Birds of a Feather

George Santos (Courtesy Wikipedia)

Troy Thompson (Courtesy Townsville Bulletin)

 

Today, gentle reader, I'm comparing two individuals who have entered positions of public office on the basis of confected fantasies. To put it in words of one syllable, they lied their way into office.

Despite the fact their behaviour is separated in time and distance, it is similar. The similarities border on the uncanny. It is almost is if it was scripted by the same writer, and to introduce a cliche, in their cases, truth is often stranger than fiction.

The first is a local.

Troy Thompson (nee Birnbrauer*) contested the mayoralty of Townsville, and won, defeating the incumbent Jenny Hill, in the 2024 local government elections.

He had previously attempted to contest the state electorate of Thuringowa n 2020 as a One Nation candidate, but was disendorsed because he did not disclose his directorship of a supply chain management company that became insolvent in 2017.

Being disendorsed by One Nation should have rung alarm bells for the electors of the city of Townsville, but it didn't. What did create problems for him was his CV which he promoted heavily whilst campaigning, both in local and social media.

That CV claimed he had military service, comprising five years as a reservist in Australia, with 109 Signal Squadron before serving with 152 Signal Squadron attached to the SAS at Karrakatta W.A.

The truth was a little different. He had in fact enlisted in 1991 as a Catering Corps reservist. I assume he had hoped that Townsville voters wouldn't discern the difference between a commando and a cook.

As Townsville is a garrison city with a large military population, who understood pretty well the role and function of army units, this military reference was probably a mistake. In addition, he claimed academic qualifications including bachelor degrees in science and commence from Griffith and Curtin universities, displayed on his LinkedIn profile. He had neither.

He was sprung when he gave a speech on Anzac Day wearing a heap of medals. They weren't his, and he wore them correctly on the right, but the lack of personal medals from his advertised service  (which he should have been able to display on the left) created conjecture. The local media got on to it, and he was  referred to the Office of the Independent Assessor.

He has been stood down on full pay for twelve months, and the payment of his salary is something that Townsville residents are not all that happy about. It seems that being creative with your CV can, for a while at least, deliver optimal financial results.

The second aspiring politician was an American.

George Santos is a former US congressman and convicted felon who served in a New York congressional district before he was expelled.

He won the seat (on his second attempt) after having fabricated a CV which did not disclose his criminal record, contained a completely fictional account of his business activities, income, and personal employment history.

This fact was lost on the voters, and he defeated his Democrat rival, Robert Zimmerman in the midterms. After his victory, numerous reports emerged that his his biography appeared fabricated. Eventually he admitted lying about his education and employment history, 

Eventually, he was expelled from congress, but not before he had participated in a number of crucial votes, including the vote removing house speaker Kevin McCarthy.

After his expulsion he pleaded guilty to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. He is scheduled for sentencing on February 7, 2025.

What these two have in common is their complete disregard for the truth in the quest for political power. The demise of the profession of journalism in favour of opionistas who sell discord and fiction for profit has seeped across the Pacific, and this trend is turbocharged by social media.

I doubt that it will end well.

*He took the name of the woman he married in 1996.

Rewriting history

Apart from being priceless viewing, gentle reader, this grab illustrates pretty clearly the consequences of a ham fisted attempt to rewrite history.

The bill is unlikely to pass a second reading, as Act's coalition partners have indicated they will not support it.

So it's going nowhere, but this is a great spectacle.

Enjoy!

Sound and Fury?

 

Pic courtesy Public Delivery

No doubt, gentle reader, you are fed up to the back teeth with the soap opera that is the US presidential election. It will continue, as an issue, to be milked by all media, both social and corporate, for weeks and months to come.

Maybe it would help to push the sensational reporting, the endless conjecture, and the triumphalism and despair aside for a bit, and look at a few (very) simple facts.

Turnout is always a good statistic to check. It looks like coming in at about 65%, which is a few percentage points lower than in 2020. I could attempt to analyse the reason for the small decline, but that would be conjecture, best avoided. The fact remains, however, that despite claims to the contrary, this election was unremarkable in terms of voter engagement.

Let's look at the popular vote. Best projection (they're still counting here and there) is Trump 50.5%, Harris 48.0%.

Applying some basic (if unconventional) analysis to that, could be informative. 

If you add votes for Harris to the quantum of non-voters, you get 48% + 35% (100% - 65%) = 83%. Put simply, 83% of eligible voters did not support the winner, or if all the 35% did, they didn't believe that the situation was serious enough to warrant a trip to a booth, a dropbox, or the hassle of completing a mail-in ballot.

It makes media references to a "landslide" or "unprecedented realignment" look pretty silly.

So after taking that metaphorical cold shower, the pundits should probably look at their forecasts of an historical shift in trans-Pacific politics, for two reasons. One is that Trump is notorious for over promising. You need only to look at his first term to understand that simple reality. There is no new unbroken border wall, for example, and what there is, was paid for by American, rather than Mexican taxpayers.

Promises about vaccines (Operation Warp Speed) were not kept, and Obamacare was not repealed. His promise to end gun-free zones was also not kept, and is an example of an issue unaffected by the pandemic, which has been used as an excuse for some of his broken commitments.

So the rhetoric he used to get into power is not a clear indicator of what he will do with that power. It reminds me a little of the cliche about a dog chasing cars and what it would do if it actually caught one. Trump's failed business ventures are text book examples of unfulfilled promises.

Finally, I learned a useful lesson about Americans when I served beside them in Vietnam fifty plus years ago. Whilst I shouldn't generalise, and there are some very smart Americans,  the quip we often made after encounters with Yanks in country was "You can tell them anything; sell them anything".

That seems to me to remain largely true.

An Anniversary

Today is the 60th anniversary of the cabinet decision to introduce selective national service, based on a ballot of birthdates, to rapidly increase the size of the ADF in peacetime.

At no time in our national history had Australians been conscripted to fight on foreign soil in peacetime. By 1972, 15381 Nashos were sent to Vietnam, where 200 were killed, 1200 wounded, and thousands traumatised.

A further 40000 (30000 have survived) who weren't deployed to Vietnam had their futures negatively and irrevocably altered by two years in the military at a critical time in their lives, and initially received no rehabilitation benefits. 

For a time, the Australian people supported the policy and returned to power a Coalition government which skilfully used anti-communist hysteria based on the Domino theory.

The voters woke up, far to late for many, in 1972, after this most political of conflicts, which had nothing to do with national security.

It's time for a bipartisan Crown apology to surviving Nashos, based on the division created by this policy, and the damage done to a generation. Those surviving voters who supported the decision at the time owe us an apology, as do those who blamed us for the war and turned on us on our return.

As Paul Ham wrote in "Vietnam, the Australian War" - "A unique aspect of the Vietnam war is the collective cruelty of a nation that ordered, with the threat of a two-year jail term, a 20 year old to go to war, and then damned him for going."

The Politics of Fear

 

Image courtesy AAP - Russell Freeman

It's pretty obvious, gentle reader, that the best way to get many voters on side is to scare the living daylights out of them.

In the recent Queensland election, both major parties used fear as a potent strategy and spent a great deal of money on spreading it.

Reasoned debate and presentation of facts were abysmally absent from the campaign. It worked for the LNP, and less so for Labor, although the emergence of abortion as an issue late in the campaign may helped them avoid a 2012 style wipeout.

Pic courtesy ABC

The irony remains that youth crime statistics have collapsed in Queensland despite both parties claiming that we are in the grip of a youth crime crisis. The only crisis visible is the hysteria spread by both legacy and social media about crime.

A couple of tragic high profile incidents have been cynically exploited as clickbait through online media, and social media has amplified the phenomenon.

The abortion issue also fed into a scare campaign, but there is uncertainty about how the current legislation will be treated if, as Robbie Katter promises, he is successful in getting a vote to amend the current law to the floor of parliament.

As usual, what happens across the Pacific always has ramifications in Australia, and the rise of abortion as an issue here after the reversal of Roe Vs Wade in the US is further evidence of the tendency for American issues to seep to the West.

I long for the day when we have members of our state parliament driven by the issues in their constituencies rather than the party line as promoted by public relations "experts".

The Toilet Wall

 

Pic courtesy Fairfax media.

As we watch the soap opera that is contemporary US politics and the rapid trend on the local scene towards the same phenomenon, it's timely to reflect on the role of social media.

Two politicians, both members of the Coalition parties, have bought time on my Facebook platform, and as a consequence I get posts from them daily on my feed.

Reading and analysing these posts is a fascinating exercise. Fact checking them is a pastime.

To provide an example, the member for my federal electorate of Groom has been posting statements such as "Crime rates have soared under Labor" and " the Liberal Party has a very proud record of driving Australia's economic and social progress"

The first statement about the crime rate is simply wrong, or to use the current jargon, an example of misinformation, as this report from Policing Insight of a graph of crime youth statistics from the ABS website illustrates.

The trend is down, not up, and it doesn't take much of an intellect to note this. 

Either Hamilton is telling porkies, or he can't read a graph. This is just one example. He's addicted to misinformation, usually expressed as three or four word slogans. He also believes that his audience is too thick to know that crime is a state issue and that he has no jurisdiction. He obviously has a low opinion of his constituents.

The second example is not so cut and dried, but is best characterised as an opinion based on historical mythology. Historical mythology can hang around like barnacles, as I discovered recently when researching a thesis on national service.

In connection with this opinion about the Menzies legacy, I beg to differ. As a national serviceman conscripted to fight in a civil war on foreign soil in peacetime I would not call selective conscription for political advantage (which is what it was) part of a "very proud record".

It's amazing how some features of Coalition policy under Menzies and his successors are airbrushed out of history.

It does illustrate why Hamilton and his colleagues in the Coalition are opposing the proposed misinformation legislation. Misinformation is their bread and butter.

 They're not the only ones who post lies on social media, of course, but my taxes pay his salary, and I'd appreciate him not telling lies on the taxpayers payroll. All politicians do it, and unfortunately social media has become a sewer. Leunig's cartoon above is apposite.

That is starkly obvious when you examine his statement about crime, but not so when you look at Coalition history. The first example is a simple denial of fact and an example of using a lie to advance a political position.

The second example is an expression of opinion. The proposed legislation is no threat to the holding and expression of an honest opinion. It is, however a threat to the deliberate posting of lies on social media.

It's Time

 

Excuse me for resurrecting the 1972 political slogan, gentle reader, but it's completely relevant.

Back then, I had returned to teaching after two years in the army, and ten months (298 days to be precise) on active duty in South Vietnam.

It was great to have returned to a productive enterprise (teaching kids with disabilities) in complete contrast to my experience during 1969/70. Most people I encountered after my RTA* were in a state of disregard about our commitment to a civil war in peacetime on foreign soil and wanted no part of any discussion about it.

That suited me, as I wanted to put the sojourn behind me, and get on with life.

That disregard had changed somewhat by 1987, with the Welcome Home march, and John Schumann's popular song, but for most Australians it was a non-issue. There was a lost fifteen years when Vietnam and national service had been consigned to the forgettery. Neither of these events (the march and the song) were initiated by politicians, although Bob Hawke did take the salute at the march. The march was organised by the veterans, although the then Labor government got behind it with some financial support through  transport and organisation.

If you follow the activity post withdrawal of politicians of all brands, they have studiously avoided the issue. John Howard made a speech on the 40th Anniversary of the Battle of Long Tan, but the apology was about how we were treated on return, rather than for sending us in the first place. He also made no distinction between volunteers (regular army) and Conscripts (Nashos). 

There has never been an apology to conscripts for sending us to Vietnam. Our situation was markedly different from that of the regular soldiers, who were all volunteers. It's likely that no politician wants to remind voters that there has been only once in our military history when selective conscription was used to send young men to kill and die in peacetime, and the party that did so would rather that it be forgotten.

But there are cranky old curmudgeons like me, who remember, and when my local Coalition federal member contact me unsolicited on Facebook, I decided to remind him of the war, his party's support of it, and their lack of action since.

This is my contribution to his feed.

I'll let you know the outcome, but won't be holding my breath.

*Return to Australia.

Of Gardens, Cars and Connections

One of the few perks of ageing is the connections it provides. 

This has been brought home to me recently, gentle reader, by a number of encounters which appear at first glance, absolutely random, but when considered carefully are an inevitable result of longevity and mobility.

Yesterday my bride and I went to check out a garden just out of town owned by a mate I first met in 1971 when teaching at the State School for Spastic Children at New Farm, Brisbane.  At the time he and I were the only males on staff, and I was fresh from a year in Vietnam.

At the gate was a charity tent staffed by two women about my age. They introduced themselves and somehow during the conversation, the fact that they were both teachers, and had worked in Townsville, emerged.

I explained that as a special school principal I had opened two schools in Townsville. Turns out that one of them was a very good friend of the ex-principal of one of the two schools which had amalgamated, and he and I had collaborated a great deal at the time.

Sadly, he had died last year, but she was able to show me a photo taken a few years ago in which he looked very happy. He didn't seemed to have changed much.

I then chatted with the bloke who owned the garden (although his wife is the main hobbyist - this bloke is into restoring cars rather than creating gardens). In this conversation I discovered through the medium of a discussion about classic cars, that another long lost acquaintance of mine in the seventies is also well known to my mate. The long lost acquaintance is into Alfas and Porsches, the gardener Citroens. 

His son favours Peugeots, and I gifted him my old 404 about ten years ago. It's undergoing a slow restoration, and I'm on a promise to drive it when it's finished, if I last that long. It is indeed a very slow restoration. The son is a busy policeman. 

The car I gave away.

When you think about it, these connections weren't all that unusual. Special education was a small but rapidly growing segment of the education community in Queensland back then. The progress and expansion since has been incredible.

The nomenclature has changed for the better. Calling a school "The State School for Spastic Children" would not be possible these days. 

The term "spastic" describes just one of the manifestations of cerebral palsy. The fact that it has gone from the language except when used by nitwits as a form of abuse is no bad thing.

You Have to Laugh

US politics has always been bizarre, but this takes the cake.

As the cliche goes, if it wasn't so consequential, you'd have to laugh.

My recommendation, gentle reader, is to laugh anyway...

A Tale of Two Popes

Pic courtesy Britannica

 Jorge Mario Bergoglio is an Argentinian Jesuit, and an ex-bouncer. His father's family left Italy in 1929 to escape the fascist rule of Benito Mussolini.

 He is essentially a pastoralist, a reformer, and perhaps represents the last hope of the Catholic church in its quest to remove the cancer of clericalism which has almost destroyed its viability in western societies.

Unless the church is reformed towards the authentic social developmental role it assumes in developing countries, especially in Africa, it has no future. The Australian church I grew up in has become a clerical, rather than a pastoral institution.

Pic courtesy Britannica

This is best illustrated by an experience I had as a rifleman, a Catholic conscript, in Vietnam in April 1970. My dog tags were embossed “RC”.

We were halfway through Operation Finschhafen and were recuperating in FSPB Anne, when the Catholic Chaplain, Captain Keith Teefey, invited all ranks in my Company (B Coy) to attend mass. He invited all present to take Communion irrespective of denomination, providing they did so with respect.

Most did so. Piety is often a characteristic of soldiers in harm’s way.

                                                        Mass at FSPB Anne 

I was impressed and wrote home telling my father about this. Dad was an advocate of eucamenism, committed to Vatican 2 and was chuffed, to the extent that he told the local parish priest, a conservative, whom out of respect, I will not identify.

This priest became very angry, and reported Keith Teefey to the Bishop of the Toowoomba Diocese who incidentally had no jurisdiction in the situation.

Subsequently the Bishop dismissed the complaint, pointing out that Canon law made that invitation (to those at risk of death) completely appropriate.

By 22nd April, two members of that congregation had died, one killed by an RPG in a bunker contact, the other died of heat exhaustion.

The parish priest maintained his outrage and refused to talk to my father. Dad withdrew my siblings from the local convent and enrolled them at the state school where he was principal at the time.

This example of the clerical hierarchy becoming indignant at an act of pastoral care was illustrative of the state of the church in Australia in 1970, and frankly it hasn’t improved much.

The greying of the Australian congregation is clear evidence of that.

The 2011 sacking of Bishop Bill Morris by Bergoglio's predecessor, ironically enough in the Toowoomba Diocese, was the nadir of clericalism in Australia. Morris' sin was his attempt to root out an insidious culture of child abuse in a couple of schools in the diocese, although that wasn't the reason given for his dismissal.

He had challenged the hierarchy and paid the price.

Unfortunately, Francis' intervention may have come too late.

Humanity, Humour and Humility - a Review of "Lest"

 

Mark Dapin seems to have made a habit of slaughtering sacred cows.

That's not unique, of course, but he does it with style and humour. There is a flavour of humility, and the writing is frequently self-deprecating.

I didn't have any idea what to expect when I found this book next to my self-published memoir in my local Dymocks. (I was checking how many copies were left, as I sell them, five at a time, on consignment). 

Some sweet young person had written a review on a slip of paper attached to the shelf. That was nice.

A bit of self-promotion is always good, and there are only eighty copies of the one thousand I had printed left. But I digress......

I had no intention of buying it, but given that I've read much of what he's written (except for his fiction - I don't read fiction) I grabbed it.

I did pay for it, by the way, something that didn't happen for one reader who stole a copy of my book from the shop last year. I'm not sure what to make of that.

Dapin's "Lest" is an engaging read. There is a unique balance of historical research, humour and whimsy that captures even the most cynical reader.

And there is a bit of that as well...cynicism, I mean.

War myths abound in our national literature. They're like barnacles. Challenging them can attract all manner of hostility.

I reckon Dapin has read Teaching as a Subversive Activity and has a highly developed ICD. That's Postman and Weingartner's Inbuilt Crap Detector for those who haven't read it.

He takes us through a range of beliefs that have been marinated in semi-sacred sentiment for generations, including Anzac Day, white feathers, Gallipoli, Monash, and the Emu War.

He ventures where others have feared to tread, covering No Poofters, spitting at Vietnam veterans, the role of the RSL, and makes predictions about myths to come. Nothing is sacred, even the old joke about Vietnam veterans and lightbulbs.

Yet the material is handled deftly, without offense to veterans, and with the objective clarity of an outside observer. Dapin is, after all, an ex-Pom, and I reckon that provides a perspective generally absent in lifetime locals.

Despite what I'd regard as a lightness in tone, there is obviously a deal of hard research embedded in this book.

It should be required reading in every Australian high school history curriculum. It won't be, of course. 

Most current high schoolers have a very vague grasp of recent wars, especially Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.

But the myths endure.

 

 

An Gorta Mor and Remittances

 

Erin go Bragh - Image courtesy Ireland Reaching Out

Just the other day, gentle reader, I stumbled on an Irish history website which included an essay about remittances sent from the USA during An Gorta Mor (the Great Hunger, the irish famine). 

It was written by Dr Ciaran Reilly, historian at Maynooth University. 

The article reports that in 1851, Lord John Russell, then British PM, claimed that more than 1.5 million pounds had been sent to Ireland as remittances by new emigrants who had arrived in the USA. A survey of Irish newspapers from the late 1840s and early 1850s confirms this, with almost daily reports of people emigrating once they had received the remittance money.

I also remember reading about these remittances on my visit to Ellis Ireland's immigration museum a few years ago on a visit to New York. 

Ellis Island Immigration Museum

The process was not confined to the USA, with a mention in the article of letters received from Melbourne containing amounts ranging from fifty to five hundred pounds.

I knew from my own family history that my ancestors traveled to Moreton Bay on the Erin go Bragh during a voyage in 1862.

The Erin go Bragh was one of thirteen ships which transported people from Ireland to Australia under the Queensland Immigration Scheme. This scheme was established by Bishop James Quinn and assisted by Father Patrick Dunne with the aim of assisting Irish immigrants to make the arduous journey to Australia where it was hoped that they could start a new life of prosperity.

Remittances were used less frequently in Australia (or as then, the colonies of Moreton Bay, New South Wales and Victoria), but they did exist. I have no idea of the mechanics of this, or how the postal services worked back then to keep the funds secure.

If anyone reading this understands the process, please enlighten us in the comments.

Degrees of Separation - A Book Review (Sort of)

Recently I've reconnected with my class at boarding school in 1961/62. That's over sixty years ago. 

There was a reunion organised which I couldn't attend, but it led to a raft of email exchanges. 

It was almost eerie to discover that one of those people was, like me, an ex-Nasho, a Vietnam veteran, and like me, wrote a book about it. Strangely, I remember his name, but can't put a face to him. 

Again, it was a long time ago. 

Anyway, I tracked down his memoir which he called Dominoes and Marbles and read it in one sitting.

Apart from the fact that the subject matter describes experiences we shared which obvious resonates, it's an engaging narrative, and the product of a professional writer; a journalist.

One chapter, which he called Fortes in Fide,  and which describes his experiences at school, unearthed previously hidden memories of my two years at a boarding school nearly a thousand kilometres from my home in North Queensland, as a thirteen year old who had never been away from my family.

It reminded me of another schoolmate who often defended me when I was on the receiving end of a bit of bullying. In those days I weighed thirty kilograms wringing wet, and probably needed a bouncer. This schoolmate went on to join the regular army and was killed in the Battle of Long Tan in 1966.

The memoir covers much more than Vietnam. The author describes his childhood at Mount Tyson, his primary school experiences in the small state school there, and his time at Downlands.

He relates experiences at recruit training similar to mine, and his posting to Vietnam in September 1966, four years before me. He served with 5 RAR, the battalion my unit (7 RAR) replaced on its second tour.  

Much of the narrative describes his experiences as an apparently competent rugby union player, a journalist, and his appreciation of the music of the Vietnam era. 

For me, the memoir is very much an indulgence in nostalgia, but it's well worth a read as it captures the flavour of the time.

You can buy it online here - https://www.amazon.com.au/Dominoes-Marbles-Young-Times-Peace/dp/0994281439

  

Chicago 1968

 

Chicago 1968 (Image courtesy Washington Post)

1968 is a year I remember very well, gentle reader.

I had begun a teaching career, turned twenty-one (which had greater significance back then) and had reported in Warwick for my national service medical.

Bobby Kennedy was assassinated on my birthday, and I was passed A1 after my medical. Both these events effectively sealed my fate when it came to the following two years, as they combined to send me to Vietnam.

If I had failed my medical, or if Kennedy had the same luck as Trump, my experience would have been very different. When Kennedy announced that he was seeking the Democratic nomination, he made it clear that his campaign agenda prioritised opposition to the war in Vietnam over racial division and the problem of the cities.

From his announcement speech - I run to seek new policies - policies to end the bloodshed in Vietnam and in our cities, policies to close the gaps that now exist between black and white, between rich and poor, between young and old, in this country and around the rest of the world.

Whether or not his election as US President would have been timely enough to begin a withdrawal of US troops, and whether the Coalition would have followed quickly in this country will of course never be known, but it is feasible.

When Nixon was elected he talked about "peace with honour", but nevertheless began an indiscriminate bombing programme in Cambodia, which led, amongst other things, to the killing fields.

Where the bombs landed in 1972 (red)

Those events in 1968 demonstrate a frightening symmetry with what has so far occured in 2024. Then as now, the incumbent Democratic president will not seek re-election (Lyndon Johnson's decision); there were two assassinations back then, both successful, (Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy); and one this year which was unsuccessful; and the Democratic convention will be held in Chicago. The most significant difference between 1968 and 2024 is that the single (so far) assassination attempt was unsuccessful.

The 1968 Convention was a landmark event which vividly demonstrated the deep divisions within the Democrats, but more significantly within the US community. Those divisions are duplicated in 2024, even if the fault lines are different, but violence is always simmering just below the surface.

I'm reminded of two cliches that go hand in hand when it comes to that country across the Pacific. One is that violence is as American as apple pie, and the other is that history doesn't repeat, but it rhymes.

However you look at it, the US is clearly at a crossroads now just as it was in 1968. By the time Saigon fell in 1975, fifty-seven thousand Americans, millions of Vietnamese, and five hundred Australians had died as a result of decisions made in the US. Many decisions had been made before those events in 1968, but many were made after that pivotal year. A reading of the Pentagon papers is informative.

Let's hope that the cadence of the rhyme fails, because if it doesn't, and more deadly conflict ensues,  there will be outcomes for Australians, just as there were in 1968, and many will be negative.

Affirmative Action

 

It was different in 1968

Teaching has always been a tough gig, but these days it seems to be getting tougher.

The attrition rate for early career teachers is pretty constant, and remains a problem. 

This report provides some useful detail.

Recently, reports of misogynistic behaviour directed at young female teachers have appeared. This essay describes an experience that is, unfortunately, far from unusual. 

It's nothing new, of course, and the plight of the casual or relief teacher is well-known. I had the opportunity to do some relief teaching post retirement, but chose advisory visiting teaching instead. The idea of working with a different bunch of students each day did not appeal. 

Frankly, without the possibility of properly engaging with your students for more than one day at a time, it seemed to me a futile exercise, despite the fact that it pays well.

This issue overlaps with the problem of gender balance within the profession, or as it frequently labelled, the feminisation of teaching.

If the statistics weren't enough evidence of a problem, my recent experience as a consultant made it abundantly clear. I had been working for a number of years in support of the rural primary school where I started my career in 1968.

At the time I was a member of a staff of eighteen, eight of whom were male. During my sojourn in support of the same school between 2006 and 2017, the school which now has thirty full timers on staff had only one male teacher.

The janitor-groundsman was male, but that really didn't assist. The phenomenon of a staff of female teachers led by a male principal (the cliche we hear a great deal) was also absent, as the principal was female.

In any profession, a gender balance which has gone beyond say, 80/20 either way, is regarded as undesirable. This gender balance report was compiled from the standpoint of improving diversity in corporate structures.  Most contemporary writings on the subject adopt a point of view which discriminates between the raw numbers and the hierarchical structures as they apply to gender in the profession.  

The problem is complicated in that whilst a large majority of teachers are female, the hierarchical structures within the profession favour career paths for men because they don't have to manage the interruptions caused by childbirth and child rearing.

Does this mean that the problems encountered by the author of the essay above are insoluble? 

I hope not, as apart from creating a difficult path for aspiring teacher of either gender, they simply encourage a view of teaching as a profession lacking in clout and significance. There is some irony in the fact that teachers are roundly criticised in some (especially right wing) media for leading children astray in a political sense, whilst these same criticisms imply that the profession is not all that important.

Perhaps there is room for a campaign of affirmative action that attracts males to the profession, driven by the same energy used (for example) to attract women into the trades and STEM. There is ample evidence out there that boys need strong and non-violent male models who can successfully relate to both genders.

Given the current worthy emphasis on the message that "women can do anything", maybe we need another message that says that "men can do most things, including teaching".

Diversity, by definition, requires balance.

  

Shared Values?

 

Pic courtesy GovNews

Since the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, we've been hearing a great deal about our "shared values" when it comes to the USA.

The contrasting attitude to gun control is perhaps the most stark evidence of this. In this country you may own a gun, but generally people only do so if they are hobby shooters or live in rural environments. Gun ownership is not seen as a fundamental right, based on a constitutional amendment that was made two hundred and thirty years ago.

The real world outcome of this would suggest that Australian values on this issue are pragmatically superior, and it hasn't made any difference to freedom across the two countries. At least it didn't when I travelled to the USA a few years ago. If anything, we were trammelled with more petty restrictions over there than we are here, ironically enough, many of them stemmed from precautionary scenarios implemented in a fearful community with almost universal gun ownership.

We don't, for example, need control measures in schools such as single-access points, fencing, or internal door locks to enable teachers to lock shooters out at proven intervention points.  

The comparative firearm fatality rate is probably the best example of one result of this different set of values. 

Then there's the contrasting attitude towards health care. In Australia we have a system which provides access to health care which isn't directly related to wealth. Not so in the USA. More than two-thirds (73.4%) of Australians reported being satisfied with their healthcare, whilst only a slight majority of Americans (54.2%) said the same.

Apart from satisfaction rates, a comparison of some important statistics is even more revealing. Life expectancy in Australia is nearly four years longer than the USA. In addition, infant mortality per one thousand live births in Australia sits at 3.14, but it's 5.44 in the USA. It seems that the satisfaction rates are based on a realistic appreciation of the situation in each country.

The firearm laws and health systems in each country are based squarely on opposing values of individualism against egalitarianism.

Then there's the contrasting welfare systems. In contrast to the USA, we don't worship the rich and despise the poor. We have created a welfare system that shares the nation's wealth more equitably than the USA whilst still valuing entrepreneurship and innovation. A wide collection of Australian inventions provides ample evidence of that. 

Because our immigration system is skills-based, we don't need an endless supply of cheap immigrant labour and we pay wages comparatively higher that those across the Pacific.  As of the latest data the minimum wage in Australia is AU $20.33 per hour as against the US federal minimum wage of USA $7.25 per hour.

Travelling in the USA exposes the social divide that becomes evident whenever you walk into a supermarket or a subway. I am beginning to notice the same situation developing here. It's not a positive trend.

My time in Vietnam where we had intermittent contact with Americans made these differences in values stark, particularly when it came to race. I remember being cautioned a number of times by white Americans that socialising with African American GIs when we were on leave was not a good idea.

The irony in this was that the black GIs were far better company that their white counterparts, and their sense of humour resembled ours, which was probably why we gravitated towards them.

And that's another difference. Our laconic sense of humour is a reflection of the fact that we don't take ourselves all that seriously. There is no such thing as Australian exceptionalism.

And that's a very good thing. Shared values? I think not.....

One Unheralded Possibility

 

Image courtesy People's World

Yesterday's UK general election has had a range of consequences, the most obvious (and predictable) of which is  a change of government.

There has been, however, a largely unacknowledged outcome in the seven counties of the United Kingdom across the Irish Sea. The counties of Antrim, Armagh, Down, Fermanagh, Londonderry and Tyrone comprise the slice of Ireland that is part of the Union.

Back in 2022, after the shambles created by Brexit at the Irish border, the Democratic Unionists lost power in the Northern Ireland Assembly to Sinn Féin.

After the 2024 UK general election result, Sinn Féin's continued emergence as the party with the greatest number of seats will intensify debate around the region's future.

The complicated makeup of the governance of Northern Ireland makes it difficult to predict the constitutional future of the seven counties, but Brexit put a bomb under the old structures and split the Unionists. Sinn Féin seems disinclined to exploit the situation at the moment, and the attitude of the Irish Free State is unclear and malleable.

A poll conducted on unification in February 2020 indicated support south of the border, but not in the north.

Northern Ireland opinion

Republic of Ireland opinion

The architects of Brexit have broken some kind of record for creating unintended consequences.

If one of them is the unification of the emerald isle, it would be an ill wind after centuries of hate and violence.

Groundhog Day

 

Image courtesy awareness days

Right now, gentle reader, we're observing the onward march of Australian politics against a background of fear and loathing.

There are two prominent threats - climate change and an emerging China. The fear refers to climate change; the loathing to China and its system of government. 

Across the two issues we see the two major parties adopting largely opposing positions. It was ever so. In this country for the last twenty years or so, if one party takes a position, the other opposes it. 

You could say that this is how it is, how it should be, and how it always will be. Isn't democracy a contest of ideas? - I hear you say.

Perhaps there is another way of looking at it. If these two issues are about existential threats (and we are told they are) wouldn't it be a great idea if the two major parties formed a war cabinet to deal with them? History shows that this has been successful practice in the face of existential threat in the past.

In the case of energy policy, each party talks about a mix of energy sources, but with one party locked into total renewables, and the other using nuclear as a foil and a point of separation, the investors will be just as confused about the future as they have been for the last decade. Lack of investor confidence will delay any solution to the loss of energy capacity caused by the closure of the coal fired generators. 

A bear of little brain would understand that if our elected representatives got together and produced a joint statement, clarity would emerge, and we wouldn't be stuck on the merry-go-round that got us into the invidious situation that we're in now. If indeed the various lobbies (both fossil fuel and renewables) understood whatever the carve-up of energy sources provided them, the competition might end up in a draw, and we'd all be better off.

The fear of China has produced nothing of benefit except the AUKUS agreement, that is if you believe that we will ever see these boats actually in the water. Frankly I doubt it, and I'm in good company. The US Studies Centre describes the AUKUS agreement as a "hospital pass". Given the political volatility evident both in the USA and the UK, there are too many minefields to cross, if you'll excuse the military metaphor. 

More fundamentally, why do we need submarines capable of cruising waters off China and Taiwan, given we are an island, and could build many more modern and stealthy diesel boats that could prowl our littoral and defend our sea lanes for a fraction of the cost? There are those who believe the era of manned boats, nuclear or otherwise, is coming to an end. How many underwater drones could we acquire for the price of one nuclear sub?

More fundamentally, we could give a strong message about our sovereignty to both "friend" and "foe" alike if we separate our fleet from those of countries who seem intent on a policy of containment of China and redirect it towards an emphasis on littoral security. The last time the US attempted to contain an emerging Asian power did not end well. My use of quotes around friend and foe by the way, is more than accidental.

Our Westminster system does not hold the formation of political parties as absolutely necessary. They have grown out of a convention largely of convenience, which should ensure stability and consistency. The achilles heel of the party system is paralysis caused by two parties adopting contradictory positions on critical issues. That's what we're seeing now.

Perhaps the growth in numbers of independent candidates elected is evidence that the situation is self-correcting. I hope so.

What we're seeing now is dysfunctional. 

 

A Small Life Retrieved

A montage from that time.

One of the most satisfying aspects of a long and varied career as a teacher, is remembering the amazing people encountered along the way.

Let me take you back, gentle reader, to the late eighties, when I had the privilege of opening a new special school in North Queensland.

Because it was a new school, it was staffed with graduate (first year) teachers. What they had in common was youth, enthusiasm, and dedication to the students with disabilities enrolled.

These children were predominantly of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander heritage. Itinerant health clinics visiting their communities had identified them as being at risk, and over the years they had been  brought to live in a residential home run in those days by the North Queensland Crippled Children's Association (now Cootharinga). 

There they received excellent care, but they were separated from their homes and families. These days, they would probably be cared for on their own country, but that was not the practice thirty-five years ago. When the new school was opened in 1987, these children, for the first time in their lives, began to share an experience shared with children living at home with family, by attending a school located separately from where they lived. Previously the school was an annexe of the nursing home. In that situation the children ate, slept, and went to school on the one site. It was a pretty restricted environment, and once removed from their communities, they rarely returned. It was institutionalisation writ large. 

One of these children was a seven year-old from Boigu Island, living with just about every sensory disability possible. He was hearing impaired, had low vision, and microcephaly. Of greatest concern was that he was failing to thrive. There were a number of reasons for this, but a major issue was his capacity (or rather incapacity) to chew and swallow. It took literally hours to patiently feed him, much in the same fashion as a baby is fed, and finding the time to do this, both at the nursing home, and at school was a major challenge.

He had to be carefully positioned and supported and his special food presented to him one small spoonful at a time. The nursing staff would attempt this in the morning before he left for school on the bus, but time was severely limited. Much the same was true in the evening, given the staffing at the home, and he was steadily losing weight. The "failure to thrive" diagnosis would have meant a hospital admission, and tube feeding.

His teacher was determined that this would not happen, so she took the whole hour long lunch time at school to set him up and feed him. This meant she had no lunch break herself, and I'll admit turning a blind eye to her continuing to feed him past the end of the designated time, whilst a teacher aide looked after the rest of the class. Conventionally, the feeding task should have been allocated to a teacher aide, but he refused to take food from anyone else.

After a few weeks of this process, he ceased losing weight, but he was scarcely thriving. The teacher had a bright idea, based on what she had learned about him. He had been born and reared within the sound and smell of the sea, so she decided to take him to the beach to feed him. This was straightforward, as we had a bus at school, I had taught most of the teachers to drive it, and she booked it for a weekly trip to Rowes Bay, pretty close to the nursing home. She would put him on the sand, and feed him there. Unsurprisingly perhaps, he seemed keen to eat there, and it became an enjoyable experience, rather than an ordeal. The rest of her class enjoyed the beach, as well.

The teacher's theory was that this little boy's olfactory sense was critically significant to him, and the familiar smell of the sea helped him relax enough to chew and swallow. Based on his weight gain as this protocol continued, it seemed she was correct. Across a period of six months, his weight improved, he became more alert, and he began to respond more often and more clearly to other students and staff. By the time this teacher was transferred away, two years later, his life had been transformed.

Over the years, I've lost track of both teacher and child, although I did encounter the teacher at a principal's conference in 1997. She had done well, and was by that time, a junior principal. That cohort of beginning teachers were high achievers.

Most of them are now in senior positions.

Review - The Forever War

 

Today, gentle reader, I'm reviewing Nick Bryant's The Forever War.

This is the second of Bryant's books I've read, and like the first one (When America Stopped being Great), it's an enlightening read.

It's also a little depressing, given the possibility that Trump may be "elected".

I put "elected" in quotes, because it is completely obvious, that even if you haven't followed US history, or read Bryant's book, the USA is not a democracy.

Stalwarts who admire America have always been honest about this. It's only non-Americans who seemed surprised when they come to the understanding that the country is a constitutional republic, not a democracy.

Bryant is in a good position to write about the USA. He's a Brit, who lived in the USA for years until his children went to school, and were obliged to participate in active shooter drills.

At that point he made the decision to move his family to Australia.

His thesis has two significant themes. The first describes the thread of violence that runs through American history. He describes violence as having been regarded as an acceptable means of managing power and politics across American history. 

The fact that four sitting presidents have been killed: Abraham Lincoln (1865, by John Wilkes Booth), James a Garfield (1881, by Charles J. Guiteau), William McKinley (1901, by Leon Czolgosz), and John F. Kennedy (1963, by Lee Harvey Oswald) makes that thread obvious.

Violence in the form of a civil war, the obscene regularity of mass shootings, and incidents such as the Oklahoma bombing and the Waco siege are cited by Bryant. This first element of his thesis is convincing.

Then he moves to an argument, which put simply, maintains that the Civil War has never ended. He traces the history of the pro-slavery Democrats, Lyndon Johnson's reforms, and what is known as REDMAP (Republican gerrymandering) that seeks to suppress African American voters. 

He maintains that race has been cynically used by both Republicans and Democrats as a tool to seek and hold power. He writes that despite the cliches surrounding the Kennedy brothers, that Lyndon Johnson (like Guy Fawkes perhaps) was honest about his intentions when it came to race, wheras the Kennedys weren't. Or put another way, the Kennedy's, especially Jack, used the issue to display their political morality, but Johnson did the hard yards in putting the reforms into practice.   

Given that both Kennedys were assassinated before their work was finished, it's difficult to make judgments about their sincerity.

As noted above, I find his narrative depressing, as he contends that the US constitution is largely incompetent, and written in a way that reflects the mores of the age. Those mores reflected a real fear of democracy, driven perhaps by the French Revolution.

He uses the events of January 6th 2021 to frame this narrative, and argues that Trump's coup went within a hair's breadth of succeeding.

In other words the American Republic is less a noble experiment than it is a reactionary exercise.

Time will tell, but unfortunately for Australians, the actions and fortunes of the USA influence life in this country. I learned that in 1970 in Vietnam.

It's beautifully written, carefully researched, and suffused with wit and irony.

It's a must-read.

  

Getting Square

Image courtesy Reddit

Mark Twain is supposed to have said that history doesn't repeat, but it rhymes. 

If this is the case, (and I agree with Twain), it's interesting to apply the aphorism to the Gaza conflict.

Back in 2001, terrorists killed 3000 plus Americans by flying hijacked airliners into buildings in New York and Washington. Two years later, the invasion of Iraq by the Coalition of the Willing led to a protracted armed conflict that Lasted to 2011, and was followed by the rise of Islamic state.

It took until 2017 for the Islamic State (in the form of ISIL) to be defeated.

Estimates of civilian casualties in Iraq between 2001 and 2017 range from 600000 to 1 million. 

The war hurt Bush's domestic popularity after an initial surge and also was responsible for Tony Blair's eventual resignation from politics. 

It has also been interpreted as weakening the West's high moral ground when it was revealed that no weapons of mass destruction were present in Iraq. What has become perfectly obvious twenty years on, is that the invasion was really an act of revenge for  the 9/11 attacks.

Remember the "mission accomplished" banner?

Revenge was exactly what the terrorists sought.  

From that point of view, their act of terror was successful. They controlled the behaviour of the west, and set the agenda.

Now we see terrorists attack Israelis on October 7th 2023, and the Israeli response (or perhaps, more accurately, their reaction).  

The Israelis have killed tens of thousands of Gazans, and are saying that at least seven more months of conflict remain. 

There is a striking resemblance between the US reaction to 9/11, and Israel's reaction to October 7th 2023. In both cases, this reaction passed the agenda to the terrorists.

The Israelis have announced that their goal is to eliminate Hamas. To believe that they can be successful in this is to assume that Hamas has no support in Gaza. This is simply not the case.

A survey conducted in Palestine in April this year found that around 70% of respondents support the terrorist acts on October 7th. 

This outcome is hardly surprising. If your home has been destroyed or your family members killed, it is likely you'll support any action taken against those responsible. 

That is, after all, what can be called "human nature", just as taking vengeance is "human nature".  When I was growing up, it was called "getting square". We knew exactly what that meant. 

So forgetting about any moral basis for the current Israeli strategy, it is most likely destined for failure.

Reminds me of the war in Vietnam. History rhymes.... 

In Praise of Podiatry

 

Pic courtesy West Ryde podiatry

There is an amazing variety of medical specialities, and podiatry is just one of them, although until last week, I had never in my 77 years, seen a podiatrist.

That was until I broke a toe, as a result of foolishly forgetting that I was now in my seventh decade, and indulging in a social volleyball match. This had a bad outcome. The company was good (mostly service veterans), but the physical consequences were not.

I finished up with a very painful left foot, which combined with a neuroma (Google it) needed attention. It wasn't healing, and I was becoming tired of limping about, so my GP referred me to a surgeon, who decided to try podiatry.

I was referred to a very senior podiatrist, almost as old as I am, and he worked wonders. He prescribed an orthotic insert, which immediately improved my gait, and eliminated the other complications of a disordered gait. I'd seen plenty of this during my career teaching kids with physical impairments.

He also discovered my painfully ingrown toenails, which I've put up with since infantry service in 1969/70. Ten minutes of minor surgery has made an amazing difference. It's great to be able to walk without a pain (which I became so used for over fifty years) that its absence is a revelation.

Podiatry forever!