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| Pic courtesy Montrose Services |
The Disability Royal Commission has just released its findings.
There are over two hundred recommendations. Enacting them will be a monumental task.
The last Royal Commission with as many recommendations as this one was the 1991 inquiry into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody.
Of *RCIADIC's 339 recommendations, a Deloitte Access Economics review in 2018 found that, 64% have been implemented in full, 14% have been mostly implemented, 16% have been partially implemented and 6% have not been implemented.
It's to be hoped that twenty-seven years down the track, the disability royal commission has a better outcome.
Somehow, although I won't be around to see it that far down the track, I believe that the result for people with disabilities will be similar to that for indigenous people in custody.
I write this because everything I saw in my 40 year career in special education points in this direction. Ironically, the five years I spent in aboriginal education in remote North-West Queensland confirms it.
Both are areas of enormous challenge, and both are shaped by the general population's disregard, sprinkled with a fair amount of fear and ignorance.
It is dismaying to note the disagreement about recommendations for the future of both special schools and group homes reflected in the findings. The commissioners were divided.
It's profoundly depressing, that in the year 2023, we are stuck in the worn out debates about provision, with the argument cycling around binary concepts, of one style of organisation opposing another.
Here's a simpler solution. All schools should be special schools, and all accommodation universal. By that I mean that the lock-step, highly graded and hierarchical organisational structure of conventional schools doesn't really suit anyone, let alone students with disabilities.
Schools should be ultimately flexible, and organised around the learning needs of the enrolment, not the classroom spaces and timetable. It can be done, and has been successful. The Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership has released a paper that is well worth a read.
State governments in this country are generally responsible for schooling, and I can't see any of the current governments with the requisite courage and foresight to change the fundamentals. This is, of course, because governments are run by politicians, not teachers, and education is one of the most politically sensitive aspects of government. It was ever thus...
*Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody
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15 comments:
P 148 conscripts and regulars for information Bobby.
Political considerations directed that the unit be made up from an approximately
even mix of National Servicemen and Regular Army soldiers. The National
Servicemen were to be from the third and fourth intake of 1968 and the first, second
and third intakes of 1969. One hundred National Servicemen commenced Infantry
Corps training with D Company in March 1969. While this was, in theory, a job for the
3rd Training Battalion at Singleton, there were advantages in doing this training in 7
RAR. The soldiers immediately identified with their unit and the unit was able to
identify those with junior leadership potential very quickly.
Seems you missed a few.
Your comment is completely off-topic, but I feel a bit sorry for you, so I'll indulge you in this case. First up, you have not read my thesis, so am in no position to comment. I was not researching the motives of 7RAR soldiers, just one of nine infantry battalions and numerous other units of all corps of national servicemen who served in Vietnam. I was researching the attitudes and motives of all Nashos who served to interrogate this statement (which was on a number of websites for schools for at least a decade) - "Every national serviceman who went to Vietnam was a volunteer". Apart from the historical fact that national servicemen were only in the army because they were conscripted when their birthdates were drawn in one of sixteen ballots held between 10th March 1965 and 22nd September 1972, and were, by definition, not volunteers, and that none of them had any real choices once they were allocated to corps postings, the whole notion that twenty year olds really wanted to be off fighting Commies was an absolute nonsense. Smarter historians than I had already debunked that statement, but I was interested in motives and attitudes of a few who may have volunteered to go to Vietnam once they had been conscripted. These men were my target group. There were very few, and universally they say now (53 years after the event), that the decisions they made back then were wrong, and for the most part they regret them, but because that disagrees with your opinion, you won't read my thesis - your problem, not mine. Whatever one specific company of Nashos in 7RAR did in 1969 was not part of my research. The group you keep referring to did not respond to my invitation, and that in itself is telling. It's weird to talk about "advantages" to the Nashos in the same breath as quoting O'Brien about the political nature of the decisions being made back then. It's abundantly clear that you and I were political collateral - cannon fodder. We were both lucky enough to get home in one piece, but I went into the exercise completely open-eyed, without believing the nonsense we were brainwashed with about the threat of Communism. You are welcome to kid yourself about the motives of a few. If it makes you feel better about what you did in 1970, good luck to you. I prefer to be honest and tell the truth. The blokes I interviewed did the same.
4/100 of your own cohort chose to be interviewed... tells you something Bobby.
I was a Conscript , but my number did not come up. Those 100 volunteered to be trained in the battalion going to Vietnam rather than the infantry training center ...makes them volunteers for service in Vietnam. It was a choice given to them when deciding a preference for corp training.
You are trying to justify your take on the story and the preference of your academic mates. I knew three other members who volunteered to serve as Nashos. O'brien knew of some of the blokes that volunteered for Seven but I knew of several that actually served in C company and mortars as I did recruits with them... blows the numbers out even more,,, reducing your 4 to even less in the big picture.
We have done this to death and your denials and obfuscation are merely to justify your own position as a conscript that was not prepared to say "I am not going" and denigrating the service of those conscripts that chose to be included.
I was a Conscript , but my number did not come up.
That statement is nonsense. The only way you could be conscripted was for your birthdate to be drawn.
Those 100 volunteered to be trained in the battalion going to Vietnam rather than the infantry training center ...makes them volunteers for service in Vietnam.
No it doesn't. How did they end up in the army in the first place? All it does show is that after they were conscripted, they chose to move direct from recruit training to a battalion. They were conscripts. That choice doesn't magically turn them into "volunteers".
It was a choice given to them when deciding a preference for corp training.
Which is what I said. Making that choice did not magically convert them from conscripts to volunteers. As pointed out above - how did these civilians end up in the army in the first place?
You are trying to justify your take on the story and the preference of your academic mates.
I don't have a "take". I have conclusions determined by my research. Nor do I have "mates" in academia. I had a supervisor, and all the work was done on-line, except for the face-to-face interviews. A couple of the blokes I interviewed are mates of fifty-three years who were in my rifle section, but I asked them questions. I didn't tell them what to say.
I knew three other members who volunteered to serve as Nashos.
There you go again. They were either Conscripts (Nashos) or regulars. Once in the army you can't magically be converted to a "Nasho" unless your number came out. You're making it up as you go along.
O'brien (sic) knew of some of the blokes that volunteered for Seven but I knew of several that actually served in C company and mortars as I did recruits with them... blows the numbers out even more,,, reducing your 4 to even less in the big picture.
O'Brien interviewed a couple of hundred ex-7RAR personnel in the nineties to gather data for "Conscripts and Regulars". He made the data available to me provided I didn't publish it because he didn't secure permission from the participants to do that. I read every one of the five page surveys. Everything I read there backed up what I was being told by the men I interviewed. Mark Dapin used the same material for his Ph D, and came up with same conclusions.
We have done this to death and your denials and obfuscation are merely to justify your own position as a conscript that was not prepared to say "I am not going" and denigrating the service of those conscripts that chose to be included.
I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be "denying". I have never said that some 7RAR Nashos, once they were in the army, didn't volunteer to join a battalion destined for Vietnam. What I have said is that some Nashos who registered early ended up being enlisted when that was not what they had intended by early registration, and like me, and the vast majority of Nashos, they had no choice. I was never given a choice, so I worked out the odds looking at casualty figures, and decided that I would take my chances given that between twenty and thirty were killed each battalion across each tour. I also wanted to maintain my teacher registration, and conscientious objection would have seen me lose that.
Turns out, that was the right decision in hindsight, but I went within a few metres of being cleaned up in a friendly fire incident on 13th March, when the bloke behind me by a metre or two was hit in the face by a round from the leading section of a following platoon. Like most things that happened in Vietnam - good and bad - it was dumb luck.
As for "denigrating service" - we honour those who served and those who died by telling the truth. Mythology dishonours them, especially the material put out to justify a tragic and unnecessary war. The whole ANZAC tradition is based on the failed Gallipoli campaign. Vietnam was a strategic failure, but telling that truth does not denigrate the sacrifice of those who served.
Your knowledge of volunteer national serviceman is coloured by your personal belief that "it does not exist". You are simply wrong. https://www.awm.gov.au/articles/encyclopedia/viet_app
Your belief that National servicemen opting to to take a short cut to overseas service by volunteering to serve in a Battalion slotted for overseas service is also incorrect. What possible reason would a nasho have for volunteering to serve in a battalion about to go overseas if he wanted to avoid service overseas. The fact that you may well have had your number pulled out of a barrel and as a result of your life choices were compelled to serve in Vietnam does not mean that all and sundry had the same applied to them. You claim to have only found 4 in your search for confirmation of your beliefs in the battalion you served with, and O'Brien's 100 in one company puts that to rest. If as you claim you found 4 volunteer nashos check the records on each and you will find they were officially recorded as national service personnel on the nominal roll and their birth dates may not have come up. I am sure you are aware that the call up dates can be checked on line. I am beginning to get the idea that the numbers of volunteers in your own battalion gave rise to the omission by you of their existence. Didn't fit your agenda Robert. "He doth protest too much" comes to mind.
Show me where I wrote that "volunteer national servicemen" did not exist. What I have maintained is that there were plenty of Nashos who ended up in Vietnam purely because they had no choice if they wanted to stay on the right side of the law. Stan Larsson's story is a stark example of that.
Here is the relevant extract from Sue Bamford's article, which was my bible when I was writing my thesis - Young men who had reached the age of eighteen years and nine months, and men aged twenty who had been granted indefinite deferment or exemption, could volunteer for national service. Volunteers could also request to serve in limited duties of a non-combatant nature.
As I pointed out before, I did interview four who volunteered by applying for early registration. Only one of these intended to join. All of them were trying to plan their futures and believed that the early registration option would allow them to do this because they would know eighteen months ahead whether they had been balloted in. All four ended up being automatically enlisted, which in the case of three of them, not their choice. They thought they were getting into the ballot early, wheras DLNS took early registration as enlistment. If you took the time to read the thesis (or even just the appendix with the transcriptions of the interviews) you'd see this confirmed in their own words.
You claim to have only found 4 in your search for confirmation of your beliefs in the battalion you served with, and O'Brien's 100 in one company puts that to rest.
Once again, you have the bull by the foot. I did not "claim" anything. Only four took up the invitation to participate. If you are so keen to prove a point, go do you own research. I don't think you understand academic rigour and the difference between anecdote and fact. My basic contention, that there were men who went unwillingly to Vietnam (and some unlucky ones to their deaths, like Stan Larsson), stands and is confirmed by my research.
In any case, remember that I was challenging the statement on the website for schools that Every national serviceman who went to Vietnam was a volunteer. This statement is an ahistorical myth (more accurately a lie) and it is not reasonable for schoolchildren to be indoctrinated, they were for decades, by this statement. "Every" has a very specific meaning - i.e. "without exception". The use of "some" or a "few" would be acceptable as historical truth, but "every" - I don't think so.
My other problem with the term "Volunteer National Serviceman", and your use of it, is that is is a meaningless oxymoron. The government of the day introduced the term "National Service" when the first scheme of national service (1951 - 1959) was introduced. It was a universal scheme, so giving it that noble title was probably reasonable. When the second (selective) scheme was introduced, the title was used again, rather than the more accurate term "conscription", a term which government always seeks to avoid.
Let's use the accurate term, and apply it to the men from 7 RAR that you are on about. Answer a simple question - How did they come to be in the army, if they weren't early registrants? The correct answer is that their birthdates were drawn. That was how they ended up in the army. They were conscripted because their birthdates were drawn. The other 87% whose dates weren't drawn remained civilians. See the difference? Now what would you call them - volunteers or conscripts? They are in the army because they were conscripted, and when they had a choice to go straight into a battalion, they took that choice. That doesn't alter the fact that they were conscripts.
The term "national servicemen" is a euphemism, and the term "volunteer national servicemen" is both an oxymoron and a euphemism.
Hiding the truth behind mealy-mouthed euphemisms is childish. The truth will always prevail, no matter how unpalatable it is or some.
Sorry about that.
Read my thesis...
🙄
As you only have replies from 4 from more than 100 in 7 RAR you actually have no idea how many volunteered for national service/conscription, Bobby. I agree the use of the word "every" is a lie. Nice of you to point that out to the educators and historical record keepers. It does not alter the truth... that a good many servicemen brought into service with national service/conscription backgrounds volunteered to serve in Vietnam although you did not. 🤷♂️
As you only have replies from 4 from more than 100 in 7 RAR you actually have no idea how many volunteered for national service/conscription.
For about the fifth time, that wasn't the purpose of my research, but other historians have estimated that about 5% who were obliged to register volunteered for national service. My literature review mentioned that, but you haven't read it, so I can't expect you to comprehend. To get an absolute handle on that, you'd have to interview all those of the 19000 who were called up and still alive, because that piece of research has not been attempted. Since you seem so interested, go do it yourself.
What I do know for certain (as would anyone with reasonable comprehension of the English language) is that zero conscripts volunteered for the simple reason that you cannot be a volunteer and a conscript simultaneously. I'll attempt to simplify it for you. There are soldiers and sailors. You get to be one or the other depending on what service you enlist in. You can't be simultaneously a sailor and a soldier in the same way as you can't be simultaneously male and female. As they say in the classics, it's black and white - one situation is exactly the opposite of the other.
Think about it...
Whether I "volunteered" to go to Vietnam or not has nothing to do with it, although you seem very hung up about it. Again, to keep it simple, I ended up in the army because my birth date was balloted, and I ended up in Vietnam because I was posted to a unit warned for service there. The army wasn't the least bit interested in my preferences. What mattered to them was manpower requirements.
Read my thesis...
Maaaate... your one eyed "Bobby is always right" attitude is clearly displayed in your postings. I merely comment on your postings and am not required to make your thesis compulsory reading, or give you a mark on its value that you would seek to appeal should it not meet with your approval.
It appears that you are one of a kind that describes national service and conscription in different terms (for reasons best known to you).
The fact is that more than 100 conscripted personnel from 7 RAR second tour volunteered for service in Vietnam. Not all conscripts were volunteers for service in Vietnam. You are one of them and merely stating such would have knocked the idea you were trying to dispel on the head. Your effort to drag your fellow servicemen into the argument to add confirmation to your point is BS and the lack of substantial numbers obtained to lend weight to your already proven argument would indicate that. Soldiers and sailors... bad anomaly.
"Whether I "volunteered" to go to Vietnam or not has nothing to do with it, although you seem very hung up about it" At no time have I suggested that you ever volunteered for service, let alone service in Vietnam. I do note that you took no action once it became inevitable that 1. you were conscripted and 2. you knew you were going to Vietnam against your wishes. Whether that is a flaw in your character or a lack of courage to follow through on your convictions is a matter for you, but putting it out there for all and sundry does give rise to judgement by others.
The fact is that more than 100 conscripted personnel from 7 RAR second tour volunteered for service in Vietnam.
Small progress, but now you're no longer calling conscripts "volunteers".
Thanks for that.
I do note that you took no action once it became inevitable that 1. you were conscripted and 2. you knew you were going to Vietnam against your wishes.
Wrong again. I took a number of actions. The first was telling the Officer who interviewed me as a candidate for officer training that I didn't think I should be in the army, and that our army shouldn't be in Vietnam. That was the end of the interview. The second action was to make my corps preferences Education and Transport. The third was to request posting at the end of corps training to 4RAR which was about to return from Vietnam. The army knew quite well what my preferences were. In any case, this explains my reasoning at the time very clearly - https://independentaustralia.net/australia/australia-display/reflections-on-the-fall,4404
You don't get it Bobby... those 100+ fellow servicemen, by putting their hands up to train and serve with 7 RAR, a battalion earmarked for Vietnam, volunteered for the trip to the funny country. The majority were no doubt, by your definition, conscripts, but consciously made the choice following the original indoctrination. They were conscripts who volunteered to serve in Vietnam. (Not "every" one as proven by your own misfortune.)
A good many of us were classified as "officer material", so that didn't make you very special old mate. At the time it meant you had passed year 10. No teaching quals required. Perhaps a more positive approach to training at Portsea may have seen you overlooked for the tour... the short course apparently took 44 weeks.
My comment meant that you neither took action as an objector to the call up nor sought to be transferred out by having a chat to the C.O. as Stan did. Voicing disapproval is hardly taking action, even though it will get disapproval from those who have to make decisions about the welfare of others required to follow strict discipline to remain functional in harsh times. Some might even say that you may have been posted to 7RAR as a punishment for your attitude. 🤷♂️ I think we all knew that the preference for corps was dependent on the need to fill Infantry training centre first and foremost.
The majority were no doubt, by your definition, conscripts, but consciously made the choice following the original indoctrination.
I'm definitely making progress. You're admitting these people were both conscripts (by the dictionary definition - not mine) and they were indoctrinated. This indoctrination was precisely the reason I asked the ANZAC Day commemoration committee to remove the "Every national serviceman who went to Vietnam was a volunteer" statement from their website, Eventually they did, with an apology, but not before thousands of Australian schoolkids had been indoctrinated with this mythology. You can read about it here - http://1735099.blogspot.com/2018/08/setting-record-straight.html
This episode got a mention in Mark Dapin's "Australia's Vietnam, Myth Vs History", p 41. Suggest you get hold of the book to read the full story about "volunteers" in 7RAR especially the difference between the first and second tours. He also quotes Mike O'Brien's research that I used in my thesis. You'll find it in most libraries.
My comment meant that you neither took action as an objector to the call up nor sought to be transferred out by having a chat to the C.O. as Stan did.
I knew quite well that saying I was a C.O. would have got me absolutely nowhere. Magistrates all over the country had set the precedent that you had to object to all wars - not just Vietnam, and I didn't. As for "Having a chat with the C.O." you can see where that got Stan once the politicians got involved. Everything you have posted confirms the fact that you and I, and every other national serviceman in 7RAR were political pawns - cannon fodder. I would make exactly the same decision if I had my time over again. My decisin was based on the casualty statistics, the only information available. The rest was dumb luck. I did pretty well out of Vietnam, unlike blokes like Joe Gilewicz (shot by police in 1991); Graham Kavanagh (dying of heat exhaustion after being refused a dustoff on 21st April 1970) and Colin Tilmouth (an Arrente man from my section who was WIA on 22nd April, casevaced to Australia, and died in 1996). You and I survived after being used to advance the political agenda of the Coalition at the time, only to be tossed aside like dirty rags when it was no longer politically convenient.
That's what you need to reflect on, not the number of Nashos in 7RAR who were coerced into touring Vietnam in 1970.
Never before; never since; and never again...
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