What Goes Round.....

Image from Queensland Government Archives

Between 1863 and 1904 about 60,000 Pacific islanders were transported to the then colony of Queensland, where they were put to work creating sugar plantations. The Islanders were generally coerced to board the traders' ships, and were often paid in trinkets for their labour, because, as one prominent blackbirder was reported as saying - "These people are savages and have no understanding of the value of money".

The mortality rate for these Islanders was about 30%, not dissimilar for African slaves to the Americas. You can read the history and make up your own mind as to whether these men were conscripted labourers or slaves.

By the 1870s, "recruiting" of South Sea Islanders had become an established industry with labour vessels from across eastern Australia obtaining Kanakas (the term used for South Sea Islanders, a term now considered offensive) for both the Queensland and Fiji markets. many of these people came from the Solomons.

Legislation was passed to end the South Sea Islander labour trade in 1890 but it was not effectively enforced. Eventually, the Pacific Island Labourers Act 1901 (part of a larger White Australia Policy), made it illegal to import South Sea Islanders During the period when Blackbirding persisted, thousands of these workers died, either on the voyages to Queensland, or after arrival, often as a consequence of diseases and the conditions.

As a child growing up in North Queensland in the fifties, I went to school with the descendants of these people, some of whom remained after the trade was outlawed, and made lives for themselves in the areas where sugar was grown. They were usually pretty good footballers. Mal Meninga was one notable example.

A memorial has been built at Corser Street, Polson Cemetery, Point Vernon, in Hervey Bay, to commemorate this dark history.

It's hardly remarkable, in the light of this history, that the people of the Solomons (or at least their government) aren't head over heels in love with Australia. Perhaps this history is one of many factors which conspired to encourage the Solomons to sign a security agreement with China.

Somehow, in the middle of the controversy and outrage, these events have been completely forgotten by most Australians.

I very much doubt the Solomon Islanders (and many other descendants of the Islanders who were indentured from other parts of the Pacific) have forgotten them.

Toxic Disinformation

 

Pic courtesy The Guardian

The other day, gentle reader, I worked out that I have participated (or attempted to participate) in twenty federal elections since 1969.

The first one in 1969 was notable in that whilst at age 21 I was old enough to vote in that election I never did, as I was refused leave from Canungra Jungle Training Centre to do so. I was threatened with a charge of being AWOL if I left the base to vote.

This was particularly frustrating as I was training to fight (in peacetime) in South Vietnam as a conscript, and felt I was entitled to have a say in my immediate future. Labor policy at the time was to abolish conscription. I did end up in Vietnam, and had to wait until 1972 to see that policy implemented.

Through all those elections, I have never observed such an avalanche of disinformation about the forthcoming ballot that I'm observing now, most of it emanating from the lunatic fringe of social media, which has oozed across the Pacific.

It has its origin in Donald Trump's big lie, and has been promoted by every disaffected group that coalesced during the pandemic and government attempts, through the health system, to manage it.

The Australian Electoral Commission has found it necessary to develop a web page specifying many of those slabs of disinformation and fact checking them.

For example, these are some of the dark whispers doing the rounds -

There will be two federal elections in 2022 including the People's non-corporate commonwealth election.

And

Dominion voting machines will be used and will be rigged to favour one of the major political parties.

And

Postal voting is not secure and people should deregister.

The ludicrous nature of this disinformation should make it completely apparent to anyone with any knowledge of this country's electoral system that it is toxic nonsense, but there are those who actually believe it.

This Youtube video explains pretty clearly (albeit with a tongue-in cheek approach) why our system is the best in the world.

Democracy is an exercise in participation. In this country it is encouraged. 

That's important. I remember very well what happened in 1969.

   

Time for an Apology

 

Pic Courtesy Adelaide Now*

The following letter, gentle reader, has been emailed to all candidates in my federal electorate.

It will be interesting to see what responses I get, if any.

I'll keep you posted.

*This picture, from the AWM archive, was used to illustrate an article by Grahame Cornes, a member of my rifle platoon, in Adelaide Now on Dec 4th 2020.

Note - The links don't work in the letter.

Find them here.

Update 15.04.22 - Genevieve Allpass, Suzie Holt and Garth Hamilton (who says he will take it up with the minister) have responded. If Hamilton is fair dinkum, he'd be taking it up with the PM. After all, the PM is one of the two people (the other is the Leader of the Opposition) who should be making the apology.

Kilcullen on Ukraine and Other Things

 

Pic courtesy Wikipedia

Dr David Kilcullen is a commentator for whom I hold a great deal of respect, if for no other reason that he called the invasion of Iraq "f**king stupid".

History, of course, proved him correct.

I'll depart from the usual convention that I follow on this blog, gentle reader, and simply link you to a recent  podcast of a talk that Kilcullen had with Peter Jennings of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, rather than sharing my own (comparatively uninformed) opinion.

It's well worth a listen. 

It's Broke

Pic courtesy Caterina Sullivan 

There's an old saying, gentle reader, which goes something like this - "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". When it comes to the state of Australian politics, I believe it is indeed "broke". 

You don't have to look very far to understand the level of this dysfunction. 

Where do I start? 

Young people can't buy homes, they are exploited by their employers because of the power imbalance created by the fading union movement, and even when employed, their jobs are often insecure and they haven't seem a wage rise in their living memories. 

At the other end of the age spectrum, our elderly are languishing in "Nursing" homes (without nurses), being fed baked beans, and dying from Covid because their paid carers have to work across a number of institutions to make ends meet whilst transmitting the virus from one site to another like pollinating bees. 

At the same time, our political class, irrespective of party affiliation, is rife with corrupt practice, blatant cronyism, and bereft of any semblance of much needed reform. 

Remember "reform"? 

That was stuff that happened when we had leaders like Hawke and Keating. 

Perhaps this situation is the culmination of a slowly developing distortion of our system of government, which was not based on party affiliations, and the power of those mechanisms, but on the notion of a local representative caring for the needs of his/her constituents. The membership of these parties, although it is improving, is still not reflective of the communities they claim to represent, no matter whether gender, race, sexuality or identity is considered. 

 Even the selection of these candidates, as we have seen recently, is a top-down process, usually controlled by the party apparatchiks.  

It's not incorrect to claim that the interests of the parties, through the power they wield, is always placed ahead of the interests of the constituents. When you think about it, this is an inevitable trend, if only to ensure the survival in power of whatever party we're considering. 

A more recent phenomenon, that of oligarchs taking advantage of this dysfunction to coerce voters through their extravagant spending in the media by the fulmination of lies and misinformation, is even more sinister. 

We have only to look across the Pacific to understand the consequences. 

So it is "broke". 

 How do we fix it? 

 Obviously, the quality and motives of the candidates is vital. 

We need the best and the bravest. 

They won't be found using branch-stacking, factional warfare and grooming political advisers as they rise through the ranks of the party. 

 Often they self-identify. Some of our best independent politicians have emerged simply as a result of their authenticity and courage. Ted Mack and Peter Andren are examples. 

 So I'll be looking at the quality of the candidates in my electorate when the PM visits Yarralumla, which could happen as soon as today. 

To be honest, none of them are actually inspiring

History Doesn't Repeat - But it Rhymes

We're downsizing and moving house, gentle reader, and during the process I unearthed the pictured front page of the Toowoomba Chronicle of Wednesday, March 19th, 2003. It was, in a "special war edition", reporting Bush's ultimatum for Saddam Hussein to leave Iraq prior to invasion by the Coalition of the Willing. My youngest daughter had been given a school assignment to complete on the report, and she had kept it.

It got me thinking.

Almost nineteen years to the day later, another military invasion has taken place, this time the Russian Federation has embarked on a "special military operation" in the Ukraine. 

Both operations were sold to the population of their respective countries as exercises in liberating an oppressed population, and the militaries involved used overwhelming force. Remember "shock and awe"?

Operation Iraqi Freedom turned out to be probably the greatest strategic blunder made by western governments this century, and its aftermath let to the development of ISIS, years of suffering for millions of Iraqis, and an enormous cost in blood and treasure paid by the countries involved. 

Australia sent troops, an action which I protested by refusing my Anniversary of National Service medal at the public presentation timed to garner support for Howard's decision. For us, it wasn't without a cost. Two Australian service personnel died in the conflict between July 16th 2003 and July 31st 2009.  

The same relatively small price is not being paid by the unfortunate Russian soldiers involved in the current debacle. They seem genuinely bewildered by the reception they're getting from the Ukrainian people. The same hostile reception wasn't evident in Iraq initially, but by 2014 it was present in spades. Funny that, the idea that a population objects to their national sovereignty being removed by a foreign military presence. The Vietnamese, as I recall, had a similar reaction over fifty years ago.

So what do we learn from this sad historical symmetry?

One universal truth is that the military industrial complex, whether it is the product of a constitutional republic like the USA, or an autocracy like the Russian Federation, thrives on warfare, and its default position is always kinetic.

It also creates enormous suffering for the innocent. As this is written, the quantum of displaced Ukrainians approaches 3.6 million. The invasion and destabilisation of Iraq resulted in 9.2 million refugees.  

As an aside, we've just heard that 450 asylum seekers held in detention are being released to move to New Zealand in a deal struck nine years ago. Apparently focus groups are telling the Coalition that the fear and loathing they exploited to use boat people as a lever to hold on to power has receded. Boat people are no longer political collateral, and the threat of the urban Independents looms large in some of the blue ribbon Liberal seats. 

The historical rhyme emerging here is the willingness of the Coalition to use individuals as political currency with no reference to Christian ethics. This from a Prime Minister who makes frequent reference to God.

In 1965-72 the collateral were conscripts. In 2001 - 2022 they are refugees. History rhymes....

     

The Importance of Sequence

Image courtesy Susan Carlson.com

 Fifty-two years ago, gentle reader, I first discovered the importance of sequence.

The incident occurred when I had returned from a TAOR1 patrol and I reversed the weapon clearing sequence. I followed that well-drilled sequence to the letter, except that I cocked the weapon (my trusty SLR2) before removing the magazine, instead of vice versa.

It was fortunate that I adhered to another important part of the sequence (pointing the weapon skywards) before pulling the trigger, and ended up causing no more damage than one neat (and mostly invisible) hole in each layer of my tent. 

The digger sharing the tent never understood why it would leak at the height of the monsoon. The holes were over his stretcher. I told him about it forty years later when I met him at Toowoomba when he came to collect his sick grandson from my school.

I got away with it without a charge of UD3 because I was by myself, there were no visual witnesses (although everybody heard it), and I joined the small group unsuccessfully looking for the origin of the shot. I'd also pocketed the spent round.

Sequence is also important when moving house, as we are at the moment. Tradies (painters and floorers) have to be engaged in the correct order, and when two buildings are involved, as they are for us, it becomes complicated.

Even relatively small issues, such as moving boxes and furniture from one house to the other, require very very careful sequencing.

You don't want to be double handling furniture and (heavy) boxes of books when you're seventy-four. Maybe doing the bulk of the work by hiring a ute wasn't such a good idea.

I'll let you know when it's all done. My back will no doubt let me know first..... 

1. Task Force Area of Responsibility

2. Self-Loading Rifle (L1A1 Australian manufactured version of the Belgian designed FAL)

3. Unauthorised Discharge - one of the most common A4s (military charges).

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