A Clear and Present Danger

Pic courtesy APSI

The brutal behaviour of a couple of ferals from Tara has left a deep scar on our national character that will take a long time to heal, if it ever does.

Apart from the shock most have expressed, and the meal the media (as it always does) has made of it, maybe we should pause and reflect on underlying causes.

It was a bit close to home for me, as I've worked at Tara, Mount Isa, Camooweal and my bride's family comes from Herberton. These were all school locations where one or both perpetrators worked at one time or another.

Maybe it's possible to eliminate a couple of the usual suspects already touted by the Murdoch media. There was an inference that one of the perpetrators had a problem with NAPLAN. Perhaps he did, and certainly he is/was not the only one, but those unhappy with NAPLAN don't usually shoot people.

Owning firearms in the bush has also been suggested as an issue. Again, people have always owned firearms in the bush, but they haven't used them to ambush police officers. 

I was brought up in a household which always had a firearm available. Admittedly, it was an old 310 gauge shotgun my dad kept to save us from snakes. Back then there were nasty ones (Taipans and the like) in abundance, and the shotty was the quick and efficient way of dispatching them. There are pellet holes in the old toilet roof at Carmilla school as evidence. With that thing you had only to aim in the general direction, and there must have been climbers about.

It wasn't humane, but there were no registered snake handlers about, and we lived a long way from medical help.

Then we read that this kind of thing is essentially a transPacific problem, and if you look at the statistics, it certainly is. 

But there is another factor. 

Click to enlarge

There have, for a long time, been any number of feral blogs festering in the USA. They have a few common characteristics. Their authors are usually anti-government,  pro-gun, and on the extreme right of the political spectrum. They frequently advocate violence, usually involving firearms.

The lunacy that inhabits these sites has begun to seep across the Pacific. Locally, we have New Catallaxy, Michael Smith News, and Cairns News, to name a few. I have occasionally called out the rubbish I read on these. It's a waste of time, I know, gentle reader, but one has to try. I have been banned from the first two, and haven't ever posted on the last one.

I post (when I'm allowed) on sites like these for good reason. Apart from seeking out ideas that are different from mine to challenge my beliefs, rather than finding those who agree with me to consolidate them, I have always harboured the naive notion that facts are useful. This leads to disappointment of course. Facts are optional in echo chambers, but I've always had a problem with the publishing of egregious rubbish.

One of the perpetrators of last week's tragedy was an occasional poster on Michael Smith News, and a more frequent visitor to Cairns News.

Do you reckon Michael will post this?

To my way of thinking, anybody prepared to publish ideas promoting and suggesting violence as a solution to political grievances, real or imagined, bears a responsibility if said posters act on them.

It will be interesting to see if anything changes as a result. Based on past events, it probably won't, but perhaps a national registration scheme for firearms would be the next logical step. 

The National Firearms Agreement (1996) recommended that New South Wales, Queensland, and Tasmania immediately establish an integrated license and firearms registration system. The remaining jurisdictions were required to review their existing registration systems to ensure compatibility so that the databases could be linked.

We do have a national firearms agreement, so the various state governments getting their ducks in a row to the point of establishing a national database should not be too expensive or onerous. It hasn't happened yet.

Your average cop on the beat would probably welcome it.   

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The Carmila Cyclone

Photo courtesy Courier Mail

On March 10th, 1950, I was a three year old living in Carmila with my mother and father (who was principal of the school), and my sixteen month-old brother. 

Dad had been principal (or head teacher as it was called then) since the beginning of 1948. We lived in a solidly built school residence and there was extensive bushland surrounding the school.

On the evening before the cyclone struck, the wind had built up swiftly and rain squalls became more frequent. It was a Thursday, and as the evening came on, the phone began to ring incessantly, as dad had a barometer and local people were phoning (on the party line as it was then) asking about the readings. They were dropping quickly, and I remember dad saying "The bottom's going to drop out of the bloody thing if this keeps up".

Back then, there was no forecasting through radar imaging, and nobody really knew where the cyclone was.  

By midnight, the wind was howling, and the house began to shake with the walls moving in and out. We sheltered under a very large and heavy dining room table and said the rosary. I don't recall being especially frightened, thinking that it was all a bit of a novelty. Mum and dad obviously kept us calm, and if they were frightened were hiding it well. At about three in the morning, the roof began to peel off, and according to a case study written by Jeff Callaghan, (a severe weather forecaster from the bureau of Meteorology), the winds peaked between 3.30 and 4.15 am and the eye passed over at about this time. I remember the howling wind returning from a different direction.

The school in the fifties

Over the sound of the wind, you could hear objects striking the walls of the house, although I don't know exactly what they were. Neighbours who lived about 300 meters away made their way to the school residence, miraculously dodging corrugated iron and assorted debris, and joined us in the kitchen. By sunrise, the wind had dropped and we were able to see the aftermath. My little brother had recently learned to ride his tricycle and charged it along the verandah which was covered with puddles of water, proclaiming "This is the beach!"

I remember that you could see for kilometres, as the trees that hadn't been uprooted had been stripped of foliage, and there were dead and injured possums and koalas scattered around. A sheet of corrugated iron from the residence had been blown into the school fence which had cut two grooves 30 cm long from the fence wire in the sheet. That gave us some idea of the power of the wind. The only time I have seen anything resembling this was during a visit to the Cyclone Tracy museum in Darwin in 2015. 

What we didn't know, and was hidden from us, was that a seventeen year-old girl had been killed by a falling tree, and four other people injured. (Carmila had a population of about four hundred in 1950). Reports at the time indicated that only eight buildings were left standing, one was the school residence, and another the school building. We moved into the school building because it wasn't as badly damaged as the residence, and stayed put for two weeks as the residence was made habitable.  

Unfortunately, one of the members of the family that had moved in with us the night of the cyclone came down with tuberculosis. Back then, any bedclothes used in a house where tuberculosis had been detected had to be destroyed. I remember mum piling the sheets and blankets into the base of the copper used to boil clothes, and setting fire to them. My mother's distress, and the smell of the burning bedclothes remain one of my most vivid memories.

Eventually, life began to return to normal with the aid of special reconstruction trains sent with materials and tradesmen down the rail line from Mackay.   

This particular cyclone was especially destructive as it zigzagged backwards and forwards between the coast and the mainland, causing drownings in Mareeba and Innisfail before wrecking Carmila. 

As far as I know, it wasn't given a name, and is known in the record as the Carmila Cyclone.

Here is Jeff Callaghan's report. 

Here is a report from the Rockhampton Morning Bulletin of 13th March 1950.

Here is a report from the Townsville Daily Bulletin of 13th March 1950, where dad gets a mention.

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Tales from the Booth

Pic courtesy CBC

Right now, elections are very much in the news, but what prompts the timing of these stories is the recent 50th anniversary of the December 2nd 1972 election of the Whitlam government.

In 1972, after returning from Vietnam at the end of 1970, I had taken advantage of a Department of Labour and National Service Rehabilitation scholarship.

This meant I had taken leave without pay from my job as a teacher at the then State School for Spastic Children New Farm, and was paid an allowance (equivalent to the basic wage at the time) for the duration of the university year. Back then, the academic year lasted 40 weeks (as it still does), which meant that I had 12 weeks without income.

I had to find work to fill the gap, and I did so, working in the J C Cooke nail-making factory (in Morningside from memory). That's another story which I will relate here at some point. I also took advantage of working for the AEC* at the polling place at the then Greenslopes Hospital in Brisbane on the day of the poll. It paid well.

I was reasonably familiar with the protocols of the AEC, as I was brought up as the son of a bush school principal who was routinely chief polling officer at his school when state and federal elections were held. Bush schools were almost always the polling stations as they were ideally set up for it, and the teachers were almost always the poll workers. I reckon I was a veteran of half a dozen such elections as dad's offsider by the time I left home to go to boarding school, so felt entirely comfortable in the job. As noted above, it paid well, and I didn't need much training.

I had two jobs on 2nd December 1972. The first was to conduct a mobile booth (on a trolley on wheels) to move around the wards so the old diggers (mostly WW2 and Korean veterans) could get to vote. Myself and another teacher did this, and it wasn't too difficult until we came across an old soldier who had a stroke and was both paralysed and unable to speak. As a newly-minted teacher of non-verbal children (I'd been doing this for a whole year in 1971), I reckoned I had the solution. We'd take him through the list of candidates on the ballot, and use eye-blinks (one for "yes" and two for "no"). This worked a charm, except that his wife was present, and for the first time in their fifty-year marriage, realised that he had been voting in exact opposition to her all those years. We saw the funny side - she didn't.

My other job, when the mobile booth work was done, was to cover the stationary ballot boxes in the hospital foyer, This was a doddle. All we had to do was check the voter's name off the roll, give him/her the initialled ballot paper, and make sure it was slotted into the ballot box on the way out. 

Greenslopes back then

This was fine until about 30 seconds before the booth closed, when an old digger, very much under the weather, staggered in through the front entrance to the hospital, demanding a paper so he could "vote for bloody Billy McMahon".  He'd been on a day release from the hospital and accomplished a fairly comprehensive pub crawl. His name was on the electoral roll, so we gave him a ballot. He wasn't happy when Billy McMahon's name wasn't apparent, but grudgingly accepted the explanation that he could vote for the Liberal candidate if he wanted. He staggered off, in the direction of the toilet, rather than the ballot box, and as I was the most junior polling clerk, I was assigned to follow him so the initialled ballot paper didn't go missing. 

He disappeared into one of the toilet cubicles and I began to wait. By this time the polling had been finished for twenty minutes and the count had started. Eventually I peered under the cubicle door, and noted that he was passed out on the toilet. The unmarked ballot paper was on the floor, so I reached in and retrieved it. The vote was counted as "informal" so he never did get to vote for Billy McMahon.

I summoned a couple of orderlies who carried him off to sober up.

It had been a very interesting day. 

*Australian Electoral Commission 

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Whitlam

 

Today is the 50th anniversary of the election of the Whitlam government. 

That event has enormous significance for the country, paralleled for me by nostalgic personal recollections.

On the day of the election, 2nd December 1972, I worked as a polling clerk at the then Greenslopes Repatriation Hospital in Brisbane, which was an interesting experience. I'll write more about that later on this blog.

At the end of the 1972 academic year, I had just completed twelve months on a Labour and National Service post-discharge Rehabilitation Scholarship, which had set the foundation for the following ten years part time study culminating in two degrees. The day's salary for the polling work with the AEC was timely. That scholarship, although requiring me to do factory work during the university vacation to pay the rent, was one of the few positive outcomes from my service in Vietnam.

In 1972 I was still technically a member of the army reserve, but nothing short of nuclear attack would have put me back in uniform. I'd had the army up to here. One of Whitlam's first actions in government was to abolish conscription. The existence of the scheme which targeted 12% of twenty year olds had been a moral blight on the nation since its introduction in 1965.

At the time I had commenced, mostly by accident, a career in special education, and there was a happy coincidence between this and the election of a government which reformed support for people with disabilities through its focus on human rights and social justice.

Subsequently, initiatives taken by the Labor government in the relatively short time it held power, transformed the quality of lives of children with disabilities, initially by securing support for mainstreaming, and by the time it lost office, setting up institutional structures such as AHRC which gave teeth to legislation supporting their right to full access.

In Queensland (and most other states) at the time of Whitlam's election, children with severe disabilities went to school in segregated institutions, mostly in capital cities, and run by charitable organisations, such as the (then) Spastic Welfare league, Crippled Children's' Association and the (then) Subnormal Children's' Association. The titles of these organisations reflect very accurately the social attitude to disability at the time. 

In 1971, immediately on return from Vietnam, I worked as a teacher at the State School for Spastic Children, New Farm. On the same campus was a separate training centre for students with cerebral palsy who were considered ineducable. Above a certain IQ, they went to school. Below it, they attended the training centre. This was anathema to the ALP reforms.

Some of my class at New farm 1971

The fact that the IQ tests used at the time weren't standardised on a population of children with cerebral palsy was not considered relevant. During the time I was at the school, the training centre was closed, and the school was staffed with teachers from the state system. Similar processes were on the way in regional centres up and down the coast in Queensland, and the institutionalised schools for the blind and deaf in Brisbane were losing enrolments as special education units for students with hearing and vision impairments were being established in local schools.

As part of the move of students with disabilities from special to regular school settings, I worked as an itinerant visiting teacher in the mid-seventies, preparing both schools and students for mainstreaming. This was enjoyable and fulfilling work, and post retirement as a principal in 2005, I returned for a time to this work. It remained enjoyable, but these days the pioneering aspect has gone. 

Mainstreaming was driven by Whitlam's reform agenda. 

Children with these very common disabilities were now able to stay with their families and attend school with their non-disabled peers. 

All of this was driven initially by the human rights reforms championed by the Labor reforms, and even though the Whitlam government was relatively short lived, these structural changes became firmly embedded in public education provision in Queensland and elsewhere. These reforms profoundly improved the quality of the lives of these children and their families.

Later, in the early eighties when the money driven by Whitlam's reforms began to cascade from the commonwealth to the states, I was again in the right place at the right time, and spent six months offline developing a design brief for a new special school in Townsville. When opened in 1987, this school moved about seventy children with physical impairments from a 1940s model boarding institution to a school to which they travelled every day. 

I founded this school, built with $2.8 million of Whitlam money, which was not small bikkies at the time. When the National Party state minister for education (Lin Powell) arrived for the official opening, I was sorely tempted to remind him that the money to build it was a result of Labor reforms, but thought better of it.

Lin (Lionel)  Powell - Qld Minister for Education 1987

So when I look back on the anniversary of the 1972 Whitlam victory, I feel deeply privileged to have been able to participate personally in the transformational reforms created for Australians with disabilities.

I wouldn't have missed it for quids.... 

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Media Bias

The Victorian state election has been and gone, and the ALP has been returned with Daniel Andrews as Premier.

As a Queenslander, this event is of peripheral interest to me, but there is one aspect of the campaign and the result that is more than remarkable.

Elements of the Victorian media ran a sustained and relentless campaign against his re-election. It was characterised by the introduction into the discussion of events that had absolutely nothing to do with Andrew's policies, but focused on two fairly recent events involving himself and his family.

The first was a motor accident that involved a collision between Andrew's Ford Territory and a cyclist on 7th January 2013. The cyclist was badly injured, but did recover, losing his spleen. The police took no action after an investigation and statements describing the incident as - 

Cyclist was travelling along the unpaved surface road and crossed Ridley Street into the vehicle as it turned right. Cyclist collided with the front drivers side of the vehicle, causing the cyclist to be ejected onto the windscreen, causing it to smash. 

Photographs of the vehicle published by the Sun Herald show damage to the area in front of, but to the side of the vehicle's mudguard, and the smashed windscreen. This is consistent with statements given to the police by Mrs Andrews.

The accident happened in 2013, nine years ago, and after the initial reports had largely been forgotten. It is then resurrected two weeks before the election together with lurid claims of a police cover-up.

The Sun-Herald produced front page coverage for a number of days, and the outrage was picked up by Melbourne shock jocks who dined out on it right up until the eve of the election.

Then there was the story of an accident on 9th March 2021 when Andrews fell on wet stairs whilst on holiday on the Mornington Peninsula. He was placed in intensive care after this incident which caused several broken ribs and a broken vertebra. Andrews took four months to recover from this incident, which generated all manner of conspiracy theories on social media, and generated front page coverage (again by the Sun Herald) on Sunday, November 6th, a few weeks before the election. 

Again, this accident happened over a year ago.

Herald Sun November 6th 2022

This accident had absolutely nothing to do with the election campaign, but was used in a clumsy attempt to smear Andrews.

Now these media organisations have to make money, but the issue of ethics of how this is done seem somehow to have vanished into the ether. There appears to be no real accountability, and the Press Council (as I learned many years ago) is a toothless tiger.

And of course, media can publish opinion, but when they actively campaign (rather than report) in the lead up to an election, they should at least be honest enough to inform their readers.

In the end, none of this seems to have influenced Victorian voters. A Royal Commission into media ownership and bias is beginning to look like a pretty good idea.

The Politics of Fear (Reprised)

Image courtesy Delaware Online

I have clear memories of the sixties and seventies and the culture of fear that was evident at the time.

The cold war was at its height, McCarthyism had been and gone, and we were assailed in the media daily and from the pulpit weekly with horror stories about the evils of Communism, the domino theory, and how we would have to "fight them there" (SE Asia) so we didn't have to "fight them here" (Australia).

The prophets of doom never really defined who "they" were, or what their ways and means of invasion and domination were, but that didn't really count. 

It was enough just to be afraid. Thank the good Lord that we didn't have social media back then.

None of this would have mattered that much to me, a bush kid growing up in Queensland, except that in 1965, Bob Menzies introduced a significant amendment to the National Service Act, and it wasn't very long before I was patrolling the jungles of Phuoc Tuy province with an SLR and in the company of good men caught up in the same boondoggle.

This was an outcome of that climate of fear that had kept a Coalition government (with the help of DLP preferences) in power since 1949.

I can't help but look at the climate of fear and loathing that has developed in the USA since the advent of the Tea Party movement, and draw the parallels between that phenomenon and events across the Pacific (and to a lesser extent in this country) since.

There are a number of core components of this climate that were evident in the fifties and sixties, and are once again obvious now. They include denouncements, outrage, branding, and conspiracy theories. These days, they can be harnessed by media that thrives on that same outrage, hate, fear and anger, and harnesses these base aspects of human nature to make money and build corporate empires.

Infowars and Breitbart are great examples.

Politicians interested in making a dollar out of the phenomenon include John Bannon, Newt Gingrich, and of course, Donald Trump. Bannon and Gingrich may, to some extent believe in the philosophies driving these movement, but Trump is a different animal entirely.

If you follow his trajectory, it becomes completely obvious that he has no love of country or political philosophy that can be identified, but possesses a bloated ego, and a belief that there are only winners and losers, rather than "people". People are to be used and discarded when they are no longer useful. 

An examination of his married life is best evidence of that, as well as the unbelievable rate of turnover in his 2016-2020 administration.

The fact that he has, in sequence, lost the popular presidential vote (2016), the 2018 midterms, the 2020 presidential election, and most recently, contributed to an historically poor showing in the 2022 midterms doesn't seem to have sunk in. 

Or perhaps, the experience he most fears (losing) is haunting him to such an extent that he continues to attempt to lay the ghost.

All of this has some significance for Australians (as I learned in 1969/70), but the most frightening element is the seepage across the Pacific of some of the trends we're seeing now.

I find the social media conspiracies about our very efficient and independent AEC the most disturbing.  I take solace in the fact that it doesn't seem to have penetrated beyond the lunatic fringe.

As we used to say (about the Yanks) when I was in Vietnam - 

"You can tell them anything - sell them anything". 

Now that is a vast over generalisation, but Australians tend to be far more pragmatic and less naive as a bunch than our transpacific friends.

Let's hope it stays that way.

Grallina Cyanoleuca

We had a very windy couple of days last week, and this critter appeared on our lawn.

It was a fledgling Peewee which had been blown out of its nest by high winds that had been around for a day or two. As they say in the classics it was one of those winds that would blow a dog off a chain.

Obviously, it had a very bleak future exposed on the ground, and at the mercy of cats, dogs, and crows, but had not yet learned to fly, so was going nowhere.

It was also completely naive, showing no sign of fear when I gently moved it under a shrub, out of sight and out of the sun.

I could find no sign of the nest, so when it was still there late in the day, it became time to attempt to get it to safety.

Some quick googling revealed a phone number for National Parks and Wildlife Queensland, and the helpful person there gave me the number of a rostered vet who was looking after injured or stranded wildlife.

This one wasn't injured, but was definitely stranded, so I put it in a box and drove it to the vet.

She said that this wasn't the only fledgling that had been brought in, as they were just at the stage of development when they were about to come out of their nests, but the unseasonal winds had created a problem for that particular population.

I never did enquire whether it had been successfully relocated - perhaps I should.

I have no idea what the protocol is for critters handed in, but assume there is something in place. Apparently, this is a better option than trying to care for them at home.

It's not a straightforward process, especially in terms of what they should be fed on.  The vet said that most well-intentioned people give them the wrong food which usually causes their fairly swift demise. 

A New Constituency

                                                    Pic courtesy AFR

Green's MP Max Chandler-Mather on Tuesday night, after the treasurer's budget speech, moved to amend a series of bills in order to make a protest speech about the government’s stage three tax cuts.

In doing so, he made the following statement -

The perversity of it is that we all sat here, hearing the treasurer talk about a sensible budget with tough choices, but everyone in this place is going to get an extra $9000 a year once the stage three tax cuts come into effect.

What are the tough choices that we’re all making here? What are the tough choices that the billionaires and millionaires are making, who are going to get the $9000 extra a year out of the stage three tax cuts?

Why on earth are my fellow MPs would wondering why people don’t like politicians. The amendment we’re moving tonight is to highlight the hypocrisy of a government that claims to care about ordinary people but gives $9000 extra a year to the politicians in this place who are already well overpaid.

This is, of course, a stunt, but it will play well with his constituency.

That constituency, gentle reader, is urban dwelling young people who are paying high rents, and can't see any prospect of getting access to the overheated housing market. It's an angry, and ever increasing group, and the Greens (and to a lesser extent the Teals) will continue to get strong backing from these people, who are articulate and resentful. 

Labor ignore them, and the Coalition ridicule them. Both major parties do so at their political peril.

Maybe, to apply a cliche, the writing is on the wall. That writing is in bold font with text in teal and green.

Grievance or Vengeance?

 

                                  Pic courtesy Sydney Criminal Lawyers

There is an intriguing historical pattern, gentle reader, observable in the rise to power of a number of totalitarian leaders.

Without labouring the point, you can look at Germany between the wars, China since World War Two, and the USA in the Trump era. Even the UK is currently moving through a chaotic political episode which has its origins not so much in grievance, as nostalgia.

In the UK, there is a sense in which something has been lost (the glories of the empire perhaps) and Brexit was a ham-fisted attempt to recover it. It hasn't ended well.

But back to Germany, where post the Great War, people were struggling against poor economic conditions, skyrocketing inflation and unemployment, and a strong sense of grievance after the punishing sanctions set out in the 1919 Treaty of Versailles.

Hitler and the NAZIs exploited these fears and frustrations, and the results played out in the most tragic fashion.

China holds major grievances against both the West and Imperial Japan, which have been festering since long before the Nanking massacre, and the Opium Wars. One of the forces driving the ceding of Hong Kong (and the CCP's iron fist used to put down dissent) is collective Chinese memory of how Hong Kong came to be British in the first place.

More recently, the phenomenon of the election of Trump (albeit by a minority of voters) reveals how desperate many Americans have become, faced with a decline in their living standards, offshoring of their once great industrial empire, and a loss of faith in their institutions. One clear measure of the physical health of a nation is life expectancy, and in the USA, it has recently seen a decline.

Noam Chomsky was prophetic back in 2010 when he noted - 

"If somebody comes along who is charismatic and honest, this country is in real trouble, because of the frustration, disillusionment, the justified anger, and the lack of any coherent response".

Unfortunately, Trump may have a primitive form of charisma, but honesty? Besides, uncharismatic leaders can be extremely successful.

There doesn't seem to be a major gap between grievance and vengeance, something that becomes obvious when the behaviour of newly-minted autocrats is examined.

Hopefully, Australian nationalism, such as it is, takes on a more tolerant and forgiving  aspect. We don't, fortunately, take ourselves all that seriously.

That's always a good thing.....

Monetizing Disinformation

Image courtesy Chequado

It's satisfying to note that a professional purveyor of disinformation has finally got his comeuppance.

He has done enormous damage to the lives of his victims, the families of the children and teachers slaughtered, and no amount of money can change this, but it does show that at least one American institution remains capable of delivering justice.

The other phenomenon that the outcome of this case allows, is to shine a light on that uniquely American activity of creating sensational disinformation, and selling it for a profit.

To quote the  BBC report -

Jurors also heard evidence that Jones and his company, Free Speech Systems, made millions of dollars selling nutritional supplements, survival gear and other products on the Infowars catalogue. 

This playbook has been frequently (and profitably) employed by the blogosphere in the USA for decades now, and it is partly responsible for raising the temperature of their political discourse.

Sensationalism appeals to the public's basest instincts. Fear, hate, loathing and contempt will always sell. Social media has supercharged misinformation. The algorithms do the rest.

It has created a cascading effect, ultimately leading to the sad and divided political and cultural discourse that we see across the Pacific.

It's a cautionary tale for Australians. 

Let's not go there..... 

The AWM - Memorial or Museum?

 

Vietnam memorial as it looked when I visited in 2020.

A low-key announcement was made in a press conference on 6th October by Matt Keogh, Minister for Veterans' Affairs in the presence of Brendan nelson, the Chairman of the War Memorial's governing Council, saying that the current $550 million expansion of the memorial would allow for greater attention to the frontier wars.

There are two elements to this announcement that are worth discussing, gentle reader.

The first is the cost of the expansion, and in my view, the necessity for it. I have been an infrequent visitor to the AWM, mostly in relation to my project on national service. On these occasions, the staff (particularly in the reading room) have been very helpful, and the holdings in the library are extremely important.

The many displays, on the other hand, and their cost, are in my opinion, difficult to justify. It's almost as if the displays have taken on a life of their own, being developed and re-developed at a furious rate. Perhaps the haste is driven by the possibility that in time we may run out of war memorabilia to. display. It only....

I guess they have an educative function, but maybe that function could better be implemented by the teaching in our schools of the facts of our wartime history, rather than the mythology. There is a need, and always has been, to create mobile displays that take the history to the schools in their local situations, rather than expecting organised (and expensive) tours to be organised.

The second noteworthy element is the introduction of the commemoration of the frontier wars into the role of the AWM. This has always been controversial, driven by the notion that a war is only a war when people in uniform fight it. This is a strange concept driven more by the ANZAC myth than the reality of history. The fact that our colonial history is pretty ugly, does not mean we should ignore it. That's simply another form of "cancel culture", that the conservative media rails against.

It's difficult to ignore genocide (the destruction of the Palawa) and the massacres, both by Aboriginal Australians, and the settlers, that are recorded in our colonial history.

What I found quite bizarre, is the reaction of some members of our veteran community., who believe that they have a unique ownership of our military history, and are only people entitled to hold an opinion about it.

The phenomenon observed in the ranks of some that "my war was worse than yours" reminds me of the days (mostly during the seventies and mid-eighties) when RSL clubs turned Vietnam veterans away, because we were told "Your war wasn't a real War..."

Obviously, as a nation we've learned something since that time. 

If only we ran out of wars...

Some Thoughts on Olfaction

This song takes me back to my childhood, but nowhere near as much as the smell of cane country.

An extract from this excellent piece in the Harvard Gazette, reminds us of the immediacy of our reaction to odours - Odours take a direct route to the limbic system, including the amygdala and the  hippocampus, the regions related to emotion and memory. This was brought home to me last week, when we visited, after an absence of over fifty years, cane country in FNQ*. Walsh's Pyramid and Gordonvale Mill I was brought up amongst the canefields, and my earliest olfactory memories are those of the smells of burning cane and bagasse. We used to chase the burnt trash as it came off the fires, or at least I did, until I ran backwards doing just that, and opened the back of my head with the corner of a tank stand. These days, the cane isn't burnt, as mechanical harvesting are removed the necessity, and to my way of thinking, something of the romance has been lost. Cane fires were always spectacular, invariably lit at dusk, when the wind was quiet. The Harvard Gazette piece explains the neurology of this connection, but experiencing it is something else entirely. I was reminded of this back in the early nineties when we took a family holiday in a friend's shack in the rain forest at Paluma. We went on a walk along a track hacked from the jungle, and at one point encountered an odour of rotting vegetation  that I hadn't experienced since Vietnam.  This particular encounter was etched on my memory as it followed an assault on a bunker system which cost one soldier killed and four wounded on 22nd April 1970. (p 208 - 214 in Michael O'Brien's book).  We were eventually rescued by two Centurion tanks, but the incident was obviously deeply embedded in my memory and the olfactory stimulus triggered it. I had to sit down for a bit which confused my wife and kids more than somewhat. FNQ resembles South Vietnam in a number of other important characteristics. The sea is to the right as you look North, the mountains are to the left, and the soil is red. It's God's own country.... Sounds of Then - Lyrics I think I hear the sounds of then, And people talking, The scenes recalled, by minute movement, And songs they fall, from the backing tape. That certain texture, that certain smell, To lie in sweat, on familiar sheets, In brick veneer on financed beds. In a room, of silent hardiflex That certain texture, that certain smell, Brings home the heavy days, Brings home the the night time swell, Out on the patio we'd sit, And the humidity we'd breathe, We'd watch the lightning crack over canefields Laugh and think, this is Australia. The block is awkward - it faces west, With long diagonals, sloping too. And in the distance, through the heat haze, In convoys of silence the cattle graze. That certain texture, that certain beat, Brings forth the night time heat. Out on the patio we'd sit, And the humidity we'd breathe, We'd watch the lightning crack over canefields Laugh and think that this is Australia. To lie in sweat, on familiar sheets, In brick veneer on financed beds. In a room of silent hardiflex That certain texture, that certain smell, Brings forth the heavy days, Brings forth the night time sweat Out on the patio we'd sit, And the humidity we'd breathe, We'd watch the lightning crack over canefields Laugh and think, this is Australia. This is Australia etc.. Source: LyricFind Songwriters: Chris Bailey / Geoff Stapleton / Graham Bidstrup / Kay Bee / Mark Callaghan / Robert James *Far North Queensland - Acronym used North of the Tropic of Capricorn, and instantly understood by those who live there.

Fair Go for Nashos

 

Those of you who subscribe to any number of ex-service Facebook groups may have already come across this petition.

In case you haven't, here is a quick and dirty explanation.

Between 1964 and 1972, 63,740 twenty year-olds were called up and enlisted into the army. This was the number of men who had their birthdates drawn in one of the sixteen ballots, and who passed the medical. 

In all, 804,286 registered for national service, but the bulk of these (92%) maintained their lifestyles when their birthdates weren't drawn.

Of the 63,740, only 15,300 saw active service in Vietnam, which means that 48,440 Nashos served their two years in units in Australia. Among them were such well known sporting celebrities as Doug Walters , Peter Brock, and Dick Johnson.

Most weren't celebrities, of course, and their lives were turned upside down by the simple fact that they were born on the wrong date. I have two in my extended family. One (who died a few years ago) served in Malaya, and one as a driver in a Brisbane unit. He was part of a small business in Clermont at the time and it took him (and the burgeoning enterprise) a long time to recover. He is now dealing with injuries occasioned at training.

It's worth remembering that this scheme was the only national service programme that was not universal, so it was completely unjust and morally absurd.

More detail is contained here.

When the two years was up, these men were entitled to return to their pre-Nasho jobs, but that was about the only benefit they received.

Contrast that with somebody like me who saw active service, was provided with a war service home loan and a *DLNS rehabilitation scholarship, and a DVA gold card at age 70. 

I reckon these 48,000 (or perhaps given the ravages of time, the approximate 30,000 who survive) are entitled to some form of compensation. The provision of a gold card at age 70 would seem to me to be utterly reasonable.

So I completely support this initiative.

I am bemused by some fellow Vietnam veterans who oppose it. 

The term "dog in the manger" comes to mind.

*Department of Labour and National Service

Teach - Don't Cancel

 

Image courtesy dictionary.com

We hear so much today, gentle reader, about "cancel culture".

As usual, most of what we hear emanates from across the Pacific. The Americans have been doing this kind of thing for years, but it seems to have caught on in Oz.

To be perfectly frank, to me the notion of destroying a symbol because you object to what it stood for is adolescent.

Surely, if the evil that men do lives after them (as the bard suggests), it should be remembered, rather than forgotten. You would hope that the recall of past evil would help guard against its recurrence. 

Cancel cancel is nothing new.

When I lived in Mount Isa in the nineties, there was a memorial on the Barkly Highway, near Kajabbi and not far from the site of Battle Mountain where a massacre of Kalkadoon people occured in 1884.

This monument was destroyed by gelignite twice in the five years I lived in Mount Isa. It was an easy target, because it was sited on the highway in the middle of nowhere. 

It has been rebuilt.

Perhaps, instead of destroying symbols (statues or whatever) informative and accurate information should be displayed on or near them. This would have the benefit of informing about evil past deeds, rather than obliterating their memory.

As both a student and teacher of history, I've always regarded the truth as instructive.

Towards Reconciliation - Lessons from a Tragedy (Marking Long Tan Day)

Easter Sunday Mass, FSB "Anne", Phuoc Tuy, 1970

On August 17th, 2006, when federal parliament was commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Battle of Long Tan, a letter was read to the chamber of the House of Representatives by Kim Beazley, then Leader of the Opposition. 

It was written by the Member for Cowan, Graham Edwards, a Vietnam veteran, who lost both legs in a mine incident in Vietnam in May 1970. At the time of his wounding, Graham Edwards was a member of 7 RAR, the same unit in which I served as a conscript in Vietnam in 1970. 

 The reading followed a speech from Prime Minister John Howard, apologising for the way Vietnam veterans were treated on their return to Australia, such treatment being somewhat alleviated by the public reception at the 1987 Welcome Home march. The march on 3rd October was organised by the veteran community, with the support of the then Hawke government. 

The 2006 apology came thirty-four years after the end of Australia’s commitment. For most veterans of the war, the march in Sydney in 1987 coming as it did nineteen years earlier, was much more significant than the apology in Canberra. 

It is worth noting that The New Zealand parliament also recorded a bipartisan Crown apology to their veterans (none of whom were conscripts) two years later, on 28th May 2008. Kim Beazley’s reading of Graham Edwards’ letter, in its entirety in the Hansard, is reproduced here – 

  I have just been advised that the Prime Minister will only allow one speaker on this important statement before the house today. 

I thank you for the opportunity to be our speaker, but I believe that our recognition of the service, sacrifice and suffering of Vietnam veterans should rightly come from you, as our Leader. I would however be pleased if you could perhaps consider just a couple of things. 

 I noted that at the Launch of the book “Vietnam Our War—Our Peace”, the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs offered an apology to Vietnam Veterans for the actions of all who opposed the war. Kim, many good Australians opposed that war and not all who opposed the war took it out on the troops. My father for instance strongly opposed the war. I remember too that Senator John Wheeldon, a former Labor Minister for Repatriation, was a bitter opponent of the war but he was incredibly compassionate toward the individual veterans and strongly supportive of their needs. 

Equally it should be said that not all who supported the war supported the troops, and even to this day many Vietnam Veterans refuse to join the RSL because of the treatment they received on their return home. 

 Had I the opportunity to speak today I would have taken the time to publicly forgive the person from my mother’s church in Scarborough who wrote an anonymous letter to my mother saying she hoped I died as a result of my wounds, as I was a killer. I could not have found it in my heart to say those words a few years ago but it is time to move on. 

Kim today is not a day to enter into the divisive issues surrounding Australia’s involvement in that war. Today is a day when our Federal Parliament should honour our Vietnam Veterans, recognise their service and say to them that they did a good job in the best tradition of the Anzacs. It is also a time when we should remember the sacrifice of those who did not come home at all. 

It is a day when we should remember the Regulars and the National Service men who confronted their enemy on his home ground and who never took a backward step. To say to them, our veterans, that we understand the difficulties of those who suffer Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and that we recognise and respect the love and loyalty of the families of veterans, particularly the wives, the partners and the children. Today is a day when we should say we are proud of our Vietnam veterans. A day when we honour and recognise their sacrifice, their service and their suffering. 

 I think it is also a time to reflect on the horror of war, the lasting trauma of those involved and the terror and suffering of innocent civilians caught in the devastation of war. I just also want to thank you for your support in Government of the Welcome Home Parade. I know there are many veterans in Australia who would not have made it to that incredibly warm and emotional parade if you had not pitched in to ensure the support of defence and other government agencies to get them there and home again. 

 Kim, can I just say those who served Vietnam either on the ground, in the air or on the waters served as a team. We would enhance our support today if once again we could become a team and work together to support each other. Kim, I said earlier that it is time to move on. 

 Last night I had dinner with the Vietnamese Ambassador. As we left the table, he said to me that both our countries must look to the future. I agree. I would wish him and his children, indeed all the children of the world that which was most elusive during the last century—peace. In closing Kim, I want to say I am proud to have served my nation and proud of all who served with me. I am proud of my mates and the contribution they made to Australia. I take pride in their mateship. 

 I don’t need anyone’s apology for that. 

 I have included the full text of this letter, as I intend to trace the references that Graham Edwards made throughout its text, and to use them to outline what has been learned (and not learned) through the Australian experience during the war in Vietnam and conflicts since. 

I have recently had the privilege to interview Graham Edwards, and consequently have a clearer understanding of these references. 

Reflecting on the story of another member of 7 RAR, Joseph Gilewicz, a member of my rifle section in Vietnam in 1970, who was shot by police in a siege situation at his farm at Pelverata near Hobart on 16 July 1991 is a tragic but revealing insight into the plight of many veterans. The Tasmanian State Coroner had found in 1992 that the shooting was justifiable homicide. 

The first time this incident had an impact in parliament was when an unsuccessful attempt was made in the Senate on 25th November 1999 by Senator Bob Brown to have documents describing the incident tabled, with a view to the calling of a Royal Commission into the incident. These documents had been compiled by journalist Paul Tapp, during research for a book he wrote about the incident and its aftermath. 

Paul Tapp is a Vietnam veteran (a national serviceman) who had also served with 7 RAR from 27th April until 14th August 1967 during its first tour of Vietnam. On the basis of Tapp’s manuscript, and the evidence of a police whistle-blower, Stan Hanuszewicz, (also a Vietnam veteran), a subsequent Commission of Inquiry (the Mahony report) was eventually held in 2000 which again exonerated the Tasmanian Police. 

The point of including Joe Gilewicz’s story in this article is to illustrate the tragic consequences to veterans and their families of the trauma suffered by operational service, and the bonds created and cemented between veterans by this shared experience. 

My intention is also to help in an understanding of the impact of operational service on young men in that conflict, the widely differing effects these experiences had on them and their families, and the often random (and sometimes tragic) nature of the outcomes. 

 I will also seek to puncture some of the generalisations about Vietnam veterans that persist in the public consciousness, fifty plus years after the war. Lastly, I will seek to honour these men and their service, and to ty to make a small positive contribution to the plethora of literature that has emerged in Australia about the war in Vietnam. 

 Joseph Gilewicz was the son of Polish immigrants who survived the horrors of the Nazi invasion of their home country and arrived in Australia after the end of the Second World War. Joseph (I knew him in my platoon as “Joe”) was born in Berlin on 1st September 1948. That date was not drawn in the eighth National Service ballot held on 13th September 1968 (drawn birthdates were September 5, 9, 12, 14, 22, 23, 24, 26), so Joe was a volunteer national serviceman. 

Whilst I spent a great deal of time with Joe during the first half of my tour of Vietnam in 1970, I do not remember him ever explaining his reasons for volunteering. He was a conscientious soldier, often being employed as forward scout when we were patrolling. He had been promoted to Lance Corporal by the time the battalion finished its tour. 

 I lost track of Joe post discharge and heard no more about him until another ex-member of my section wrote to me in 1991 telling me about his tragic and controversial death in a police siege. Subsequently, another Tasmanian Vietnam veteran, Stan Hanuszewicz, who was a police ballistics expert at the time of the incident, became a whistle-blower in reference to the circumstances of the police conduct during and after the shooting. 

He claimed that he was asked by a senior officer to plant evidence meant to indicate that Joe had fired his shotgun at police before being fatally shot. Stan Hanuszewicz, like Joe, was also of Polish heritage, and had served two tours of Vietnam as a regular soldier, the first in 1 RAR as an infantryman in 1965/66 and the second as a tank commander. 

 On his second tour, Stan had rank of sergeant in C Squadron, 1st Armoured Regiment, and A Squadron, 3rd Cavalry Regiment in 1971. In 1991Stan visited a lawyer and made the whistle-blower allegations. 

 He believed a senior officer wanted to make it appear that Joe had shot at police snipers. This claim was denied by the officer concerned. Stan Hanuszewicz had made a similar claim at the coronial inquiry into the death in 1991, but the coroner had dismissed him as a witness of truth. Despite the evidence of a cover-up, the commission found that Joe’s death was “justifiable homicide”. 

Stan has never made his motives in taking the step to become a whistle-blower public, but it is likely that his regard for the reputation of a fellow veteran and an understanding of his suffering were instrumental in taking what must have been a courageous step given his position as a career police officer, and the opprobrium that it caused amongst his police colleagues. 

His background has some similarities with Joe Gilewicz, given that he was born in a concentration camp in Germany and his parents emigrated to Tasmania in the early 1950s. He also had a great deal of experience with national servicemen, having spent three years training them at 2 RTB Puckapunyal prior to returning to Vietnam in 1971 as a tank commander. Stan described himself as “persona non gratia” with the Tasmanian Police Force after the two Gilewicz inquires in his 2008 interview with Nick Fletcher from the Australian War Memorial, and he subsequentially retired from the force. 

The episode was put to bed, as far as Tasmanian authorities were concerned, by this reference added as a postscript to the Department of Police and Public Safety 1999 – 2000 Annual Report - The report of Commissioner Mahoney into the death of Joe Gilewicz has reiterated the findings of the coroner in 1992, that the officer who fired the fatal shot acted appropriately under all the given circumstances. 

Commissioner Mahoney accepted the fact the shooting occurred in the circumstances found by Coroner Matterson and rejected various scenarios put forward since then. Joe Gilewicz, Stan Hanuszewicz and Paul Tapp, all have one experience in common. 

They are (or were) Vietnam veterans. The last two worked together to right a perceived wrong for the reputation of the first, and his family. They may have been unsuccessful, but their intention, brought out of a clear understanding of a common experience, was obvious. Graham Edwards is one of a small number of parliamentarians who were also Vietnam veterans. 

This small cohort includes the late Peter White, Kevin Newman, and Tim Fischer, as well as survivors like Rod Atkinson and John Bradfield. Graham Edwards’ enduring strong support and advocacy for Vietnam veterans has always been obvious since he has been a public figure. The reasons why individuals enter parliament are probably similar, in that those who do so are seeking to improve the lot of the communities from which they emerge. 

In Graham Edward’s case that community was initially wounded Vietnam veterans. Prior to Vietnam, he had worked for five years as a railway fireman before enlisting in the Australian Regular Army in 1968. He went to Vietnam as a member of the assault pioneer platoon of 7th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment, where he had the misfortune to trigger an M16 mine on 12th May 1970, near Route 326, between Long My and Tam Phuoc. This resulted in the amputation of both legs, and the three weeks later, he was flown home to Australia. 

He recalls that time –

It was an emotional time, a really confronting time, but it was a very warm time too, to finally come into the embrace of a loved one and my family and to be reunited but never ever the way I ever wanted to be reunited, and I still feel a sense of emotion, when I see homecomings of other troops today and I see them walking off the ship or walking off an aeroplane, and walking into the arms of a loved one and I would have given anything, even today, for that sort of a homecoming.

He found that both the army and the Department of Veterans’ Affairs was unsure about how to deal with wounded veterans during the Vietnam era and puts this haphazard treatment down to the fact that, in contrast to the situation in previous wars, wounded soldiers returned in an irregular and interrupted fashion and were regarded as problems rather than people. 

His response to this was to fiercely throw himself into community activities which he says worked for him both physically and mentally. He describes channelling the anger he often felt into positive outcomes for others, especially veterans. Over time he met every challenge head on and, driven by his work with veterans' welfare, moved into politics, serving first in State parliament and later with distinction in the Federal Parliament of Australia. 

 I interviewed Graham Edwards a short time ago, in the hope that his responses to some simple questions might give some insights into the points he made in the letter read to the Australian parliament on 18th August 2006. 

My first question was “What do you believe has been learned, or not learned, by the Australian experience in Vietnam?” His response referred to how Australia came to be involved in both Vietnam in 1965 and Iraq in 2003. He reminded me that the Australian commitment to the Coalition of the Willing in Iraq was based on poor intelligence – or more accurately – a lie, and that this was a precise rerun of how the country became involved in Vietnam. 

He reminded me that Prime Minister Howard had announced on March 18, 2003, that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was prepared to use them, and that this had been used as a justification for the commitment of an Australian Task Force. 

The cabinet announcement read – 

The government has authorised the chief of the Australian Defence Force, General (Peter) Cosgrove, to place the Australian forces already deployed in the Gulf region as part of any US-led coalition operation that may take place in the future, directed in accordance with existing authority under UN resolutions to disarm Iraq. 

Grahame Edwards likened this statement to Prime Minister Menzies alleging on 29th April 1965 on the floor of the Australian parliament that the government of South Vietnam had requested the involvement of Australian troops. 

In the first instance (Iraq), history clearly revealed that those weapons were non-existent, and in the second (South Vietnam), that a very reluctant South Vietnamese government was pressured through both US and Australian diplomatic channels to make a request. It took until 1971, with the release of the Pentagon Papers, for his successor as Prime Minister, William McMahon, to acknowledge this fact. 

Another question referred to the way in which veterans of the war in Afghanistan have been treated in direct comparison to the treatment of Vietnam veterans. Graham Edward’s response was unequivocal. 

He contrasted the treatment of veterans of Afghanistan with those from Vietnam and described it as much improved. He explained how the separation of the rights and wrongs of war from the treatment of veterans was so significant, something not apparent after the political and social division that lingered after Vietnam. He described his action as President of the West Australian branch of the RSL in inviting an Afghan veteran to lead the ANZAC Day parade through Perth, and the symbolic significance of this. 

Again, this recognition of younger veterans by their forebears was unfortunately not a feature of the treatment of Vietnam veterans by the RSL in the sixties and seventies. Something still not completely understood and acknowledged is the impact of Post Traumatic Disorder, as evidenced by the incidence of suicide amongst veterans of Afghanistan. 

Graham Edwards referred to this problem, noting that it is still often underestimated and misunderstood, and referred to Dr Peter Yule’s recent monograph. Peter Yule makes note of the Joe Gilewicz tragedy in this comprehensive and compassionate work as follows – 

 His severe PTSD meant that Joseph Gilewicz had stormy interpersonal relationships, seen clearly with his long-term de facto partner. In early July 1991, Gilewicz made violent threats to his partner and her family, leading to a siege at his home. Early in the morning of 2 July Gilewicz was shot dead by a police marksman. An inquest found that the shooting was reasonable and justified.

To quote Grahame Edwards in my interview – 

  Everybody comes home changed. 

 He argues that the many “rotations” (tours of operational duty) that soldiers experienced in Afghanistan are a major factor in suicides, and that despite the post-Vietnam experience, when the norm was two rotations at most, and a large proportion of veterans have been diagnosed with PTSD, the lessons still have not been learned. 

Finally, it is worth revisiting the 2006 speech that introduced this article, and to analyse its relevance sixteen years later. In his speech Graham Edwards referred to several surviving cliches that adhere like barnacles to any discussion of our Vietnam experience. 

Prominent amongst them is the notion that the soldiers, upon return, were blamed for the war. What is closer to the truth is that the veterans were readily identifiable and may have become a target for hostility with some as a result. However, as pointed out in his speech, many who opposed the war nevertheless supported the soldiers. 

Graham Edward’s reference to his father resonates in my experience. My father was very much opposed to the war, something which frequently brought him into conflict with our local parish priest. On the other hand, the notion that not all who supported the war supported the soldiers, holds true in my memory, after an experience at a polling booth in the 1975 federal election when a Coalition booth worker abused me when I told him I was a Vietnam veteran. 

 Graham Edwards’ reference in his speech to PTSD and the effect this has on their families is also significant. But what was for me most impactful in his speech was his appeal for reconciliation, both between those in Australia who had very opposing attitudes to the war, and between Australians and Vietnamese fifty years after it ended. 

The memory of Joe Gilewicz and other victims of this war is honoured by reconciliation, not bitterness. As the poet J. S. Manifold reflected in 1945 after a different war – 

This is not sorrow, this is work: 

I build a cairn of words over a silent man,

My friend John Learmonth whom the Germans killed. 

 Joe Gilewicz, and the other five hundred Australian soldiers who died in Vietnam, can be regarded as “silent men”. If we understand, fifty years later, the truth about their experience, rather than confecting a rationalising mythology, we respect their sacrifice, and have the best opportunity to learn the lessons of that sacrifice to achieve peace and reconciliation for ourselves and our children.