tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/fair-go-12876/articlesFair go – The Conversation2024-02-08T19:17:44Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2221542024-02-08T19:17:44Z2024-02-08T19:17:44ZAustralians love to talk about a ‘fair go’. Here’s what it meant before we became a nation<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573697/original/file-20240206-24-mn43my.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C8%2C989%2C785&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-148533449/view">National Library of Australia</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>“Fair go” is an expression we hear a lot in Australia. Activists use it to demand social justice, companies use it to promise customers a good deal, and politicians invoke it to persuade us that they understand the plight of ordinary people. </p>
<p>Most political commentators and academics who write about the fair go associate the phrase with Australia’s famed <a href="https://www.dca.org.au/news/opinion-pieces/land-of-the-fair-go">egalitarian traditions</a>, including equality of economic opportunity, universal political rights and the provision of a safety net via minimum wages and welfare programs. </p>
<p>Yet the fair go expression is sometimes used in ways that are distinctly inegalitarian. Former prime minister Scott Morrison repeatedly declared his belief in “a fair go for those who have a go”, suggesting the concept only applies to hardworking, “deserving” Australians. Morrison’s comments <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/apr/17/the-meaning-of-morrisons-mantra-about-getting-a-fair-go-is-clear-its-conditional">drew the ire</a> of critics who argued he was subverting the original egalitarian meaning of the fair go phrase, along with the Australian culture of benevolence to the needy. </p>
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<p>So who is right about what a fair go means to Australians? Are some uses more faithful to our “fair go traditions” than others? </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/in-australia-land-of-the-fair-go-not-everyone-gets-an-equal-slice-of-the-pie-70480">In Australia, land of the 'fair go', not everyone gets an equal slice of the pie</a>
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<h2>Origins in the sports pages</h2>
<p>In our <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10361146.2023.2170211">research project</a>, we went back to the earliest recorded mentions of the fair go phrase in colonial-era newspapers to understand the original uses and meanings of this phrase, focusing on the period between 1860 and 1901. </p>
<p>We found the most common uses of the fair go expression did not refer to equality, benevolence and social justice. Instead, the phrase was mainly used to describe spirited efforts in competitive sports such as horse racing, boxing and sprinting. We found this in an <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/227936298">article</a> published in New South Wales in 1889:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>They were stripped of shoes and everything and had a fair go with the hurdles out about 18 yards.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In sport, a fair go could also mean trying your hardest, as opposed to “pulling” a race or “throwing” a match, such as in <a href="http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article120653023">this piece</a> from 1892: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>With a dishonest jockey aboard […] an owner never knows whether he is to get ‘a fair go’ or not.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A fair go could also refer to a thrilling, close match that entertained spectators, or a lucky win for gamblers, as in the expression “having a fair go for their money”. The fair go phrase was also used in politics in the context of closely
fought elections, such as in <a href="http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article155981003">Western Australia in 1900</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>[…] he can depend on a fair go for it, for it’s a dead certainty he won’t gain the seat unopposed.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>“Fair go” could also refer to violent power struggles. In an <a href="http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article3524500">1891 telegram</a> sent during the Shearers Strike in Queensland, a union leader advocated achieving a fair go by force: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>[…] if a little more devil was put into our actions the better it would be for us in the end. We have tried passive resistance and it appears to have failed. Let us try the other now, and have a fair go.</p>
</blockquote>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573908/original/file-20240206-28-4temqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white photo of a group of men standing in a bush campsite." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573908/original/file-20240206-28-4temqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573908/original/file-20240206-28-4temqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573908/original/file-20240206-28-4temqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573908/original/file-20240206-28-4temqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573908/original/file-20240206-28-4temqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573908/original/file-20240206-28-4temqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573908/original/file-20240206-28-4temqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The term ‘fair go’ was used during the Queensland Shearer’s Strike in 1891.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://collections.slq.qld.gov.au/viewer/IE316889">State Library of Queensland</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The expression was sometimes used to refer to fistfights in politics and beyond, such as <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/216692383">this piece</a> in 1897: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Fights between members of Parliament or city or municipal councillors are not of rare occurrence in Australia, but a fair “go” between lawyers with the “bare bones” is not often chronicled.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It was even used to describe violence in wartime, such as when an Australian soldier in the Boer war <a href="http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-page12085571">expressed a hope</a> to a reporter that the enemy would “let him have a fair go […] with the bayonet”. </p>
<h2>Different contexts, different meanings</h2>
<p>While the dominant meanings of the fair go in the 19th century referred to competition and power struggles, we also found uses that resonate more with egalitarianism, social justice and procedural rights. In an 1891 article about politics, a fair go could mean the right to speak:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>You are a liar and the father of a liar. Why don’t you let me speak? This is my maiden speech and you might let me have a fair go.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The fair go phrase was also used to <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/216907224">advocate for</a> the principle of one person, one vote, as well as <a href="https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-page7513252">ranked voting</a>. </p>
<p>In sport, a fair go was said to require <a href="https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article19024103">impartial umpires</a> who didn’t favour one side over the other. In the legal system, a fair go required the right to <a href="https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article114314382">due process</a>, such as the provision of warrants for arrests and adequate defence in the courtroom. </p>
<p>While these ideas resonate with contemporary concerns about equal rights, non-discrimination, and proper process in government, they represented the minority of uses of the fair go phrase in the 19th century. Uses of “fair go” to refer to benevolence to the poor and the need for a safety net were virtually absent in the period we studied. </p>
<p>These findings highlight that the fair go originally meant different things to different people, and in different contexts. In our <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-8500.12624">recent research</a>, we show that 19th-century uses of the fair go can be organised into six distinct meanings. These reflect the fact that the words “fair” and “go” have multiple meanings associated with both “justice” and “strength”.</p>
<p><iframe id="84J3U" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/84J3U/1/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>These different interpretations are alive and well today, and can be used to critically <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-8500.12624">assess public policies</a> on contentious issues such as housing affordability and immigration. </p>
<p>Who is right about the true historical and contemporary meaning of the fair go? Our research shows no political ideology or party has a monopoly on the fair go. How we talk about the fair go reveals the ideas that shaped us as a nation, and the values that influence our political debates.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222154/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cosmo Howard receives funding from the Australian Research Council. This article was funded under the ARC Discovery Project: DP220101911 – Understanding the Antipodean 'Fair Go'.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Pandanus Petter receives funding from the Australian Research Council. This article was funded under ARC Discovery Project: DP220101911 – Understanding the Antipodean 'Fair Go'.</span></em></p>Politicians often wheel out the phrase, but what does it really mean? We examined newspaper articles from before Federation to track how it was used.Cosmo Howard, Associate Professor School of Government and International Relations, Griffith UniversityPandanus Petter, Research Fellow Centre for Governance and Public Policy, Griffith UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1871102022-07-21T20:23:10Z2022-07-21T20:23:10ZFriday essay: 30 years after Mabo, what do Australia’s battler stories – and their evasions – say about who we are?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/475304/original/file-20220721-18-m6v206.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C5%2C3988%2C1988&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> </figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/australian-politics-explainer-the-mabo-decision-and-native-title-74147">Mabo decision</a> in 1992
was a turning point for Australia. It finally overturned the dishonest doctrine of <em>terra nullius</em> and recognised Indigenous land rights. It was a moment of hope, accompanied by a productive tension.</p>
<p>Mabo followed a decade in which awareness of the need to address Indigenous dispossession had grown. In the preceding years, sectors of the (white) settler population had begun to distance themselves from a triumphalist, uncritical view of the past. They had finally stopped looking away.</p>
<p>They had stopped looking away from shocking dispossession, disregard, and dismissal of the nation’s First Peoples. From the pretences of equality, a <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-australia-land-of-the-fair-go-not-everyone-gets-an-equal-slice-of-the-pie-70480">fair go</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/mateship-might-sound-blokey-but-our-research-shows-women-value-it-more-highly-than-men-169154">mateship</a>. From the flattening of intersections of identity such as <a href="https://theconversation.com/should-the-census-ask-about-race-its-not-a-simple-question-and-may-reinforce-racial-thinking-185295">race</a>, cultural backgrounds; and sexualities other than heteronormative. </p>
<p>An important cultural conflict, out in the open, seemed imminent. It would have been healthy.</p>
<p>Paul Keating broached some of that necessary conversation in the December 1992 <a href="https://antar.org.au/sites/default/files/paul_keating_speech_transcript.pdf">Redfern Park Speech</a>. Although that speech has been over-eulogised since, it was the first time that a prime minister used the pronoun “we”, naming settler Australians as the ones who needed to shift their attitudes and behaviour and take responsibility.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LAFaHP6w6tE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Paul Keating’s Redfern Park Speech was the first time a prime minister used “we”, recognising responsibility for invasion.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>‘Comfortable and relaxed’ evasion</h2>
<p>But the Mabo judgement also sparked a backlash which in 1996 contributed to the election of a new prime minister. John Howard immediately set about <a href="https://pmtranscripts.pmc.gov.au/release/transcript-10217">urging Australians</a> to feel “comfortable and relaxed” about the past. Howard shifted the “We” of Keating to “Us” (and “Them”). </p>
<p>Since then, Howard’s masterful weaponisation of “us and them” as a cornerstone of national identity has influenced debates in literary and artistic circles. He transitioned the Australian psyche from Menzies’ <a href="http://www.liberals.net/theforgottenpeople.htm">forgotten people</a> to Howard’s <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/howards-battlers-a-broad-church-20040519-gdxvk8.html">battlers</a> – who eventually became the Morrison <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_quiet_Australians">quiet Australians</a> of the past four years. </p>
<p>Conservative governments have held office for the lion’s share of the 30 years since 1992. Their politicians have historically pitted those who are interested in advancing conversations (and genuine dialogues) around class, racial, and gendered equity against the “ordinary” Australian – usually still imagined as a white settler. </p>
<p>The robust public discussions around intersectionality, equity and diversity – along with social justice agendas and displays of ethnic identity and pride – that were coming to be considered healthy in a pre-Howard era were repositioned as a divisive “them” discourse. They still are.</p>
<p>I want to unwind the post-Mabo climate, and the continuing evasion legacy of the Howard years in settler writing, through examining some settler texts (the storytelling emerging from settler colonialism) spanning the late 1990s to where we are today, in 2022. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/live-streamed-event-top-thinkers-explore-the-life-and-legacy-of-eddie-mabo-186543">Live-streamed event: Top thinkers explore the life and legacy of Eddie Mabo</a>
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<h2>The Castle, Mabo and Howard’s ‘Us-Australians’</h2>
<p>In 1997, a film hit Australian cinemas that nailed the Howard ethos and represented the “Us-Australians”. It set the blueprint for the largely flatliner, non-intersectional, evasive textual conversation to follow. The film was <a href="https://theconversation.com/straight-to-the-pool-room-a-love-letter-to-the-castle-on-its-25th-anniversary-176361">The Castle</a>. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/475083/original/file-20220720-26-kemjmq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="a man stands under a plane, hands on hips, in front of a house" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/475083/original/file-20220720-26-kemjmq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/475083/original/file-20220720-26-kemjmq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475083/original/file-20220720-26-kemjmq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475083/original/file-20220720-26-kemjmq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475083/original/file-20220720-26-kemjmq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1161&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475083/original/file-20220720-26-kemjmq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1161&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475083/original/file-20220720-26-kemjmq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1161&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The original 1997 film poster for The Castle.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">IMDB</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Castle is the story of the Kerrigan family – portrayed as an ordinary, clean-living, working-class family in western Melbourne. The family live in a ramshackle home they have built themselves, just a few metres from Melbourne Airport in Tullamarine. </p>
<p>When their family home is condemned by a building inspector and plans are revealed, showing that the property is to become part of a government-planned expansion of airspace, the family enter a legal battle to save their family home. The plot of the film revolves around this battle.</p>
<p>25 years on, the timing of this film and its post-Mabo message are worth unwinding.</p>
<p>The film’s narrative verifies gender binaries, heteronormativity, larrikinism, healthy scepticism, surface egalitarianism and manual-hands-on type jobs. It verifies minimal engagement with national/current affairs, mateship, and the great Aussie illusion of luck and chance. It reflects minimum diversity always matched with jibes at difference, masked as humour (e.g. “the wogs next-door”). And it valorises an attachment to the Australian dream of private property, represented through a small corner of Australia – the suburban backyard.</p>
<p>Comic as The Castle may be, its overt ideology can be interpreted critically as enacting a self-reflexivity on the part of the viewer: a <em>how-would-you-feel-if-you-were-the-Kerrigan-family</em> moment. It undermines the disengagement from politics, national and current affairs that was being encouraged from late 1990s Australia, which is still persistent in popular settler texts. But it also enacts a disengagement with “other Australians who don’t have any property to start with”. It’s a story for the propertied only.</p>
<p>Daryl Kerrigan makes a brief and fleeting reference to “knowing how the Aborigines feel”, in having land stolen. It’s poised as a statement spoken to the nation for brief consideration, as if Daryl is saying it for everyone. His wife’s dismissal with “have you been drinking?” and Daryl’s short rejoinder, “people have got to stop stealing other people’s land in this country”, are striking for the way the sentence is allowed to hang – inviting the rest of the “Us-Australians” to whom John Howard was talking to finish the statement. Moreover, the audience can.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qFr2Gh6yIyQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Daryl Kerrigan’s reference to ‘knowing how the Aborigines feel’ in having their land stolen is poised as if for brief consideration.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I think it is no accident that the moment is poised and framed this way: to allow the viewer time for a quick mental calculation between their “little piece of Australia” and the vast tracts of Australian First Nations land that <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTtlHZxigOY">Howard’s government positioned</a> as “under threat from Native Title” when he used a pendulum to describe Australia’s swing towards recognition of First Nations sovereignty (and the need to address it through the 1996 <a href="https://pmtranscripts.pmc.gov.au/sites/default/files/original/00010323.pdf">Wik Ten-Point Plan</a>).</p>
<p>What doesn’t Daryl Kerrigan say? Where does he not go? Which people and whose land? Which land has got to stop getting stolen? And when it’s got to stop? And what of the intersections of identity, and the entanglements between First Nations peoples, settlers, and many different diasporas to Australia since – left unexplored in this statement, in this text – who have been largely evaded in Australian mainstream literature since?</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/GTtlHZxigOY?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">John Howard claimed on the 7.30 Report, in 1997, that 78% of Australia’s landmass was under threat from Native Title claims.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Also – how polite is the text? It’s the ultra-genteel working-class backbone of Australia on display. Howard ushered in, and his legacy left, an era of the dangerous politics of settler civility – the language of euphemism and evasion.</p>
<p>There’s nothing about the Kerrigan family that threatens the status quo of the “Australian Dream” and the mythscape of a united nation. </p>
<p>The Kerrigans’ challenge to the system is positioned as a healthy insurgence – the Kerrigans’ quarter acre is inconsequential to the state. Their win is positioned as a concession to a good family by a benevolent system. The film glorifies white crime as Aussie <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-larrikin-lives-on-as-a-conservative-politician-168464">larrikinism</a> – there’s a son in jail, a scene with a firearm, a scene where a truck is used to tear down someone’s front gate. </p>
<p>The film upholds a landmark case, for which and whose land (or property) really is sacred in post-Mabo Australia – and it’s not First Nations land. At a time when right-wing politicians and newspapers were arguing against native title, The Castle sold a story to a nervous nation that was quite reassuring.</p>
<p>Think about the casting. How would these roles fly with a family that’s anything other than white? What sort of appeal would the film have had (and still have) if the family at the centre, fighting for their piece of land, were Aboriginal? Or Lebanese? </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/475078/original/file-20220720-26-cklqel.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/475078/original/file-20220720-26-cklqel.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/475078/original/file-20220720-26-cklqel.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=296&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475078/original/file-20220720-26-cklqel.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=296&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475078/original/file-20220720-26-cklqel.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=296&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475078/original/file-20220720-26-cklqel.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475078/original/file-20220720-26-cklqel.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475078/original/file-20220720-26-cklqel.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">How would the characters of The Castle – and their actions – play with a cast that wasn’t white?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">IMDB</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Can you imagine the different reaction if a First Nations protagonist or a protagonist of Islamic heritage had pulled down the gates to someone else’s property in a tow-truck, or pulled a gun on someone? Would it be funny then? </p>
<p>Imagine a First Nations family being as relaxed as the Kerrigans are about their son – or anyone – being incarcerated. An audit of secondary social science and humanities curricula that I undertook in 2020 revealed that The Castle is the most taught text in units relating to identity and culture in Australian high schools. This film is a canonised text for Australian settler identity.</p>
<p>At the end of the Howard era, Australia’s Indigenous population was in a ruinous state. Australia’s extraordinary natural environment was threatened on numerous fronts, and its people were beginning to ask where the wealth had gone. Public schools and public health were in crisis, social welfare was decimated, housing was unaffordable for many, and wages and conditions were being cut under Howard’s industrial reforms.</p>
<p>At the height of the 2001 election, when 400 refugees were rescued from a sinking boat and left stranded in the tropical heat on the deck of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/australian-politics-explainer-the-mv-tampa-and-the-transformation-of-asylum-seeker-policy-74078">Tampa</a>, Howard publicly refused permission to land the refugees in Australia. His immigration and defence ministers claimed that refugees had thrown their children overboard, leading Howard to <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/opinion/a-bit-of-empathy-wouldnt-go-amiss-20040817-gdjkbs.html">declare</a>: “I don’t want people like that in Australia.” Only after the election was it proven that the government had known the claim was false. </p>
<p>Truth became an inconvenient detail from here on. We entered an era of <a href="https://theconversation.com/post-truth-politics-and-why-the-antidote-isnt-simply-fact-checking-and-truth-87364">post-truth</a>. The nation’s already murky relationship with its hidden truths – its <a href="https://theconversation.com/of-course-australia-was-invaded-massacres-happened-here-less-than-90-years-ago-55377">settlement by invasion</a>, massacre and cultural genocide, and the continued <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-australia-wont-recognise-indigenous-customary-law-60370">legal fiction of terra nullius</a> – were relegated to the spectre of irresolution that hangs over of the nation.</p>
<p>At the heart of the legacy of Howard’s 11-year era is an unease, and (dis) ease – something deeper that Australians would perhaps rather not admit. For a decade, Howard’s power had resided in his ability to speak directly and powerfully to the great negativity at the core of the Australian soul. Its timidity, its conformity, its fear of other people and new ideas. Its colonial desire to ape rather than lead – and its shame (which sometimes seems close to a terror) of the uniqueness of its land and people. </p>
<p>The country was frightened: unready for the great changes it must make, and ill-fitted for the robust debates it must have.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/post-truth-politics-and-why-the-antidote-isnt-simply-fact-checking-and-truth-87364">Post-truth politics and why the antidote isn't simply 'fact-checking' and truth</a>
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</p>
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<h2>Alexis Wright’s overtly political, ‘distinctly First Nations’ debut novel</h2>
<p>Released in 1997, the same year as The Castle, paralleling the narrative of “Us”, was <a href="https://www.uqp.com.au/books/plains-of-promise">Plains of Promise</a>, the debut novel by Waanyi writer <a href="https://theconversation.com/alexis-wright-wins-2018-stella-prize-for-tracker-an-epic-feat-of-aboriginal-storytelling-94906">Alexis Wright</a>. </p>
<p>Alexis’s work arrived with much less fanfare – it was neither subtle nor polite, amid its intricate plot and beautifully crafted words in the language of the coloniser. Plains of Promise spoke to the “Them” – those “other Australians” outside of the “Us” that Howard claimed to be governing for. </p>
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<p>Plains of Promise is a story of mothers and daughters who endure and survive a series of colonial interventions. A story of the intergenerational trauma of separation, dispossession from land, and repeated sexual assaults of Aboriginal women at the hands of white men and black men who have internalised the worst of settler behaviours. The novel ends with a powerful allegory that alludes to a precarious future for First Nations peoples under conservative governments. </p>
<p>Wright’s narrative is a brutal parody of settler texts like The Castle, and the Howard-Australian mythscape that evoked Russell Ward’s <a href="https://insidestory.org.au/the-legend-turns-fifty/">Australian Legend</a> of egalitarianism, mateship, larrikinism, anti-intellectualism, and healthy, non-threatening anti-authoritarianism. </p>
<p>Plains of Promise posits an overtly political, distinctly First Nations, and determinedly fictional and literary account of Indigenous peoples’ experiences in Australia. It’s a text that writes at the <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-does-intersectionality-mean-104937">intersectionality</a> of racism, sexism, classism, ableism, chauvinism; and all that hover in the spectre of irresolution and dis-ease above the nation – and the bearing that these intersections and entanglements have on the First Nations, Waanyi protagonists of the novel. </p>
<p>With its particular focus on the way the intersections of sexism, classism, ableism, and racism impact the lives and futures of Waanyi women, Plains of Promise is the total antithesis of: <em>A man’s home is his castle!</em> Alexis achieves this through making First Nations identities visible and complex, and by highlighting ongoing colonial dispossession and struggles for land rights and recognition.</p>
<p>We are now living under the spectre of post-Howard euphemisms that locate truth as divisive. First Nations people are labelled as rude or confrontational if we point out cultural chauvinism in settler language or call out skin privilege or white fragility. Under Howard and his “Us-Australians”, charges of “identity politics” were levelled against “Them-Australians” – and identity politics were positioned as both anti-Australian and anti-art. This remains the case.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/read-listen-understand-why-non-indigenous-australians-should-read-first-nations-writing-78925">Read, listen, understand: why non-Indigenous Australians should read First Nations writing</a>
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</em>
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<hr>
<h2>All writing is identity politics</h2>
<p>Attacks on <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-conservatives-use-identity-politics-to-shut-down-debate-89026">“identity politics”</a> and the construction of an ideological hard binary between ethnic identity and art and literature are legacies of post-Howardism. Yet the idea that any artwork or piece of literature is free of cultural value is mythical and warrants interrogation.</p>
<p>Some terms are used a lot, but rarely deconstructed – like the slippery charge of “identity politics” in art and literature. So, the scientists have been telling us for some time that <a href="https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2017/science-genetics-reshaping-race-debate-21st-century/">the concept of race is dead</a>. I don’t dispute what it all looks like under a microscope, but socially and politically, the term and all its connotations are alive and well – in literature, art, music, policy. And the terms “race” and “culture” are conflated in Australian discourse. </p>
<p>Together, these words drive Australian national policy and historical discourse. The politics of race, the politics of skin privilege and the politics of representation have been cornerstones of Australian policy and practice since invasion. Literature is the handmaiden who tells this tale. White identity politics is the most dominant force of production in Australian settler literary culture. </p>
<p>Charges of identity politics impeding art have only entered the public space since First Nations people and people from culturally and linguistically diverse communities have infiltrated the space, and now use it and some of the “tools” it affords to tell their own tales – or stories. </p>
<p>These presences challenge the unspoken identity of white-settlerism and make identities explicit – and explicitly political, as they have been politicised in public discourse. Charges of “identity politics” come from those who now have to concede space – and see themselves represented, not always to their own liking, in someone else’s picture or story.</p>
<p>All creative pieces are identity politics in some way or other. All writing is identity politics: from a shopping list to a treatise on government and all in-between. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-black-lives-matter-movement-has-provoked-a-cultural-reckoning-about-how-black-stories-are-told-149544">The Black Lives Matter movement has provoked a cultural reckoning about how Black stories are told</a>
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<h2>Popular settler texts, post-Mabo</h2>
<p>So, how am I reading the settler landscape of influential writing post-Mabo, and in the aftermath of Howardism? Influence is decided by the literary economy of prizes, and the public visibility of a text.</p>
<p>In the main, settler texts are still repurposed, largely intersectionless battler narratives, where the protagonists battle different obstacles depending on the times. Or, as Sujatha Fernandes put it so well in <a href="https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/review/cummins-american-dirt-krien-act-of-grace/">her 2019 essay</a> for the Sydney Review of Books, they are “great white social justice narratives”. Though they may read as concern, really the writer should be yielding space for those they are so concerned about to speak, write or tell their own stories.</p>
<p>Popular settler literature in post Mabo-Australia (and literature on the border between literary and popular) still loves to be a “good battler narrative”. The best battler is the battler who succeeds. The one who is aspirational within a recognisable setting. </p>
<p>And the best battler narrative re-enforces a meritocracy and the myth of a classless, raceless, society, where intersectionality is irrelevant. It continues to erase deeper, more complex, and contested histories of place. It’s a place that flattens or erases intersectionality – racial/cultural background, orientation/sexuality (what is your pronoun?), age, ability, religion/spirituality, socio-economic class – and the complex and contested histories of place.</p>
<p>What can we learn about contemporary Australia from its popularly and critically acclaimed novels – and their success? This is a question that critics and reviewers have been reluctant to broach. Critics tend to avoid writing about popular works, as part of an intra-cultural cringe. </p>
<p>But by refusing to engage, they’re in danger of writing into a blinkered, self-informed space that reproduces a very narrow view of Australian national identity and the values it perpetuates in its literature.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-larrikin-lives-on-as-a-conservative-politician-168464">The larrikin lives on — as a conservative politician</a>
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</em>
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<h2>Trent Dalton’s superficial melting pot</h2>
<p>A popular writer is the public’s barometer. The optimistically conservative view of national identity – Australianness if you like – that was aired in The Castle 25 years ago has carried through to the popular literature of the moment. You only need to look at Trent Dalton. </p>
<p>Unlike many popular, big-selling Australian authors, Dalton’s writing has been listed for prestigious awards. His first novel, <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com.au/9781460757765/boy-swallows-universe/">Boy Swallows Universe</a>, was longlisted for the Miles Franklin Award in 2019. At the NSW Premier’s Prizes, it won the Glenda Adams Award for New Writing, and the People’s Choice Award, and was shortlisted for the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction. </p>
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<p>The plot of Boy Swallows Universe revolves around the coming of age of teenager Eli Bell – son of a heroin-addicted mother, an alcoholic father, a drug-dealing stepfather; and brother to Gus, an elective mute since age six. As the story unfolds, Eli overcomes many obstacles and learns much about being ‘street-wise’ from his babysitter Slim, a convicted murderer. The plot is driven by Eli’s largely individualistic quest to determine what a “good man” is.</p>
<p>Boy Swallows Universe <a href="https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/review/dalton-shimmering-skies-boy-swallows-universe/">is apparently</a> the fastest-selling Australian debut novel ever published. With one exception I’ve found, reviewers have been laudatory. The labels of “literariness” could be because both Dalton’s works are laced with literary allusions, and brief and fleeting references to western classics. For example, an orphaned teenager, Molly, carries The Collected Works of Shakespeare in their duffle bag; Eli is well versed in the 20th-century white male canon, and often bursts into optimistic streams of consciousness, in a way that is meant to evoke <a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-the-wonder-of-joyces-ulysses-79417">James Joyce</a>. </p>
<p>Such literary allusions and references reassure readers that these works and their protagonists are literary, despite the grungy realism of the settings; and that the western literary canon endures.</p>
<p>In the <a href="https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/review/dalton-shimmering-skies-boy-swallows-universe/">one critical review</a> I could find (in the Sydney Review of Books), settler critic Catriona Menzies Pike described Dalton as the “Scott Morrison writer” of the decade. Howard’s “battlers” segues seamlessly into Morrison’s quiet Australians who <em>have a go to get a go</em>.</p>
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<p><a href="https://www.harpercollins.com.au/9781460759325/all-our-shimmering-skies/">All Our Shimmering Skies</a> is Dalton’s second novel. Set in Darwin in 1942, it’s about teenager Molly Hook’s quest to remove a curse she believes was cast on her family by an Aboriginal man called Longcoat Bob. To me as an Aboriginal reader, Longcoat Bob, penned in 2020, resonates with an ongoing colonial trope – that of the part-Aboriginal (sic) child, and the black witch-doctor-sorcerer stereotype in settler literature. From Marbuck in Charles Chauvel’s 1955 film <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048227/">Jedda the Uncivilised</a> to Bobwirridirridi in Xavier Herbert’s Miles Franklin award-winning work <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com.au/9781460703243/poor-fellow-my-country/">Poor Fellow My Country</a> (published in 1975), through to Craig Silvey’s <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Craig-Silvey-Jasper-Jones-9781742372624">Jasper Jones</a>, 2009 – the trope lives on.</p>
<p>In Shimmering Skies, the “our” pronoun, in Dalton’s hands, becomes a conduit for a melting pot. Evoking the language of evasion and euphemism, a group of “diverse” people – whose differences are superficially and stereotypically represented throughout – can put all differences (which aren’t explored anyway) aside and unite under common symbols, traditions, and icons.</p>
<p>We’re given a painless, quick, sentimental version of <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-courage-to-feel-uncomfortable-what-australians-need-to-learn-to-achieve-real-reconciliation-183914">reconciliation</a> that basically involves finding aspects of settlement to celebrate – with no basis whatsoever for land rights or reparative justice. Readers are presented with chess-set characters in starry campfire scenes that bring together Yukio, a Japanese pilot; Greta, a woman of German heritage; Molly, an orphaned teen; and her Aboriginal friend Sam, as they discover their common humanity as bombs explode in the sky. </p>
<p>Catriona Menzies Pike <a href="https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/review/dalton-shimmering-skies-boy-swallows-universe/">writes</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Dalton presents a national domain in which no obstacle is too great for an earnest and well-intentioned individual to overcome on their own. There is seemingly no ill in the world that can’t be sentimentalised by Dalton: prison life, addiction, violence, colonialism. There is no insight into contemporary life here, just fantasy built on nostalgia and dishonest nationalism.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Boy Swallows Universe and All Our Shimmering Skies offer Hollywood endings, where kids haul themselves up and out of poverty and disempowerment, through strength of will and character. </p>
<p>These stories give literary and social value to a narrative that relies on and reinforces pernicious, dangerous, and untrue ideas about poverty and social marginalisation – mainly, that it requires nothing more than effort to get out of it. Socio-economic success and security simply become questions of individual moral fortitude, altruism, and determination. Systemic structural failures are not called into question.</p>
<p>The only role for First Nations and people of colour in Dalton’s national epic is to advance the plot. The people brought together under the shimmering skies are settlers. All Our Shimmering Skies wants a quick and easy, group-hug reconciliation – but the text doesn’t want to recognise the violence of settler colonialism and ongoing dispossession. </p>
<p>In his fiction, Dalton refuses to acknowledge that there’s anything structural about the suffering his characters must endure. There’s no room for state intervention or reform in these worlds. </p>
<p>Both works unequivocally disseminate the same intensely conservative vision of nationhood and identity as The Castle. </p>
<p>Ethnic and gender stereotypes abound – but as Menzies-Pike points out, the difficult questions about representation and cultural appropriation that are recently being asked of literary authors have not been raised in relation to Dalton’s fiction. Such issues are seldom raised in relation to popular fiction because it is too easily dismissed. </p>
<h2>Ignoring the popular makes us ‘part of the problem’</h2>
<p>Different sets of rules apply to popular (or genre) fiction and literary fiction. Definitions tend to centre around literary fiction being more driven by character and theme, while popular commercial fiction is driven by plot and lots of action – and distinguished by higher book sales. </p>
<p>Whether it is clever marketing on the part of publishers, or whether it is driven by intellectual snobbery and elitism, the divide between popular (or genre) and literary fiction leads to a disconnect between what is being read and internalised by the public, and what is being analysed as good literature. </p>
<p>This separation between “literature” and the rest of culture is unhelpful. Popular culture should be held to the same high standards as literary authors – which means that critics, academics and the rest of the self-selected elite need to properly engage with it. If they do, they will unpack what is driving its mass appeal.</p>
<p>Nurturing critical thinking is the responsibility of all of us who read literature and care about issues of representation. All of us who care about exposing and addressing structural inequalities and systematic discrimination. If we only focus on changing the “literary” culture we read, but ignore what mainstream Australia is reading, then we’re part of the problem of Australia’s continuing evasion discourse.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-courage-to-feel-uncomfortable-what-australians-need-to-learn-to-achieve-real-reconciliation-183914">The courage to feel uncomfortable: what Australians need to learn to achieve real reconciliation</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/187110/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jeanine Leane receives funding from ARC grants. </span></em></p>What do popular ‘settler’ Australian stories like The Castle and Trent Dalton’s books say about who we are? What do they evade? Jeanine Leane investigates the state of post-Mabo Australian literature.Jeanine Leane, Associate Professor In Creative Writing, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/815502017-07-26T20:16:11Z2017-07-26T20:16:11ZThere’s far more to the fair go than just economics<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179757/original/file-20170726-30108-ro9p66.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">We need to consider whether values are the basis of beliefs about inequality.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has often <a href="https://theconversation.com/factcheck-qanda-is-australia-the-most-unequal-it-has-been-in-75-years-47931">argued</a> that inequality in Australia is the worst it has been in 75 years.</p>
<p>Leaving aside whether that is or isn’t correct, there is a bigger, more pertinent political question: is it inequality itself, or the perception of inequality, that fuels so much of the contemporary mistrust of politicians and political systems?</p>
<p>The growing legitimacy of inequality is a serious problem, even among market advocates like the IMF and World Bank, which seek to confine the fix to more equitable distributions of wealth. They fail to recognise the strong possibility that the push on inequality comes from wider perceptions that the system is so unfair it creates distrust of those in power and their main alternatives, so the damage is social rather than material. </p>
<p>Commentator Ross Gittins <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/comment/the-neoliberalism-of-margaret-thatcher-and-ronald-reagan-has-run-its-course-20170718-gxda42.html">has argued</a> that the collapse of the “neoliberal consensus” is as apparent in Australia as it is in Donald Trump’s America and Brexit-ing Britain. Yet the data here do not reveal the serious poverty it brings with it.</p>
<p>The local focus on inequality has very much been more on tax rorts and the presumed sins of the rich than on the poor, either on or off welfare. This looks to be the basis of Shorten’s next policy bid for power, which he promises to release via inequality policies at the <a href="http://www.nswlabor.org.au/conference2017">New South Wales ALP conference</a> this weekend.</p>
<p>Shorten’s targeting of the voters’ desire for the “fair go” <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/jul/20/bill-shorten-says-inequality-threatens-australias-economy-and-social-cohesion">by claiming inequality in Australia</a> creates a “sense of powerlessness that drives people away from the mainstream so creating a fault line in politics”. </p>
<p>His emphasis on the wider effects of inequality suggests he recognises it as a symptom of wider issues, rather than a single economic cause of problems. However, if <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/video/2017/jul/25/shorten-talks-up-labor-plan-to-tackle-inequality-and-tax-reform-video?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Politics+AUS&utm_term=236585&subid=7119379&CMP=ema_792">his proposals</a> are primarily focused on increasing tax takes, he is not tackling the wider damage, such as system distrust, that is widely evident. </p>
<p>He is not alone in this limitation; it dominated the debates on his proposals. The immediate responses from Treasurer Scott Morrison and several economic commentators <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/gr%20ogonomics/2017/jul/25/bill-shortens-inequality-pitch-has-rustled-the-jimmies-of-conservatives">disputed whether</a> the Gini coefficient (a measure of how wealth is distributed in a society) supported the claims of rising inequalities. They ignored the many other indicators, such as that workers’ share of income is at its lowest level in a half-a-century.</p>
<p>The complex data shown in <a href="https://theconversation.com/factcheck-qanda-is-australia-the-most-unequal-it-has-been-in-75-years-47931">The Conversation’s factcheck</a> come down mainly on Shorten’s side. These varied sources show the problem of defining what counts as inequality. Are voters very aware of income differentials? Or do most judge inequality by tightening budgets and everyday hardships such as rising utility bills?</p>
<p>It is in fact these perceptions of wider inequality as unfairness that affects how we relate to those in power. These are toxic effects that need to be fixed, not just through adjusting tax or individual payments.</p>
<p>There is considerable evidence that inequality is increasing and, importantly, that it is affecting the views of possible voters. The long-running <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-20/2016-australian-election-disaffected-study/8134508">Australian Election Study</a> in 2016 found voters showed both increased distrust of politicians, and income concerns. More than half – 55% – supported incomes being redistributed versus 19% who did not. There have been <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/distrustful-nation-australians-lose-faith-in-politics-media-and-business-20170118-gttmpd.html">other recent polls</a> that show the lack of trust of the mainstream parties.</p>
<p>Who do you trust? Increasingly the answer seems to be: nobody. </p>
<p>After a year when voters worldwide thumbed their noses at mainstream politics and the elite, a landmark annual survey has found trust in major institutions is eroding at a rapid rate. And the effect is particularly pronounced in Australia.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.edelman.com/trust2017/">The 2017 Trust Barometer</a> by Edelman, the world’s largest PR outfit, has documented an “implosion of trust”. It found that Australians believe their entire political system is failing and they harbour deep fears of immigration, globalisation and changing values.</p>
<p>We need to consider whether values are the basis of beliefs about inequality. My thesaurus offers eight synonyms of the word: four simply describe it, while four signal negative feelings and perceptions: discrimination, unfairness, inequity, disproportion. None expresses inequality as a material or monetary difference. This indicates how often inequality connects with growing distrust of mainstream parties.</p>
<p>So is inequality a significant but limited indicator of wider issues that need attentions? The current special issue of <a href="http://www.aips.net.au/aq-magazine/">Australian Quarterly</a> features articles on this topic. The journal’s opening remarks state:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Inequality is arguably the catch-cry of our times, but, when you pick it apart, what does it actually look like in the Australian context? Is it economic, is it political; is it tax breaks for big business, or the everyday homelessness of our capital cities; is it the rot crumbling the sanctified pillar of the ‘fair go’, or has it become a convenient catch-all so broad as to be meaningless?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>If this is so, the question will be whether Shorten’s policy options stay within the narrow confines of fairer taxes. If they do, it may be too simply economic to interest voters – unless he creates a broader vision of a trustworthy (fairer) Australia.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81550/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eva Cox does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Who do you trust? Increasingly the answer seems to be nobody, especially when it comes to inequality.Eva Cox, Professorial Fellow, Jumbunna IHL, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/704802017-01-27T04:31:17Z2017-01-27T04:31:17ZIn Australia, land of the ‘fair go’, not everyone gets an equal slice of the pie<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/154488/original/image-20170126-30397-10ei227.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Australian political leaders love to talk about the 'fair go', but in truth we are moving away from it on many measures.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This is part of a series examining Australian national identity, especially around the ongoing debate about Australia Day.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Australian politicians, interest groups and political and social commentators have long drawn on the idea of the “fair go”. In fact, despite their ideological differences, Australia’s last four prime ministers have all used the term at some point. </p>
<p>In government and opposition, Labor leader Kevin Rudd referred to the fair go, particularly when <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2007/s1899860.htm">criticising</a> the Howard government’s WorkChoices industrial relations reforms. </p>
<p>In December 2011, <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/national/julia-gillards-speech-in-full-20111201-1o9yu.html">Prime Minister Julia Gillard</a> also argued that “we are the people who hold onto mateship and the fair go”, citing Labor’s support for the National Disability Insurance Scheme and health spending in support of this claim. </p>
<p>The idea of the fair go is not unique to Labor, either. <a href="https://theconversation.com/slanguage-and-dinky-di-aussie-talk-in-elections-59967">Robert Menzies and Malcolm Fraser</a> used the term in campaign speeches, and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull also made reference to the fair go when discussing tax reform in 2015. <a href="http://www.news.com.au/national/politics/prime-minister-malcolm-turnbull-has-promised-tax-changes-will-be-fair-in-a-melbourne-speech/news-story/db4ad7c0ccc40df3cd7ee716c76b7616">He stated</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We have a very unique culture in Australia and we have a very good mixture of capitalism and free market, but we also have a culture of fair go, of looking after each other. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The idea of the fair go also figured prominently in debates over the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-05-13/budget-winners-and-losers/5433178">2014 federal budget</a>, which was attacked for placing a disproportionate burden on lower-income families. </p>
<p>Given the term is used by such different politicians in a range of contexts, it is impossible to associate the idea of the “fair go” with any precise meaning. It generally stands for whatever the person using the term regards as fair or just, although it generally has an egalitarian flavour. </p>
<p>However, even political theorists who devote themselves to analysing political values and concepts differ over what an egalitarian approach to fairness and justice requires. At the most basic level, most egalitarians agree that justice and fairness demand that all citizens have their basic needs met. So ending poverty, for example, is an important egalitarian goal. </p>
<p>Equality of opportunity is also regarded as another important requirement of justice. This means that all citizens should have the same chance to develop their natural abilities, regardless of their backgrounds. For example, it is wrong if a child from a working-class background is disadvantaged because the schools she has access to are worse than the schools to which affluent children have access. </p>
<p>Some egalitarian political theorists take the idea further, arguing that justice and fairness requires a more equal distribution of social resources, not just equal opportunities. </p>
<p>There are a variety of different reasons for this. Some defend the idea because of the beneficial social consequences it has. Others challenge the distinction between “natural” and “social” forms of inequality, arguing that we should be concerned about inequalities resulting from differences in our natural abilities, not just our social environment. </p>
<p>Perhaps the most influential approach in the post-war period is <a href="http://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences-and-law/sociology-and-social-reform/sociology-general-terms-and-concepts-93">John Rawls’ difference principle</a>, which states that inequalities are only justified if “they are to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged”. This means that we should aim for equality in the distribution of social resources, but not to the point that we damage the economy and actually leave the poorest citizens worse off than they were before. </p>
<p>How does Australian society match up against these goals? For a start, there is an ongoing problem with poverty in Australia, with <a href="https://crawford.anu.edu.au/pdf/events/2013/8801/Whiteford-Australia-Inequality-and-Prosperity-final.pdf">recent research</a> suggesting that the relative poverty rate has been between 10% and 14% of households since 2000 (where the poverty rate is set at 50% of median income). </p>
<p>Around 5% of households were suffering from what is known as “deep exclusion”. Australians with a long-term medical condition or disability were particularly vulnerable, as were indigenous people. People lacking a year 12 qualification and those in public housing also had higher levels of deep exclusion. </p>
<p>Equality of opportunity is usually tested by focusing on whether children end up in a different income category from their parents. In the literature, this is usually measured through intergenerational earning elasticity, which “<a href="http://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=319647066160018;res=IELHSS">benchmarks adult children’s earnings</a> with their parents’ earnings after controlling for demographic characteristics”. </p>
<p>There are major methodological challenges in measuring intergenerational elasticity in an Australian context. There are also relatively few studies on the topic.</p>
<p>However, <a href="https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/bitstream/10440/716/1/Leigh_Intergenerational2007.pdf">a 2007 study</a> by Andrew Leigh found that Australia had a higher level of mobility than the US. As he put it in his 2013 book, “in the United States, the heritability of income is similar to the heritability of height. But in Australia, income is only about half as heritable as height”. A <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/j.1839-4655.2016.tb01236.x/full">2016 study</a> reached broadly similar conclusions to Leigh, finding that Australia has “a relatively large amount of income mobility”.</p>
<p>But doing relatively well internationally is still a long way from saying there is equality of opportunity. Being half as heritable as height still suggests the playing field is a long way from level. </p>
<p>There has also been an increase in income inequality over recent decades. While there are different ways of measuring income inequality, the <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-31847943">Gini coefficient</a> is one of the most common measures. A country with a Gini coefficient of 0 has complete equality in incomes, while a country with a Gini coefficient of 1 has complete inequality. </p>
<p>In Australia, the <a href="http://www.treasury.gov.au/PublicationsAndMedia/Publications/2013/Economic-Roundup-Issue-2/Economic-Roundup/Income-inequality-in-Australia">Gini coefficient</a> in disposable household income was 0.309 in 1995 but 0.334 in 2010. Going back further, the increase in inequality is even more marked – the Gini coefficient in 1980 was 0.2.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.oecd.org/australia/49177643.pdf">In 2011, the OECD reported</a> that according to 2008 figures, “the average income of the top 10% of Australians was … nearly 10 times higher than that of the bottom 10%”. Australia is once again more equal than the US, but more unequal than the OECD average.</p>
<p>So although politicians claim to place a great deal of importance on the idea of the fair go, there are still significant ways in which Australian society seems to depart from this idea.</p>
<p>Given the reforms the Coalition tried to get through (for the most part unsuccessfully) in the 2014 budget, and the recent <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-01-16/government-to-change-centrelink-debt-recovery-program/8185366">scandal over Centrelink</a>, it seems likely that the “fair go” will continue to be under political pressure in the years to come, whatever the rhetoric.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Catch up on other pieces in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/the-australian-national-identity-35033">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/70480/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicholas Barry is a member of the NTEU.</span></em></p>Although politicians claim to place a great deal of importance on the idea of the fair go, there are still significant ways in which Australian society seems to depart from this idea.Nicholas Barry, Lecturer, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/589992016-05-09T00:55:55Z2016-05-09T00:55:55ZFans deserve fair play in major sports, not cheating and corruption<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/121486/original/image-20160506-450-5nhkft.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Fans who go to the stadium or barrack from their living rooms need to be assured that sport is real. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock/Oleksii Sidorov</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Why is global sport business booming and why does this come with the increasing frequency and growing size of integrity scandals of bribery, corruption and cheating?</p>
<p>This is something I have been giving serious thought to as I prepared for today’s biannual <a href="http://www.vucentenary.com.au/events/integrity-sport-forum-2016">Integrity in Sport Forum</a> in Melbourne, co-hosted by the Sport Australia Hall of Fame and Victoria University. </p>
<p>I think that the digitisation of sport combined with big data analytics has dramatically increased the attractiveness of the product on sale. With that comes the desire to win or be associated with winners, a longing for social acceptance and narcissistic craving to shine.</p>
<p>Ultimately, there is no market without a product that is in demand. And sport is hot property.</p>
<p>One very important reason why sport has been in demand for decades is its primordial simplicity. Every human being understands “you against me”, “them against us” and winners trumping losers.</p>
<p>But it is the digital production and distribution of sport competitions that now allows for global and instant access to a mass market for sport businesses. Big data analytics and near real-time digital responsiveness have enabled the slicing and dicing of sporting contests into endless sub-products. </p>
<h2>Odds on</h2>
<p>Betting agencies are selling odds to <em>parts</em> of the sporting contest, such as who will score the first goal, who will commit the foul next or what will be the half-time score. </p>
<p>With these multiplying moments of monetisation of sport comes the opportunities for criminals to exploit the loopholes and gaps in integrity safeguarding. </p>
<p>Bribing an athlete to ensure that one tiny aspect of the sporting contest can be predicted is enough to make millions, such as the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-02-01/40-professional-tennis-matches-flagged-for-match-fixing/7127240">scandal in world tennis</a> revealed in January this year.</p>
<p>Further fuelling the sport business gravy train are the rich, but not so famous (yet). They use high-profile sport to show off their economic power and bask in the reflected glory of their team – in the process creating a sense of personal achievement and social acceptance.</p>
<p>But are they the right reason to be involved in sport governance.</p>
<p>Could <a href="http://www.theherald.com.au/story/3766345/im-sorry-says-tinkler/">private sport ownership</a> in Australia lead to similar excesses? </p>
<p>In order to access the benefits that global sport offers as a platform, winning at all cost is too often required on the sporting field, but also in the sport business corridors. </p>
<p>It may be achieved by taking performance enhancing drugs that deliver superhuman performance, or using excessive financial resources to buy influence to stay in power.</p>
<p>So is sport business at the crossroads? </p>
<h2>Whom do you trust?</h2>
<p>In sport governance, whom do we trust? Are the current crop of sport governors and sport managers capable, skilled and equipped well enough to combat the forces that seek to illegally exploit the exploding profit potential of sport?</p>
<p>How do we prepare, train and educate the future managers of sport? Can the primal spirit of sport be maintained and its integrity kept safe? </p>
<p>A global compact between the leading international sport federations on what should be the basic business principles that underpin and regulate the trade in sport is required. </p>
<p>A coalition of sport governing bodies, government, international authorities, business, academia and civil society was announced earlier last month in the Sport Integrity Global Alliance (<a href="http://www.theicss.org/en/news/read/new-sport-integrity-global-alliance-siga-launched">SIGA</a>). </p>
<p>The Alliance needs to agree on how far the commodification of sport can be allowed to progress before the integrity of its production and consumption is irrevocably tarnished. </p>
<p>Educators, researchers, administrators and politicians need to combine their brainpower and industry knowledge. An admirable and crucial initiative, but one is left wondering how key principles that more than 40 organisations signed onto are implemented and enforced. </p>
<p>How, for example, is such an Alliance going establish an</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[…] independent betting monitoring platform, capable of providing sport integrity intelligence alerts to sporting, law enforcement, betting operators and government stakeholders to assure early warning advice.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Or</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[…] establish independent monitoring, audit and oversight in relation to all sport-related development programs and financial transactions. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>And how can this happen when sports themselves are competing against each other for the best TV rights deal, host city arrangement, biggest sponsorship deal and slice of the gambling dollar, not to mention the best available athletic talent to take their sport to the next level? </p>
<p>Those people who go to the stadium or the fans barracking from their living rooms need to be assured that sport is real. </p>
<p>They need to be confident that their cheers are part of a real contest, that the outcome remains unpredictable, the contest limited to those competing in it, and that there is always a chance that the underdog can win. </p>
<p>Only then can the superstars of world sport be role models for the millions of weekend warriors in communities around the world. </p>
<p>All of us, those who will only ever play sport for the fun of it, and who use sport to meet and congregate will decide if sport remains worthy of such prominence in society. If that primal spirit of sport is lost, so will be its profit potential, because nobody is prepared to pay a premium for a fake.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/58999/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hans Westerbeek does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As the business of sport booms why does this come with an increasing frequency of integrity scandals of bribery, corruption and cheating?Hans Westerbeek, Dean, College of Sport and Exercise Science and Institute of Sport, Exercise, Active Living, Victoria UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/325522014-10-13T19:19:08Z2014-10-13T19:19:08ZDo Australians still believe in the fair go? Views on pay suggest not<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/60882/original/696w57kj-1412571900.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The difference between CEO and average workers' pay is much greater than most people imagine, but Australians' idea of the ideal ratio is higher than elsewhere.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-175830491/stock-photo-an-old-school-bronze-justice-scale-with-stacks-of-brazilian-real-money-on-one-side-and-a-few.html?src=pOrwFNG72dGOrYjDQxcbLg-1-15">Shutterstock/albund</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A <a href="http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/Kiatpongsan%20Norton%20PPS_dae93595-5382-4ab6-99f7-24329c8c0c33.pdf">recently published study</a> produced some revealing findings on beliefs about inequality in a range of countries around the world. The study, by Chulalongkorn University’s Sorapop Kiatpongsan and Harvard Business School’s Michael Norton, examined the views of 55,000 people in 16 countries. It asked subjects two questions about CEO pay and worker pay. </p>
<p>The first question was: “What do you believe is the average ratio of the pay of CEOs to that of workers?” The second question was: “What, in your opinion, is the ideal ratio between the pay of CEOs and workers?”</p>
<h2>CEOs get paid far more than people think</h2>
<p>One finding was that, in all countries surveyed, people consistently underestimated how much CEOs were paid. </p>
<p>The discrepancy was particularly large in the US. Respondents thought the average CEO earned about 30 times as much as the average worker. According to the study, the average CEO earns 354 times as much.</p>
<p>Some other countries had even larger discrepancies. But in every country surveyed, CEOs earned more – often much more – than people believed they did.</p>
<p>Subjects were also asked what they thought the ideal ratio of CEO pay to that of workers would be. In every country surveyed, this figure was significantly lower than both the actual ratio and what people believed the ratio to be.</p>
<p>In Britain, for example, CEOs earn 84 times what workers earn, people believed CEOs probably earned about 13.5 times as much, and thought that ideally it ought to be 5.3 times as much. A more or less similar pattern was found in all countries surveyed.</p>
<h2>‘Ideal’ pay ratios vary widely</h2>
<p>There were, however significant differences between countries concerning beliefs about the ideal ratio between CEO pay and worker pay. </p>
<p>Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Scandinavian countries had the most egalitarian views. Respondents in Denmark thought that, ideally, the CEO ought to earn twice what workers earned. In Sweden, they thought CEO pay ought to be 2.2 times that of workers, while in Norway they thought it ought to be 2.3 times worker pay. </p>
<p>Well towards the other end of the spectrum lay the US. People surveyed there thought the CEO ought to earn 6.7 times as much as a worker. </p>
<h2>Which country favours the biggest pay gap?</h2>
<p>The United States was not the country in which people saw the largest gap between CEO and worker as ideal. The identity of that country might come as a surprise.</p>
<p>It was not Germany or Japan or France. It was Australia. We thought the ideal ratio of CEO pay to worker pay would be 8.3.</p>
<p>Not only did Australians approve of the largest gap between CEO and worker, we did so by a fair margin. Here, in order, are the countries seeing the largest pay gaps as ideal:</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/60875/original/wct4qrks-1412568936.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/60875/original/wct4qrks-1412568936.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60875/original/wct4qrks-1412568936.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60875/original/wct4qrks-1412568936.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60875/original/wct4qrks-1412568936.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=554&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60875/original/wct4qrks-1412568936.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=554&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60875/original/wct4qrks-1412568936.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=554&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kiatpongsan and Norton/Harvard Business School, Chulalongkorn University</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The “gap” between Australia at 8.3 and the second place-getter – the US – is 1.6. This is more than twice the “gap” (0.7) between the US and fifth-placed Japan. </p>
<p>By a significant margin Australians are, it seems, most accepting of a large pay gap between those at the top and those at the bottom. This is certainly very different from the image of Australia as a highly egalitarian country.</p>
<p>In <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/hindsight/the-lucky-country50-years-on/5710724">The Lucky Country</a> (published in 1964), Donald Horne described Australia as “the most egalitarian of countries” where “most people earn within a few pounds of the average”. Although Horne acknowledged there were still some forms of inequality, he expressed the belief these would fade with time. For Horne, Australia was above all a place that valued egalitarianism.</p>
<h2>What’s become of our fabled egalitarianism?</h2>
<p>Now, 50 years later, we are the country (at least of those surveyed) most <a href="https://theconversation.com/ceo-pay-study-shows-how-much-australians-tolerate-inequality-32140">accepting of big differences in pay</a> between those at the bottom and those at the top. What has happened? Is it possible that in the last half-century we have in our values gone from being “the most egalitarian of countries” to the least, or one of the least, egalitarian?</p>
<p>A few possible answers to these questions might be considered.</p>
<p>Perhaps the most obvious suggestion is that Australians are most accepting of high levels of inequality because we have not, as yet, actually been exposed to the stark contrasts found in some other countries. Perhaps if billionaires and people in grinding poverty lived side by side, we would be repelled by gross inequality. But living in a society in which there just isn’t that much difference between those at the top and those at the bottom, we have yet to see what a bad thing inequality can be.</p>
<p>The only problem with this suggestion is that it is false. Compared to other developed countries, Australia is well towards the unequal end of the spectrum on some measures. If inequality is defined as the <a href="http://www.oecd.org/social/income-distribution-database.htm">ratio of incomes</a> of the top 10% to the bottom 10%, Australia generally comes in at around the third- or fourth-most-unequal developed country. </p>
<p>It might be suggested that Australians are so accepting of large pay differences because in this country there is little or no “absolute” poverty. </p>
<p>The thinking behind this suggestion might be as follows: the main reason inequality is bad is not because there is a gap between those at the top and those at the bottom, but because those at the bottom are deprived of what we regard as the necessities for a decent life. It is the poverty of those at the bottom that is the real “culprit”, not the fact that some have very much more.</p>
<p>And, it might be suggested, we in Australia fortunately do not have significant numbers <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-10-12/poverty-levels-among-australians-on-the-rise-acoss-report-abs/5807624">living in poverty</a>. But this suggestion, too, is false. </p>
<p>An explanation of a rather different kind might be sought. One reason people in some countries might be wary of great inequality of wealth is the inequality of power it may produce. Perhaps in some other countries people are concerned about their wealthiest exerting power or influence in the political sphere, and are worried this would be inimical to healthy democracy. </p>
<p>Is it possible that we in Australia are happy with a larger pay gap between those at the top and those at the bottom because our wealthy have not sought to exert political influence?</p>
<p>Again, this suggestion pretty clearly doesn’t square with the facts. After all, Australia has an exceptionally <a href="https://theconversation.com/australias-lamentable-media-diversity-needs-a-regulatory-fix-12942">high concentration of media ownership</a>. News Corporation alone accounts for about two-thirds of daily newspaper circulation.</p>
<p>And there other ways, such as the recent success of the Palmer United Party, in which great wealth would seem to be able to <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-wa-senate-election-and-the-rise-of-money-in-australian-politics-25477">acquire political power</a>. In Australia, differences in wealth have brought about differences in political power.</p>
<p>So it remains unclear why Australians are accepting of such large pay differences between those at the top and the rest. Is it possible we just no longer believe in the fair go?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/32552/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Wright does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A recently published study produced some revealing findings on beliefs about inequality in a range of countries around the world. The study, by Chulalongkorn University’s Sorapop Kiatpongsan and Harvard…John Wright, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, School of Humanities and Social Science, University of NewcastleLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.