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.....