Monday 18 March 2024

Taken for Granted

Pic courtesy Leader Today

Yesterday I went to the state school down the road, and voted in the local government elections, something I've been doing for years, and something entirely unremarkable. 

 But is it? 

 We've only to take a glance to the East, across the Pacific at the U.S., or Northwest,  to the Russian Federation, to understand that our electoral system is entirely remarkable. 

We're not the only country to have compulsory suffrage, but it goes well beyond that.

To use that much-maligned "mutual obligation" term, if the law demands that you vote, it has to provide you the facility and infrastructure to do so. Hence, state and federal electoral commissions, regulated boundaries, and a standardised and transparent vote counting process have been developed over the years.

The foundation of our system is the maintenance of an up-to-date electoral roll. We don't always appreciate the fact that the maintenance of this critical data is humming away quite efficiently in the background, except perhaps when we receive the note in our letterbox reminding us that an election is on the way, and we have to vote.


People who arrive at the age to vote are also encouraged to enrol, although many don't follow through. That seems to be changing, which can only be a good thing.

Enrolling to vote is encouraged at school, and most young people in my experience are enthusiastic first-time voters. I certainly was, when my first opportunity to vote came up at the 1969 Federal election. At the time, I was at the Jungle Training Centre at Canungra, preparing as a conscript, for operational service in Vietnam.

I was, to say the least, disappointed, when I went to the orderly room seeking transport to Canungra State School to vote, only to be told that if I left the centre, I'd be charged with being AWOL*.

Somehow, the notion that we were ostensibly fighting for democracy seemed lost on the army at the time.

This experience has driven home to me the value of our system, as I was voting for a decision about my immediate future, and I was given no say in it. I wonder how many of the 200 National Servicemen who died in Vietnam actually got to vote on the issue?

Contrasting our system with that in the "democracy" across the Pacific is revelatory. The quotes are intentional, by the way, as the US is not a democracy, but a constitutional republic. 

It's electoral college system, the history of the disenfranchisement of minorities, and its bipartisan tradition of electoral gerrymandering are well known, although not always well understood outside of the USA.

The fact that 62% of US voters turned out at the 2020 presidential poll, gives the lie to an application of the term "democracy" as applied to the USA when you consider that 38% had no say. The turnout in 2020 was one of the highest on record, and an improvement on the 52% in 1952. Voter suppression of minorities has decreased, but it continues in many southern states.

Perhaps the greatest advantage of a compulsory system is that no encouragement is needed to get people out to vote. In countries where voting is voluntary, you need to get people angry or frightened to get them to the ballot box. Anger and fear are very dangerous emotions, and the results are usually the election of those who use anger and fear, rather than hope, to secure power.

So gentle reader, be thankful that you live in a country where participation is understood the be the cornerstone of democracy, and don't ever take it for granted.


*Absent without leave.



Sunday 3 March 2024

George is Back


George is back, and providing entertainment based on snippets of truth, as he has done so often in the past.

I know, gentle reader, that he is a product of the UK political landscape, but much of what he says and does has echoes in our electorate.

He excels at puncturing bloated political commentary. He also has a knack of getting under the skin of his political critics.


We could do with a George Galloway in our senate. We have David Pocock, but whilst he has the substance, he lacks the style of a George Galloway.


Wednesday 21 February 2024

The Second Coming

Image courtesy of the Paris Review

Over the decades, gentle reader, I've enjoyed reading poetry, and have, from time to time, made attempts to do my own work. Most of this musing went on during my service in Vietnam. There was always a need to fill in the three hours of picket duty, when doing so in the daylight made scribbling possible.

I was always careful to keep this practice well hidden. On the very few occasions when I was sprung, I always said I was writing a letter. I got away with it.

The product of this lifelong dabbling is an appendix in my memoir. 

You really should buy it. I need the coffee money.

One of my favourite poets is W.B. Yeats.

Yeats was a Protestant/Agnostic, but his work has always resonated with this Catholic, possibly because of his subject matter, and his espousal of Irish nationalism. Easter 1916 captured the spirit of this nationalism as no sterile reading of the history could ever do.

Yeats was deeply into spiritualism and towards the end of his life, this became evident in his works. His "The Second Coming" is said to be a dirge for the decline of European civilisation. I reproduce it here, and ask the reader to consider the state of western (not just European) civilisation in 2024. 

Yeats wrote it in 1919, at a time when the horrors of the Great War were fresh in the minds of most, but the rise of authoritarian fascism had not yet begun. The resurrection of these themes worldwide is apparent now (note Putin, Trump and Milei). A resurrected Yeats would probably have had something to write were he observing now.

Yeats should always he heard, not read, so here is a link to a reading.

And here is the text of the poem - 

Turning and turning in the widening gyre  
The falcon cannot hear the falconer; 
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; 
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, 
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere 
The ceremony of innocence is drowned; 
The best lack all conviction, while the worst 
Are full of passionate intensity.
 
Surely some revelation is at hand; 
Surely the Second Coming is at hand. 
The Second Coming! 
Hardly are those words out 
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi 
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert 
A shape with lion body and the head of a man, 
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, 
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it 
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds. 
The darkness drops again; but now I know 
That twenty centuries of stony sleep 
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, 
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, 
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? 

 

Monday 12 February 2024

One Website at a Time

 

Some of 5 Platoon B Coy June 1970

Regular readers of this blog will remember this post, which explained the fun I had setting the record straight about the "Volunteer Nasho" myth that had persisted for nearly fifty years at the time I encountered it.

The simple exercise of discerning and disseminating fact is essential if we are to tell the truth about our history, military or otherwise.

Truth-telling is, after all, the first step towards reconciliation, and I'm aware that there is still a way to go to to achieve real reconciliation amongst Vietnam veterans, given the comments I get whenever I post on the topic. Three years of research doesn't seem to make a difference to some of the enduring mythology. 

The barnacle metaphor springs to mind.

I'd written about the need for reconciliation before.

Last month I came across a page on the State Library of Queensland website devoted to national service. It regurgitated the old myth that national servicemen who served in Vietnam were for the most part volunteers. Once you ignore the logical impossibility that conscripts could be classified as volunteers, the next step is to consult the literature, something that I spent three years doing prior to my thesis.

I made phone and email contact with the library about a month ago, sending them my thesis, together with a reading list on the topic, much of which has been around for ten years at least.

Today on revisiting the site I found that the reference to "many" volunteers on the website has been altered to - 

The 1965 amendment to the Defence Act stated 'conscripts could be obliged to serve overseas' and in March 1966 then Prime Minister Holt announced, National Servicemen would be sent to Vietnam to fight in units of the Australian Regular Army. Consequently, most National Servicemen (Nashos) were not given the choice of active service once allocated to a regular army unit, especially infantry units. As a result, 2 died in Borneo and in the Vietnam War 210 were killed and more than 1200 were wounded. 

This is gratifying because the reference to infantry units not being given a choice is precisely what my interviews with Nashos revealed. Once posted to infantry, manpower was all that mattered to the army.

The courteous head librarian told me that they had relied on material from the National Service Association to provide content. I then contacted the NSA who told me that they had not updated their information for years, mainly because the people tasked with maintaining their website were infirm as a result of age.

So the myth has remained on the NSA website more out of neglect than malice, a very sad state of affairs.  

It's still there -

Most but not all units gave National Servicemen the choice of active service and most volunteered. 

So the next step in my quest is to contact the NSA and suggest that they rejig their website to reflect the historical reality. 

Everyone has to have at least one obsession. 

Wish me luck...


Update -

I posted this email to the NSA after many unsuccessful attempts to talk to them, with copies to the Australian War Memorial, and the Minister for Veterans' Affairs -

____________________________________________________________

Dear Sir

I draw your attention to the following statement on your history of national service as it refers to the second national service scheme on your website – 

 

 All Battalions were rotated through Vietnam between 1966 and 1971.  Most but not all units gave National Servicemen the choice of active service and most volunteered.  

 

This statement is misleading, especially the “most volunteered” reference, and is not based on fact. In the first place, national servicemen (including myself who served in 7RAR in Vietnam in 1970) were conscripts. We were in the army because our birthdates were drawn in the various national service ballots. If we had wanted to volunteer to fight in Vietnam, we could have done so by enlisting in the ARA.

Secondly, historians who have researched national service, including Mark Dapin, Jeffrey Grey, and Ben Morris (the latter a Vietnam veteran) have shown through their research that most units did not offer options regarding operational service. Once enlisted, we were members of the ARA and amendments to the National Service Act of 1965 specified that we were to be treated as such. My own research has made it clear that most national servicemen allocated to Infantry, were not given an option. There were examples of Nashos going directly from recruit training to battalion postings, in the knowledge that those battalions were likely to be deployed but describing that process as “volunteering” is an abuse of the English language. These men were in the army because they were conscripts, not volunteers. 

The best example of this practice was the fate of Stanley Larsson, a member of my unit who was killed in a mine incident on June 6th, 1970. Reference to this incident is made on P 132 of my recently completed thesis. 

 The statement on your website should read - 

 All Battalions were rotated through Vietnam between 1966 and 1971. Occasionally, unit commanders gave National Servicemen the choice of avoiding active service, but this practice was in breach of the National Service Act and was discouraged at a political levelMost national servicemen simply made the best of their situation.


Whilst this history is not a good fit with the Anzac legend, it is the reality, and if you respect our service, especially those who gave their lives, you will tell the truth about it in your publications. Those who died are honoured by the truth, not convenient mythology.

 

Please acknowledge this email and correct your webpage.

 

Respectfully yours


XXXX

_____________________________________________________________


I'll keep you posted.

Sunday 4 February 2024

A True Volunteer

 

They're sweet and juicy

The Oxford defines a volunteer as "a person who does something without being forced".

It's a term usually applied to a person, but my father-in-law, a lifetime farmer, used it to refer to plants which came up all by themselves without being planted by human hands. He grew mostly peanuts.

Until I met him, I had never heard the term used in this way. His often unconventional and picturesque use of language reflected a life lived richly across many parts of the country, and a keen sense of observation.

More recently, I have been involved in exploring the use of the term as it applied to the use of conscripts in this country between 1965 and 1972. I was amazed to find that there are those who define conscripts as volunteers.

Upon analysis, it became clear that mythology has no respect for facts and history, so the volunteer myth persists like barnacles on a boat.

With that concession to metaphor, I'll give myself permission, gentle reader, following the example of my father-in-law, to apply the term to a plant. 

The plant in question is a variety of tomato. I have no idea exactly what breed of tomato, because it came up all by itself near one of my worm farms. I feed the worms with leftover organic cooking waste, and some seeds must have escaped.

The soil here is pretty good, and most things grow well. This summer has been especially wet, and the grass grows whilst you watch. The volunteer tomato did exactly that, after I almost removed it because I thought it was a weed. It was, actually, as a weed is defined as an unwanted plant that turns up somewhere you don't want it.

It grew like a weed, and flowered prolifically, much more so than the numerous tomato I'd bought and set up in hanging pots. It's producing large fruit which initially were spoiled by fruit fly until I applied some organic insecticide. 

We now have more tomatoes than we can eat. I'm looking for recipes for tomato sauce and chutney.

The volunteer metaphor works well, as the plant is sturdy, energetic, and resilient, a bit like the ahistorical myth as applied to national service. 

 

 




Friday 26 January 2024

Short Finals at Cunnamulla


I was going through some archived video the other day, and came across this.

It was a video grab (via iPhone) of a landing we made at Cunnamulla in 2017, when I was working permanent part time as an Advisory Visiting teacher.

The chartered flight (Beechcraft Super King Air) flew Roma - Cunnamulla on Thursdays with the flying surgeon and his offsider anaesthetist. As far as I know, he never performed surgery on these occasions. Rather, he was assessing and preparing patients for procedures carried out in Roma.

To be honest, I never had any idea what he was doing during the day. Upon arrival, I would be dropped off at the school, and the medical (QHealth) people at the hospital. We'd be collected by a government vehicle at the end of the day and driven to the airport. Boarding the aircraft after it had been locked up and sat in the sun all day, particularly in the summer, wasn't much fun, although once the engines were started it cooled down quickly. 

Hitching a ride on these regular charters was a very efficient use of taxpayer resources. The aircraft was a nine-seater, there was plenty of room, and a whole day wasted on travel by car was avoided.

Nevertheless, permission to do it was withdrawn shortly at head office level, overriding the very sensible local decision to allow it. I never was told exactly why. It's possible that it had something to do with cost and/or insurance.

In any case, I always enjoyed the flights, and usually sat in the cockpit where I could see what was going on. The airstrip at Cunnamulla was originally built for US bombers (B-17s) stationed there in World War Two. One of the US personnel involved was a certain Lt Commander Lyndon B Johnson on leave from the US Congress. Apparently he had advised that  Cunnamulla was inland far enough to be out of range of Japanese attacks.

That history explains the length of the strip at Cunnamulla at 1733 metres. It would still be marginal for modern airliners. A 737 needs 2133 metres.  




 

Monday 22 January 2024

At the Bakery

Pic courtesy ABC

My daily habit, gentle reader, is to drive the short distance to a nearby bakery to buy a coffee and a bagette. 

 I should probably walk, but my son's blue heeler looks after my exercise by taking me around the block daily. Besides, I enjoy driving. 

You should always do something you enjoy every day. I can at a stretch, pretend I'm still driving my MX5, despite the fact that I had to dispose of it a few years ago as physical access became a problem. The CX3 has the same engine and gearbox, after all. 

 This morning, as I was about to drive out of the car park at our local shopping centre, I was approached by a woman who asked for money. I told her I didn't have any cash (which was true) and was about to offer to buy her something from the bakery if she was hungry, but she didn't give me the chance, telling me to "f**k off" before I completed my explanation. She then approached somebody else, and as far as I could tell, got a similar response. 

 I was thinking about this incident on the way home. The last time somebody asked me for money was in Washington on a visit in 2018. Apart from that, I vaguely remember a similar request in Paris in 1980. 

That was a very long time ago and in a very different place when the world and I were a little younger. So what has changed, in regional Queensland, and perhaps in this land of Oz, to cause this behaviour to emerge? Are there fundamental changes afoot, or was this an isolated insignificant incident? 

ACOSS (the Australian Council of Social Service) with the cooperation of the University of NSW, has published a report which illustrates pretty clearly at least one aspect of the situation, that of wealth distribution in Australia. It reveals, amongst other things, that people in the highest 20% of the wealth scale hold nearly two thirds of all wealth (64%), while those in the lowest 60% hold less than a fifth of wealth (17%). 

 That is obviously significant, but is this disparity a simple enduring reality, or is it part of a trend? Generally in this country, current research doesn't detect a measurable trend, and that, I suppose, is somewhat comforting. Ann Harding's 2002 paper does however suggest that the middle class (however you define it) is shrinking. Certainly, the Australian dream of home ownership is increasingly beyond the means of many of the younger members of the current middle class. 

 Inequality across the pacific is growing, as is apparent from this illustration from this Pew Resource Centre study.

Social and economic trends across the Pacific are almost always visited on us in this country, after a three/five year delay. The abandonment of support for the war in Vietnam first in the USA, and a few years later here, is the best example of this phenomenon.

These trends shape the political culture. 

In the USA, the response seems to be the rise of neo-Fascism. In Australia, the emerging of the TEALs and the growth of support for Green candidates in urban electorates is apparent. Young renters are becoming more than a little unhappy with the major parties.





Taken for Granted

Pic courtesy Leader Today Yesterday I went to the state school down the road, and voted in the local government elections, something I'v...