. This piece from Talk’n Tours will give you a little of the history of the Tingha store displayed in the photo.

Now in writing this way, I am in fact doing something somewhat similar to John Izzard if for different reasons and in a different way. Izzard uses examples in an attempt to temper if not refute some of the views on the White Australia Policy expressed in Immigration Nation. Here he is playing a similar role to that adopted by Australian historian Keith Windschuttle in writing on Aboriginal history.

In focusing on the Chinese experience in New England I am also attacking some of the conventional stereotypes. I obviously have to explain the nineteenth century racial exclusion legislation and the impact that had on the Chinese community. That sets the scene for the adoption of the White Australia policy. In writing on the New England Chinese community in the twentieth century, I have to explain the impact on that community of the immigration restriction acts that came with the White Australia policy. However, and this is an important point, the Chinese experience did not suddenly end with Federation and White Australia. The Chinese were not passive victims, but found ways of working around and through the system.

I have no particular desire to get involved in current controversies on particular aspects of Australian history where those controversies are really driven in part by differing ideological positions. I am more interested in understanding what was. However, I am consciously trying to shift what I perceive to be particularly monochromatic views of Australian history that conceal the real diversity of past Australian life. That is the significance of the Chinese example, for the Chinese were more important in New England history than often realised, especially in the tin field areas, an importance that continued through the twentieth century.

My approach carries its own risk of bias, of course. If I allow myself to be too influenced by current discussions, I risk unbalancing my own work creating another bias. In a way, the weight of evidence provides its own correction. Then, too, I try to make clear the frame from which I am working. Still, a risk remains.

It is also true that the contrary views are actually quite important for the questions they make me ask. The result is, I think, a deeper historical experience for me and, hopefully, the reader. 

Saturday Morning Musings – Florentine bankers with a dash of Palmer

Our blogging colleague AC is presently in Florence and seems to be enjoying herself enormously. This is a Wikipedia shot of the Palazzo Vecchio.

I didn’t like Florence as much as Venice or Rome;  it seemed over-hyped. That said, it is a fascinating place.

The Fairfax Press has just released the BRW Australian Rich 200 list. Gina Rinehart leads at a tad over $A20 billion. Then there is blue sky until the Pratt family kicks in at $A7.6 billion. I felt a little sad for Frank Lowy. He came in at fourth with just $A7.2 billion. Perhaps the new restructuring of Westfield fought through against strong opposition will help.

That was a magnificent segue because it allows me to go in so many directions. I must be disciplined! In a way, Florence was developed by the then equivalent of the BRW top 200. I have always liked the battles between the rival Strozzi and Medici families. Both made their initial money out of banking – Florence was at the centre of the invention of modern banking. Both used their money to gain political power. Both then built things.

The only Australian equivalent that I can think of is Clive Palmer. Well, that’s not quite accurate. Still, its the base for another segue. 

This image was apparently developed following a comment by skepticlawyer aka Helen Dale. It’s a play on the original slogan of the Australian Democrats (and here), keeping the bastards honest.

Views vary on Clive Palmer. Personally, I have fluctuated between thinking him a complete buffoon and then laughing out-right at something he said. He is, in fact, a very experienced political operator as well as a consummate showman. You will get a feel for this from Neil Whitfield’s post Shock and Gore and the weather in West Wollongong this morning. I would hardly have thought of Neil as a natural Palmer supporter, I am not saying he is, but he is clearly drawn in by the theatre of it all.

The Al and Clive show in Parliament House was one of the most effective pieces of political theatre that you will find. There was the suspense, the secrecy, drawing the media like flies. Then to find Clive and Al Gore standing together was so far from left field that it blew the media apart. It actually changed the political landscape.

However, beyond the theatrics there were two things that I found interesting.

One was the role played by veteran conservation campaigner Don Henry in stitching the whole thing together. This was quite clever, because it shifted the debate away from the messages that the Abbott Government had been trying to deliver.

The second was the apparent reaction of the new Palmer United Party party room. If the reporting is correct, they would not agree with their boss on the deal, throwing the whole plan into a degree of disarray; changes had to be made to allow the show to proceed. This is quite important, for it suggests that the new parliamentarians, and they are all new, are not mere ciphers. They never would be of course, Parliament doesn’t work that way. Still, now they face the challenge of developing coherence as a group. 

Well, the day has dawned. I had other things that I wanted to say, but it is time to move on. 

Postscript

Cousin Sophie’s take on the Palmer matter in The Saturday Paper. 

Postscript 2

This second postscript has nothing to do with the main theme in this post. I record it simply as  remarkably bad example of “popular” history. Archduke Franz Ferdinand: The man whose assassination is blamed for triggering World War I.

The lingering effects of James Busby, founder of the Australian wine industry, on Australian life

James Busby (and here) was a remarkable man.

In New Zealand, he is remembered for the Treaty of Waitangi. You can see why that might be important. It’s a fundamental constitutional document that is central to today’s New Zealand. In Australia, he is remembered as the founder of the Australian wine industry.

James Busby was born in Edinburgh (Scotland) on 7 February 1801. He was twenty two when the family set sail on the Triton for Australia  where father John Busby, a surveyor and civil engineer, was to take up a position responsible for “the management of the Coal Mines, in supplying the Town of Sydney with water, and in objects of a similar nature'. In this role, he was responsible for the creation of Sydney’s first permanent water supply.  

The Busby's arrived in Sydney in February 1824. James had previously studied viticulture in France and had written A Treatise on the Culture of the Vine and the Art of Making Wine, which was published in Sydney in 1825.This was followed in 1830 by A Manual of Plain Directions for Planting and Cultivating Vineyards and for Making Wine in New South Wales.  

Initially James was employed at the Male Orphan School near Liverpool where  he was to take charge of the school farm and teach viticulture. He lost this position when the orphan school came under the control of the trustees of the Church and School Corporation in 1827. He was not happy with the way he had had been treated or subsequent offers, leading him to sail for England in 1831 to protest his work treatment.

On 19 February 1831, James Busby sailed for England in part to protest his work treatment. Viticulture was still a core interest. In September 1831 he began a four-month tour of Spanish and French vineyards, which resulted in two further publications: Journal of a Tour Through Some of the Vineyards of Spain and France (Sydney, 1833); and Journal of a Recent Visit to the Principal Vineyards of Spain and France (London, 1834).

James arrived back in Sydney on 16 October 1832, along with a large collection of vine clippings. In March 1832, he had been appointed British Resident in New Zealand. On 1 November he married Agnes Dow of Segenhoe in the Hunter, embarking for New Zealand in HMS. Imogene on 21 April 1833. He now effectively departs from the Australian story, becoming part of New Zealand history. However, his impact on Australian life continued.

At this point, we have a confusion of dates in the main secondary sources. Either John or James Busby was given a grant of 2000 acres in the Hunter that was named Kirkton. Management of the property was taken by William Kelman. Kelman had come out on the same ship as the Busby’s and had married John Busby’s daughter Katherine. The vines that James Busby had brought back were planted in the Sydney Botanical Garden and at Kirkton. From Kirkton, the vines spread across Southern Australia. Fittingly, William Kelman inherited the property after John Busby’s death.

Like many modern Australians with their love of the life styles of France and Tuscany, James Busby, too, fell in love with aspects of that life style and especially the wine. He wrote, I’m sorry, but I have not been able to find the reference again, that if Australia had been settled by the French you would find the farmer at the end of the day sitting outside sipping his own wine, perhaps under the shade of the vines.

An idyllic picture, but perhaps not as far removed from modern Australia as James Busby might have expected. The inheritance of those Kirkton vines lives on.   

The Peter Greste case

There is a real sense of outrage in Australia over the sentencing of Peter Greste and his Al Jazeera colleagues. Foreign Minister Julie Bishop had this to say:

"The Australian government is shocked at the verdict in the Peter Greste case. We are deeply dismayed by the fact that a sentence as been imposed. We are appalled by the severity of it.

"It is hard to credit that court in this case could have reached this conclusion.

"The Australian government simply can not understand it based on the evidence presented in this case.

"Peter Greste is a respected Australian journalist, he was not there to support the Muslim brotherhood

"We respect the outcome of the recent elections in Egypt and will now initiate contact at the highest levels in the new Egyptian government to see whether we can gain some kind of intervention from the new government.

"I have spoken at length with Peter Greste’s parents. They are considering their legal options, including appeal options.

"We do not know how long an appeal process will take, but in the meantime, we will provide whatever consular assistance we can.

"We understand there have been some very difficult times and there has been a great deal of turmoil in Egypt. But this kind of verdict does nothing for Egypt’s claim to be transitioning to democracy.

"The Australia government urges Egypt to reflect on what message is being sent to the world.

"We are deeply concerned that this verdict is part of a broader attempt to muzzle the press freedom that upholds democracies around the world.

"I can not think what more we could have done. I am bitterly disappointed by the outcome."

Foreign Minister Bishops’ remarks were supported by all sections of Australian politics.

In other reported reaction, the Netherlands and the UK said they would summon the Egyptian ambassador over the sentencing. The Dutch foreign ministry said that the "minimum requirements for a fair trial were not met".

"I am appalled by the guilty verdicts handed down today against Egyptian and international journalists in Egypt," the UK foreign secretary, William Hague, said in a statement.

"I am particularly concerned by unacceptable procedural shortcomings during the trial process, including that key prosecution evidence was not made available to the defence team."

The Canadian ambassador David Drake, who attended the session for Fahmy, an Egyptian-Canadian, said there were many questions over the verdict.

"We are very disappointed," he said. "We are digesting this ... We don't understand this particular verdict.''

As you might expect, the twitter feeds ran hot with reactions from fellow reporters when the news first came out -  #petergreste and #freeajstaff provide examples. As one twitterer observed with a particularly Australian take, even kangaroos would be embarrassed by this result. The BBC provides an analysis of the hash tag traffic to this point.

The Egyptian Government has attempted to defend the decision:

“Egypt has strongly rejected foreign criticism of its judicial system and interference in its affairs after a court decision to sentence three al Jazeera journalists to seven years or more in jail raised an international outcry.

"The Egyptian foreign ministry strongly rejects any comment from a foreign party that casts doubt on the independence of the Egyptian judiciary and the justice of its verdicts," the foreign ministry said in a statement.”

I suppose that one could argue that there have been other travesties in show trials here and elsewhere, as well as other oppression of the press; this is a much retweeted example: “Rastakhiz ‏@sedaye_iran I don't hear this much #FreeAJStaff outrage against #Iran regime which has made Iran into the biggest prison for journalists in the world.”  That said, it remains true when you strike at journalists in this way you are striking at the heart of an institution that we rely on the provide at least some protection against tyranny.

Monday Forum – disruptions & conundrums 1

I am, I fear,  a very confused person. Today’s forum demonstrates that! Feel free to roam in whatever direction you wish as a consequence!

Disruptive Innovation

Comments on Rear Vision - The Market for Higher Education, drew us into the current debate started by Jill Lepore in the New Yorker. These pieces will give you a feel:

• Jill Lepore: THE DISRUPTION MACHINE 
• Then came this: Clayton Christensen Responds to New Yorker Takedown of 'Disruptive Innovation'’
• And this: CHRISTENSEN'S DISRUPTIVE INNOVATION AFTER THE LEPORE CRITIQUE.

In a comment, Winton wrote:

It seems to me that it is futile to attempt to argue that any particular business model is best under all circumstances. In some circumstances disruptive innovation is desirable. In other circumstances continuous improvement is desirable. In some circumstances there may even be virtue in going back to the old ways of doing things.

In a sense, that was part of my point. You can’t, but people do just that and at a cost.

How do we stop the blind application of models regardless?

Mr Abbott (and Winton’s) Bravery

In a post, How can desirable economic reforms be pursued more effectively in Australia?, Winton came to a partial defence of the Howard/Hockey budget. He said in part

Perhaps I should apologize to Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey. The government has made some tough decisions in its first budget. I don't endorse everything they have proposed, but it is good to see a government proposing action to deal with a looming problem before a more painful adjustment becomes unavoidable.

So just following up on Winton, what were the good features of this budget?

Education for National Efficiency

The second half of the nineteenth century saw significant expansion in technical and adult education, driven in part by the ideal that such education provided a vehicle through which ordinary working people could advance themselves. In a way, the Scottish/American philanthropist Andrew Carnegie exemplified this trend. Born in 1835, Carnegie was a self-made man who built a huge industrial empire.  In  1901 he sold his steel company to J P Morgan and devoted the remainder of his life (he died in 1919) to large-scale philanthropy, with special emphasis on local libraries, world peace, education and scientific research.

Carnegie believed passionately in the power of education for the ordinary man and in self-help. His interview with Napoleon Hill forms the basis of How to Raise Your Own Salary, one of the early and still very popular self-help books,

In his philanthropic work, Carnegie focused on building infrastructure and especially public libraries. His work continued after his death. In New South Wales, for example, the creation of the public library system during the 1930s was facilitated by Carnegie support.

Just as Carnegie was launching his philanthropic work, a new trend in technical education was reaching a peak. This was education for national efficiency. Driven by European power rivalries and especially the rising power of Germany, this was education and especially technical education for national economic and political power, a vey different concept from education for individual advancement. It had profound effects.

Which to your mind is more important, education in the service of the state for national efficiency or education for individual advancement?

The New Zealand Model

Back in 2006, in Changes in Public Administration - the New Zealand Model, I looked at the flowering of a particular approach. When these ideas first emerged, I was attracted to them and studied them, visiting NZ on multiple occasions.  I can still their relevance, although I feel that they have been misappropriated. Is the NZ model still relevant? Why?

I was going to give further examples to encourage discussion, but that’s enough for a start. 

Postscript

Winton referred to this speech by Minister Pyne. Address to the Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA), 16 May 2014, Adelaide. I have added it to extend the discussion.

Train reading – Edith Potter’s The Scone I Remember

My background reading at the moment is solidly entrenched in the Hunter Valley. Reading intensely on a particular area, even one I know reasonably well, is always informative because of the linkages it establishes in my mind.

Once a mental pattern is established, new information challenges, deepens, shifts the pattern. Something that would have seemed dry or even trivial becomes meaningful. “Wait a minute”, I say to myself, “that’s a nice example.”  Alternatively, I say to myself “That can’t be right. It doesn’t fit!”  Then, sometimes, something that is apparently local or personal or family will take me in a new direction far removed from that locale or even time as I seek to understand.

My present train reading, Edith Potter’s  The Scone I Remember (Scone and Upper Hunter Historical Society, Scone, 1981) is a case in point.

Scone is a town in the Hunter Valley.  It’s not a big place, but one with a considerable history. The photo shows Scone’s St Luke’s Anglican Church.

Edith Potter’s recollections cover her younger life in Scone in the period leading up to and including the First World War. Her family, the Hulins, came to the area in the middle of the nineteenth century.

The book is packed with detail, you could walk the streets of of old Scone with it in hand. It is loaded with names, I think that Edith tried to include every name she could!, to the point that they blur. It is a very polite book. Yet it’s also a very good book in part because of all that detail.

When I first started to read the book I got a little lost in the names, although even then there were patches of recollections expressed in a writing that sucked me in. As the book progressed, the detail became important. The names of the main stores are just that, names, although I knew some. The detail of their physical location will mean little to someone who does not know or is not interested in Scone. However, the descriptions of the stores and the life that revolved around those stores is interesting.

More broadly, in describing the detail of daily life Edith provides real texture. Take women’s clothing, those complex long dresses that were fashionable at the end of the nineteenth century. Edith describes not just them, but the whole paraphernalia from undergarments up, the fabric, look and feel. She describes the detail of the ceremonies and sometimes tragedies of life as expressed in one place at the one time and especially among one group. The laying out of the bodies in a formal sense, the procedures for saying farewell.

I said that books like Edith’s took me in new directions. In my case, it’s my next two History Revisited Express columns looking at changes in women’s life over the last century and a half. My conclusion is not quite what you might expect. The grand fights of the women’s movements in the last half of the twentieth century were second order issues. They were major changes, but they could not have occurred without earlier changes.

For some reason, bobbed hair has become my mental symbol of the fundamental change that took place. The trigger for this is a simple one. Edith describes the pain that could result from the combination of long hair with long high necked dresses with multiple small button holes stretching up the back. The hair became entangled with the buttons; getting undressed could be painful. In the end. you might just have to cut the entangled hair.

I well remember the problems I had in getting knots out of my daughters’ hair as I brushed it, They would wriggle: “Daddy, you are hurting me!” So I could empathise with Edith’s predicament.

I will return to this theme once I have finished my columns. In the meantime, I will finish reading Edith’s book with great pleasure. Maybe, later, I will tell you a little more about Scone. There are stories there that have a modern resonance that you may find surprising.       

Rear Vision - The Market for Higher Education

ABC Radio National’s Rear Vision series has just run a useful documentary on the market for education  especially in the US. You can listen to the program here. I do not know if is available to people outside Australia.

I mention it because of the recent discussion threads here linked to Minister Pyne’s proposals, the economics of education, the structuring of Government funding (if any) that should be provided to support education and especially higher education and, if so, how.

If you can access it, I think that it’s worth a listen. 

Postscript

Another story from this morning that I wanted simply to record at this  time: Working age Australians have become far less reliant on welfare payments, new figures show.

Postscript 2

kvd found this piece by Jill Lepore in the New Yorker: THE DISRUPTION MACHINE. It makes for depressing reading, at least for me. Over thirty years in senior management or as an adviser to management, I have seen so many management fashions. Some I have supported, others made me cautious because they seemed just too simplistic, too partial. I find it ironic now that a fair bit of my professional or semi-professional writing attempts to address the continuing dead hand of things I once supported!

Postscript 3

Evan pointed me to this response by Professor Clayton Christensen to the Lepore piece: Clayton Christensen Responds to New Yorker Takedown of 'Disruptive Innovation'’

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