tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/griffith-review-8465/articles
Griffith Review – The Conversation
2022-02-03T19:08:33Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/175920
2022-02-03T19:08:33Z
2022-02-03T19:08:33Z
Remaking universities: notes from the sidelines of catastrophe
<p>Can we grieve not for a person but for an institution? Should we be angry over possibilities destroyed, young talents denied a chance to flourish? Is there any point in lamenting greed, short-sightedness, the brutality of power?</p>
<p>As I write this, in September 2021, Australian higher education is <a href="https://theconversation.com/big-spending-recovery-budget-leaves-universities-out-in-the-cold-160439">in a deeper hole</a> than it has been since the 1950s, when the creaky collection of universities inherited from colonial times, under severe stress, was rescued by the Menzies government. I worked in that rebuilt sector as student, teacher and researcher for about 50 years. Then I retired and wrote a book called, with a mixture of irony and hope, <a href="https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2019/08/25/book-review-the-good-university-what-universities-actually-do-and-why-its-time-for-radical-change-by-raewyn-connell/">The Good University</a>.</p>
<p>In the past couple of years I’ve watched the COVID-19 pandemic place huge new demands on university workers – my colleagues and friends – who had already come <a href="https://theconversation.com/our-uni-teachers-were-already-among-the-worlds-most-stressed-covid-and-student-feedback-have-just-made-things-worse-162612">under heavy stress</a>. This is a brief reflection on what has happened and why, and how we might do better.</p>
<h2>The history matters</h2>
<p>We’ve only had a national public university system for two generations; the sector has been through mighty changes in a short span. At first, Australian universities were separately funded by the colonial and state governments that set them up. </p>
<p>Building a national system made sense under the agenda of modernisation, industrialisation and nation-building that was more or less shared by Liberal and Labor parties in the postwar decades. High-school enrolments boomed in the 1950s and undergraduate enrolments followed, spurring governments to launch new universities as well as expand the older ones. National co-ordinating bodies were established. </p>
<p>At the same time there was a spurt in higher degree studies, giving Australia, for the first time, a capacity to produce its own research workforce. This was, potentially, a revolutionary change for the economy and society – a potential never realised.</p>
<p>Universities in the 1950s and 1960s were not comfortable places. They were run by an oligarchy of male professors who were linked, especially in faculties of law, medicine and engineering, with professional establishments outside. The odour of the British Empire still hung around academic life. Curricula were monocultural, despite the mass immigration of Australia’s postwar decades and the presence of Indigenous cultures. </p>
<p>There’s <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/The_University_Experience.html?id=edAsAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">research</a> showing that many of the students were quite alienated from these institutions. The majority were enrolled in bread-and-butter “pass” degrees; they listened to lectures and sat for exams but got little attention from academic staff. Only a minority were in honours streams with a more challenging agenda. </p>
<p>Through the 1960s, students increasingly became politicised in groups that opposed the war in Vietnam, supported Aboriginal causes and demanded democratic reform of the universities themselves.</p>
<p>When the Whitlam government took over the entire funding of universities in the 1970s and abolished fees, the stage was set for further expansion. New suburban and regional universities were launched, and the combination of rapid growth and new institutions made space for experiments in curriculum and teaching methods. New fields such as urban studies, environmental studies, women’s studies, information science and molecular biology opened up. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Aerial view of Deakin University's Waurn Ponds campus" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443366/original/file-20220131-13-die0ir.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443366/original/file-20220131-13-die0ir.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=261&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443366/original/file-20220131-13-die0ir.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=261&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443366/original/file-20220131-13-die0ir.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=261&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443366/original/file-20220131-13-die0ir.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=328&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443366/original/file-20220131-13-die0ir.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=328&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443366/original/file-20220131-13-die0ir.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=328&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The opening of Deakin University was part of the 1970s expansion and diversification of the university system.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deakin_University">Bob T/Wikipedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-century-that-profoundly-changed-universities-and-their-campuses-151765">A century that profoundly changed universities and their campuses</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Both the students and the university workforce became more diverse. Yet universities remained privileged institutions, gateways to the elite professions. Most vocational education was the business of TAFE (Technical and Further Education) colleges and the Australian equivalent of polytechnics, the CAEs (Colleges of Advanced Education).</p>
<p>By the mid-1980s, as the political system shifted towards a free-market agenda, a new kind of pressure was exerted on education. At the end of the decade, Labor’s education minister, John Dawkins, introduced dramatic changes for universities. Fees were restored, the CAEs were folded into the university system in a chaotic free-for-all of amalgamations and takeovers, co-ordinating and consultative bodies were ditched, and university administrators were encouraged to become corporate-style managers and entrepreneurs.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/dont-just-blame-the-libs-for-treating-universities-harshly-labors-1980s-policies-ushered-in-government-interference-163880">Don't just blame the Libs for treating universities harshly. Labor's 1980s policies ushered in government interference</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The rise of universities as competing businesses</h2>
<p>To do him justice, Dawkins wanted to widen access to universities. Basically, he instigated a fresh expansion of the system by beginning to privatise it. Though a less obvious privatisation than the outright sale of Qantas and the Commonwealth Bank, this would have huge consequences in the long run. </p>
<p>University enrolments did grow, while the proportion of public funding in universities fell. Fees rose steadily, and student debt – more or less hidden by the deferred payments of HECS and then HELP – grew. </p>
<p>Some universities became heavily dependent on fees from overseas students. University managers’ salaries and bonuses rose steeply, losing any connection with university workers’ pay packets. (By 2019, Australian vice-chancellors’ <a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/average-australian-v-cs-pay-smashes-through-a1-million-barrier">average package was a million dollars a year</a>, very high by global standards.) </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-australian-vice-chancellors-pay-came-to-average-1-million-and-why-its-a-problem-150829">How Australian vice-chancellors' pay came to average $1 million and why it's a problem</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<iframe title="Ratio of Australian VC to lecturer pay, 1975 – 2018" aria-label="Interactive line chart" id="datawrapper-chart-ARDd2" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/ARDd2/1/" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" style="border: none;" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>The system began to split, with a cabal of older universities declaring themselves an elite – the “Group of Eight”, derisively known as the Sandstones. Universities were gradually redefined as market-oriented, competing firms rather than co-operating parts of a public service. </p>
<p>More and more executives and directors from for-profit companies were appointed to university councils, bringing their business connections and their business ideology. University managers centralised decision-making in their own hands, imposing “performance” demands on staff who had previously been trusted to do their work as professionals. </p>
<p>Managers increasingly saw their younger workforce not as the teachers, researchers and operations staff of the future but as a budget cost needing to be reined in. The result has been a massive <a href="https://theconversation.com/wage-theft-and-casual-work-are-built-into-university-business-models-147555">casualisation of the teaching workforce</a>, outsourcing of more and more general and professional staff, and a growing distrust between the university workforce and its managers.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/2-out-of-3-members-of-university-governing-bodies-have-no-professional-expertise-in-the-sector-theres-the-making-of-a-crisis-171952">2 out of 3 members of university governing bodies have no professional expertise in the sector. There's the making of a crisis</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Exploring the role of universities</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443370/original/file-20220131-116343-17d8foa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Cover of The Good University" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443370/original/file-20220131-116343-17d8foa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443370/original/file-20220131-116343-17d8foa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=963&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443370/original/file-20220131-116343-17d8foa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=963&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443370/original/file-20220131-116343-17d8foa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=963&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443370/original/file-20220131-116343-17d8foa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1210&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443370/original/file-20220131-116343-17d8foa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1210&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443370/original/file-20220131-116343-17d8foa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1210&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Raewyn Connell’s The Good University was published in 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://publishing.monash.edu/product/the-good-university/">Monash University Publishing</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This was the situation when I wrote The Good University, in the years after a long industrial struggle at the University of Sydney – an enterprise-bargaining affair in which management tried hard to degrade our conditions of employment. Meditating on the picket line, I thought that university workers had been on the back foot too long, responding to every policy disaster from Canberra or aggression from management. To shift the terms of debate required serious rethinking of what these institutions were. </p>
<p>I tried to re-examine the work that universities did, their social role, their history (much more varied and interesting than most people know), and what alternatives to the dominant model could be found for curriculum, control and social purpose. I thought we needed, above all, fresh ideas about the kind of university that would be good to work in, good to study in and worth fighting for.</p>
<p>Well, the book had been out for a year, and I was in the United States on a tour to publicise and discuss it, when the COVID-19 pandemic arrived. I scrambled home on one of the last scheduled Qantas flights and went straight into self-isolation.</p>
<p>Nothing could isolate the universities from the pandemic. In Australia as overseas, campuses were closed as lockdowns of regions and cities began. University staff worked very hard to shift courses online, and that intricate work is still under way nearly two years later. Students too had to change their routines and methods, learning to work from home, learning to study in isolation and needing their own access to the internet.</p>
<p>These changes happened worldwide, but the crash was particularly brutal in Australia. The national government, so slow to organise a vaccination program, rushed to close the borders – that was its primary response to the pandemic, eerily matching its response to asylum seekers. </p>
<p>Border closures suddenly cut off the flow of overseas students, who before 2020 had been paying about half the total fee income received by Australian universities. This plunged many institutions into financial trauma – one reason for their heavy job losses, now <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-09-13/covid-job-cuts-at-universities-prompting-fears-for-future/100447960">estimated at 40,000</a> across the higher education sector.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/after-2-years-of-covid-how-bad-has-it-really-been-for-university-finances-and-staff-172405">After 2 years of COVID, how bad has it really been for university finances and staff?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>No sympathy or support from government</h2>
<p>I doubt that the Morrison government worried about this effect. When the JobKeeper scheme was introduced in the first half of 2020, subsidising businesses to keep their workers employed during the pandemic, the government carefully excluded universities. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1460793077363142656"}"></div></p>
<p>In June the same year it revealed its ideas about higher education in a document called the <a href="https://www.dese.gov.au/job-ready">Job-Ready Graduates Package</a>. It’s the most miserable excuse for a higher education policy in the 80 years that such documents have been written in Australia. In the name of vague “national priorities”, the Job-ready Graduates Package arbitrarily doubled fees for arts and humanities degrees, cut overall support for areas (such as nursing and education) that it claimed to encourage, introduced <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-government-is-making-job-ready-degrees-cheaper-for-students-but-cutting-funding-to-the-same-courses-141280">perverse trade-offs</a> likely to reduce support for research and, in the background, cut government support for the whole sector.</p>
<p>What is going on here? In general terms, both the Coalition and Labor have been reducing the capacities of the public sector for a generation; this is another step in the same direction. </p>
<p>More specifically, there is a culture-wars agenda. The reactionary wing of the Coalition, in step with the Murdoch media, doesn’t like humanities and social sciences, basically because they encourage critical thinking (called “cultural Marxism” in recent right-wing rhetoric). Accordingly, the policy makes humanities and social sciences more difficult to access and burdens those who do with heavier debt.</p>
<p>Perhaps most importantly there’s an attitude that flows from overall economic strategy. When the Menzies government expanded higher education, the new funding made sense within the state-guided industrial development strategy of the time. That development strategy was abandoned in the neoliberal wave of the 1980s in favour of deregulation, “opening” of the Australian economy and a search for comparative advantage in global markets. </p>
<p>The industries with big comparative advantages in the short term were mining coal, mining iron ore, mining other kinds of rocks, running sheep and cattle, and growing wheat. These are industries with low demand for highly educated workers and little demand for a research capacity in Australia, since their technology is imported. In the logic of free-market fundamentalism, Australia hardly needs universities at all.</p>
<p>It might be politically embarrassing to close them down, but it’s easy to see why in 2020 the Coalition government would refuse JobKeeper subsidies and leave universities and university workers to sink or swim in the pandemic. It’s not clear that the Labor leadership would have done anything very different.</p>
<h2>Public still believes in the public university</h2>
<p>Yet there is considerable popular support for higher education. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, universities and colleges around the world were teaching 200 million students, representing a vast increase in recent decades. Domestic demand for university places has held up in Australia, despite the pandemic. </p>
<p>Managers and governments might treat universities as competitive firms, but the public still tends to see them as a public service. Universities do well in surveys of public trust in various institutions.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/pandemic-widens-gap-between-government-and-australians-view-of-education-148991">Pandemic widens gap between government and Australians' view of education</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Universities could have a more secure position in the economy, the culture and public policy. To reach this new position would take more than a public-relations effort. It would need a serious reconstruction of the way universities work as organisations and the way they serve their public.</p>
<p>It’s highly unlikely that Universities Australia, the organisation that claims to be “the voice of Australia’s universities”, would support reconstruction: it represents the managers who benefit from the current regime. But managers aren’t the only people on campus. There are multiple groups and different interests. </p>
<p>The National Tertiary Education Union, which represents the bulk of university staff, has been discussing alternatives for the sector and paying more attention to <a href="https://theconversation.com/unis-offered-as-few-as-1-in-100-casuals-permanent-status-in-2021-why-arent-conversion-rules-working-for-these-staff-172046">casualisation</a>. Student organisations, too, could support a different future.</p>
<p>Let’s consider just one aspect of the work done in universities. The commonest image of university teaching is a lecture. Holding forth to students sitting in neat rows is what professors and lecturers are supposed to do, even if the podium is replaced with a screen. But that’s not the heart of higher education.</p>
<p>University teaching builds a relationship between groups of students who have adult intellectual capacities, and the complex structure of research-based knowledge. It does not simply train young people for current jobs; it educates graduates who can think for themselves from a base of solid knowledge and relevant method. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1335813839502204928"}"></div></p>
<p>The process needs co-operation across the university workforce, a supportive environment and an intricate, two-way learning process between teachers and students. That can’t be commanded from above nor automated from outside. Universities work from below, and that is their strength. There is democratic potential in the nature of the work itself.</p>
<h2>The good university isn’t a lost cause</h2>
<p>There has been “crisis” talk about universities for a generation. I was sceptical of it, but I have to say that the language of crisis makes more sense now. The riotous growth of managerial power, the level of distrust between management and the workforce, the stresses on university workers, their increasingly precarious employment, government hostility or indifference, plus the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic – that’s a more toxic combination than I have ever seen before. </p>
<p>But, classically, a “crisis” is not just a threatening situation. It’s a turning point, which may be for the worse or for the better.</p>
<p>For the better – how? There’s a need for imagination, creating new models of university life and work. There’s a need for internal reform, for industrial democracy. There’s a need for policy work, for more stable funding and more secure jobs. There’s certainly a need for more rational co-operation among universities. There’s a need for more effective support from universities’ multiple constituencies. And underlying all of these, there’s a need to organise – among university workers, among students and their families, and beyond.</p>
<p>Coming back to the questions I raised at the start, yes, there is reason to grieve for what’s been done to institutions that were flourishing, though flawed. And there’s reason for anger at what’s been done to a whole generation of university workers. This wasn’t necessary, and it isn’t necessary now. </p>
<p>It won’t be easy to turn the situation around, but it can happen. Good universities are possible, if we are determined to make them.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This article is an edited extract, republished with permission, from <a href="https://www.griffithreview.com/editions/learning-curves/">Griffith Review 75: Learning Curves</a> edited by Ashley Hay.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/175920/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Raewyn Connell is a life member of the National Tertiary Education Union. She is a graduate of the University of Melbourne and the University of Sydney, and in the past has worked at Flinders University of South Australia and Macquarie University in Sydney, as well as several universities overseas.</span></em></p>
After 50 years as a university teacher, researcher and student, Raewyn Connell wrote a book, The Good University. Today, universities face a more toxic set of challenges than she has ever seen before.
Raewyn Connell, Professor Emerita (social science), University of Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/166673
2021-10-20T04:01:51Z
2021-10-20T04:01:51Z
From counting birds to speaking out: how citizen science leads us to ask crucial questions
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426361/original/file-20211014-25-1vjg4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=178%2C170%2C4601%2C2623&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/close-young-boy-blue-coat-looking-420955114">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>My utopia is based on one simple idea: we should all become citizen scientists.</p>
<p>Why? Because citizen scientists can overturn the information inequity that plagues much of our collective decision-making. If citizens immerse themselves in gathering knowledge and asking questions, they gain power – and are far more likely to engage in participatory democracy. This is fundamental to achieving sustainable environmental change.</p>
<p>Let me give you an example. Over the last 25 years, I’ve been lucky enough to be an active participant in the development of marine spatial plans in many countries. </p>
<p>These plans aim to deliver win-win outcomes for nature, climate, the economy and equity. If you protect marine areas from fishing and other human uses, the fish and other species will bounce back, increasing the number of fish we can catch outside the parks. </p>
<p>But there’s a problem. To work, these plans need buy-in from everyone from artisanal fishermen to national governments. Ideally, that means people need to be able to understand fish growth, movement and population dynamics to be able to discuss the issues on a level playing field. At present, that isn’t always possible. </p>
<p>That’s why I have my hopes pegged on a rapid expansion and celebration of citizen science. </p>
<h2>What is citizen science?</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://citizenscience.org.au/">Australian Citizen Science Association</a> defines citizen science as:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>public participation and collaboration in scientific research with the aim to increase scientific knowledge.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In short, it’s where lay people collect and sometimes analyse, interpret and share scientific information.</p>
<p>Finding out which species live where is often the first step to becoming a citizen scientist. Many people do this without realising. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427437/original/file-20211020-19-2jhxcd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="binoculars and birdwatching guide" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427437/original/file-20211020-19-2jhxcd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427437/original/file-20211020-19-2jhxcd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427437/original/file-20211020-19-2jhxcd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427437/original/file-20211020-19-2jhxcd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427437/original/file-20211020-19-2jhxcd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427437/original/file-20211020-19-2jhxcd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427437/original/file-20211020-19-2jhxcd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Birdwatchers are often engaged in citizen science without even knowing it.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/binoculars-bird-guide-1142628281">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Every day, thousands of birdwatchers enter data about birds they’ve seen into apps. This collective undertaking can become almost addictive for the user. On a mass scale, it allows us to produce maps showing where species are present, where they are not, and in some cases their abundance. </p>
<p>This citizen-collected data is exactly the kind we need for better spatial planning and environmental regulations. Collecting this data across large areas quickly would be almost impossible without the help of citizen scientists. </p>
<p>A huge body of scientific literature has been built around assembling, analysing and interpreting community-gathered spatial data.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/citizen-scientists-are-filling-research-gaps-created-by-the-pandemic-152521">Citizen scientists are filling research gaps created by the pandemic</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Citizen science creates informed citizens</h2>
<p>Citizen science also creates informed citizens who ask crucial questions.</p>
<p>Are there errors in the data and do they matter? How can we make distribution maps when so many parts of Australia are rarely visited by people? What does this data tell us about whether species are becoming more or less abundant, or changing their distribution? </p>
<p>If we collectively create and share data on species distributions, that allows communities to meaningfully discuss thorny issues such as the tension between threatened species and urban development.</p>
<p>Is a block of koala habitat important even if no koala has been seen in it for a couple of years? Should we be planting koala habitat in other areas? </p>
<p>The next fundamental question - what is changing? – is what leads citizen scientists further into engagement with science and collective decision-making. </p>
<p>This question has been important in improving policies for more than 50 years. Rachel Carson’s groundbreaking book about environmental science, <a href="http://www.rachelcarson.org/SilentSpring.aspx">Silent Spring</a>, was inspired in part by data collected by birdwatchers in the US showing some species were declining rapidly. That book led to changes in pesticide policy and gave rise to the modern environmental movement in the US. </p>
<p>To truly understand change, citizen scientists ideally collect data in the same way, at the same locations and across many years. Though this type of data requires more commitment and more attention to process, it produces the most valuable outcome: information on changes in species distribution and abundance. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427438/original/file-20211020-23-3n03mw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="bushwalkers photographing waratah flowers" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427438/original/file-20211020-23-3n03mw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427438/original/file-20211020-23-3n03mw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427438/original/file-20211020-23-3n03mw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427438/original/file-20211020-23-3n03mw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427438/original/file-20211020-23-3n03mw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427438/original/file-20211020-23-3n03mw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427438/original/file-20211020-23-3n03mw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Observing changes in where species live and their abundance provides vital data.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/bushwalkers-photographing-nsw-waratahs-royal-national-1810105873">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For instance, the Threatened Species Index has influenced policies such as the <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-major-report-excoriated-australias-environment-laws-sussan-leys-response-is-confused-and-risky-154254">recent review of the federal Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act</a>, which exposed Australia’s failure to arrest the decline in listed threatened species over twenty years. </p>
<p>But this index would not have been possible without the data generated by citizen scientists (and researchers and governments). It was the quality of the data that made clear the alarming trends for our wildlife. </p>
<p>Knowing that the sky is falling is necessary, but it’s not enough. Knowing what to do about the falling sky is much more useful. This happens when a citizen scientist begins asking how our actions cause change. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/our-turtle-program-shows-citizen-science-isnt-just-great-for-data-it-makes-science-feel-personal-155142">Our turtle program shows citizen science isn't just great for data, it makes science feel personal</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Speaking up and speaking out</h2>
<p>In my ideal world, everybody in Australia would not only be asking questions about what causes changes to the environment but would also be involved in solving the problems we face and making the most of whatever opportunities emerge. </p>
<p>For example, we have found that the work of recreational fishers in monitoring species abundance and size of fish in and outside of protected areas proves powerful advocacy for more marine zoning. </p>
<p>When people see with their own eyes how fish increase in size in protected zones compared to fishing zones, they often become advocates for protected areas. To me, this is a clear example of the power of information and connected knowledge in locally managed ecosystems.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426364/original/file-20211014-19-5c4ap3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Large ball of schooling fish" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426364/original/file-20211014-19-5c4ap3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426364/original/file-20211014-19-5c4ap3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426364/original/file-20211014-19-5c4ap3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426364/original/file-20211014-19-5c4ap3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426364/original/file-20211014-19-5c4ap3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426364/original/file-20211014-19-5c4ap3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426364/original/file-20211014-19-5c4ap3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Citizen science can help capture changes in fish abundance and distribution in real time.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/big-eye-trevally-jack-caranx-sexfasciatus-169126661">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Any utopia requires decision-making by the people, for the people. For us to make good decisions together, we need to have equal access to information - not only consumption, but production. </p>
<p>That’s why I see citizen science as so important. It’s information produced by the people for everyone’s benefit. Its power lies in the opportunities it gives anyone to learn about the world, to ask questions about how it is changing, and and how our actions are affecting that change. </p>
<p>More and more citizen scientists are willing to speak up and speak out about matters they care about, and to question policies or decisions they disagree with. Science has given them power to speak with authority. If we were all citizen scientists, information inequities would be a thing of the past. </p>
<p><em>This piece has been adapted from Professor Possingham’s <a href="https://www.griffithreview.com/articles/power-to-the-people/">essay</a> in Griffith Review 73: Hey, Utopia!</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/166673/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hugh Possingham works for The Queensland State Government and The University of Queensland . He receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He is affiliated with BirdLife Australia, Birds Queensland, Accounting for Nature, Ecological Society of Australia, Ecological Society of America, Australian Academy of Sciences, Nature Conservation Society of South Australia. and several other science and environmental organisations.</span></em></p>
If we all collect and understand scientific data as citizens, we’ll be a step closer to a society able to make better collaborative decisions.
Hugh Possingham, Professor, The University of Queensland
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/160447
2021-05-13T19:53:47Z
2021-05-13T19:53:47Z
Friday essay: searching for sanity in a world hell-bent on destruction
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399371/original/file-20210507-19-16uwms7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C0%2C2977%2C2479&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1602501213731-fa7d77d5ab9c?ixid=MnwxMjA3fDB8MHxwaG90by1wYWdlfHx8fGVufDB8fHx8&ixlib=rb-1.2.1&auto=format&fit=crop&w=2084&q=80">Unsplash/Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>According to <a href="https://paulocoelhoblog.com/2013/05/15/the-well-of-madness/">The Parable of the Poisoned Well</a>, there once lived a king who ruled over a great city. He was loved for his wisdom and feared for his power. At the heart of the city was a well, the waters of which were clean and pure and from where the king and all the inhabitants drank. But one evening an enemy entered the city and poisoned the well with a strange liquid. Henceforth, all who drank from it went mad.</p>
<p>All the people drank the water, but not the king, for he had been warned by a watchman who had observed the contamination. The people began to say, “The king is mad and has lost his reason. Look how strangely he behaves. We cannot be ruled by a madman, so he must be dethroned”.</p>
<p>The king sensed his subjects were preparing to rise against him and grew fearful of revolution. One evening he ordered a royal goblet to be filled from the well and drank from it deeply. The next day there was great rejoicing among the people, for their beloved king had finally regained his wisdom and sanity.</p>
<p>In his 1955 book <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40717990-the-sane-society">The Sane Society</a>, psychoanalyst Erich Fromm suggests nothing is more common than the assumption that we, people living in the advanced industrial economies, are eminently sane. Nevertheless, Australia’s Department of Health reports that <a href="https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/mental-health-services/mental-health-services-in-australia/report-contents/summary/prevalence-and-policies">almost half of Australians aged 16 to 85 will experience a mental disorder</a> at some point in their lives. </p>
<p>According to Fromm, we are inclined to see incidents of mental illness as individual and isolated disturbances, while acknowledging — with some discomfort, perhaps — that so many of these incidents should occur in a culture that is supposedly sane. Fromm haunts our self-image even today, attempting to unsettle these assumptions of sanity: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Can we be so sure that we are not deceiving ourselves? Many an inmate of an insane asylum is convinced that everybody else is crazy, except himself. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In an age now widely described as the <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/anthropocene/">Anthropocene</a>, the conventionally held distinction between sanity and insanity is at risk of collapsing … and taking our civilisation with it.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-term-anthropocene-jumped-from-geoscience-to-hashtags-before-most-of-us-knew-what-it-meant-130130">How the term 'Anthropocene' jumped from geoscience to hashtags – before most of us knew what it meant</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The line shifts over time</h2>
<p>At least since Michel Foucault’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51933.Madness_and_Civilization?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=yNMCU9OJxI&rank=1">Madness and Civilization</a> (1961), it has been understood that the idea of (in)sanity is an evolving, socially constructed category. Not only does the medical validity of mental health diagnoses and treatments shift with the times, but what has been judged “sane” in one era has the potential to blur into what is not in another — and without announcement.</p>
<p>This can disguise the fact that social practices or patterns of thought that may once have been considered healthy may now be properly diagnosed as unhealthy. And while this can apply to individual cases, there is no reason to think it should not also apply more broadly to a society at large. A society might go insane without being aware of its own degeneration.</p>
<p>One does not need to be a conspiracy theorist to recognise, with Foucault, that power shapes knowledge. If profits and economic growth are the benchmarks of success in a society, it simply may not be profitable to expose a society as insane, and even members of an insane society may sooner choose wilful blindness than look too deeply into the subconscious of their own culture. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-the-ideas-of-foucault-99758">Explainer: the ideas of Foucault</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399357/original/file-20210507-16-1xnvpgm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Man with glasses writing on notepad" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399357/original/file-20210507-16-1xnvpgm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399357/original/file-20210507-16-1xnvpgm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399357/original/file-20210507-16-1xnvpgm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399357/original/file-20210507-16-1xnvpgm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399357/original/file-20210507-16-1xnvpgm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=610&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399357/original/file-20210507-16-1xnvpgm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=610&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399357/original/file-20210507-16-1xnvpgm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=610&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 can we be so sure of our own sanity, asked psychoanalyst Erich Fromm, pictured in 1974.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/72/Erich_Fromm_1974.jpg/2048px-Erich_Fromm_1974.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>If our society is not sane — and I find myself pointing towards this thesis — another question follows: what might sanity look like in an insane world? </p>
<p>I come to these questions without mental health training or expertise, but simply as an ordinary member of late-stage capitalist society, one suffering in his own way and trying to understand the mental health burdens that accompany our <a href="https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/ecocidal">ecocidal</a> and grossly inequitable mode of civilisation. I make no comment on the very real biophysical causes for mental illness, such as chemical imbalances or physical injury. </p>
<p>Instead, I reflect, at a “macro” level, on the <a href="https://www.kritike.org/journal/issue_22/pacquing_june2018.pdf">sanity or insanity of the dominant culture</a> and political economy in contemporary capitalist societies such as Australia, asking how the world “out there” can impact the inner dimension of our lives. </p>
<p>Following Fromm’s lead, I inquire not so much into individual pathology, but into what he calls “collective neuroses” and “<a href="https://philpapers.org/rec/FROTPO-2">the pathology of normalcy</a>”. Of course, collective neuroses are not easily observed, for they are, by nature, the background fabric of existence and so easily missed. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/covids-mental-health-fallout-will-last-a-long-time-heres-how-were-targeting-pandemic-depression-and-anxiety-155734">COVID's mental health fallout will last a long time. Here's how we're targeting pandemic depression and anxiety</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Drinking the Kool-Aid</h2>
<p>At first, I tried to distil a positive life lesson from the Parable of the Poisoned Well, but I quickly realised this was the wrong way to approach it. </p>
<p>There is arguably no moral guidance in the fable, only an amoral social insight. If there is a lesson, it is that sometimes it is easier or safer simply to conform to common assumptions or practices, no matter how dubious or absurd they are, to avoid being socially ostracised. If you do not go with the flow you may be deemed mad, so it may be better just to blend in and drink the Kool-Aid. </p>
<p>A second reading of the parable points to the relativity of notions of sanity, again suggesting that what’s sane or insane isn’t fixed, but is culturally dependent: a person is sane if they “function” well enough in the society, even if that society is sick.</p>
<p>It is this relativity of sanity that Fromm calls into question in The Sane Society. “The fact that millions of people share the same vices,” he wrote, “does not make these vices virtues, the fact that they share so many errors does not make the errors to be truths, and the fact that millions of people share the same forms of mental pathology does not make these people sane.” </p>
<p>He felt that society needed certain objective conditions to be sane, including environmental sustainability. If too many of humankind’s most basic needs were not being met despite unprecedented capacity, he felt it would be proper to declare a society sick, even if the behaviour producing the sickness was widespread and validated by its own internal cultural logic. </p>
<p>What is “normal” behaviour today? The climate emergency points to our fatal addiction to fossil fuels. We know their combustion is killing the planet, but we can’t help ourselves. The <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/">Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change</a> was established in 1988 to advise us on the science of climate change, yet here we are, more than 30 years later, and carbon emissions continue to rise (excepting only the years of financial crisis or pandemic). We emit <a href="https://www.wri.org/insights/co2-emissions-climb-all-time-high-again-2019-6-takeaways-latest-climate-data">37 gigatons of carbon dioxide</a> into the atmosphere each year, in full knowledge of their impacts. </p>
<p>In 2019, fossil fuels supplied <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2020/06/20/bp-review-new-highs-in-global-energy-consumption-and-carbon-emissions-in-2019/?sh=662d09d066a1">around 85 per cent</a> of global primary energy demand. Driven by a fetish for economic growth, voters support politicians who bring lumps of coal into a parliament for a laugh and enthusiastically build new fossil fuel power stations. It is a tragedy disguised as a grim joke.</p>
<p>Scientists warn that current trajectories of climate heating are not compatible with civilisation as we know it, with potentially billions of lives at risk this century, both human and non-human. You know something is wrong when the <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02568-y#:%7E:text=Fires%20are%20releasing%20record%20levels,have%20been%20a%20carbon%20sink.&text=Wildfires%20blazed%20along%20the%20Arctic,fire%20season%20in%20a%20row.">Arctic is burning</a>. And yet nothing is more “normal” than hopping into a fossil-fuelled car or consuming products shipped around the world to satisfy the carboniferous desires of affluent society. </p>
<p>We’re deforesting the planet and destroying topsoil to feed a population that is growing by over 200,000 people every day. The United Nations projects we’ll have reached <a href="https://www.un.org/development/desa/en/news/population/world-population-prospects-2017.html">almost ten billion people by mid-century</a>.</p>
<p>This human dominance of the planet under global capitalism is contributing to a holocaust of biodiversity loss, with the World Wildlife Fund <a href="https://www.worldwildlife.org/press-releases/68-average-decline-in-species-population-sizes-since-1970-says-new-wwf-report">recently reporting</a> that populations of vertebrate species have declined by 68 per cent since 1970. We are living through the sixth mass extinction, driven by human economic activity that is not just normal but encouraged, rewarded and widely admired.</p>
<p>Empire marches on like a snake eating its own tail, pursuing growth for growth’s sake — the ideology of a cancer cell.</p>
<h2>Unmoored, lost at sea</h2>
<p>A spiritual malaise seems to be spreading throughout advanced capitalist societies, as if the material rewards of consumerism have failed to fulfil their promise of a happy and meaningful existence. Scholars publish books about it: Robert E Lane’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/918138.The_Loss_of_Happiness_in_Market_Democracies?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=6HgxVZCV3c&rank=1">The Loss of Happiness in Market Democracies</a>, David G Myers’ <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/405577.The_American_Paradox?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=BADGVXKZVJ&rank=1">The American Paradox: Spiritual Hunger in an Age of Plenty</a>, and Clive Hamilton and Richard Denniss’ <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48831.Affluenza?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=eNG86hzteG&rank=1">Affluenza: When Too Much Is Never Enough</a>. </p>
<p>For whom, then, do we destroy the planet? Is a greater abundance of “nice things” what we are lacking in the overdeveloped world? Or is there, as historian and philosopher Lewis Mumford <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/243756046_How_Lewis_Mumford_saw_science_and_art_and_himself">once opined</a>, an inner dimension to our crises that must be resolved before the outer crises can be effectively met?</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399361/original/file-20210507-24-1q4lsmd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="rubbish in waterway" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399361/original/file-20210507-24-1q4lsmd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399361/original/file-20210507-24-1q4lsmd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399361/original/file-20210507-24-1q4lsmd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399361/original/file-20210507-24-1q4lsmd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399361/original/file-20210507-24-1q4lsmd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399361/original/file-20210507-24-1q4lsmd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399361/original/file-20210507-24-1q4lsmd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nice things that fail to meet our needs become trash, polluting the planet.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1605027538782-c1b60ffa6cef?ixid=MnwxMjA3fDB8MHxwaG90by1wYWdlfHx8fGVufDB8fHx8&ixlib=rb-1.2.1&auto=format&fit=crop&w=2700&q=80">Alexander Schimmeck/Unsplash</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>How easy it is to live life regurgitating the prewritten script of advanced industrial society: cogs in a vast machine, easily replaced. Perhaps we see our <a href="https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9789811578601">disenchantment</a> reflected in the eyes of those tired, alienated commuters, a class into which it is so easy to fall simply by virtue of being subjects of the capitalist order. We all know that there is more to life than this. </p>
<p>We find ourselves living in an age where the old dogmas of growth, material affluence and technology are increasingly exposed as false idols. Like a fleet of ships that has been unmoored in a storm, our species is drifting in dangerous seas without a clear sense of direction.</p>
<p>Where are the new sources of meaning and guidance that all societies need to fight off the ennui? Pioneering sociologist Émile Durkheim used the term “anomie” to refer to a condition in which a culture’s traditional norms have broken down without new norms arising that can give sense to a changing world. Perhaps this is the term that best explains our existential condition today. </p>
<p>I am reminded of a poem by Michael Leunig:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>They took him on a stretcher</p>
<p>To the Home for the Appalled </p>
<p>Where he lay down in the corner</p>
<p>And be bawled and bawled and bawled.</p>
<p>‘There’s nothing wrong with me,’ he wailed, </p>
<p>When asked about his bawling, </p>
<p>‘It’s the world that needs attention;</p>
<p>It’s so utterly appalling.’ </p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-how-many-climate-crisis-books-will-it-take-to-save-the-planet-149529">Friday essay: how many climate crisis books will it take to save the planet?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>What is a sane reaction to an insane society?</h2>
<p>One could go on, but it would be perverse to do so. “Doom porn” is not my business or purpose. But there is a case for diagnosing our society as insane — not as rhetorical strategy, but in the pursuit of literal truth. </p>
<p>If an individual knowingly destroyed the conditions of his or her own existence, we’d question their sanity. If a mother only fed her children if she could make a profit, we’d doubt the soundness of her mind. If a father took all the household wealth and left the rest of the family in destitution while building bombs in the basement that could destroy the neighbourhood, we’d call him psychopathic. </p>
<p>And yet these are characteristics of our society as a whole. Fromm would not permit us to diagnose ourselves and our society as sane just because the actions that produce the features outlined above are considered “normal”. There is a pathology to our normalcy — my own regrettably included — and this pathology is no less pathological just because it is shared by millions upon millions of people.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399359/original/file-20210507-16-vkd9mu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Woman alone in crowd" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399359/original/file-20210507-16-vkd9mu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399359/original/file-20210507-16-vkd9mu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399359/original/file-20210507-16-vkd9mu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399359/original/file-20210507-16-vkd9mu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399359/original/file-20210507-16-vkd9mu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399359/original/file-20210507-16-vkd9mu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399359/original/file-20210507-16-vkd9mu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘A sane person in an insane society must appear insane.’ Kurt Vonnegut.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://image.shutterstock.com/image-photo/back-view-asian-woman-wear-600w-628259960.jpg">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There are <a href="https://www.googleadservices.com/pagead/aclk?sa=L&ai=DChcSEwjE__jH4rjwAhXPVWAKHfurCMQYABAAGgJ0bQ&ae=2&ohost=www.google.com&cid=CAESQOD2kmtebeEhZpbAMgF79UQcE4qd7DNgkUIVBPel6aYOV7fLeWC6R4M-OXz7_Y2cLto2uqghI1fw6OB2z1KLrLw&sig=AOD64_1an5FMVedlWNBKZH6gWKSA6wHTlA&q&adurl&ved=2ahUKEwiFy_DH4rjwAhWKILcAHRQAA6cQ0Qx6BAgJEAE&dct=1">negative mental health effects</a> that might naturally and justifiably arise when otherwise sane people find themselves living in an insane world. The paradox that threatens to emerge has already been variously noted.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4985.Welcome_to_the_Monkey_House?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=4CvpPACCbI&rank=1">Welcome to the Monkey House</a>, Kurt Vonnegut Jnr writes, “a sane person in an insane society must appear insane”. <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/6588830-insanity-is-the-only-sane-reaction-to-an-insane-society#:%7E:text=%E2%80%9CInsanity%20is%20the%20only%20sane%20reaction%20to%20an%20insane%20society.%E2%80%9D">Thomas Stephen Szasz</a> contends: “Insanity is the only sane reaction to an insane society”. And the British psychiatrist <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/4436873.R_D_Laing">R. D. Laing</a> said insanity was “a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world”. I think I recall Star Trek’s Mr Spock saying <a href="https://connecticut.cbslocal.com/2015/03/26/in-an-insane-world-a-sane-man-must-appear-insane/">something similar</a>.</p>
<p>How can we not get depressed when reading the newspapers today or watching our politicians go about their business with such confident incompetence? How can we not grieve the wildlife and natural habitat being destroyed each moment? What parent can look to the future and not feel a foreboding dread at what world their children and grandchildren will inherit? </p>
<p>At the same time, and because of that dread, it is hard to maintain the emotional resources to care for strangers or “join a movement” when stress, agitation, worry and busyness clutter our mental lives. This can make society seem like a harsh place, lacking in generosity of spirit or compassion. </p>
<p>Whether it’s from watching white supremacists march or listening to climate deniers speak from platforms in parliament and mass media, a nausea sets in, a sickness not so much of the mind but of the soul. </p>
<p>This is an existential diagnosis, not a medical or psychiatric one. It would be wrong to make peace with this madness. The world we live in should not be treated as normal, and it should not be a sign of good health to become “well adjusted” to a society that is casually practising ecocide, celebrating narcissism, institutionalising racism and assessing the value of all things according to the cold logic of profit maximisation.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-thinking-like-a-planet-environmental-crisis-and-the-humanities-125489">Friday essay: thinking like a planet - environmental crisis and the humanities</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>It is okay not to feel okay</h2>
<p>We must not assume behaviour that makes an individual “functional” within a sick society is sufficient evidence of their sanity. In such a society, it is okay not to feel okay, to cry and feel grief, to feel dread and alienation. In our tears, let us find solidarity, for we are not alone.</p>
<p>Remember this when you wake up prematurely in the morning with an anxiety without object, or as you stare at the ceiling late at night as you try to fall asleep. You are not losing your mind. It is precisely because you have a grip on reality that reality seems so out of whack.</p>
<p>On my third reading of the Parable of the Poisoned Well, I noticed something I had missed — it was the watchman, the man who warned the king not to drink the poisoned water the rest of the citizenry had already consumed. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399358/original/file-20210507-21-grax6q.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="book cover: Griffith Review journal 72" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399358/original/file-20210507-21-grax6q.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399358/original/file-20210507-21-grax6q.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399358/original/file-20210507-21-grax6q.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399358/original/file-20210507-21-grax6q.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399358/original/file-20210507-21-grax6q.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1154&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399358/original/file-20210507-21-grax6q.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1154&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399358/original/file-20210507-21-grax6q.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1154&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Wanting to quash the revolutionary sentiment, the king succumbed to public pressure and eventually drank from the well in order to fit in. But what about the watchman? Is it possible he never drank the poisoned water and remained sane in an insane society? Did that made him seem mad?</p>
<p>Perhaps my thoughts here are those of a watchman, someone who has tried not to drink the Kool-Aid, who has attempted to resist the pathology of normalcy. </p>
<p>Admittedly, I have questioned my own sanity at times — when, for example, I’ve found myself dancing in the middle of a busy intersection with <a href="https://www.booktopia.com.au/extinction-rebellion-rupert-read/book/9780648840510.html">Extinction Rebellion</a>, risking arrest. What had driven me to act in a way that sees me surrounded by police with batons, guns and pepper spray? They sure looked mad.</p>
<p>Call me crazy, but I’ll finish with the words often attributed to <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7887-and-those-who-were-seen-dancing-were-thought-to-be">Friedrich Nietzsche</a>: “Those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music”.</p>
<p><em>This piece is an edited extract, republished with permission from <a href="https://www.griffithreview.com/">GriffithReview72: States of Mind</a>, edited by Ashley Hay.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/160447/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Samuel Alexander 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>
The line between what is normal and what is pathological has blurred. We risk our collective sanity and our planet if we stick to business as usual.
Samuel Alexander, Research fellow, Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, The University of Melbourne
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/143099
2020-07-23T19:52:56Z
2020-07-23T19:52:56Z
Friday essay: the forgotten German botanist who took 200,000 Australian plants to Europe
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348745/original/file-20200722-15-pzmefh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C4%2C3000%2C4994&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Kangaroo Apple collected by Preiss at Swan River in the early19th century.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.ville-ge.ch/musinfo/bd/cjb/chg/adetail.php?id=142264&base=img&lang=en">Catalogue des herbiers de Genève (CHG). Conservatoire & Jardin botaniques de la Ville de Genève</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It is not widely known that many Australian colonial natural history collections are represented in German museums and herbaria, nor that there are initiatives to transform these artefacts of colonial heritage and science back into objects from living cultures with living custodians and their own stories to tell.</p>
<p>Dr Johann August Ludwig Preiss (1811–1883) played a significant role in this evolving story as the first professional botanist to collect systematically in the Colony of Western Australia from 1838 to 1842. </p>
<p>His collections of flora and fauna were pivotal in opening this globally significant region of biodiversity to the world — and he beat the British at their own game by bringing their new colony’s botanical wonder to scientists, nurserymen and gardeners in Europe.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/botany-and-the-colonisation-of-australia-in-1770-128469">Botany and the colonisation of Australia in 1770</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Despite his unusually long sojourn collecting in Western Australia, Preiss has been largely forgotten – unlike his contemporary, the naturalist and explorer <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Leichhardt">Ludwig Leichhardt</a> (1813–1848), well known for his work in northern and eastern Australia and his ill-fated 1848 expedition to cross the continent; and the globally active science visionary <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_von_Humboldt">Alexander von Humboldt</a> (1769–1859), whose birth anniversaries were celebrated in Germany and Australia in 2013 and 2019 respectively. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348816/original/file-20200722-25-vl663c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348816/original/file-20200722-25-vl663c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348816/original/file-20200722-25-vl663c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=872&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348816/original/file-20200722-25-vl663c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=872&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348816/original/file-20200722-25-vl663c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=872&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348816/original/file-20200722-25-vl663c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1096&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348816/original/file-20200722-25-vl663c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1096&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348816/original/file-20200722-25-vl663c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1096&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A dryandra (or a banksia) as would have been collected by Preiss.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Anca Gabriela Zosin/Unsplash</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Preiss held no important posts in exploration, science or public office and left only a small selection of archived letters and some strangers’ impressions. So, we are left to speculate about the negative spaces between the known fragments of Preiss’s life and the agents – human and non-human – of the worlds he moved through.</p>
<p>The natural sciences in Germany and Britain in the 19th century shared much common ground: there were royal dynastic connections, cultural ties, migrations to Australia and complementary interests in advancing the natural sciences. </p>
<p>The British Empire, however, had the edge over Germany, with global networks plugged into the nerve centre of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew – an oasis of collecting, classifying, storing, propagating and dispersing exotic and useful plants in Britain and the colonies. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349015/original/file-20200722-28-5uri2n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349015/original/file-20200722-28-5uri2n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349015/original/file-20200722-28-5uri2n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349015/original/file-20200722-28-5uri2n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349015/original/file-20200722-28-5uri2n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349015/original/file-20200722-28-5uri2n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349015/original/file-20200722-28-5uri2n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349015/original/file-20200722-28-5uri2n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A page from Priess’s field books.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">L. Preiss Field book Nos. 1 and 2 State Records Office of Western Australia AU WA S32 cons3401 PRE/01</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Germany had more diffuse networks of scientists, across scattered institutions – universities, herbaria and botanical gardens – focused on classifying and documenting the diversity of flora and fauna into rigid systems, using dried, preserved and some live specimens.</p>
<p>In Preiss’s time Germany had no colonies to draw on but collected on others’ turf. In British colonies this seemingly innocent practice was supported by their structures of privilege and violence. </p>
<p>While there were no legal prohibitions on German naturalists collecting in British colonies, Preiss irritated his hosts by staying so long, collecting so much and transporting most of it back to Germany, not London.</p>
<h2>A botanising craze</h2>
<p>Preiss came from humble origins in the small village of Herzberg am Harz, in the Harz Mountains of the Göttingen district of Lower Saxony. When I visited there in 2018 to learn about Preiss’s family and early life, the council archivist Dieter Karl Wolfe explained there was little local information known about his family. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Water colour painting of a green landscape." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348750/original/file-20200722-37-1excc0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348750/original/file-20200722-37-1excc0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348750/original/file-20200722-37-1excc0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348750/original/file-20200722-37-1excc0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348750/original/file-20200722-37-1excc0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348750/original/file-20200722-37-1excc0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348750/original/file-20200722-37-1excc0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">View of Herzberg Castle on the Harz, painted by Carl Irmer.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Preiss was the eldest surviving son of 12 children, and his father was a master saddler (like his father before him), a vinegar brewer and land owner. His cousin Gustav Friedrich Preiss (1825–1888) was the family success: he printed the local daily newspaper Kreiss Zeitung from 1848, became the village mayor and built a fine home. There are portraits of him and his wife in the council archive. </p>
<p>Another more internationally minded relative helped start the town’s Esperanto Society in the early 1900s. Friendly Esparantists showed me public monuments for Esperanto and its Polish founder, Ludwik Zamenhof (1859–1917) – but there was nothing to commemorate Preiss, their local botanical achiever.</p>
<p>Speculating on why Preiss took up botanising in far distant lands, Wolfe extolled the benefits of Germany’s advanced education system for gifted youths of limited means – like Preiss and Leichhardt. </p>
<p>The ideal was a humanistic education to equip children with the foundations of learning and intellect, allowing students to build further knowledge and expertise in adult life. The curriculum included science and languages. </p>
<p>Preiss probably followed the same schooling trajectory as Leichhardt: boarding school, gymnasium, university. Preiss was university educated and held a German DPhil doctorate. This was more like a degree with an original research component than today’s formal doctorate qualification.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Black and white portrait etching" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348752/original/file-20200722-31-8xn98j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348752/original/file-20200722-31-8xn98j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=721&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348752/original/file-20200722-31-8xn98j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=721&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348752/original/file-20200722-31-8xn98j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=721&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348752/original/file-20200722-31-8xn98j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348752/original/file-20200722-31-8xn98j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348752/original/file-20200722-31-8xn98j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Botanist Johann Christoph Lehmann.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Preiss’s faculty “promoter” was probably <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Georg_Christian_Lehmann">Professor Johann Georg Christian Lehmann</a> (1792–1860), director of Hamburg’s botanic garden, who sent Preiss to the Western Australian Colony. </p>
<p>The craze for botanising gripped both scholars and amateurs and opened new opportunities for serious study, teaching and collecting – assisted by new equipment, including the vasculum (a botanical tin case for collecting in the field), drying papers for preparing specimens, Wardian cases (ensuring safe transportation back to Europe) and glass houses for cultivating living plants. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-wardian-case-revolutionised-the-plant-trade-and-australian-gardens-100448">How the Wardian case revolutionised the plant trade – and Australian gardens</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>In the 1830s, the botanical world was abuzz with news of Western Australia’s unique floral diversity. Transport of plants to London was still in its early days in 1836 when Lehmann first recognised the chance for expansion through the 25-year-old Preiss. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348568/original/file-20200721-35-dmmjuq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=148%2C1738%2C2847%2C2254&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348568/original/file-20200721-35-dmmjuq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=874&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348568/original/file-20200721-35-dmmjuq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=874&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348568/original/file-20200721-35-dmmjuq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=874&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348568/original/file-20200721-35-dmmjuq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1098&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348568/original/file-20200721-35-dmmjuq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1098&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348568/original/file-20200721-35-dmmjuq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1098&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An asteraceae sample collected by Preiss.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.ville-ge.ch/musinfo/bd/cjb/chg/adetail.php?id=220894&base=img&lang=en">Catalogue des herbiers de Genève (CHG). Conservatoire & Jardin botaniques de la Ville de Genève.</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Preiss recalled being instructed to collect everything – flora, fauna, minerals and fossils – and hoped to “collect the products of [natural history] and arrange those products in a useful way for the purpose of Science”. </p>
<p>Lehmann and his wealthy friend, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_von_Winthem">Wilhelm von Winthem</a> (1799–1847), a private collector and entomologist with extensive collections, organised funds for him through a form of venture capital under which the von Winthem family company publicised and sold shares to private citizens and collecting institutions. </p>
<p>On Preiss’s return, investors would choose items from his collections equal to the value of their shares.</p>
<h2>Rich wilderness</h2>
<p>Arriving in Perth in late 1838, a dusty village huddled between vast expanses of sea, bush and hinterland, Preiss encountered a parochial society. </p>
<p>Local collectors who worked with London’s botanical elite guarded their status jealously. Most colonists were disillusioned by false promises of rich farming lands and worn out by the struggle to survive. </p>
<p>I imagine Preiss as lonely and friendless.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A sketched city grid" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348754/original/file-20200722-29-177evdv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348754/original/file-20200722-29-177evdv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=354&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348754/original/file-20200722-29-177evdv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=354&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348754/original/file-20200722-29-177evdv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=354&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348754/original/file-20200722-29-177evdv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348754/original/file-20200722-29-177evdv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348754/original/file-20200722-29-177evdv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The town plan of Perth, 1838.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The local landscape would have been so strange for Preiss, humanised by millennia of Nyungar curation but an apparent wilderness to the colonists’ eyes. </p>
<p>Botanical scientist <a href="https://research-repository.uwa.edu.au/en/persons/stephen-hopper">Steve Hopper</a> has revealed how the deep time of the region’s unusually stable environmental evolution both helped shape the unique floristic richness and endemism of this area and enhanced Nyungar people’s deep knowledge (<em>kartijin</em>) of their country – enabling them to live well off the diversity of plant foods they cultivated and nurtured with practices they adapted to the environment and passed down over many thousands of years. </p>
<p>This richness drew Preiss in.</p>
<p>Preiss began collecting immediately. In contrast to local British collectors he had the freedom of sufficient funds and no domestic encumbrances or civic duties. He also had no rights to own land. </p>
<p>His extensive collecting implicated him in the process of multispecies destruction and dispossession. The Indigenous Nyungar people were already in a state of crisis as colonists destroyed their ancient accommodations to the land and replaced them with their own hasty adaptations of species and farming.</p>
<p>The destruction intensified during the 20th century with the clearing of 90% of the region for wheat farming. In fewer than 200 years this encounter between Old and New World ecosystems transformed the landscapes of exceptional floral riches into a canary in the coalmine for climate change.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/writing-the-wa-wheatbelt-a-place-of-radical-environmental-change-76567">Writing the WA wheatbelt, a place of radical environmental change</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Collected sample of dried flowers" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348756/original/file-20200722-37-a69qrn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348756/original/file-20200722-37-a69qrn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=868&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348756/original/file-20200722-37-a69qrn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=868&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348756/original/file-20200722-37-a69qrn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=868&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348756/original/file-20200722-37-a69qrn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1091&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348756/original/file-20200722-37-a69qrn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1091&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348756/original/file-20200722-37-a69qrn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1091&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Senecio cygnorum Steetz collected by Preiss.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.ville-ge.ch/musinfo/bd/cjb/chg/adetail.php?id=233423&base=img&lang=en">Catalogue des herbiers de Genève (CHG). Conservatoire & Jardin botaniques de la Ville de Genève.</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A new critical approach to Australian 19th century natural history collections in German institutions has been prompted by concerns about their colonial provenance and reports of environmental damage. </p>
<p>In 2018 in Berlin, curators and scholars attended an international conference on the politics of natural history and decolonising of collections and museums.</p>
<p>There were calls to open conversations with Indigenous custodians and reflect on issues of climate change. Environmental knowledge in Preiss’s field notebooks, now missing, could have made an important contribution. </p>
<p>In a report on the colony published in Flora (1842), Preiss wrote that he “recorded [information] about specimens he observed and learned accurately from the Aborigines”.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://archive.sro.wa.gov.au/index.php/informationobject/browse?topLod=0&query=preiss">field books</a> from his 1841 survey commission held in the State Records Office in Perth suggest the extent of the loss, being richly illustrated with botanical and landscape features and detailed annotations of measures and calculations. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="An orange and purple banksia flower." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348827/original/file-20200722-27-jabxop.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348827/original/file-20200722-27-jabxop.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=748&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348827/original/file-20200722-27-jabxop.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=748&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348827/original/file-20200722-27-jabxop.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=748&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348827/original/file-20200722-27-jabxop.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=940&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348827/original/file-20200722-27-jabxop.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=940&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348827/original/file-20200722-27-jabxop.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=940&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Preiss collected many species of banksia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Holger Link/Unsplash</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>They speak eloquently today of how seriously Preiss took this colonial project to map “the significance of the earth … as a space to be occupied”.</p>
<p>Preiss wrote that he “traversed this land in all directions … [and] observed the greatest diversity of plants”. It seems he had no transport or equipment for long surveys, so often walked lengthy distances alone. </p>
<p>This was an intimate way for Preiss to come to know the bush. His proximity to plants and the earth sharpened his eye for shapes and colours as well as his capacity to interpret signs along bush pathways. He sometimes travelled with colleagues, and visited Rottnest Island with the colony’s chief botanist James Drummond and John Gilbert, who collected for British ornithologist John Gould.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349023/original/file-20200723-20-1uw4vm0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349023/original/file-20200723-20-1uw4vm0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349023/original/file-20200723-20-1uw4vm0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349023/original/file-20200723-20-1uw4vm0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349023/original/file-20200723-20-1uw4vm0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349023/original/file-20200723-20-1uw4vm0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349023/original/file-20200723-20-1uw4vm0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349023/original/file-20200723-20-1uw4vm0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rottnest Island, off the coast of Western Australia, was one of the locations Preiss collected plant specimens.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tony McDonough/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And he relied on the hospitality of homesteaders and assistance from Nyungar people. The colony’s Advocate-General George Fletcher Moore <a href="https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/3966229">noted</a> an instance, perhaps disapprovingly, of Preiss walking out of the bush with a Nyungar woman, both of them loaded down with plants. </p>
<p>He added that “the natives seem quite surprised at his collecting the <em>jilbah</em> [shrubs] and are very curious to know what he does with them”, suggesting that Preiss was following the colonial practice of collecting without their permission.</p>
<p>Despite being the colony’s best qualified botanist, Preiss was never invited to join its British collecting networks. Instead, Preiss built his own networks in London and Germany. </p>
<p>Drummond became his occasional helper and nemesis. He warned his London patron, Sir William Hooker (1785–1865), that the new German botanist was collecting for the Russian, Prussian and some German states. </p>
<p>The German botanist Dr Ludwig Diels (1874–1945), who collected in the area in 1906, <a href="https://www.dpaw.wa.gov.au/about-us/science-and-research/publications-resources/103-conservation-science-wa-journal?showall=&start=7">imagined</a> the two men as benign opposites: the older “bushman, always in the saddle” out collecting rather than “arranging his specimens in order” and young Preiss, the “cultured scientist of old Europe” and first collector in the colony to have “each item in his collection carefully labelled, giving the locality and other data”. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Dried plants and roots" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348769/original/file-20200722-29-fbj2d6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348769/original/file-20200722-29-fbj2d6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=798&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348769/original/file-20200722-29-fbj2d6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=798&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348769/original/file-20200722-29-fbj2d6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=798&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348769/original/file-20200722-29-fbj2d6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1003&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348769/original/file-20200722-29-fbj2d6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1003&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348769/original/file-20200722-29-fbj2d6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1003&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tetraria octandra, collected at Swan River.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://specimens.kew.org/herbarium/K000960099">© copyright of the Board of Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>However, simmering resentments erupted after Preiss challenged Drummond’s identification of a poison plant killing stock and quaffed an infusion of its leaves to prove his point. Preiss survived the ordeal but lost the argument after Drummond proved the plants’ toxicity for stock.</p>
<p>The more Preiss wore out his welcome in the colony, the more determined he became to stay and in 1839 he decided to try his luck as a British subject, with all the benefits and moral compromises this bestowed. </p>
<p>In 1839 he wrote to the colonial governor requesting naturalisation as a British subject, referring to British connections with the kingdom of Hanover near his birthplace. </p>
<p>He outlined his intention to return to Germany to raise funds for expeditions into the northern interior to explore, collect and open up the land and then become a farmer. </p>
<p>He proposed to sell his collections to the British government for £3,000 – “being produce of a British territory” – and added, “I flatter myself that such a collection has never been sent from this country to England” and there were many new species “not known in Britain and Europe”. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A pink flower" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348824/original/file-20200722-27-99xtui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348824/original/file-20200722-27-99xtui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348824/original/file-20200722-27-99xtui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348824/original/file-20200722-27-99xtui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348824/original/file-20200722-27-99xtui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348824/original/file-20200722-27-99xtui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348824/original/file-20200722-27-99xtui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Australia was home to many flowers never before seen in Europe.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">April Pethybridge/Unsplash</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>He also proposed a German immigration scheme to help resolve labour shortages in the colony, suggesting that 50 young farming families be enticed from Saxony and the Rhine Province in a payback arrangement with other settlers and for his own farming needs, with government land grants payable for bringing out workers. </p>
<p>If his proposal was not accepted he would seek Prussian and Russian funding to explore the north coast.</p>
<p>The British government refused Preiss’s offers, preferring to acquire from established British collectors such as Gould and Gilbert. His request for naturalisation was finally granted in 1841. The next year he travelled back to Europe, taking with him the largest collection then to leave the colony. </p>
<p>Lauded at the time, Preiss’s actions of taking Indigenous plant material and knowledge without consent for scientific gain would now be condemned as bio-piracy.</p>
<p>The collection included 200,000 plants with around 2,500 species and collections of algae, fungi, lichens, bryophytes as well as species of birds, reptiles, mammals, shells and more, as well as his copious notes. </p>
<p>Packed firmly in tin-lined boxes, they travelled well. Ironically, Preiss’s boxes left no space on board for Drummond’s collection of seeds and specimens to be sent to London. Delays in its passage meant that nurseries lost an entire season for planting – while Preiss’s quality collections and duplicate plants entirely spoiled the market for Drummond.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Dried flowers" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348771/original/file-20200722-17-1mv6rui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348771/original/file-20200722-17-1mv6rui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=862&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348771/original/file-20200722-17-1mv6rui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=862&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348771/original/file-20200722-17-1mv6rui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=862&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348771/original/file-20200722-17-1mv6rui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1083&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348771/original/file-20200722-17-1mv6rui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1083&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348771/original/file-20200722-17-1mv6rui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1083&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Stalked Guinea-flower collected in Perth.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://specimens.kew.org/herbarium/K000700355">© copyright of the Board of Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Diels lavishly praised Preiss’s collections for the sheer quantity of specimens he had collected in such a short period, the range of plant specimens, detailed information to identify flowers and plants and his collecting sites, the overall presentation that made his collections and notes so useful to science, and the outstanding achievement of producing the first West Australian collection for Europe’s leading herbaria. </p>
<p>Australian naturalist Rica Erikson (1908–2009) <a href="https://slwa.wa.gov.au/erickson/pages/1969drummonds.html">observed</a> that his collections were “far superior to others being offered for sale in England”, but that British botanists “were prejudiced in favour of collectors of their own nationality”.</p>
<h2>Troubled returns</h2>
<p>Preiss’s return to Germany via London was troubled – although he did manage to sell some plants and seeds to fund his journey across to Hamburg. But the situation he found there was disastrous. </p>
<p>The Great Fire of Hamburg in May 1842 had killed more than 50 people and destroyed many public and private buildings. The huge costs of rebuilding would cripple the state – and plans for the natural history museum that would have housed Preiss’s collections were shelved, along with their purchase.</p>
<p>Preiss was now forced to advertise the collections for sale – both to cover his debts from the trip and to offload the sheer quantity of material remaining after his investors’ selections. </p>
<p>He placed advertisements praising the excellence of his collections in botanical and gardening journals, wrote letters to institutions and private collectors, and published his report in the Flora with observations of natural features of the colony. </p>
<p>He also announced his intention to make a second longer journey in Australia from the Gulf of Carpentaria across country to the Swan River Colony. A portion of the current collections, he said, would be delivered to Lehmann “as soon as they are generally arranged, and … description and publication [entrusted] to him and other celebrated natural historians”.</p>
<p>Preiss’s expedition never eventuated, but the book hinted at in his report was a triumph. The two-volume publication named <a href="https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/205504#page/5/mode/1up">Plantae Preissianae</a> (1844– 1847) was compiled by Lehmann with leading German botanists working from the collections, all with extensive publications on Australian species. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348829/original/file-20200722-17-1n3v7iv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348829/original/file-20200722-17-1n3v7iv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348829/original/file-20200722-17-1n3v7iv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348829/original/file-20200722-17-1n3v7iv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348829/original/file-20200722-17-1n3v7iv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348829/original/file-20200722-17-1n3v7iv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348829/original/file-20200722-17-1n3v7iv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Yellow wattle is one of Australia’s most recognisable flowers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rebecca/Unsplash</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This was the first major reference book on Western Australian flora, and preceded by decades the British seven-volume <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/flora-australiensis/4485D6CA3062CC0B7463E5EA5E4C35A8">Flora Australiensis</a> (1863–1878) compiled by botanist George Bentham (1800–1884) – although that work, too, featured several of Preiss’s specimens. </p>
<p>There were further honours for Preiss: he was commemorated in the names of around 100 plants – a matter of considerable status; in 1843 he was elected to membership of the National Academy of Germany; and in the same year his name was added to the registry of the Regensburg Royal Botanical Society.</p>
<p>And his collections began their own journeys. Splitting them for sale dispersed them into private collections and an estimated 35 European herbaria, with the “original” or standard reference set of specimens for Plantae Preissianae passing from Lehmann to his widow, and eventually to its final resting place in the Lund herbarium in Sweden when Germany declined to buy it.</p>
<p>Preiss’s extensive zoological collections of mammals, birds, reptiles, insects and other material did not fare so well. </p>
<p>Some were sold to European museums or dealers but many simply disappeared or can no longer be identified as his. Credit for his “discoveries” of new species was given to other collectors. </p>
<p>His <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/preiss-johann-august-ludwig-2561">entry</a> in the Australian Dictionary of Biography laments that “had Preiss the backing of an ambitious and enterprising zoologist, as Gilbert had in Gould, it is certain that he would have been much better known today”.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Handwritten notes in German" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348783/original/file-20200722-19-1btb38k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348783/original/file-20200722-19-1btb38k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=854&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348783/original/file-20200722-19-1btb38k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=854&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348783/original/file-20200722-19-1btb38k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=854&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348783/original/file-20200722-19-1btb38k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1073&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348783/original/file-20200722-19-1btb38k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1073&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348783/original/file-20200722-19-1btb38k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1073&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A plant specimen with notes from Preiss.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://specimens.kew.org/herbarium/K000203461">© copyright of the Board of Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Despite the success of the book and his standing among Europe’s natural historians, in 1843 Preiss suddenly announced that he was leaving Hamburg along with his collections – at the “urgent wishes of my father” – and that all future letters should be sent to him at Herzberg. </p>
<p>He gave no further explanation for this; in the modern parlance, it seems he just “left the building”.</p>
<p>This sudden shift by Preiss from a very public life to a very private one remains an unsolved mystery. Preiss’s legacy, however, is enduring. </p>
<p>His remarkable achievements in the few years between 1838 and 1843 created a permanent link between the botanical sciences in Western Australia and Germany. His sudden withdrawal opened a space for others to lead. </p>
<p>But how will the collections fare under the well-deserved critical scrutiny of their colonial origins and histories in German institutions? Can they be decolonised to take on new tasks relevant for today?</p>
<p>A couple of years ago, sitting with Preiss’s dryandra specimens at the <a href="https://www.uni-goettingen.de/en/herbarium+goet/157034.html">Göttingen herbarium</a>, I was inspired to see them as potential message sticks with agency to bring people together.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349024/original/file-20200723-30-vv056l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349024/original/file-20200723-30-vv056l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349024/original/file-20200723-30-vv056l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349024/original/file-20200723-30-vv056l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349024/original/file-20200723-30-vv056l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349024/original/file-20200723-30-vv056l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349024/original/file-20200723-30-vv056l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349024/original/file-20200723-30-vv056l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dryandra Woodlands in Western Australia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Charles England/Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Now I’m part of a new project, Healing Land Healing People, based at Dryandra Woodlands south-east of Perth in the country of our project leader, Nyungar Elder Darryl Kickett. </p>
<p>We are working with the knowledge of Nyungar families, botanists, historians and artists to restore the biodiversity of the land and community cultural strengths. We work with similar projects at other sites in the south-west region.</p>
<p>In Germany we are linked with the Centre for Australian Studies at the University of Cologne and the Rachel Carson Center at the University of Munich. My role is to identify other collections from the region in European museums and herbaria and their curators. </p>
<p>With Nyungar Elders and curators sharing their knowledge and stories we can map the journeys of the message sticks from the sites where they were collected to their present locations.</p>
<p>With our German colleagues we can weave new narratives of biodiversity loss and restoration to engage the public, heal the past and ensure a future for our corner of Western Australia and other global biodiversity hotspots.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This piece is republished with permission from GriffithReview69: The European Exchange, edited by Ashley Hay and Natasha Cica, and published in partnership with the Australian National University <a href="https://www.griffithreview.com">griffithreview.com</a></em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/143099/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anna Haebich receives funding from Australia Research Council, Ernst & Rosemarie Keller Award, Australian Academy of Humanities</span></em></p>
Johann August Ludwig Preiss was the first professional botanist to systematically collect flora in the Colony of Western Australia. Yet he is little remembered today.
Anna Haebich, Senior Research Professor, Curtin University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/136721
2020-04-30T20:07:14Z
2020-04-30T20:07:14Z
Friday essay: grief and things of stone, wood and wool
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330605/original/file-20200427-145553-1ftb5j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=2%2C224%2C1994%2C2173&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1472666260353-23210544cdf1?ixlib=rb-1.2.1&ixid=eyJhcHBfaWQiOjEyMDd9&auto=format&fit=crop&w=1545&q=80">Annie Spratt/Unsplash</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Following the death of her elderly father, a close friend of mine recently asked if I would read a poem by Goethe at his funeral. </p>
<p>I didn’t know the man well. In fact, I had met him only once, seated in my friend’s car on a Fitzroy street on a sunny day several years ago. What struck me about him at the time was the mischievous smile he wore and the youthful sparkle in his eyes. I felt honoured to be invited to share in the celebration of his life. </p>
<p>Although my friend is near a generation younger than me, we are very close. I have known her since she was a shy but determined young person. She has since become an advocate for the rights of Indigenous people in Australia and the South Pacific. She is thoughtful and kind and fierce whenever the situation requires a “warrior woman”.</p>
<p>The funeral service took place at a community hall in the Dandenong Ranges, east of Melbourne. Family and friends of the man who had passed spoke, sang and prayed (in their own way) about the remarkable life of a person who had survived the ravages of war-torn Europe, the loss of loved ones, separation from family and an eventual migration to Australia, where he fell in love, raised a family and continued his lifelong passion for the natural world. </p>
<p>Before I left home for the funeral service, my wife, Sara, asked me, “Will you be okay?” My younger brother had died suddenly only weeks earlier, and I remained grief-stricken by the experience of finding him in the small government flat where he’d lived for two decades. I answered Sara’s question with a dismissive, “I’ll be fine”.</p>
<h2>Of stone</h2>
<p>And I was fine. Following the death of a person you love dearly, a person you yearn to see just once more, a person you want to say just one more goodbye to, isolation can become a tempting companion. You feel that nobody understands the depth of your grief. </p>
<p>Appointments, work, conversations with friends – they all make little sense. Mundane tasks become even more meaningless. My retreat into self-imposed isolation had become debilitating. Attending a funeral in the mountains was, if nothing else, an escape from my solitary confinement. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330601/original/file-20200427-145518-177ylhd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330601/original/file-20200427-145518-177ylhd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330601/original/file-20200427-145518-177ylhd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330601/original/file-20200427-145518-177ylhd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330601/original/file-20200427-145518-177ylhd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330601/original/file-20200427-145518-177ylhd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1156&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330601/original/file-20200427-145518-177ylhd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1156&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330601/original/file-20200427-145518-177ylhd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1156&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Cover image: Anna Di Mezza, Memory’s Persistence 2016</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A few hours later I found myself in a room crackling with the energy of those who had gathered, along with the man who had bought us together for the day, who was resting in a wicker coffin at the front of the room. As I read the poem for him and his family, I thought again about my own brother and felt comforted, for the first time in weeks, that I was not alone. I was sharing a valued life among the living.</p>
<p>Following the burial at a local cemetery, we were invited back to the community hall, where we enjoyed food and stories about the life of my friend’s father. I noticed a wooden table where a range of items had been placed: books, hand tools, photographs and other secondhand objects you might find at a garage sale. My friend took me over to the table and explained that each of the items had belonged to her father and held particular significance for him and his family. I was invited to choose an object and take it home with me as an act of commemoration. I hesitated. It didn’t seem right that I should take something personal belonging to a man I’d hardly known.</p>
<p>My friend gently nudged me. “Go on, pick something,” she said.</p>
<p>My eye was drawn to an egg-shaped, ivory-coloured stone, speckled with an earthy pigment. I picked up the stone. It sat full and heavy in the palm of my right hand. I turned it over. Its centre was smudged with a dark stain. It appeared that someone may have held the stone in their hand and rubbed it (and rubbed it) with the back of a thumb.</p>
<p>“Can I have this?” I asked my friend.</p>
<p>“Of course,” she answered. “It’s a good choice for you.”</p>
<p>The stone now sits on my writing desk. I often hold it in my hand when I’m thinking about the words I want to write (as I’m doing now). I have thought with the stone about life and death and my love for my friend, who misses her father so deeply. The stone has affected my thoughts on climate justice, which is a key area of my academic and community research. </p>
<p>What I have come to understand about the stone is that it is stronger than me – and you. It is also patient and thoughtful to an extent that human society appears to be incapable of. If we manage to destroy ourselves in the future, and destroy non-human species and vital ecological systems in the process, it will be because we don’t possess the humility and wisdom of the stone. Unfortunately, many in positions of power and influence appear most ill-equipped to recognise this. The stone has invited me to reflect on love, and on death, including my own. The stone also reminds me that seemingly inanimate and soulless objects have guided me throughout my life, particularly when I am reaching for understanding.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330604/original/file-20200427-145553-10ivm11.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330604/original/file-20200427-145553-10ivm11.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330604/original/file-20200427-145553-10ivm11.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330604/original/file-20200427-145553-10ivm11.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330604/original/file-20200427-145553-10ivm11.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330604/original/file-20200427-145553-10ivm11.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330604/original/file-20200427-145553-10ivm11.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330604/original/file-20200427-145553-10ivm11.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&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 stone has invited me to reflect on love, and on death, including my own.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1494861895304-fb272971c078?ixlib=rb-1.2.1&auto=format&fit=crop&w=3300&q=80">Scott Webb/Unsplash</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Foraging</h2>
<p>If I wasn’t born to forage, I was taught to from a very young age. Growing up in the inner Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy in the early 1960s, we were very poor. (As poor as a Monty Python shoebox.) We were always a gleaning family, out of necessity. The open fire in our two-room terrace was fed with scraps of wood we gathered from the streets, empty houses and vacant blocks. </p>
<p>Coming home from school of an afternoon, if my older sister and I spotted an eight-foot long plank of wood, we’d pick it up, cart it home and add it to the woodpile in the yard. My brother and I collected scrap metal – lead, copper and brass – and sold it to a dealer who had a yard behind a pub on Brunswick Street. </p>
<p>I later came to cherish the narrative power of found objects through my grandmother, Alma, who introduced me to op shop fever, an ailment I continue to live with 60 years later. From the age of around four or five, hand-in-hand with my Nan, I’d walk from Fitzroy to the Salvation Army’s “Anchorage” in Abbotsford, around a mile and half in the imperial measurement of the time. The Salvos’ secondhand business could not be described as a “shop” or “store”, but a series of rusting corrugated-iron sheds on the bank of the Birrarung. </p>
<p>Each shed was dedicated to particular items: ornaments, household furniture, books and comics, and children’s clothing. Nan and I would move from shed to shed, with the rule that I could buy one book, one comic and one item of clothing. She liked to spend her time in the ornaments shed, searching for a vase, or a gravy dish perhaps, that she could add to the mirror-backed, glass-fronted cabinet in the front room of her Fitzroy house. Once an item went into the cabinet, it stayed there, never used and rarely touched – any item put into the cabinet was for “show”.</p>
<p>I loved my books and comics, but most of all I sought out a t-shirt or jumper, especially a warm woollen jumper, largely for practical purposes. Winters in our house and on our street were cold. A jumper provided warmth. A jumper purchased secondhand was my jumper, not one that had been handed down to me by my older brother. And when I put a thick woollen jumper over my head as a small child, my body felt protected, emotionally and physically. Woollen jumpers became my security blanket, and that desire for fabric has never left me. </p>
<p>I have a cupboard full of woollen jumpers at home. Some have been collected from the op shops I continue to visit each week. Others, bought new, are quite expensive. Any time I become particularly anxious, or feel the desire for “comfort clothes”, I put on one of my jumpers. (Summer is not my favourite season.) Recently, while experiencing a near emotional collapse, a crafted woollen object rescued me.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330606/original/file-20200427-145513-1u92emk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330606/original/file-20200427-145513-1u92emk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330606/original/file-20200427-145513-1u92emk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330606/original/file-20200427-145513-1u92emk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330606/original/file-20200427-145513-1u92emk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330606/original/file-20200427-145513-1u92emk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330606/original/file-20200427-145513-1u92emk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330606/original/file-20200427-145513-1u92emk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">One man’s trash, another’s treasure.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://image.shutterstock.com/image-photo/melbourne-australia-march-03-2020-600w-1661855323.jpg">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>In Booktown</h2>
<p>I was in a Victorian country town on an autumn morning as a guest of the Clunes Booktown Festival, which I’d been invited to some months previously. My younger brother had died a few weeks before the festival. I had begun to write about him, as it was my only means of understanding, if at all, what I was experiencing. I have since written about his death several times, with each essay building on the previous one, including conscious repetition (which I am doing now). The essays focus on walking country, travelling and remembering, with my brother at my side. Perhaps I am not repeating myself, but rather engaging in the act of reiteration as a means of paying my respect to his life?</p>
<p>Immediately after my brother’s death I cancelled several commitments, took weeks away from work and spent as much time as I could with my grieving mother. I had simply forgotten to cancel Clunes and felt obliged to attend when I was reminded about the festival only days before it was to begin. I drove there with Sara. </p>
<p>Clunes is a gold rush town in north-west Victoria and proudly carries the title of Booktown. On arrival, we parked the car alongside a bluestone church above the town. It was a cool and clear morning. Walking down the hill towards the festival, I suffered what I could only explain as an anxiety attack. I needed to sit down. I enjoy writing-and-reading festivals and I love the warmth of audiences. But, sitting on a bench in the main street of Clunes, I suddenly realised that I would be incapable of performing at all. I wanted to go home and hide. Sara suggested that a coffee might pick me up, although she was also ready to leave and drive me home if that was what I decided.</p>
<p>We went for a walk and I bought a café latte, an object of right-wing disdain. I took a sip and felt a little better. We spotted a craft stall selling woollen products: scarves, gloves and beanies. My eye was drawn to a naturally dyed beanie, chocolate and (sort of) aqua coloured, with a chocolate pompom on top. I picked the beanie up and held it in my hands. The wool was soft, the texture rich. With the permission of the woman standing behind the stall, I put the beanie on. It wrapped itself gently around my head. Feeling immediately comforted and secure, I smiled at Sara and said, “Let’s go.” We walked back up the hill, into the Clunes Town Hall, where we were met by a room crowded with generous people.</p>
<h2>Gathering through the years</h2>
<p>As we grow older, some of us begin to dispose of our possessions. Others continue to hoard. Thinking back to the table of objects at the funeral I attended, I experienced it as a generous and communal gesture, yet another act of reciprocity and energy. </p>
<p>My stone continues to teach me about the contrasts between humility and arrogance, between the world we are wilfully attacking and our self-destructive stupidity. The stone has also sharply focused my attention on the deep value of my relationships with other people. My friend who lost her father has been in a state of grief since his passing. When I hold the stone, or glance at it sitting on my desk, I think of my friend and I am reminded that she is in my care, as I am in hers. The thought strengthens me and gently reminds me to remain aware of my obligation to her. For this, I can thank the stone and the man who first picked it up and held it in his hand.</p>
<p>As I write this I am 62 years of age. (That’s old for an Aboriginal man!) I have five children, two grandchildren and a loving partner. </p>
<p>On July 4 1996, my grandmother, Alma, was in St Vincent’s Hospital in Fitzroy, dying of renal failure. Although I was a grown man, about to turn 40, I sat by the window of her room on the tenth floor, a child again, looking over the streets of our shared life. She passed away that night. My mother decided that our first task after her death was to empty out her Housing Commission flat and scrub it clean. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330602/original/file-20200427-145518-ncoowp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330602/original/file-20200427-145518-ncoowp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330602/original/file-20200427-145518-ncoowp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330602/original/file-20200427-145518-ncoowp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330602/original/file-20200427-145518-ncoowp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330602/original/file-20200427-145518-ncoowp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330602/original/file-20200427-145518-ncoowp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330602/original/file-20200427-145518-ncoowp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Op shop foraging can become circular as buyers grow older and leave their finds behind.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1514988081842-feeaeac260e3?ixlib=rb-1.2.1&ixid=eyJhcHBfaWQiOjEyMDd9&auto=format&fit=crop&w=3300&q=80">Julien-Pier Belanger/Unsplash</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>My grandmother’s flat was crowded with the objects she’d collected from op shops over 60 years. The family gathered at the door of my grandmother’s flat and my mother said, “Each of you pick something of love. The rest we pack up in boxes and drop at St Vincent de Paul’s in Collingwood”. </p>
<p>My initial thought was that it was reckless of my mother to sweep away Nan’s possessions so soon, and my older sister felt the same, whispering to me, “Shit. Nan’s not even cold yet”. </p>
<p>Our feelings shifted to acceptance, and subsequently deep satisfaction once each of us had chosen our love pieces. I picked a ceramic teapot mat, an ancient stone hot water bottle and a squat glass jar that my nan would fill with tomato sauce so that we could sit around her kitchen table and dip our hot chips into it. </p>
<p>A week later, I walked into the local op-shop and noticed a young woman pick up an orange flower vase that had belonged to my grandmother. She held it up admiringly. Light passed through the vase and the woman’s face glowed with happiness. She paid for the vase and took it home.</p>
<h2>What’s left behind</h2>
<p>When my brother died died last year, my two sisters performed the same ritual in his government flat. Whatever else might be said about a working-class Aboriginal-Irish family, we’re fucking spotlessly clean! </p>
<p>We took the goods we’d each decided to keep around the corner to my mother’s house. There were three guitars, two crucifixes and several books, including a copy of my short story collection <a href="https://www.wheelercentre.com/broadcasts/tony-birch-common-people">Common People</a>, which was sitting on the side table next to his bed on the morning I found him dead. </p>
<p>My sisters allowed me to take his acoustic guitar home as long as I promised that I would learn to play it. I walked home with the guitar under my arm, wondering what would happen to my own stuff when I died. </p>
<p>The books will continue to be treasured and read, I’m sure. I’m concerned for the bowls of collected pine cones scattered around the house. </p>
<p>My grandson, Archie, is 14 months old. Recently, I introduced him to the pine cones, naming them individually, hoping for attachment on his part. I took him on his first pine cone forage in Carlton Gardens. My motivation, of course, is that when I die and they come to sweep my life away, Archie will intervene, say, “Not so soon” and rescue my pine cones.</p>
<p>I don’t know what will happen to my woollen jumpers, scarves and beanies. If I was able to choreograph my own wake (as my mother has done in a lengthy list), or if this was a short story I was writing for you rather than nonfiction, I would die during a cold winter and my family would be gathered around a fire reminiscing about my life. My children, Erin, Siobhan, Drew, Grace and Nina, would each be wearing a “Tony Birch find” (as I refer to the jumpers); my grandkids, Isobel and Archie, would be each be wrapped in one of the many brightly coloured scarves I’ve collected; and Sara would be wearing the precious striped beanie that saved me on a beautiful morning in Clunes.</p>
<p><em>This is an edited extract republished with permission from <a href="https://www.griffithreview.com/">GriffithReview68: Getting On</a> (Text), ed Ashley Hay</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/136721/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tony Birch 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>
The objects we gather around us - from op shops, from roadsides, from the intimate spaces of lost loved ones - are far from inanimate. They carry wisdom, comfort and guidance.
Tony Birch, Lecturer, Creative Writing, Victoria University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/115443
2019-04-25T20:13:09Z
2019-04-25T20:13:09Z
What’s the school cleaner’s name? How kids, not just cleaners, are paying the price of outsourcing
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/270592/original/file-20190424-19297-1dn85pe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In Victoria in 1992, every government-employed school cleaner was terminated overnight.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">from shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This is an edited extract from The New Disruptors, the 64th edition of <a href="https://griffithreview.com/">Griffith Review</a>. It is a little longer than most published on The Conversation.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>It is supposed to be a test of character. An A+ student sits down to the final exam of his degree and is surprised to be presented with a piece of paper with a single question: what is the name of the person who cleans this building? </p>
<p>Walter W. Bettinger II, CEO of a finance giant, the Charles Schwab Corporation, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com.au/charles-schwab-ceo-learned-biggest-lesson-of-career-after-failing-a-test-2016-2">told a version of this story </a> to The New York Times last year, describing the test as “the only one I ever failed” and “a great reminder of what really matters in life”.</p>
<p>I recently tried it out on my eight-year-old, a New South Wales public school student, and she flunked too. This result, though, is less to do with her moral qualities, I suspect, than her state of residence. For NSW, it turns out, is one of the harder states for a kid to pass the “what’s the cleaner’s name?” test.</p>
<p>Kath Haddon, a school cleaner in NSW since 1981, remembers when cleaners’ names started to drop from use in her workplace. It was in early 1994, following the Greiner Coalition government’s <a href="https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/researchpapers/Documents/Privatisation%20in%20NSW%20-%20a%20timeline%20and%20key%20sources.pdf">decision to dissolve</a> the Government Cleaning Service and tender the work to private companies. </p>
<p>“We went from being employees of the school to being employees of the contractors overnight, and you could physically feel the change,” she says. </p>
<p>She stopped being invited to meetings about school health and safety – that was now the contractors’ job – and face-to-face conversations with the school principal ceased. Instructions were now delivered via a bureaucratic maze of faxes, phone calls, logbook entries and area manager site visits. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/270629/original/file-20190424-19289-cu48e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/270629/original/file-20190424-19289-cu48e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/270629/original/file-20190424-19289-cu48e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/270629/original/file-20190424-19289-cu48e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/270629/original/file-20190424-19289-cu48e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/270629/original/file-20190424-19289-cu48e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/270629/original/file-20190424-19289-cu48e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/270629/original/file-20190424-19289-cu48e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Only in some states do children know their cleaner’s name.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">from shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Passing the “name the cleaner” test is far easier for kids in Tasmania, where cleaners have remained direct employees of the school. In fact, when I spoke to Tasmanian school cleaner Robert Terry about what his job was like, the theme of name-remembering was one of the first subjects to come up.</p>
<p>“I can barely step onto school grounds without hearing ‘Robbo this, Robbo that!’,” he laughs. He has been cleaning primary schools since the 1970s and sees remembering names as a crucial dimension to his work. </p>
<p>“At the start of the year I look at the whole group and pick out the really shy ones, the ones looking like they are left out or the ones who are in trouble,” he twinkles.</p>
<p>“I stand at the front and tell them, ‘I’m Robbo, I’m the cleaner here, don’t worry about what the teacher says, do what I say!’ ” </p>
<p>One kindergarten boy, Julian (not his real name), spent much of first term hiding under his desk, refusing to speak. Robert made great play of walking past him with his drill, an object of fascination to the boy. </p>
<p>He would carry the drill into Julian’s classroom, across his line of sight as he crouched beneath the desk and put a screw in the wall. The next day he did the same, taking the same screw out of the wall. </p>
<p>He repeated the pattern every day until the boy eventually came out from under the desk and allowed him to roll a ball up and down the corridor with him.</p>
<p>A week later, the teacher later got in touch to say that the boy had at last spoken. His first word? Robbo.</p>
<h2>A neoliberal experiment</h2>
<p>How did we get to be a nation where cleaners’ names ring out across a playground in some states and not others? This peculiar phenomenon is the outcome of an experiment in neoliberal design that was never planned: the privatisation of school cleaning in <a href="https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/researchpapers/Documents/Privatisation%20in%20NSW%20-%20a%20timeline%20and%20key%20sources.pdf">some states</a> and territories (<a href="https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/researchpapers/Documents/Privatisation%20in%20NSW%20-%20a%20timeline%20and%20key%20sources.pdf">NSW</a>, Victoria, Australian Capital Territory, Northern Territory, Western Australia and South Australia) and not in others (Tasmania and Queensland) in the 1990s.</p>
<p>Some states have since reversed, wholly or partially, the system (<a href="http://www.parliament.wa.gov.au/Hansard%5Chansard.nsf/0/9f4ecd3a6fbce11c482577120022c5d4/$FILE/A38%20S1%2020100421%20p1965b-1968a.pdf">WA</a>, ACT and <a href="https://www.incleanmag.com.au/victorian-school-cleaning-reforms-take-effect/">Victoria</a>), but at 20 years’ distance the story of Australia’s patchwork system of public and privately contracted school cleaning can tell us much about what happens in the long run when the maintenance of school space is transformed from a public service to a private for-profit affair.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/270641/original/file-20190424-19283-1xh5b5o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/270641/original/file-20190424-19283-1xh5b5o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/270641/original/file-20190424-19283-1xh5b5o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/270641/original/file-20190424-19283-1xh5b5o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/270641/original/file-20190424-19283-1xh5b5o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/270641/original/file-20190424-19283-1xh5b5o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/270641/original/file-20190424-19283-1xh5b5o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/270641/original/file-20190424-19283-1xh5b5o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Outsourcing cleaners has had the unlikely consequence of alienating children from the consequences of some of their actions.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">from shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Victorian case was the first and most dramatic. In 1992, the Kennett government, acting on the professed urge to liberate Victorians from “<a href="https://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/images/stories/volume-hansard/smaller/Hansard%2051%20LA%20V404%20Aug-Oct1991/VicHansard_19910828_19910829.pdf">sterile bureaucracy</a>”, terminated every government-employed school cleaner overnight. </p>
<p>Every school principal was now expected to act like the director of a standalone business. At the same time, the total school cleaning budget was slashed to less than half. Leaflets about “how to get an ABN” were thrust into cleaners’ hands, from which they learnt that, as contractors, their minimum pay (then around A$9 an hour) would fall to precisely zero.</p>
<p>Paperwork proliferated as more than 700 <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/rubbish-pay-for-vic-state-school-cleaners">new cleaning companies</a> were established, each one required to bid for individual contracts with 1,750 schools. </p>
<p>School principals, most of whom had little business experience, became overwhelmed with a new set of obligations and tended to choose the cheapest tender for each contract. A system that entrenched the cutting of corners, underquoting, exploitation and spooling bureaucracy was born.</p>
<p>Schools that once had seven cleaners were suddenly cleaned by two. Principals unblocked toilets during the day while teachers cleaned schoolyards. Parents organised working bees to clean pavements and water troughs, which had been excised from the cleaning contracts.</p>
<p>Cleaners bought supplies with their own money, snipped sponges in half to make them go further and took dirty mops home to clean on their own time. </p>
<p>In 2017, the workers’ union <a href="https://www.incleanmag.com.au/united-voice-reveals-wage-theft-victorian-schools/">United Voice found</a> one cleaner working in a Victorian public school for just A$2.70 an hour.</p>
<p>In NSW, change was slower, with contracts created for just three large cleaning companies, rather than hundreds of small owner-operators, and cleaner numbers falling through attrition, rather than slashed budgets. </p>
<h2>Who are the winners?</h2>
<p>The losers from privatised school cleaning aren’t very visible. </p>
<p>They are the children, who miss out on the chance to confide in a trusted adult outside the disciplinary teaching hierarchy, someone who is looking out for them when things get difficult, whether that is in school or after hours. </p>
<p>These children do not get the chance to put a name and a face to the person who cleans up their mess, and so to think more carefully about the consequences of their actions. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/270642/original/file-20190424-19280-thap75.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/270642/original/file-20190424-19280-thap75.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/270642/original/file-20190424-19280-thap75.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/270642/original/file-20190424-19280-thap75.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/270642/original/file-20190424-19280-thap75.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/270642/original/file-20190424-19280-thap75.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/270642/original/file-20190424-19280-thap75.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/270642/original/file-20190424-19280-thap75.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Who is really paying the cost of outsourcing cleaners?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">from shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>They are the teachers, who have one less resource to draw upon to de-escalate conflict in the classroom. Who do not have the option of sending a potentially disruptive student out to help the cleaner run errands, or to a groundsperson to do some planting, rather than straight to the principal’s office.</p>
<p>They are also the cleaners themselves, most of whom are forced to work in conditions that do not allow them the time and opportunity to do their jobs as well as they would wish to do them, or to know the students they serve. </p>
<p>Who receive wages that give them no possibility of living in, or even remotely close to, the communities they clean. Who must drive for two or more hours in the dark to get to work in the morning, and then sleep in the car between shifts. Who may miss out on the chance to buy a house or have a family of their own. </p>
<p>The winners from the system aren’t easy to spot either. They are the bureaucrats with careers staked to the implementation of a “hollowed out” vision of government. They are the fund managers and shareholders who benefit from adjustments to the balance sheets of multinationals. </p>
<p>They are the executives of the multinationals themselves, such as Rafael del Pino y Calvo Sotelo – executive director of the Spanish multinational Ferrovial, which holds the cleaning contract for a portion of NSW schools – whose <a href="https://www.ferrovial.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Integrated-Annual-Report-2017-3.pdf">annual remuneration in 2017</a> was more than A$8 million.</p>
<p>The question of how to employ school cleaners is fundamentally not an economic one. It cannot be answered without addressing the more foundational question of what, in essence, a public school is for. </p>
<p>Is it a site for the inculcation of literacy and numeracy skills on the cheapest possible basis? If so, why should marketisation stop with the cleaning staff? Why not tender out the services of teacher aides, administrative staff, teachers themselves? </p>
<p>Further cost savings could be made by incentivising students to stay home and teach themselves using Wikipedia, Siri and a handful of apps. Such “innovation” would surely generate enormous “savings” for the public purse.</p>
<p>We wince at such suggestions because at primary school we want our kids to learn more than reading and writing.</p>
<p>But when my daughter makes a mess at school and it is left to be cleaned up by a person in the early hours of the next morning, whose name she does not know, who are we letting down?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/115443/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Frances Flanagan 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>
Public schools in some states outsourced their cleaning services to private companies as part of a neoliberal experiment starting in the 1990s. This has had a host of impacts, including on students.
Frances Flanagan, Researcher, Discipline of Work and Organisational Studies, University of Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/115643
2019-04-25T20:12:59Z
2019-04-25T20:12:59Z
Why the idea of alien life now seems inevitable and possibly imminent
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/269753/original/file-20190417-139084-2drij5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Relative sizes of planets that are in a zone potentially compatible with life: Kepler-22b, Kepler-69c, Kepler-62e, Kepler-62f and Earth (named left to right; except for Earth, these are artists' renditions).</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/multimedia/images/kepler-hz-2013-04.html">NASA</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is an edited extract from an essay, The search for ET, in The New Disruptors, the 64th edition of <a href="https://griffithreview.com/">Griffith Review</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>We’re publishing it as part of our occasional series Zoom Out, where authors explore key ideas in science and technology in the broader context of society and humanity.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Extraterrestrial life, that familiar science-fiction trope, that kitschy fantasy, that CGI nightmare, has become a matter of serious discussion, a “risk factor”, a “scenario”. </p>
<p>How has ET gone from sci-fi fairytale to a serious scientific endeavour <a href="http://reports.weforum.org/global-risks-2013/section-five/x-factors/">modelled by macroeconomists</a>, <a href="https://www.aip.org/fyi/2017/congress-passes-bipartisan-nasa-authorization-legislation">funded by fiscal conservatives</a> and <a href="https://www.archbalt.org/vatican-sponsored-meeting-discusses-chances-of-extra-terrestrial-life">discussed by theologians</a>? </p>
<p>Because, following a string of remarkable discoveries over the past two decades, the idea of alien life is not as far-fetched as it used to seem. </p>
<p>Discovery now seems inevitable and possibly imminent. </p>
<h2>It’s just chemistry</h2>
<p>While life is a special kind of complex chemistry, the elements involved are nothing special: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and so on are among the most abundant elements in the universe. Complex organic chemistry is surprisingly common. </p>
<p>Amino acids, just like those that make up every protein in our bodies, have been found in the <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1945-5100.2009.tb01224.x">tails of comets</a>. There are other <a href="https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/06/nasa-rover-hits-organic-pay-dirt-mars">organic compounds in Martian soil</a>. </p>
<p>And 6,500 light years away a giant <a href="https://phys.org/news/2014-09-alcohol-clouds-space.html">cloud of space alcohol</a> floats among the stars. </p>
<p>Habitable planets seem to be common too. The first planet beyond our Solar System was discovered in 1995. Since then astronomers have catalogued thousands. </p>
<p>Based on this catalogue, astronomers from the University of California, Berkeley <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/10/31/1319909110/tab-article-info">worked out</a> there could be as many as 40 billion Earth-sized exoplanets in the so-called “habitable zone” around their star, where temperatures are mild enough for liquid water to exist on the surface. </p>
<p>There’s even a potentially <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nature19106">Earth-like world</a> orbiting our nearest neighbouring star, Proxima Centauri. At just four light years away, that system might be close enough for us to reach using current technology. With the <a href="https://breakthroughinitiatives.org/initiative/3">Breakthrough Starshot project</a> launched by Stephen Hawking in 2016, plans for this are already afoot.</p>
<h2>Life is robust</h2>
<p>It seems inevitable other life is out there, especially considering that life appeared on Earth so soon after the planet was formed. </p>
<p>The oldest fossils ever found here are <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/115/1/53.short">3.5 billion years old</a>, while clues in our DNA suggest life could have started as far back as <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-018-0644-x">4 billion years ago</a>, just when giant asteroids stopped crashing into the surface. </p>
<p>Our planet was inhabited as soon as it was habitable – and the definition of “habitable” has proven to be a rather flexible concept too. </p>
<p>Life survives in all manner of environments that seem hellish to us: </p>
<ul>
<li>floating on a lake of <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0923250803001141">sulphuric acid</a></li>
<li>inside barrels of <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/ismej2014125">nuclear waste</a></li>
<li>in water superheated to <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/105/31/10949">122 degrees</a> </li>
<li>in the <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25014">wastelands of Antarctica</a></li>
<li>in rocks <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/dec/10/tread-softly-because-you-tread-on-23bn-tonnes-of-micro-organisms">five kilometres below ground</a>. </li>
</ul>
<p>Tantalisingly, some of these conditions seem to be duplicated elsewhere in the Solar System.</p>
<h2>Snippets of promise</h2>
<p>Mars was once warm and wet, and was probably a fertile ground for life before the Earth. </p>
<p>Today, Mars still has <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/361/6401/490">liquid water underground</a>. One gas strongly associated with life on Earth, methane, has already been found in the Martian atmosphere, and at levels that mysteriously <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-finds-ancient-organic-material-mysterious-methane-on-mars">rise and fall with the seasons</a>. (However, the methane result is under debate, with one Mars orbiter recently <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-019-0331-9">confirming the methane detection</a> and another <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1096-4">detecting nothing</a>.) </p>
<p>Martian bugs might turn up as soon as 2021 when the <a href="https://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Human_and_Robotic_Exploration/Exploration/ExoMars/ESA_s_Mars_rover_has_a_name_Rosalind_Franklin">ExoMars rover Rosalind Franklin</a> will hunt for them with a <a href="http://exploration.esa.int/mars/60914-oxia-planum-favoured-for-exomars-surface-mission/">two-metre drill</a>. </p>
<p>Besides Earth and Mars, at least two other places in our Solar System might be inhabited. Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s moon Enceladus are both frozen ice worlds, but the gravity of their colossal planets is enough to churn up their insides, melting water to create <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/cassini-finds-global-ocean-in-saturns-moon-enceladus">vast subglacial seas</a>. </p>
<p>In 2017, specialists in sea ice from the University of Tasmania <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-journal-of-astrobiology/article/sea-ice-extremophiles-and-life-on-extraterrestrial-ocean-worlds/C76FF80A75B755492331A3356CD1B824">concluded</a> that some Antarctic microbes could feasibly survive on these worlds. Both Europa and Enceladus have undersea hydrothermal vents, just like those on Earth where life may have originated. </p>
<p>When a NASA probe tasted the material geysered into space out of Enceladus last June it <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0246-4">found large organic molecules</a>. Possibly there was something living among the spray; the probe just didn’t have the right tools to detect it. </p>
<p>Russian billionaire Yuri Milner has been so enthused by this prospect, he wants to help <a href="https://earthsky.org/space/billionaire-yuri-milner-nasa-plan-life-search-enceladus">fund a return mission</a>.</p>
<h2>A second genesis?</h2>
<p>A discovery, if it came, could turn the world of biology upside down. </p>
<p>All life on Earth is related, descended ultimately from the first living cell to emerge some 4 billion years ago. </p>
<p>Bacteria, fungus, cacti and cockroaches are all our cousins and we all share the same basic molecular machinery: DNA that makes RNA, and RNA that makes protein. </p>
<p>A second sample of life, though, might represent a “second genesis” – totally unrelated to us. Perhaps it would use a different coding system in its DNA. Or it might not have DNA at all, but some other method of passing on genetic information. </p>
<p>By studying a second example of life, we could begin to figure out which parts of the machinery of life are universal, and which are just the particular accidents of our primordial soup. </p>
<p>Perhaps amino acids are always used as essential building blocks, perhaps not. </p>
<p>We might even be able to work out some universal laws of biology, the same way we have for physics – not to mention new angles on the question of the origin of life itself. </p>
<p>A second independent “tree of life” would mean that the rapid appearance of life on Earth was no fluke; life must abound in the universe. </p>
<p>It would greatly increase the chances that, somewhere among those billions of habitable planets in our galaxy, there could be something we could talk to.</p>
<h2>Perhaps life is infectious</h2>
<p>If, on the other hand, the discovered microbes were indeed related to us that would be a bombshell of a different kind: it would mean life is infectious. </p>
<p>When a large meteorite hits a planet, the impact can splash pulverised rock right out into space, and this rock can then fall onto other planets as meteorites. </p>
<p>Life from Earth has probably already been taken to other planets – perhaps even to the moons of Saturn and Jupiter. Microbes might well survive the trip. </p>
<p>In 1969, Apollo 12 astronauts retrieved an old probe that had sat on the Moon for three years in extreme cold and vacuum – there were <a href="https://lsda.jsc.nasa.gov/Experiment/exper/1651?">viable bacteria still inside</a>. </p>
<p>As Mars was probably habitable before Earth, it’s possible life originated there before hitchhiking on a space rock to here. Perhaps we’re all Martians.</p>
<p>Even if we never find other life in our Solar System, we might still detect it on any one of thousands of known exoplanets. </p>
<p>It is already possible to look at starlight filtered through an exoplanet and tell something about the composition of its atmosphere; an abundance of oxygen could be a telltale sign of life. </p>
<h2>A testable hypothesis</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.jwst.nasa.gov/">James Webb Space Telescope</a>, planned for a 2021 launch, will be able to take these measurements for some of the Earth-like worlds already discovered. </p>
<p>Just a few years later will come space-based telescopes that will take pictures of these planets directly. </p>
<p>Using a trick a bit like the sun visor in your car, planet-snapping telescopes will be paired with giant parasols called starshades that will fly in tandem <a href="https://science.nasa.gov/technology/technology-stories/starshade-enable-first-images-earth-sized-exoplanets">50,000 kilometres away</a> in just the right spot to block the blinding light of the star, allowing the faint speck of a planet to be captured. </p>
<p>The colour and the variability of that point of light could tell us the length of the planet’s day, whether it has seasons, whether it has clouds, whether it has oceans, possibly even the colour of its plants.</p>
<p>The ancient question “Are we alone?” has graduated from being a philosophical musing to a testable hypothesis. We should be prepared for an answer.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/115643/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cathal D. O'Connell 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>
The ancient question ‘Are we alone?’ has graduated from being a philosophical musing to a testable hypothesis. We should be prepared for an answer.
Cathal D. O'Connell, Researcher and Centre Manager, BioFab3D (St Vincent's Hospital), The University of Melbourne
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/100652
2018-07-29T20:17:03Z
2018-07-29T20:17:03Z
Reimagining Parramatta: a place to discover Australia’s many stories
<p><em>This piece is republished with permission from <a href="https://griffithreview.com/editions/who-we-are/">Who We Are</a>, the 61st edition of Griffith Review. It is a little longer and more in-depth than most published on The Conversation.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>There are jackhammers everywhere. A new Parramatta is emerging out of the rubble, seeking to make real its tag line: “Australia’s next great city”. Thickets of new residential and commercial towers are rising – testament to the city’s ferocious ambition – overshadowing what remains of the squat, 1970s office blocks built during Parramatta’s previous development boom.</p>
<p>There are many today who loudly proclaim Parramatta’s centrality to the story of Sydney. Mike Baird, when premier of NSW in 2015, <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/premier-mike-baird-says-parramatta-is-looked-to-as-the-infrastructure-capital-of-the-world-20150313-1437md.html">called Parramatta</a> nothing less than “the infrastructure capital of the world”, its fortunes tied closely to those of the state and the nation. The west is booming, as the New South Wales government releases huge tracts of land in the north-west and south-west of Sydney for development, and <a href="https://www.domain.com.au/news/why-investors-have-their-sights-set-on-parramatta-20170503-gvy0oz/">developers are cashing</a> in on Parramatta’s rise. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229562/original/file-20180727-106530-15gurnm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229562/original/file-20180727-106530-15gurnm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229562/original/file-20180727-106530-15gurnm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229562/original/file-20180727-106530-15gurnm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229562/original/file-20180727-106530-15gurnm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229562/original/file-20180727-106530-15gurnm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229562/original/file-20180727-106530-15gurnm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229562/original/file-20180727-106530-15gurnm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">It’s been claimed Parramatta is the infrastructure capital of the world.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/redwolf/39847046615">redwolfoz/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>National Australia Bank is setting up its new headquarters at the A$2 billion development that is Parramatta Square. A new light rail network is on the way. Western Sydney University has completed its A$220.5 million high-rise campus. A new A$1 billion health precinct at Westmead is coming.</p>
<p>So, Parramatta is a city on the make. And the numbers tell us why. The NSW government’s population projections show Greater Sydney growing by more than 1.5 million people <a href="https://www.greater.sydney/nsw-booms-back-strong-economy">over the next two decades</a>. The City of Parramatta’s <a href="https://forecast.id.com.au/parramatta/Population-households-dwellings">population is forecast</a> to grow by over 75,000 over the next decade alone. </p>
<p>Presented as objective fact, too often it’s forgotten that such numbers are primarily expressions not of a certain future but of a recent past, projected forward in time. Today’s population projections are comprised, to no small extent, by yesterday’s migration policies. They are not an inevitable future, but an intentional one, a story about where we want to go.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/migration-helps-balance-our-ageing-population-we-dont-need-a-moratorium-100030">Migration helps balance our ageing population – we don't need a moratorium</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Western Sydney attracts a high proportion of Australia’s migrants. Parramatta, in particular, is a city being radically reshaped to meet the volume of demand projected off the back of this recent, record-breaking intake. Between the <a href="https://profile.id.com.au/parramatta">2001 and 2016 census</a> dates, the city welcomed almost 20,000 more Indian-born residents and 16,000 Chinese-born arrivals. </p>
<p>Over the same period, the number of Parramatta’s Australian-born grew by just 6,000. Today, the proportion of Parramatta’s population that identifies as Australian by ancestry is just 13%, compared to 23% for Australia as a whole.</p>
<p>Clearly, Parramatta’s A$10 billion transformation is preparing the city for a future that will be culturally distinct from its past. Australia’s next great city is emerging as a beacon of our nation’s hopeful, cosmopolitan future, built on growth, multiplied. But what kind of city will it be?</p>
<h2>What makes a city</h2>
<p>A city, after all, is more than the sum of its speculative real estate invest- ments and projected demand. Cities, as Leonie Sandercock reflected in her essay <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02513625.2002.10556791">Practicing Utopia</a>, are “neither organisms nor machines. They are flesh and stone intertwined. They are ‘built thought’.” </p>
<p>Surely, to be great a city must capture our imaginations. It must offer, all at once, a place to get lost in and a place in which to belong. In great cities we seek both refuge in the crowd and a sense of connection with something bigger than our selfies.</p>
<p>The greatest cities of the world also immerse us in experiential encounters with the archaeology of other eras. They are storied landscapes. Walking through these cities, we quite naturally absorb the daily integration of archaic infrastructures – horse troughs, cobblestones, ceramic piping – with the computationally connected services of our emergent present. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229535/original/file-20180727-106508-n52x38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229535/original/file-20180727-106508-n52x38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229535/original/file-20180727-106508-n52x38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229535/original/file-20180727-106508-n52x38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229535/original/file-20180727-106508-n52x38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229535/original/file-20180727-106508-n52x38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229535/original/file-20180727-106508-n52x38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229535/original/file-20180727-106508-n52x38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&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 road we walk along can capture our imagination of the stories it holds.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/fD0pgJCvypk">Donnie Rosie/Unsplash</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is through the remnant traces of past eras that we can imagine a sense of physical connection with those who came before us. We hear a lot about the challenges that population growth brings to Australian cities. Mostly, we are conditioned to thinking of these challenges as infrastructural, or monetary.</p>
<p>But as our new, denser urban forms are rapidly realised, with forests of cranes and thickets of high-rise apartments replacing the sleepy suburbs that once represented the Australian dream, we’re also going to need to rebuild, as it were, the narratives of place and of belonging that define our cities.</p>
<p>As Robert Hughes once said, delivering a <a href="http://www.teachingheritage.nsw.edu.au/section07/d_ntref_hughes.php">National Trust lecture</a> in 1998 on Australia’s forgotten histories: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>An urban culture that predicates itself chiefly on an obsession with development is not worth having. A city needs deep memory, without which it becomes merely a stage set. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is the accumulation of stories and experiences inscribed in built form that gives a place its distinct identity. Such stories are not only for the culturally sensitive: they drive real-estate investment too. When a city is rebuilt from scratch, we risk losing these stories and connections.</p>
<p>Australian cities have never been particularly good at celebrating the stories of people and place that have shaped them over time. Is this still true? More and more, our planners, designers, architects and developers seek to use the resources of the past to cultivate a contemporary sense of place. Decades of urban sprawl and featureless, automobile-dependent suburban landscapes have led to a renewed push for the creation of “liveable” urban identities that celebrate place and community. </p>
<p>The art of city building is now the art of place-making. In this context, local heritage becomes an asset; an important contributor to both economic and cultural vitality. You can see this in the prices paid for the converted warehouse buildings and sugar mills dotted across the suburban landscape.</p>
<p>So, if it’s going to be Australia’s next great city, the radical rebuilding of Parramatta is also an opportunity to ask questions about how we make use of the past as a resource for building the future.</p>
<h2>Parramatta – a gathering place</h2>
<p>So often celebrated within historical accounts as the “cradle of the colony”, Parramatta’s history has been synonymous with the story of Australia’s beginnings as a nation.</p>
<p>This, after all, is where Australia’s identity as an agricultural nation was first forged. Having followed Arthur Phillip down the river in search of arable land, it is where early convicts successfully proved not only the economic viability of the fledgling colony, but their worthiness as free citizens. It is likewise in Parramatta that the British government first tested its limits of moral and administrative governance in its new colony through the building of not only the first Government House, but also of prisons, factories, asylums and “native institutions”.</p>
<p>This heroic story about Parramatta’s colonial foundations continues to be told through sites like Experiment Farm, the Parramatta Female Factory and the many other colonial administration buildings that remain. You walk into the Parramatta Heritage Centre and you will learn much about this story. And yet, cleaving to the notion of European founding, somehow standing in for the beginning of time, has in turn obscured other narratives.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229558/original/file-20180727-106521-1mh522t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229558/original/file-20180727-106521-1mh522t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229558/original/file-20180727-106521-1mh522t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=367&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229558/original/file-20180727-106521-1mh522t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=367&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229558/original/file-20180727-106521-1mh522t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=367&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229558/original/file-20180727-106521-1mh522t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=461&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229558/original/file-20180727-106521-1mh522t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=461&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229558/original/file-20180727-106521-1mh522t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=461&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 Parramatta Female Factory continues to tell Parramatta’s colonial story.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/Parramatta_Female_Factory.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Parramatta’s founding is a big story, particularly when it helps forge the identity of Australia as a largely Europeanised nation. But the cradle story has also contributed to a certain blindness about the experiences of people in Parramatta since the days of Phillip and his men. It excludes millennia of Aboriginal occupation, their custodianship of the environment and continuing urban presence, as well as the great diversity of people who have arrived here from nations across the globe.</p>
<p>Rich as it is, Parramatta’s story requires considerable rethinking and public conversation in order to bring it into a stronger relation with the present. As Australia’s next great city appears in view, this dialogue is beginning to happen, and new evidence is being found within the rubble. A <a href="https://www.cityofparramatta.nsw.gov.au/culture-and-our-city">cultural plan</a> for the new CBD released by the City of Parramatta in 2017 acknowledges that Parramatta “always was, always will be, a gathering place”. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/transforming-the-parramatta-female-factory-institutional-precinct-into-a-site-of-conscience-88875">Transforming the Parramatta Female Factory institutional precinct into a site of conscience</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>An archaeological analysis recently undertaken by Comber Consultants as part of the redevelopment of Parramatta Square has tentatively found the area may have been used as a gathering place for at least some 5,000 years. Such discoveries prompt a reassessment of the nature and experience of early interactions between settlers and Aboriginal peoples.</p>
<p>This gathering place likewise witnessed the “Battle of Parramatta” in 1797, when a hundred Aboriginal warriors led by Pemulwuy arrived in formation down George Street. They were fighting against the many injustices inflicted upon them by the new arrivals. Pemulwuy would be shot, his warriors dispersed.</p>
<h2>A rich history</h2>
<p>The City of Parramatta commissioned us in 2017 to offer an account of Parramatta’s many “<a href="http://arc.parracity.nsw.gov.au/waves-of-people/">waves of migration</a>”, a project inspired by this revived notion of Parramatta as a gathering place. We found that not all the convicts who first settled here were European. Africans and Indians were among the first convicts. </p>
<p>The different nationalities caught up in the convict system reflected a number of diverse political struggles being fought at the time of European arrival in Sydney.
Political activists from around the world included the Scottish “martyrs” of 1794 and 1795, Irish rebels of 1798 and 1803, trade unionists and insurrectionists from Canada, military prisoners from India and rebellious slaves from the West Indies.</p>
<p>In the early years of Parramatta’s settlement there are records of the presence of various Maori, Afro-Americans, Indian, Chinese, Maltese and others. There is a long association in Parramatta with Maori connecting to the colony through trade, shipping, whaling and missionary activity. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/rediscovered-the-aboriginal-names-for-ten-melbourne-suburbs-99139">Rediscovered: the Aboriginal names for ten Melbourne suburbs</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Parramatta was also central, we found, to the story of Australia’s embrace of immigration after the second world war. The formation of a federal department for immigration after the war, and massive growth of European migration from the late 1940s through the 1960s, would alter the fabric of Australian life in decisive ways. </p>
<p>Parramatta, where experiments in European food production were first tried and tested, is also where our early experiments in migrant support took place.
It was here that many new arrivals from war-torn Europe first settled. An American naval base hospital, established in Granville Park in 1942, was used after 1945 as one of the first hostels for migrants. Other migrant hostels were located in nearby Ermington, Dundas and Villawood to accommodate displaced persons and recent migrants.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229560/original/file-20180727-106499-3zqqsw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229560/original/file-20180727-106499-3zqqsw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229560/original/file-20180727-106499-3zqqsw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229560/original/file-20180727-106499-3zqqsw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229560/original/file-20180727-106499-3zqqsw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229560/original/file-20180727-106499-3zqqsw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229560/original/file-20180727-106499-3zqqsw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229560/original/file-20180727-106499-3zqqsw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=500&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 US naval base hospital in Granville Park was used to house migrants after 1945.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/holroydlibrary/3382868089/in/photolist-6a1gFb-69W5Wx-69W5PT/">Holroyd City Library/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We saw that over the 20th century processes of “chain migration” would shape Parramatta fundamentally. Chain migration – the term used to describe how migrants follow others from their town to a new host destination – was most strongly practised by Lebanese and Greek communities. </p>
<p>We learned of the significance of two women from the Lebanese village of Kfarsghab, Rosie Broheen and Zahra Youssef Assad Rizk, who were among the first to have <a href="http://arc.parracity.nsw.gov.au/blog/2017/07/14/lebanese-migration/">settled in Parramatta</a>, after arriving in Australia in the late 1890s. Since their arrival, families from the Kfarsghab village continued to migrate to Parramatta, a process that intensified as part of the post-war wave of migration to Sydney. Chain migration was actively supported by Australian migration policy at this time, which placed strong emphasis on family reunion. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/australias-post-war-migration-was-a-success-lets-admit-it-28390">Australia's post-war migration was a success, let's admit it</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>By 2008, an estimated 10,000 people in Parramatta could trace their ancestry to the village of Kfarsghab. Indeed, the importance of Parramatta to this community was commemorated when the main street of the village in Lebanon was renamed Parramatta Road. Another Lebanese village of importance to Parramatta is the Maronite village of Hadchit in northern Lebanon. There are now about 500 Hadchiti households in areas such as Westmead and Harris Park.</p>
<p>We found great gaps in knowledge about the continued presence of Aboriginal people after the initial years of contact (gaps that are beginning to be filled). One woman we spoke to said she was sick of hearing about “her culture” being thousands of years old while not being listened to in the present.</p>
<p>And so, while we did gather together diverse stories of migration and movement in and around Parramatta – sometimes free movements, some under adverse circumstances – what was ever-present was the invisibility of lives not previously deemed of any real importance to the evolving story of Parramatta and its role in accommodating different ideas about Australia’s place in the world.</p>
<h2>Keeping place</h2>
<p>In commissioning our research, the City of Parramatta Council has sought to fill some of the gaps in its historical knowledge of migration impacts on the city. It plans to acknowledge and celebrate these many experiences – of both gathering and dispersal – through interpretive artworks within new developments like Parramatta Square. There are hopes for a “Keeping Place” that acknowledges stories of Indigenous lives, including their dispossession.</p>
<p>Through ongoing practices of interpretation, documentation and story-telling, as well as continuing dialogue about the most appropriate future uses of significant historical sites such as Parramatta Park and the Parramatta Female Factory, we hope Australia’s <em>next great city</em> can also be a place where new cultural imaginaries of place can be celebrated. Looking beyond the exaggerated localism of much local history and the “foundational narrative” of colonial beginnings, Parramatta is a place where many different versions of becoming Australian can be cultivated and explored.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/100652/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sarah Barns was commissioned by the City of Parramatta in 2017 to offer an account of Parramatta’s migration history. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Phillip Mar was commissioned by the City of Parramatta in 2017 to offer an account of Parramatta’s many migration history. </span></em></p>
Sydney’s Parramatta is developing fast, building over a rich archaeological history. Finding ways to retain it can help visitors and residents feel a sense of physical connection with those who came before.
Sarah Barns, Engaged Research Fellow, Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University
Phillip Mar, Research Associate in Cultural and Social Research, Western Sydney University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/95919
2018-05-03T20:21:03Z
2018-05-03T20:21:03Z
The Dreamtime, science and narratives of Indigenous Australia
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217130/original/file-20180501-135803-tkypa4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Lake Mungo and the surrounding Willandra Lakes of NSW were established around 150,000 years ago. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/sunset-over-famous-walls-china-mungo-580536352?src=BM3RK99LNXsfkXUcrXCK0Q-1-0">from www.shutterstock.com </a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is an extract from an essay <strong>Owning the science: the power of partnerships</strong> in <a href="https://griffithreview.com/editions/first-things-first/">First Things First</a>, the 60th edition of Griffith Review.</em></p>
<p><em>We’re publishing it as part of our occasional series Zoom Out, where authors explore key ideas in science and technology in the broader context of society and humanity.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Scientific and Indigenous knowledge systems have often been in conflict. In my view, too much is made of these conflicts; they have a lot in common.</p>
<p>For example, Indigenous knowledge typically takes the form of a narrative, usually a spoken story about how the world came to be. In a similar way, evolutionary theories, which aim to explain why particular characters are adapted to certain functions, also take the form of narratives. Both narratives are mostly focused on “origins”.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-when-did-australias-human-history-begin-87251">Friday essay: when did Australia’s human history begin?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>From a strictly genetic perspective, progress on origins research in Australia has been particularly slow. Early ancient DNA studies were focused on remains from permafrost conditions in Antarctica and cool temperate environments such as northern Europe, including Greenland.</p>
<p>But Australia is very different. Here, human remains are very old, and many are recovered from very hot environments.</p>
<p>While ancient DNA studies have played an important role in informing understanding of the evolution of our species worldwide, little is known about the levels of ancient genomic variation in Australia’s First Peoples – although some progress has been made in recent years. This includes the landmark recovery of genomic sequences from both contemporary and ancient Aboriginal Australian remains.</p>
<h2>Found, or revealed?</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.visitmungo.com.au/who-was-mungo-lady">Mungo Man and Mungo Lady</a> have been the subject of both Indigenous and scientific narratives.</p>
<p>From a scientific perspective, in 1968 the burnt remains of a woman were recovered at Lake Mungo by Jim Bowler, a young geologist. Six years later, after heavy rain, Bowler was riding his motorbike around the lake and again found human remains, this time of a man.</p>
<p>From an Indigenous perspective, it was not that Jim Bowler discovered these ancient people but that they found him. And of course, one is struck by the apparent coincidence that they both revealed themselves to the same person, albeit six years apart.</p>
<p>Professor <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/jim-bowler-145173">Jim Bowler</a> is a distinguished scientist who has close ties with, and an understanding of, Australia’s First Peoples, so Mungo Lady and Mungo Man chose well.</p>
<h2>Since the Dreamtime</h2>
<p>Perhaps the most well-known conflict between scientific and Indigenous perspectives relates to the origins of Aboriginal Australians.</p>
<p>From an Indigenous perspective, Aboriginal Australians have always been on this land – since the Dreamtime. From a scientific perspective, there is strong evidence that they have been here for more than 65,000 years – not quite “always”.</p>
<p>From my perspective, though, 65,000 years seems pretty close to “always”, and, moreover, it is likely that people became Aboriginal Australians when they first set foot on this land. So, in this sense, they have indeed always been here.</p>
<p>When a <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/98/2/537">publication by Professor Alan Thorne</a>, a prominent Australian anthropologist, and his colleagues from the Australian National University appeared in the journal PNAS in 2001, it drew worldwide attention. The authors reported the recovery of short <a href="https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/primer/basics/mtdna">mitochondrial DNA</a> from Mungo Man, as well as the other ancient remains of a number of people from the Willandra Lakes region.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-are-mitochondria-and-how-did-we-come-to-have-them-83106">Explainer: what are mitochondria and how did we come to have them?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The results from their analysis, which included an evolutionary tree of recovered DNA sequences, suggested that Mungo Man was genetically different to the other ancient people they studied, who were closely related to the Aboriginal Australians of today.</p>
<p>This implied that contemporary Aboriginal Australians replaced another population of humans that lived here first.</p>
<p>This conclusion caused widespread offence among Aboriginal people, though it was difficult for them to reject the scientific claims. Some <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2001/01/01/2813404.htm">scientists argued</a> that Thorne’s results were highly unlikely to be correct, given the age of the remains and the hot environment in which they had been interred. It was not, however, possible to refute these claims without a detailed understanding of the methods used and the opportunity to redo the experiment.</p>
<p>Some politicians and commentators seized on the result to <a href="https://theconversation.com/factcheck-might-there-have-been-people-in-australia-prior-to-aboriginal-people-43911">argue against constitutional recognition of Aboriginal Australians</a>, suggesting there was considerable doubt about their First Peoples status.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/factcheck-might-there-have-been-people-in-australia-prior-to-aboriginal-people-43911">FactCheck: might there have been people in Australia prior to Aboriginal people?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Big personalities</h2>
<p>Big personalities have dominated Australian archaeology and anthropology, and influenced its development – Alan Thorne prominent among them. He first became involved in the Lake Mungo excavations under the archaeologist Jim Bowler in 1969, reconstructing the remains of the skeleton of Mungo Lady.</p>
<p>Five years later he also reconstructed Mungo Man and led excavations at other important burial grounds in Victoria. Thorne was very well known for his work on the multiregional evolution hypothesis, a model of human evolution that disputed the more widely known recent African origin (or “<a href="https://theconversation.com/worlds-scientists-turn-to-asia-and-australia-to-rewrite-human-history-88697">out of Africa</a>”) hypothesis.</p>
<p>For more than a decade after Thorne’s research was published, his work on Mungo Man and other ancient people from Willandra went largely unchallenged, despite the distress it caused to Aboriginal Australians.</p>
<p>Then, in 2010, with the permission of the Paakantji, Ngyiampaa and the Mutthi Mutthi peoples of the Willandra Lakes, my colleagues and I from the Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution were able to resample these important remains.</p>
<p>With the advantages of technology that had developed in the preceding decade, we repeated much of the original work. The new technology meant that we were able to recover much smaller amounts of DNA (if it was still present in the remains) and sequence it.</p>
<p>In 2016, we also <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/113/25/6892">published the results</a> in PNAS journal. Our findings provided <a href="https://theconversation.com/new-dna-study-confirms-ancient-aborigines-were-the-first-australians-60616">strong evidence</a> to refute the claims made by Thorne and his colleagues, showing it was not possible to recover any DNA that unequivocally belonged to Mungo Man.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/new-dna-study-confirms-ancient-aborigines-were-the-first-australians-60616">New DNA study confirms ancient Aborigines were the First Australians</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>We did, however, recover five distinct DNA sequences from his remains. But these sequences revealed no ancient DNA damage patterns, indicating that they were not ancient sequences – and genetic analysis showed that they were European in origin. Clearly these were sequences from people who left their DNA on the bone material after handling Mungo Man’s remains.</p>
<h2>New techniques, new light</h2>
<p>Our study set the record straight. We refuted the claim that Mungo Man was a member of an earlier group of people that previously inhabited Australia and not an Aboriginal Australian.</p>
<p>Perhaps of equal importance, we were able to recover substantial coverage of the mitochondrial genome from another ancient Willandra Lakes man, who was buried only a few hundred metres from Mungo Man.</p>
<p>The remains contained about 1% human DNA; from them, we were able to recover two complete mitochondrial genomes. One of these was a previously unidentified Aboriginal Australian mitochondrial genetic type, almost certainly from the remains themselves. The other was European in origin, and certainly a contaminant.</p>
<p>It appeared that this man was from within the Holocene period (that is, the period since the last Ice Age that ended around 11,700 years ago); we know this because the skeletal remains were not heavily mineralised. His teeth exhibited a pattern of wear typical of Aboriginal hunter-gatherer populations and included no evidence of cavities or tooth decay. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/worlds-scientists-turn-to-asia-and-australia-to-rewrite-human-history-88697">World's scientists turn to Asia and Australia to rewrite human history</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Combined with the lack of mineralisation in the bone and its position in the soil layers at Lake Mungo, various authors have suggested that the remains were a few thousand years old. This is important, because it means that he represents the best “proxy” currently available for Mungo Man.</p>
<p>The fact that he was buried so close to the oldest-known Australian, albeit much later, suggests a common place and country. This is particularly significant given that the environmental conditions were very different at the times of the two burials, which were about 40,000 years apart.</p>
<p>Hence, nuclear gene studies of this man, currently underway, will be especially relevant to our understanding of Mungo Man himself. And because the nuclear genome is much larger than the mitochondrial, it will reveal much more information.</p>
<p>Such nuclear genome studies enable us to establish kinship relationships between people living now and ancient peoples. Such studies will take substantial time and effort, and will require the development of new innovative genomic tools.</p>
<p>Ethical considerations demand Aboriginal involvement in both the design and operation of such new techniques, as well as new research relationships with Indigenous communities.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/buried-tools-and-pigments-tell-a-new-history-of-humans-in-australia-for-65-000-years-81021">Buried tools and pigments tell a new history of humans in Australia for 65,000 years</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/95919/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Lambert receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>
New techniques for genetic analysis are helping us build more detailed and accurate stories about the ancient histories of the first Australians.
David Lambert, Professor of Evolutionary Biology, Griffith University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/89309
2018-02-27T01:13:49Z
2018-02-27T01:13:49Z
Empire of delusion: the sun sets on British imperial credibility
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/201281/original/file-20180109-83547-1y4sxm1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Today the Commonwealth exists as an organisation in search of a rationale.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This piece is republished with permission from <a href="https://griffithreview.com/editions/commonwealth-now/">Commonwealth Now</a>, the 59th edition of Griffith Review. Articles are a little longer than most published on The Conversation, presenting an in-depth analysis on the relevance of the Commonwealth of Nations in today’s geopolitical landscape.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Anyone interested in power must visit Persepolis. Its ruins stand defiantly in a parched valley in southern Iran, the ultimate statement of humans’ capacity to dominate vast multitudes of their fellow humans. </p>
<p>Amid the intricately carved stairways, walls and plinths stand the two halls from which the Achaemenid Empire radiated its power, from the Indus to the Danube. The Apadana, begun by Darius in 518 BC and finished by Xerxes, was where the King of Kings received tribute from the variety of peoples he ruled. </p>
<p>With walls 60 metres long, its huge ceiling of Lebanese cedar was supported on 72 columns of carved grey marble, each 19 metres high. Next to the Apadana is the even larger Throne Hall, its massive roof once supported by 100 columns, each of its eight carved stone doorways depicting the King of Kings wrestling with a mythical monster. </p>
<p>The architecture of these two halls, and the stairways leading to them, was designed to inspire awe in the subjects of the Achaemenids. Any tributary hoping to see the King of Kings would be so disoriented by the time he saw the throne as to be utterly prostrate at the heart of the largest empire the world had ever seen.</p>
<p>The British Empire has no Persepolis. Its beginning and end weren’t marked by the construction and destruction of a city. London began as an outpost of another empire, and has continued to flourish long after the fall of its own. </p>
<p>Neither is there a founding date or a battle in which Britain decisively beat its predecessor and was universally hailed as the new world power – just as there is no decisive defeat that marks its end.</p>
<p>The British Empire is a story of ambitious, evangelical, avaricious but ordinary men and women, and a weary, reluctant Whitehall bureaucracy dragged toward formalising what its citizens had created on the frontiers of enterprise in Asia, Africa and the Pacific. </p>
<p>Far from popular notions of an empire driven by surging jingoistic ambition, British society was deeply divided about the benefits and morality of empire at the time of its greatest expansion. </p>
<p>By the mid-19th century, a rising tide of opinion opposed to imperialism on material and moral grounds had begun to contest the pro-imperialist dominance of the Tories under Palmerston and Disraeli. Britain’s economy had started to sputter and lose ground to surging industrial rivals; accumulated war debt and rising taxes were generating popular resentment. </p>
<p>William Ewart Gladstone, at the head of a surging Liberal movement, combined moral attacks on the Tories’ overseas adventurism with a hip-pocket campaign that debt and taxes were the direct consequence of imperial ambition.</p>
<p>And yet, the 70 years that followed 1850 saw the fastest expansion of the empire in history. Hundreds of millions of Asians, Africans, Pacific Islanders and Americans found themselves ruled by Britannia. Apart from in India, the British preferred to govern through local systems of government – and, more often than not, reluctantly. </p>
<p>As the French and the Germans became determined to build themselves global empires, the British were forced to clarify their intentions in vast areas of the world where they had simply asserted a sphere of influence by virtue of the British navy and British commercial dominance. </p>
<p>Repeatedly, where they had been prepared to stand aside in a bid to manage complex relations with their continental rivals, the British found their hand forced by the thrusting subjects in their dominions, who had none of the Empire-weariness of British society. </p>
<p>After the first world war, a bloodied and impoverished Britain found itself forced to take on yet more territory surrendered by vanquished empires in the Middle East and Africa.</p>
<p>Just as the British Empire has no founding moment, neither has it an emphatic final act. There is no burning of Persepolis from which history will forever date the demise of Rule Britannia. After the second world war, the largest empire the world has ever seen declined exactly as it had arisen – through the self-interested acts of thousands of subjects, overseen by an overwhelmed Whitehall bureaucracy, amid an ambivalent British public, romantic and cynical at the same time. </p>
<p>Even today, Britain can’t divest itself of territories that cause it diplomatic difficulties – the Falklands, Gibraltar, Northern Ireland – thanks to the attachment of their populations to membership of a vanished empire. </p>
<p>And while the British Empire’s gracious decline can be seen as a tribute to the prim pragmatism of the same national character that built it, the lack of a final act may carry an ominous thread. Without a clear full stop there can be no certainty that the unravelling has ended even now.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/201287/original/file-20180109-83571-oh3ry3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/201287/original/file-20180109-83571-oh3ry3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201287/original/file-20180109-83571-oh3ry3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201287/original/file-20180109-83571-oh3ry3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201287/original/file-20180109-83571-oh3ry3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201287/original/file-20180109-83571-oh3ry3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201287/original/file-20180109-83571-oh3ry3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The British Empire has no Persepolis.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Takhtejamshid_1234.jpg">Mardetanha/Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The evolution of the Commonwealth</h2>
<p>The key to Britannia’s reluctant rise and dignified eclipse lies in a mystical association: the Commonwealth. </p>
<p>The displacement of “empire” by “Commonwealth” first happened amid the horror of the first world war, at the <a href="http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/cabinetpapers/themes/first-world-war-effects.htm">Imperial War Conference of 1917</a>. Britain, its self-governing dominions – Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Newfoundland – and India had come together to discuss the form and function of the empire after the war. </p>
<p>Britain had come to rely ever more heavily on the Empire for its survival during the cataclysm. In full knowledge of this, the dominions and India had begun to demand a greater say over an imperial foreign policy that could have such momentous consequences for them. </p>
<p>The Imperial War Conference issued Resolution IX, which recognised:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… the dominions as autonomous nations of an Imperial Commonwealth, and … India as an important portion of the same. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The resolution further recognised:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… the right of the dominions and India to an adequate voice in foreign policy and in foreign relations, and should provide effective arrangements for continuous consultation in all important matters of common imperial concern, and for such necessary concerted action, founded on consultation, as the several governments may determine.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Names matter. In naming something or someone, not only do we give them a social handle, we also aim to define the essence of what they are and what we want them to be. Names are meant to shape their hosts and evoke behaviours; that’s why we remain so fascinated by what particular names “mean”. “Commonwealth” was chosen by a succession of statesmen for no less a reason.</p>
<p>Let’s start with the noun it replaced. The British, as they became increasingly devoted to liberal politics and economics, the rule of law and freedom of religion, had grown increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of empire. These were what despots and autocrats built; Britain’s growing dominion was something entirely different. </p>
<p>Like ancient Athens, they told themselves, Britain’s was a liberal empire: built on democracy, free trade and maritime strength, not on huge standing armies and command-and-control repression. </p>
<p>Queen Victoria may have been named “Empress of India”, but Britons could not bear to think they were in charge of a project akin to that which Louis XIV, Frederick the Great or Napoleon had tried to build.</p>
<p>And so they found a gentler, less precise title. But “Commonwealth” was not without controversy, evoking for some the horrors of Cromwell’s own very English revolutionary fervour and despotism. </p>
<p>The rehabilitation of “Commonwealth” was simultaneously occurring in Australia, at a time when the colonists were contemplating their own momentous remaking of their political order. As historian W.K. Hancock pointed out, the name was adopted:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… as a manifesto, a declaration of faith in a way of life, rather than as an accurate descriptor in terms known to political science. The name Commonwealth is a programme in itself.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>“Commonwealth” is an anglicisation of the Latin term <em>res publica</em>: “the welfare of the people”. But the modern usage of this term – “republic” – carries with it a precise constitutional framework, as defined by the jurists of the Roman Republic and the constitutional fathers of the US. </p>
<p>“Commonwealth” is less precise, more mystical. It dates from the late 15th century, when England was throwing off the yoke of the Roman church and abolishing feudalism. At a time of great political, social and ecclesiastical upheaval, the English coined a term evoking a comforting vision of an idealised Anglo-Saxon harmony. </p>
<p>For Hancock:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The idea depended on the conception of society as a mystical body, as an organic unity based on a just and harmonious distribution of functions and rewards among the various degrees and estates of men … The idea of the Commonwealth as a mystical body denied that any man or any rank possessed a natural right to power and wealth: it insisted on stewardship.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>How perfect for an empire acquired by anti-imperialists. Theirs was not a system of domination and extraction, they told themselves – it was a voluntary association of free societies, held together by sentiment and loyalty for the mutual support and welfare of all. </p>
<p>Surely it is a testament to the power of names that the Commonwealth gained in strength and sentiment even as the empire it tried to deny became ever more repressive, extractive and attached to racial hierarchy. </p>
<p>As the great Commonwealth loyalist Alfred Deakin wrote in London’s Morning Post in 1906, the British Empire:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… though united in the whole, is, nevertheless, divided broadly into two parts, one occupied wholly or mainly by a white ruling race, the other principally occupied by coloured races who are ruled. Australia and New Zealand are determined to keep their place in the first class.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Commonwealth thus became a cypher for the arc of British imperial delusion. Its siren call of volunteerism and the good-of-all convinced a nation caught in industrial eclipse to expand its responsibilities vastly beyond what it could ever hope to maintain. </p>
<p>And, repeatedly, it maintained association among the disparate parts of empire when rational statecraft would have brought an emphatic end to the quixotic enterprise.</p>
<p>By the 1870s, Britain was under serious threat from the rising powers of France and Germany in Europe.</p>
<p>With industrial, military and scientific eclipse beckoning, the empire needed to become a state, refocusing its energies on dominating the near seas and ensuring the balance of power in Europe. Instead, its energies were dissipated at the edges of empire. Where it should have been concentrating its power in Europe, Britain suffered humiliating defeats at the hands of the Afghans in 1878 and the Zulus in 1879.</p>
<p>So it was for the dominions. By the early 20th century, Australia and New Zealand were rightly preoccupied by competition from rising powers in the Pacific.</p>
<p>Never was there a greater need to manage relations and build their own defences and military capabilities. Yet they remained tied to the foreign policy of empire, even as the empire entered an alliance with Japan, the country that most worried them, and then granted it the right to retain the Carolines and Marshall Islands in the Central Pacific after the first world war. </p>
<p>At the <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1921-1936/naval-conference">Washington Naval Conference of 1921</a>, dedicated to finding a solution to the rising rivalry in the Pacific, the antipodean dominions chose meekly to be represented by the empire.</p>
<p>The Depression provided an opportunity for the Commonwealth to become a genuine society brought together for the common good. But when the dominions and Britain came together at Ottawa in 1932, the result was acrimony and hard, self-interested bargaining.</p>
<p>The real power of the name was revealed in 1949. India, the country that had shed more blood for the empire than any other, and that had just wrenched itself free of the Empire’s grasp, became a republic. And yet it chose to retain the mystical connection, opting to remain within the Commonwealth. </p>
<p>In the decades that followed, the Asian and African colonies – never even thought of as part of the original Commonwealth compact in 1917 – also chose enthusiastically to remain part of the mystical association. </p>
<p>By the 1960s, they were to turn an imperial club into a radically anti-racist force, taking the Commonwealth to the apex of its history in its campaigns against Rhodesia and apartheid. </p>
<p>Now, the Commonwealth’s once most oppressed societies are its most ardent supporters. Surveys show the most positive feelings about the Commonwealth are <a href="https://www.channel4.com/news/jubilee-prompts-questions-about-commonwealths-role">among those societies</a> Deakin placed emphatically in the “ruled” category.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/201289/original/file-20180109-83550-16mcnur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/201289/original/file-20180109-83550-16mcnur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=283&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201289/original/file-20180109-83550-16mcnur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=283&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201289/original/file-20180109-83550-16mcnur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=283&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201289/original/file-20180109-83550-16mcnur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=356&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201289/original/file-20180109-83550-16mcnur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=356&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201289/original/file-20180109-83550-16mcnur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=356&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Imperial War Conference of 1917 first gave rise to the term ‘Commonwealth’ as opposed to ‘empire’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lafayette Negative Archive</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>An organisation lacking a rationale</h2>
<p>Today the Commonwealth exists as an organisation in search of a rationale. The mythology of the name has done its job: what brings the association together now is an act of forgetting what constructed it in the past. </p>
<p>Its bonds are not hard objectives of modern statecraft but a subterranean sentimentality of connectedness; it endures in its benignity because no-one has the heart to kill it off. </p>
<p>Its secretariat, a recent eminent persons’ group report, and the biennial meetings of its leaders all desperately try to find a rationale for its existence, loading fashionable issue after fashionable cause on its ramshackle shoulders – from green finance to fair trade. </p>
<p>It is hard to find an issue on which the Commonwealth has succeeded in bringing about genuine change since the demise of white rule in southern Africa. </p>
<p>When this coalition of whimsy meets a hard policy issue, its solidarity falls victim to its diversity, while its breadth of membership can’t deliver real weight and gravitas in the present day.</p>
<p>Where then does the Commonwealth sit, in the company of Persepolis and history’s empires? Surely as the last empire – the one that turned that word from a label of pride to one of accusation.</p>
<p>An empire determined to destroy and delegitimise the idea of empire itself. </p>
<p>An empire dedicated to the puncturing of its own pretensions to grandeur and permanence, under the reassuring myth of a mystical Arcadian community of free association. </p>
<p>Surely this is the enduring legacy of the British Empire – which is still so potent. We search in vain for the beginning of the unravelling; nor can we date its end. </p>
<p>Perhaps it continues, as Scotland, Wales and even England begin to assert themselves against the British Union as the original free association in the common interest.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>You can read other essays from Griffith Review’s latest edition <a href="https://griffithreview.com/editions/commonwealth-now/">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/89309/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Wesley is a member of the board of the Australia-China Council, the AFP Commissioner’s Advisory Board, and the NSW/ACT State Advisory Council for CEDA. </span></em></p>
Without a clear full stop there can be no certainty that the unravelling of the British Empire has ended even now.
Michael Wesley, Professor and Director of School of International Political and Strategic Studies, Australian National University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/89310
2018-02-05T02:58:26Z
2018-02-05T02:58:26Z
Relics of colonialism: the Whitlam dismissal and the fight over the Palace letters
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/201266/original/file-20180109-83553-1bhucel.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A reversion to imperial imbalance in the British-Australian relationship began with the Whitlam government's election and ended with its dismissal.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/NAA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This piece is republished with permission from <a href="https://griffithreview.com/editions/commonwealth-now/">Commonwealth Now</a>, the 59th edition of Griffith Review. Articles are a little longer than most published on The Conversation, presenting an in-depth analysis on the relevance of the Commonwealth of Nations in today’s geopolitical landscape.</em></p>
<hr>
<blockquote>
<p>We will make better decisions on all the great issues of the day and for the century to come, if we better understand the past. – Gough Whitlam</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The celebration of the “Queen’s birthday” in Australia is a perfect reflection of a fading, remnant, relationship. Commemorated in the Australian states as a public holiday on <a href="https://www.timeanddate.com/holidays/australia/queens-birthday">three different days</a> – none of which is her birthday – and honouring an event of dubious significance, the “Queen’s birthday” reminds us that, despite our national independence, the symbolic ties of colonial deference remain.</p>
<p>The “Queen’s birthday” may seem a fitting if absurd genuflection to a powerless relic of a former time, and in itself confirmation that the Queen no longer has a role in post-dominion matters. But things are not always as they seem.</p>
<p>Neither sovereignty nor national independence flowed neatly from federation. The <a href="https://www.foundingdocs.gov.au/item-sdid-82.html">Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act</a> created Australia as a federation of the former colonies and a constitutional monarchy, with all the tension inherent in that term – between a democratic government chosen by the people and a monarchical head of state whose ultimate constitutional power stemmed solely from inherited aristocratic assumption and unchallenged legal privilege.</p>
<p>The gradual devolution of Australian autonomy appeared assured at the Imperial Conference of 1926. This affirmed the relationship between Great Britain and its dominions as <a href="http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/cabinetpapers/themes/dominion-status-legislation.htm">being that of</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… autonomous communities within the British Empire, equal in status, in no way subordinate one to another in any aspect of their domestic or external affairs, though united by a common allegiance to the Crown.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The critical qualifier in this proclamation of an imperial gift of national autonomy, equality and independence is this: “though united by a common allegiance to the Crown”.</p>
<p>The imperial assertion of continued dominion allegiance to the Crown was a stark counterpoint to the proclaimed national autonomy. Indeed, it undermined the very autonomy and equality of nations the conference so proudly affirmed.</p>
<p>Five years after the Imperial Conference, the <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1931/4/pdfs/ukpga_19310004_en.pdf">Statute of Westminster</a> gave statutory expression to the principles of equality established at the Imperial Conference and vested full legislative authority and independence in the “dominions”.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, it remained the case that some bills would continue to require the Queen’s assent to be passed into law. The Statute of Westminster also granted dominion ministers the right of direct access to the sovereign. This access had previously been available only indirectly through UK ministers and reflected their then incomplete post-colonial status.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/201244/original/file-20180108-83563-obkv47.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/201244/original/file-20180108-83563-obkv47.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201244/original/file-20180108-83563-obkv47.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201244/original/file-20180108-83563-obkv47.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201244/original/file-20180108-83563-obkv47.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201244/original/file-20180108-83563-obkv47.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201244/original/file-20180108-83563-obkv47.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The ‘Queen’s birthday’ is celebrated in Australia on three different days – none of which is her actual birthday.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Jodie Richter</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A fight for independence</h2>
<p>Yet, in reality, neither of these critical junctures in the evolving British–Australian relationship created the clear-cut path to national independence that these paternalistic statements of ceded imperial power might suggest. </p>
<p>Although the dominions were entitled to separate representation at the League of Nations and subsequently the United Nations, as made clear at the Imperial Conference, the cultural expectation of continued British primacy and Australian dominion subservience remained.</p>
<p>It can be seen in the British attitude toward <a href="https://www.moadoph.gov.au/blog/dr-evatt-goes-to-san-francisco/">the efforts</a> of Australia’s minister for external affairs, H.V. Evatt, to champion the role of the smaller nations against the Great Powers at the San Francisco conference in 1945 that established the ground rules for the UN. </p>
<p>Evatt’s insistence that Australia would take its own independent position as an autonomous nation in these high-level international negotiations infuriated the British representatives at the fledgling discussions over the UN. </p>
<p>At a preliminary meeting of Commonwealth nations in London, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had bemoaned Evatt’s defiant independent stance. </p>
<p>Describing the Commonwealth as “the third of the Great Powers”, Churchill argued that the Commonwealth could only maintain its influence by ensuring unity among members and speaking with one voice – and that one voice of course would be Britain’s, not Australia’s.</p>
<p>These expectations of British administrative, legal and political authority, based more in the established imperial mindset, behaviours and networks than an exercise of formal political control, remained powerful resistors to change throughout the 20th century.</p>
<p>The undercurrent of lasting imperial privilege and hierarchy proved to be a major obstacle in ending the complex web of residual colonial ties across legal, constitutional and political domains. </p>
<p>In particular, continued allegiance to the British Crown as the imperial condition of dominion nationhood was a political oxymoron. It cast an impossible constraint on the form of national autonomy, while Australian allegiance to the British Crown was superimposed on the representative model of parliamentary democracy. </p>
<p>The fundamental contradiction this established at the heart of the Australian polity remained largely dormant during the long years under the avowed Anglophile prime minister Sir Robert Menzies, until inevitably rupturing along the faultlines of divided allegiance – to the British Crown on the one hand and to Australian democratic governance on the other – with the 1972 election of the Whitlam Labor government.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/201246/original/file-20180108-83547-vmwcd0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/201246/original/file-20180108-83547-vmwcd0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201246/original/file-20180108-83547-vmwcd0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201246/original/file-20180108-83547-vmwcd0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201246/original/file-20180108-83547-vmwcd0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201246/original/file-20180108-83547-vmwcd0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201246/original/file-20180108-83547-vmwcd0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Australia’s continued allegiance to the British Crown above all else was a theme of the Menzies/Churchill years.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Keystone-France/Getty Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Whitlam tries to loosen the ties</h2>
<p>Gough Whitlam came to office with a core policy agenda of ending the residual colonial ties between Australia and Britain. </p>
<p>Although largely seen as ceremonial and symbolic, these colonial links were to be immensely significant in the trajectory of the Whitlam government and its dismissal threeyears later. </p>
<p>Whitlam moved rapidly on some of these. He ended the British honours system and introduced Australian honours, introduced an Australian national anthem to replace God Save the Queen, changed the Queen’s title by removing arcane references to God and Empire, and, in 1974, removed the words “God save the Queen” from the official proclamation dissolving parliament.</p>
<p>Eighteen months after his second election victory in the double dissolution <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_federal_election,_1974">of May 1974</a>, Whitlam was peremptorily <a href="http://whitlamdismissal.com/">removed from office</a> by the Queen’s representative in Australia, Governor-General Sir John Kerr, without warning and despite Whitlam maintaining a clear majority in the House of Representatives at all times. </p>
<p>Concerns were immediately raised over the possible role of Buckingham Palace and British authorities in this unprecedented vice-regal action. The suspicion that the Queen knew more about Kerr’s intentions than has ever been publicly acknowledged has grown in recent years with the Queen’s embargo of her correspondence with Kerr at the time of Whitlam’s dismissal.</p>
<p>Of all the residual colonial ties, the one that Whitlam found particularly abhorrent, and was determined to sever, was the right of appeal from some state supreme courts to the Privy Council. <a href="http://pmtranscripts.pmc.gov.au/release/transcript-3557">In his view</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>No people with an ounce of self-respect would allow decisions made by their own judges … to be overruled by judges sitting in another country. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Whitlam described this as an “absurd” and “ludicrous” situation. Yet his efforts to end remaining state Privy Council appeals were stymied at every point. </p>
<p>Whitlam’s attorney-general, Lionel Murphy, reported he had struck nothing but intransigence, non-co-operation and obstruction from the British authorities in the government’s moves to implement this core policy.</p>
<p>Returning from his first visit to England as prime minister in 1973, Whitlam was clearly frustrated by the UK’s reluctance to end colonial ties when he <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/sep/06/the-palace-treats-us-as-the-colonial-child-not-to-be-trusted-with-knowledge-of-our-own-history">told reporters</a>, more in hope than confidence:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We are a separate country from Britain. We are an entirely independent country. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>A tense meeting with Edward Heath, the British Conservative prime minister, the following year saw little change. An exasperated Whitlam again <a href="https://github.com/wragge/dfat-documents/blob/master/volumes/volume-27-australia-and-the-united-kingdom-1960-1975/480-note-for-record-by-james.md">declared that</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>All these colonial relics are incompatible with the position of Australia as a separate, sovereign country.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>When the Whitlam government was removed from office by Kerr, three years later, these state-based appeals to the Privy Council remained, unchanged.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/201247/original/file-20180108-83550-1ar5y6h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/201247/original/file-20180108-83550-1ar5y6h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201247/original/file-20180108-83550-1ar5y6h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201247/original/file-20180108-83550-1ar5y6h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201247/original/file-20180108-83550-1ar5y6h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201247/original/file-20180108-83550-1ar5y6h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201247/original/file-20180108-83550-1ar5y6h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gough Whitlam aimed to end the residual colonialties between Australia and Britain.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Alan Porritt</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What we know about the Palace’s role</h2>
<p>The archival records of the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) covering these official visits are at once illuminating and disturbing. They show a troubling lack of respect for such a significant engagement with a senior member of a new Australian government.</p>
<p>Murphy’s visit was, after all, the first official visit by any of Whitlam’s cabinet to England. And yet, even before his arrival, the FCO files show that British authorities viewed Murphy, and indeed the Whitlam government itself, as a troublesome interloper whose presence they barely tolerated and whose policy concerns they did not share.</p>
<p>More than mere intransigence, or even simply a refusal to accept the legitimacy of the Whitlam government, these archival records disclose profound breaches of confidence, secrecy and even deception of Whitlam by the FCO, the British High Commission in Canberra, and the Queen’s private secretary Sir Martin Charteris. They show a partisan pattern of disrespect for and undermining of the new Labor government. </p>
<p>Most significantly, far from any equality of national status, “in no way subordinate one to another” professed at the Imperial Conference, these files reveal the FCO’s brazen presumption – “our right as the colonial power” – to deceive the prime minister, to liaise in secret with the conservative states and, ultimately, to intervene in Australian politics to prevent the government holding a half-Senate election to resolve a stalemate in the Senate over the passage of supply bills.</p>
<p>From October 16, 1975, opposition senators refused to vote on the government’s supply bills, which provided the annual funds for government expenditure. In the new political vernacular, supply was “blocked”.</p>
<p>Calling the half-Senate election, which was then due, had been Whitlam’s resolution to this unprecedented situation since the day supply was first blocked. The Labor caucus had voted unanimously in support of Whitlam calling the half-Senate election “at a time of his choosing”.</p>
<p>The FCO files document a rapid breakdown and reversion to imperial imbalance in the British-Australian administrative relationship that began with the election of the Whitlam government and ended with its dismissal. They reveal a deep suspicion of the new government that quickly led to secrecy, deception and to routine breaches of the highest levels of confidentiality by both the British prime minister’s office and the Palace throughout the terms of the Whitlam government. </p>
<p>Most alarming is that the FCO files also reveal overt British involvement in Australian politics in the weeks before the dismissal – specifically with the half-Senate election due at that time and which Whitlam was to call on November 11, 1975, to end the blocking of supply in the Senate.</p>
<p>Kerr’s papers in the National Archives of Australia provided the first glimpse of the Palace’s role in the dismissal.</p>
<p>Although there are some who continue to claim that the Palace was not involved, this has increasingly become more a matter of faith than fact. Revelations from Kerr’s papers, the Palace letters, and the FCO’s files have rendered that position untenable. </p>
<p>We now know that Charteris wrote to Kerr in October 1975 to discuss action the Palace would take if Whitlam became aware of Kerr’s plans to remove him from office and sought to recall him as governor-general. Charteris told Kerr that the Palace would, in that instance, “try to delay things”.</p>
<p>This communication between the Queen’s private secretary and the governor-general over the position of the governor-general himself is politically and constitutionally shocking. It reveals the Palace to be in deep intrigue with Kerr, to protect his tenure as governor-general, in the weeks before the dismissal – unknown to Whitlam.</p>
<p>It was also a breathtaking rupture of the vice-regal relationship. At the heart of this relationship in a constitutional monarchy is that the appointment of the governor-general is made by the Queen on the advice of the Australian prime minister alone. This has certainly been the case since 1930, when King George V accepted Labor prime minister James Scullin’s advice to appoint Sir Isaac Isaacs as governor-general. </p>
<p>Despite being vehemently opposed to Isaacs’ appointment, the King told Scullin:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… being a constitutional monarch I must, Mr Scullin, accept your advice.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>For the Queen’s private secretary to intervene with Kerr himself on the question of the governor-general’s tenure was a staggering breach of that relationship. </p>
<p>From this point on, knowing that Kerr was considering dismissing Whitlam and concerned that Whitlam might then recall him, and having agreed to a course of action in order to protect Kerr’s position should Whitlam do so, the Palace was already involved in the dismissal.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/201262/original/file-20180109-142334-61td1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/201262/original/file-20180109-142334-61td1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201262/original/file-20180109-142334-61td1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201262/original/file-20180109-142334-61td1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201262/original/file-20180109-142334-61td1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201262/original/file-20180109-142334-61td1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201262/original/file-20180109-142334-61td1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Buckingham Palace was in deep intrigue with Sir John Kerr in the weeks before he dismissed the Whitlam government.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Will Oliver</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The fight over the Palace letters</h2>
<p>The letters between Charteris and Kerr are part of the so-called “Palace letters”. This is the secret correspondence between the governor-general and the Queen, her private secretary, and Prince Charles, in the weeks before the dismissal. </p>
<p>Although these letters are among Kerr’s papers and held by the National Archives in Canberra, they are closed to us. This is because the Palace letters are considered “personal” and not official “Commonwealth” records. This is despite Kerr’s own description of them as his “duty” as governor-general, and despite their obvious significance to our history.</p>
<p>The Palace letters are embargoed until 2027, “at her Majesty the Queen’s instructions”, with the Queen’s private secretary retaining an indefinite veto over their release even after this date. It is quite possible, then, that they will never be released.</p>
<p>The Palace letters are extraordinarily significant historical documents. They are contemporaneous real-time communications between the Queen and her representative in Australia, written at a time of great political drama, and are a vital part of our national historical record. </p>
<p>At the heart of this still-secret vice-regal correspondence was the prospect of the dismissal of the Whitlam government, which Kerr had already raised in September 1975 with Prince Charles and Charteris.</p>
<p>The designation of the Queen’s correspondence with her representative in Australia as “personal” means they do not come under Australia’s <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2016C00772">Archives Act</a>, which relates only to official “Commonwealth records”. </p>
<p>And so, in a rather neat catch-22, the decision by the National Archives to deny access to the correspondence cannot be appealed to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. </p>
<p>There is only one way to challenge this decision: through a Federal Court action, which is a complex, expensive and onerous proposition. This is clearly an area in need of legislative reform to ensure a viable appeal process is in place for records described as “personal” in this way.</p>
<p>In an effort to secure the release of the Palace letters, I <a href="https://www.crikey.com.au/2017/09/14/what-we-learned-in-the-court-case-to-release-queens-secret-dismissal-letters/">launched an action</a> against the National Archives in the Federal Court last year, with a legal team working on a pro-bono basis and supported by a crowdfunding campaign. This concluded in September 2017; the decision is anticipated within months.</p>
<p>At the heart of the case is this central question of just what constitutes “personal” as opposed to “Commonwealth” records. Lead barrister Antony Whitlam (Gough Whitlam’s eldest son) argued to the court that “personal records” would be records covering matters “unrelated to the performance of Sir John’s official duties”, and that this could not extend to correspondence between the Queen and her representative in Australia prior to the dismissal. He said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It cannot seriously be suggested that there was a personal relationship between the Queen and Sir John Kerr.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is difficult to see, from common sense alone, that the correspondence between the Queen and her representative in Australia could in any way be seen as “personal”. The precise legal points on which the question of Palace letters’ status will turn – whether as personal or Commonwealth records – will be a different matter. </p>
<p>The case itself has brought to light a significant amount of new historical and contemporary material on the relationship between the Queen and the governor-general and its implications for Australian national sovereignty.</p>
<p>One thing that can be said is that from the moment this case came before the court, the question of the release of the Palace letters changed irrevocably. Their status and their release will now be determined by an Australian court, according to Australian law – and not as a quasi-imperial grant of release by the Queen. </p>
<p>This alone is an historic and important outcome that ends one of the few remaining “colonial relics” that continue to deny us access to historical documents relating to the Queen about a historical episode also relating to the Queen.</p>
<p>The continued embargo by the Queen of the Palace letters and the revelations from the British archives of the FCO all point to the lingering imperial power that comes from an incomplete severance of colonial ties. They show above all that the residues of colonialism, the “imperial aftermath” in Whitlam’s words, can never be fully extinguished until Australia becomes a fully independent republic.</p>
<p>It is surely absurd that in the 21st century we can still see the Australian prime minister <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/prince-philip-awarded-knight-of-the-order-of-australia-by-prime-minister-tony-abbott-20150125-12xzk8.html">giving an Australian knighthood</a> to the Queen’s consort, Prince Philip, and that the governor-general, the Queen’s representative in Australia, can still dismiss an elected government on the basis of claimed “reserve powers” derived from, and in the name of, the Queen.</p>
<p>As an independent autonomous nation, Australia has a right to know its own history, including and in particular the records pointing to British involvement in that history, if we are to ensure such a profound rupture in our political structures and denial of our national sovereignty cannot happen again.</p>
<p>This troubling time in our history and in the Australian–British relationship is also critical to our decisions as we recommence the debate over the inevitable move toward a republic. </p>
<p>The fundamental issues to be confronted in that debate will relate absolutely to the events surrounding the dismissal of the Whitlam government: how to protect the institutions of democratic parliamentary governance, how to secure the formation of government in the House of Representatives, and what the powers of the new, Australian, head of state should be.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>You can read other essays from Griffith Review’s latest edition <a href="https://griffithreview.com/editions/commonwealth-now/">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/89310/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Emeritus Professor Jenny Hocking receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p>
The continued embargo on documents relating to the dismissal of the Whitlam government point to the lingering imperial power that comes from an incomplete severance of colonial ties.
Jenny Hocking, Emeritus Professor, Monash University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/89308
2018-01-29T01:27:53Z
2018-01-29T01:27:53Z
The ties that (still) bind: the enduring tendrils of the British Empire
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/201099/original/file-20180108-195527-flqw2k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Commonwealth Games at the Gold Coast will set the scene for a year of challenges for this grouping of nations.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This piece is republished with permission from <a href="https://griffithreview.com/editions/commonwealth-now/">Commonwealth Now</a>, the 59th edition of Griffith Review. Articles are a little longer than most published on The Conversation, presenting an in-depth analysis on the relevance of the Commonwealth of Nations in today’s geopolitical landscape.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Twelve years after William the Conqueror sailed across what’s now known as the English Channel to invade England, kill the king and claim the crown in 1066, he constructed the Tower of London. </p>
<p>Defiant locals viewed the stone tower, built into the remnants of the city’s Roman wall, as a symbol of the oppression of the continental regime. For the new monarch it was an important defensive hold on the north bank of the Thames, a useful place for temporary retreat if needed.</p>
<p>Over the following millennia the tower, more than any other building, has represented the power of the throne: a palace, treasury, public-record office, mint, menagerie and, most famously, a prison – the place where opponents were imprisoned and, sometimes, executed. </p>
<p>Now it has more than a touch of Disneyland – a World Heritage site <a href="http://alva.org.uk/details.cfm?p=607">visited by</a> nearly 3 million people a year, and home to the crown jewels, the most glittering embodiment of a former empire.</p>
<p>Sentiment, glamour, heritage and power are a heady mix, and over the past decade the tower has gone from being a dour embodiment of imperial might to the place that one in ten of those who come to the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-most-visited-cities-around-the-world-in-2017-2017-9?IR=T/#3-paris-france-161-million-international-visitors-28">second-most-visited city in the world</a> pay to see. </p>
<p>It is one of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historic_Royal_Palaces">six historic Royal Palaces</a>, a royal charity with commercial and political clout. This was symbolised most compellingly in 2014 when the precinct <a href="https://www.hrp.org.uk/tower-of-london/history-and-stories/tower-of-london-remembers/">was covered</a> with nearly 1 million red ceramic poppies – one for each of the 888,246 British and Commonwealth soldiers killed in the first world war.</p>
<p>The unexpected and overwhelming success of Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red, and subsequent sale of each flower, presented the challenge of success for the tower’s management. What next could match this achievement? </p>
<p>In 2017, I was a member of a group of international cultural leaders invited to meet with the tower’s executive to brainstorm new ideas that could help continue this success. We were a diverse group of artists and administrators from many countries. </p>
<p>Those from the former colonies – South Africa, Uganda, India, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, New Zealand and Australia – had plenty of suggestions: </p>
<ul>
<li><p>include the history of the empire (those jewels…)</p></li>
<li><p>invite artists from the Commonwealth to create and present works that engage with history</p></li>
<li><p>provide new points of connection with the City of London, and with local communities in East London – many of whom trace their heritage to lands once ruled by Britannia.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>The initial reaction was swift and somewhat unexpected. “What has that got to do with the tower?” one executive asked, his face revealing his genuine astonishment. </p>
<p>To those of us from the former colonies, who had grown up in places named for long-forgotten monarchs and were quickly discovering how much we had in common, it was straightforward. The empire had been built in the name of, and to the benefit of, the Crown. In country after country, on five continents, when independence was granted or won, the royals presided and then departed.</p>
<p>By the end of the day, it seemed there was a polite hint that this unexpected idea might possibly be something that might be considered – maybe. None of us left the meeting thinking it was likely the tower would include a more robust representation of the legacy of empire anytime soon, let alone attempt to reconcile what had been done in the name of the Crown. </p>
<p>As those who opposed William the Conqueror had learnt, like their successors in far-flung lands who were later subjected to British rule: to the victor goes the spoils.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/201096/original/file-20180108-195531-1xhvtex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/201096/original/file-20180108-195531-1xhvtex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201096/original/file-20180108-195531-1xhvtex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201096/original/file-20180108-195531-1xhvtex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201096/original/file-20180108-195531-1xhvtex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201096/original/file-20180108-195531-1xhvtex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201096/original/file-20180108-195531-1xhvtex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In 2014, the Tower of London precinct was covered with nearly 1 million red ceramic poppies.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Toby Melville</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A changed power balance</h2>
<p>We are so accustomed to hearing about American exceptionalism that British exceptionalism is rarely discussed. But, as the epigenetic precursor of the American condition, it deserves consideration. It may help make sense of the Brexit vote, which mystifies those not steeped in centuries of British myth-making and its resurgent Europe-as-other drumbeat over the past two decades.</p>
<p>It did not take long after the <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/politics/eu_referendum/results">narrow vote</a> to leave the European Union was declared in June 2015 before a new phrase intruded into public discussion. </p>
<p>Seventy years after the war that marked the end of the British Empire, a quaint, ahistorical notion emerged. In the jargon of the day, it was time for the Commonwealth to become Empire 2.0: a sphere of influence with one-third of the world’s population, one-fifth of global trade, and the dominant global language.</p>
<p>It did not take long before British political leaders were invoking this revival, reciting Rudyard Kipling on journeys abroad, conjuring a nostalgic vision of a wealthy mother country enriched by trade with the former colonies. </p>
<p>No-one bothered to ask whether this vision was shared by the independent states that had once been part of an empire. When they did, the answer was unexpected. The power balance had changed – trade with Europe, China and the US were more important.</p>
<p>If there is a moment that marks the end of the British Empire it was when the Royal Yacht Britannia sailed out of Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour at midnight on June 30, 1997, on her last voyage. Charles, Prince of Wales, was there to oversee the <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-40426827">handover to China</a>, or what he called <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/a-breach-of-the-princes-trust-charles-and-the-great-chinese-takeaway-6108450.html">“the great Chinese takeaway”</a>, with accompanying displays of military might and unlikely promises of “one country with two systems”.</p>
<p>On the flight back to London, Charles wrote in his diary that Prime Minister Tony Blair:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… understands only too well the identity problem that Britain has with the loss of an empire and an inability to know what to do next. Introspection, cynicism and criticism seem to have become the order of the day and clearly he recognises the need to find ways of overcoming apathy and loss of self-belief by finding a fresh national direction.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Charles was surprised to realise that he was seated in business class, and the Labour politicians were on the lower deck of the British Airways jumbo in first class: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Such is the end of empire, I sighed to myself.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Two decades later, as the Empire 2.0 dream gained some traction in Britain, Chinese President Xi Jinping celebrated the anniversary of the handover <a href="http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/2100856/full-text-president-xi-jinpings-speech-one-country-two">by stressing</a> the overwhelming importance of China being “one country”. </p>
<p>At that moment it was unequivocally clear that power and influence had moved east. Beijing was now the emerging global epicentre.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/201097/original/file-20180108-195558-8yqt89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/201097/original/file-20180108-195558-8yqt89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201097/original/file-20180108-195558-8yqt89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201097/original/file-20180108-195558-8yqt89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201097/original/file-20180108-195558-8yqt89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201097/original/file-20180108-195558-8yqt89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201097/original/file-20180108-195558-8yqt89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">China under Xi Jinping is emerging as the global epicentre.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Damir Sagolj</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The decline of British exceptionalism</h2>
<p>The creation in the 1960s of what was called the “New Commonwealth” was an example of British exceptionalism. </p>
<p>The New Commonwealth was conceived as a progressive league of nations with some shared history, values, institutions and language, which came into its own as negotiated settlements and bloody wars of independence in the former colonies concluded in the years after the second world war. Never before had a fallen empire found such an ingenious way to hold on to influence.</p>
<p>The New Commonwealth marked the beginning of a grand experiment. It extended rights and recognised the connection of people from beyond the eight nations that founded the Commonwealth in 1949, to those from former colonies in the rest of the world. </p>
<p>During the years of Empire, the “mother country” had a special appeal, and people gravitated to the “green and pleasant land” in the north Atlantic to study and work. </p>
<p>As the Commonwealth grew, more people came from equatorial lands to work and live in British cities. As novelist Zadie Smith <a href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/12/22/on-optimism-and-despair/">reflected</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… to have been raised in London, with, say, Pakistani Muslims in the house next door, Indian Hindus downstairs, and Latvian Jews across the street, is thought of, by others, as evidence of a specific historical social experiment … </p>
<p>Of course, as a child I did not realise that the life I was living was considered in any way provisional or experimental by others: I thought it was just life. And when I wrote a novel about the London I grew up in, I further did not realise that by describing an environment in which people from different places lived relatively peaceably side by side, I was “championing” a situation that was in fact on trial and whose conditions could suddenly be revoked.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Britain changed as a result. But when it <a href="http://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/tradeindustry/importexport/overview/europe/">joined the Common Market</a> in 1973, the hard work of interrogating and reconciling the past was pushed aside, before a settled understanding of the legacy of empire could be fully realised.</p>
<p>Britain’s leap into Europe cast countries – including Australia and New Zealand – adrift, like teenagers thrown out of home before they were ready. They found new partners and geographic destinies, and the past was buffed with nostalgia.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/201098/original/file-20180108-195555-1y2qlsf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/201098/original/file-20180108-195555-1y2qlsf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201098/original/file-20180108-195555-1y2qlsf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201098/original/file-20180108-195555-1y2qlsf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201098/original/file-20180108-195555-1y2qlsf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201098/original/file-20180108-195555-1y2qlsf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201098/original/file-20180108-195555-1y2qlsf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The ‘New Commonwealth’ marked the beginning of a grand experiment.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Andrew Winning</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What now for the Commonwealth?</h2>
<p>The history of the Commonwealth during the period from 1973 to 2015, when Britain shifted focus to Europe – and its four freedoms of movement of people, goods, services and capital – is an interesting story of redefinition, shifting power relations and emerging values. </p>
<p>During those decades, the Commonwealth of Nations and its London-based secretariat pursued, with varying degrees of persuasiveness, an increasingly human-rights-focused agenda: educating, empowering, encouraging the rule of law and sustainability, excluding countries that stepped beyond acceptable norms. </p>
<p>As time went on, the Commonwealth seemed to make less sense. Surveys suggested it was a relic from another age – today, only <a href="http://www.monarchist.org.uk/the-commonwealth.html">16 of the 52 member countries</a> retain the Queen as head of state. The Commonwealth Games endured as an important international sporting fixture, but royal tours became less frequent and the once relatively free movement of people between the former colonies became more complicated.</p>
<p>Expert groups were appointed to test the continuing relevance of the institution in the face of public “indifference”. They recommended reforms to ensure the Commonwealth of Nations might continue to exercise geopolitical and cultural influence. </p>
<p>The tensions between the Global North, and its focus on human rights, and the Global South, which resented any hint of imperialism, took a toll on its legitimacy.</p>
<p>After the underwhelming Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Perth in 2011, The Economist took the advocates of what was to become Empire 2.0 <a href="https://www.economist.com/blogs/bagehot/2011/10/britain-and-eu-3">to task</a>.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Talk of the Commonwealth forming the dynamic, like-minded, free-trading core of a new British global network for prosperity is, to use the technical term, cobblers. The Commonwealth is many things: a talking shop, a useful place to exchange best practice on everything from education for girls to fighting malaria, an occasionally effective forum for putting pressure on regimes to clean up their governance or face the embarrassment of suspension. But it is also seriously dysfunctional.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Following negotiations, a new <a href="http://thecommonwealth.org/our-charter">Commonwealth Charter</a> was signed by the Queen, as head of the organisation, in March 2013. Designed to give new meaning to an institution crafted for another era, it restates democratic and independent values and notes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… that in an era of changing economic circumstances and uncertainty, new trade and economic patterns, unprecedented threats to peace and security, and a surge in popular demands for democracy, human rights and broadened economic opportunities, the potential of and need for the Commonwealth – as a compelling force for good and as an effective network for co-operation and for promoting development – has never been greater.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The resilience of the new charter and the commitment of member countries to “mutual respect, inclusiveness, transparency, accountability, legitimacy and responsiveness” will be tested in 2018. The Commonwealth Games at the Gold Coast will set the scene, with an inclusive, competitive, people-to-people exchange, followed by the People’s Forum of civil society groups, and then CHOGM in London in April 2018.</p>
<p>These meetings will consider the many challenges of creating a robust multilateral organisation that represents most of the world’s poorest, most populous and youthful countries, against the uncertain backdrop of succession planning for the new head of the Commonwealth. </p>
<p>Despite the added complication of Brexit negotiations and the nostalgic attachment to past glory, the prospect of Commonwealth becoming Empire 2.0 remains, as The Economist suggested, “cobblers”.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>You can read other essays from Griffith Review’s latest edition <a href="https://griffithreview.com/editions/commonwealth-now/">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/89308/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julianne Schultz receives funding from Australia Council, Arts Queensland and Copyright Agency.</span></em></p>
We are so accustomed to hearing about American exceptionalism that British exceptionalism is rarely discussed.
Julianne Schultz, Founding Editor of Griffith REVIEW; Professor, Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research, Griffith University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/84692
2017-10-05T01:31:01Z
2017-10-05T01:31:01Z
Alternative facts do exist: beliefs, lies and politics
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187709/original/file-20170927-16428-8ldsd7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The status of facts and their use in politics hasn’t changed as a result of Donald Trump’s election.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Joshua Roberts</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This piece is republished with permission from <a href="https://griffithreview.com/editions/perils-of-populism/">Perils of Populism</a>, the 57th edition of Griffith Review. Articles are a little longer than most published on The Conversation, presenting an in-depth analysis of the rise of populism across the world.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>It is January 20, 2017, mere hours after Donald Trump has been sworn in as US president. The new White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, has been given a tough assignment for his first-ever press conference in the job: he has to stand before seasoned journalists from the domestic and international press, and lie.</p>
<p>The lie he has to tell isn’t like the usual lies that are told in politics, which use subtle hues of meaning to obfuscate the untruth; there is no built-in buffer that allows for any backpedalling should it be exposed. No, the lie Spicer has to tell is one that is immediately verifiable using various kinds of evidence (pictures, videos, statistics on public transport usage statistics). </p>
<p>Spicer has to tell the press, the TV audience, the world, that Trump’s was the largest presidential inauguration in history.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XXoyk4PDZ4I?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Sean Spicer’s first press conference as press secretary.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The press conference goes terribly. Spicer aggressively throws every skerrick of evidence that Trump’s team has come up with in the hours since the inauguration. More than half of the press conference is devoted to discussing the numbers at the inauguration, and how this claim is justified. </p>
<p>And once his angry, meandering task is complete, he quits the room without taking questions. The claim is so egregious that Trump advisor and former campaign manager Kellyanne Conway defends her colleague by suggesting that Spicer, far from claiming things that are factually incorrect, was actually providing “alternative facts”.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/VSrEEDQgFc8?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Kellyanne Conway coined the term ‘alternative facts’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Smelling blood, the media attack the phrase “alternative facts” with remarkable vigour. The self-righteous chorus continues for weeks, and swings from disbelief to mockery, from earnest frown to sardonic grin, all while lamenting the state of political discourse in this post-fact age.</p>
<p>But here’s what they missed. In politics, facts are contestable. This has always been the case: the status of facts and their use in politics hasn’t changed as a result of Trump’s election.</p>
<p>In politics, alternative facts exist. And they always have.</p>
<h2>Scientific versus political propositions</h2>
<p>Facts do exist. I am not enough of a postmodernist, nor enough of a nihilist, to claim the opposite. </p>
<p>There are certainly things that are true – that the world is not flat, for instance – whose truth is supported by various kinds of evidence. These might be called “scientific propositions”, because their truth is verified through certain, standardised methods of collecting and interpreting data, and through the reproduction of experimental tests.</p>
<p>“Political propositions”, which are directly relevant to the governance of people, are designed to appeal to emotions and beliefs, and so cannot be held to the same scrutiny as scientific propositions. </p>
<p>Beliefs operate in a similar way to facts, insofar as a belief generally requires some evidence at an individual level. And a belief, like a fact, must still be justified by this evidence. However, where feelings and intuition count as evidence for a belief, these are purposefully scoured from scientific discourse.</p>
<p>Contrary to the way hypotheses are tested and reproduced, beliefs are formed with very little recourse.</p>
<p>While the vehemently “rational” may decry beliefs for this reason, they undeniably exist and affect the way people make decisions. Belief can override evidence obtained by other means precisely because it is more personal and, in a sense, more humanistic than the impartial scientific method.</p>
<p>Indeed, the simple statement of facts doesn’t seem to be a particularly good tool for persuading someone, as anyone who has had an argument with a climate-change sceptic will have found. Perhaps this follows from scientific evidence being divorced from daily experience; most people don’t have experience of evolution by natural selection, for instance, as it generally occurs on a timescale that is inaccessible to humans.</p>
<p>And so, if someone doesn’t subscribe to scientific consensus, wouldn’t it be strange for them to base a belief on it? </p>
<p>But belief is even more complicated than this. For instance, the existence of germs is outside the direct experience of most people, yet germ theory predicts the spread of disease in a way that makes sense given people’s observations. Without having seen a germ, most people believe that they exist, and attribute diseases to their presence – instead of, say, an imbalance in the “humours” (bodily fluids that, until the 19th century, were thought to regulate disease). </p>
<p>It is interesting to note that this earlier belief in humours was widely held by lay people and physicians alike, precisely because it explained illness in a way that was intuitive and metaphorically cogent, and it could produce physical evidence in the form of bile, blood and phlegm.</p>
<p>Despite the similarities they may share, scientific propositions are fundamentally different from political propositions. Beliefs are formed on the basis of some information, but it’s limited compared with the information that is used to inform something taken as fact. </p>
<p>To be clear, I am not dismissing belief by claiming it is based on limited information. Rather, I’m pointing out that this a property of any belief held by any individual – and the belief may relate to anything. </p>
<p>I, for instance, believe all sorts of things that make me suspicious of neoliberal economics, but I suspect that’s because my entire adult life has been marked by recession, negative wage growth, and increasing economic precarity and inequality. </p>
<p>My beliefs are informed by not having lived through the period of mining-driven growth that my parents lived through; they are evidenced by a limited perspective. And while I might acknowledge this, I still firmly hold them to be true.</p>
<h2>Alternatives exist</h2>
<p>The major problem with using the term “fact” is that it’s saturated. </p>
<p>What is meant by fact in everyday speech is a statement that is demonstrably true, that has some evidence to support it. </p>
<p>The evidence that is required differs between politics and science, and what may be considered a fact differs in the same way. While the two sorts of facts are utterly different, they are both referred to as facts by those stating them.</p>
<p>This situation might be tenable if either politics or science occurred in some rarefied isolation that meant the term “fact” was unambiguous; that is, if it could only refer to a scientific fact, and couldn’t be used sensibly in political speech, or vice versa. But this isn’t the case: the scientific and political spheres interact, and the two meanings of “fact” follow suit.</p>
<p>Since alternatives exist for any given political belief, and since these are often called “fact”, alternative facts do exist in the politics. We are confronted with them every day.</p>
<p>Spicer claims it as fact that Trump’s inauguration was the most attended in history. Is this the case scientifically? According to the evidence, probably not. And yet for all the ridicule this statement received, there are people who believe Spicer’s proposition to be true. </p>
<p>Perhaps it is believed because the people who were at the rally had never been in a larger crowd, or maybe because those watching at home had never watched, or didn’t remember another inauguration. The point is that the belief that the crowd at Trump’s inauguration was the biggest in history may be a rational one, informed by a certain amount of evidence. </p>
<p>If someone holds this belief based on information they gathered with their own senses, then of course it seems factually correct. </p>
<p>And so Spicer does, in fact, offer alternative facts.</p>
<h2>Not just a historical anomaly</h2>
<p>We do not live in a post-fact world. Scientific and political statements both behave in precisely the same way they did before Trump announced his presidential campaign. </p>
<p>Indeed, facts have rarely mattered in politics as much as appeals to belief have. The 2003 invasion of Iraq was justified politically by promoting a belief that Iraq was in possession of weapons of mass destruction, despite an absence of sufficient evidence to support this claim. </p>
<p>People are detained on Manus Island and Nauru based on the belief that doing so will stop people smugglers, and prevent deaths at sea. This continues, supported by both major parties, despite statistical evidence suggesting that this is <a href="https://theconversation.com/resettling-refugees-in-australia-would-not-resume-the-people-smuggling-trade-60253">not the case</a>. Belief is a powerful thing.</p>
<p>In politics, facts have never been what they are in science.</p>
<p>What has shifted, however, is that the claims of the political class are no longer automatically taken to be true. The data bear this out. The Australian Election Study <a href="http://www.australianelectionstudy.org/index.html;%20http://www.australianelectionstudy.org/trends.html">found that in 2016</a>, a mere 26% of respondents agreed that they trusted politicians, the lowest score for this question since the survey began in 1969. The highest level of trust was 48% in 1996, the year John Howard was elected. </p>
<p>A similar sentiment is found in 2016, when 58% of respondents believed that the government was run for a “few big interests” instead of “all the people”, up from 38 per cent in 2007. Satisfaction in democracy is similarly low at 60%, from a high of 86% in 2007.</p>
<p>Where mainstream politicians generally attempted to paint themselves either as paternalistic protectors or honest servants of the people, populist politicians present themselves as agitators, whose primary mission is to expose the lies of mainstream politicians – apparently without regard for how this is achieved. </p>
<p>For example, Pauline Hanson claims that Australia is now being <a href="https://theconversation.com/suburbs-swamped-by-asians-and-muslims-the-data-show-a-different-story-79250">swamped by Muslims</a>. Her statements suggest this claim is the truth, and that it is being concealed from regular Australians by the politically correct, globalist politicians of the major parties.</p>
<p>Hanson <a href="https://theconversation.com/if-the-normal-rules-of-political-engagement-dont-apply-how-do-we-handle-pauline-hanson-65473">flouts the norms</a> of political discourse, and uses this to present herself as one of the people – someone who is supposedly apart from the political class. Ironically, since she appeals to the voting public, Hanson’s facts are presented with precisely the same disregard for truth as her mainstream counterparts.</p>
<p>All politicians are aware of the distinctions being made here. Their awareness is evident in the way that they use appeals to belief, and especially in the way that they use lies. </p>
<p>A lie in a political discourse is nothing to flap about on its own, although this is precisely what happens in the media each time a false statement is made by a politician, or on their behalf.</p>
<p>Lies are not the domain only of populist politicians. Far from it. But populists are easier targets because they aren’t so fickle with the plausibility of their assertions. They are more willing to commit to things that are demonstrably false, even things that might seem trivial to disprove. </p>
<p>Spicer claims the inauguration crowd was historic (it wasn’t), and Hanson claims that Australia is being swamped by whatever ethnic or religious group is the boogieman of the day (it isn’t). Each of these is easily refuted by drawing on statistical evidence, or is at least more easily refuted than the subtler untruths of other politicians – such as <a href="https://theconversation.com/turnbull-uses-south-australian-blackout-to-push-for-uniformity-on-renewables-66275">Malcolm Turnbull’s claim</a> that renewables caused the 2016 blackouts in South Australia. </p>
<p>Yet it’s the populists who are called out, and are portrayed as being fundamentally and irreconcilably different from politicians of mainstream parties. But the lies told by populists are not different in kind to those told by their colleagues; they are different only in degree.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187712/original/file-20170927-16434-anwdef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187712/original/file-20170927-16434-anwdef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187712/original/file-20170927-16434-anwdef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187712/original/file-20170927-16434-anwdef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187712/original/file-20170927-16434-anwdef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187712/original/file-20170927-16434-anwdef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187712/original/file-20170927-16434-anwdef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pauline Hanson flouts the norms of political discourse.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Mick Tsikas</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Populists are cast differently</h2>
<p>An error that is often committed by political pundits, particularly those associated with the mainstream media, is to treat populists as irrational. </p>
<p>It’s assumed that the reasonable person selects their actions according to the potential benefits, while factoring in the cost that is incurred by performing them. The reasonable person is rational precisely because they don’t do anything where the cost will outweigh the benefits. </p>
<p>In general, politicians are assumed to be reasonable people, at least in this abstract sense. </p>
<p>The alternative – that politicians are utterly irrational and do not consider the consequences of their actions – may be professed by the more cynical among us, but I doubt it’s truly believed: the thought of the men and women governing our country being irrational is perhaps too frightening for most people.</p>
<p>Populists are called politicians of a different sort to the mainstream politicians who are reasonable people. Mainstream politicians certainly tell lies, but they do so strategically – in ways that are difficult to expose – so that the expected cost of uttering them does not outweigh the expected gain.</p>
<p>On the other hand, populists are cast as irrational because they tell lies that are very likely to be uncovered. Knowing full well that an adversarial press will attempt to verify their statements, and will give them flak if they can’t, populists continue to present alternative facts. </p>
<p>For any reasonable person, it would appear that the cost of lying in such a blatant fashion far outweighs any perceivable benefit. These populists must be stupid, or ignorant, or insane.</p>
<p>This is mistaken because it assumes, most optimistically, that the populist is deficient and can’t calculate the loss they incur from making this utterance; or, most pessimistically, that the populist isn’t even aware of the potential for loss to begin with. </p>
<p>In fact, populists are just another breed of politician, and as such weigh their utterances very carefully. </p>
<p>The statements Spicer made about the inauguration crowd are demonstrably false, but they weren’t meant to gain traction with the mainstream of voters. They were carefully calculated to gain enough support from a certain class of elector.</p>
<p>Indeed, it would appear that such claims are designed to draw flak from mainstream political discourse, because this can in fact be an asset. </p>
<p>The careful, strategic, and highly rational deployment of lies in the political context is so effective and damaging because politics has been pronounced as a discourse of truth; a lie is rendered a highly newsworthy event, one that allows voices that would otherwise be ignored to be broadcast nationally.</p>
<h2>Why are lies told?</h2>
<p>Despite earnest proclamations to the contrary, simply crying “lie” every time a lie is told achieves nothing. </p>
<p>What would be more interesting, and arguably more valuable to public discussion, is a clear investigation of why certain lies are told in certain circumstances. That is, the lies are less interesting for their content than for the reasons they are told. This view would allow us to focus on the strategic function of presenting an alternative fact.</p>
<p>It is instructive that, in each of the cases above, the speaker is sensitive to demonstrating their claim as fact.</p>
<p>Spicer pointed to the fact that the grass in the National Mall was covered by white temporary flooring, so that the contrast between the dark silhouettes of people and the ground was greater than in previous photos of inauguration crowds (therefore it only seemed as if there was more empty space in the crowd).</p>
<p>When questioned on the nation being “swamped by Asian migration”, Hanson points to the Sydney suburb of Hurstville as an example of noticeable Asian migration, where there was a 10% increase in the population of people who identified as Chinese between the 2006 and 2016 censuses. She suggests that we just have to look at Hurstville to see how prevalent Chinese migration is, because Chinese migration is prevalent there. </p>
<p>But the broader numbers do not reflect Hurstville’s migration patterns: in the same period, there was a <a href="http://profile.id.com.au/georges-river/ancestry?BMID=50&EndYear=2006&DataType=EN&WebID=310&StartYear=2011">4.5% increase</a> of people who identify as Chinese in New South Wales, and a 3.4% increase nationally.</p>
<p>While these examples are lies, they still present themselves as facts, grounded in evidence, in an attempt to conform to the (somewhat lax) standard of factuality in politics – not unlike mainstream political statements.</p>
<p>Spicer and Hanson wish for their assertions to be understood as facts, and to be a part of the mainstream political discourse. We shouldn’t ask: “Why did they not tell the truth?”. Rather, we should ask: “why that lie?”; “why at that time?”; and the same question that’s asked of every mainstream politician: “what’s in it for them?”.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>You can read other essays from Griffith Review’s latest edition <a href="https://griffithreview.com/editions/perils-of-populism/">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84692/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lochlan Morrissey 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>
In politics, alternative facts exist. And they always have.
Lochlan Morrissey, Research Associate, Griffith University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/81900
2017-08-16T20:13:12Z
2017-08-16T20:13:12Z
Grooming the globe: denying fairness, complexity and humanity
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180833/original/file-20170803-14599-1eh8nso.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Donald Trump may not have been the 1%’s preferred candidate, but he embodied its message.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Joshua Roberts</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This piece is republished with permission from <a href="https://griffithreview.com/editions/perils-of-populism/">Perils of Populism</a>, the 57th edition of Griffith Review. Articles are a little longer than most published on The Conversation, presenting an in-depth analysis of the rise of populism across the world.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>“I know it makes you sick to think of that word fairness,” Arthur C. Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute, told the Conservative Political Action Conference in March 2013. But he went on to tell the heads of Washington’s most influential right-wing think-tanks, who were still shocked by Barack Obama’s continuing appeal, that Americans “universally believe it’s right to help the vulnerable”.</p>
<p>He continued:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If you want to win, start fighting for people! Lead with vulnerable people. Lead with fairness … telling stories matters. By telling stories we can soften people.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>New Yorker investigative journalist Jane Mayer paraphrased Brooks’ message in her magisterial book <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27833494-dark-money">Dark Money</a>. If the 1% wanted to win control of America, they needed to rebrand themselves as champions of the other 99%. </p>
<p>Donald Trump may not have been the 1%’s preferred candidate – his ego, ignorance and lack of discipline were well known – but he embodied the message. <a href="https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/arendt-matters-revisiting-origins-totalitarianism/">In the words</a> of the Hannah Arendt scholar Roger Berkowitz, Trump:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… appeals to the need for constant distraction, destruction and entertainment.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is tempting to think that this appeal, and its authoritarian consequences, is innate – a default setting of human societies across history and geography. But the swift counter-reaction to Trump at home, and subsequent elections in Europe, challenge this presumption. </p>
<p>Nonetheless, there is a <a href="https://theconversation.com/discontents-identity-politics-and-institutions-in-a-time-of-populism-80882">long list</a> of authoritarian leaders across the globe ready to deride the rule of law, circumvent checks and balances, undermine institutions, cultivate ignorance and encourage fear.</p>
<p>As Mayer painstakingly demonstrates, making self-interest seem normal and a commitment to fairness an elite aberration has been a long-term project. </p>
<p>Upending this commitment – expressed most simply in President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s <a href="https://fdrlibrary.org/four-freedoms">four freedoms</a> (of speech and religion, from want and fear) that were ultimately embodied in national and global institutions created at the end of the second world war – is not something that has happened by chance. It has been the result of a deliberate, well-funded, long-term strategy that has touched us all, whether we are aware of it or not. </p>
<p>As Mayer writes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>During the 1970s, a handful of the nation’s wealthiest corporate captains felt overtaxed and over-regulated and decided to fight back. Disenchanted with the direction of modern America, they launched an ambitious, privately financed war of ideas to radically change the country. They didn’t want to merely win elections; they wanted to change how Americans thought.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>These well-lubricated ideas quickly spread through the world due to American global dominance. </p>
<p>It didn’t take long before institutions were accused of failing, experts gained the prefix “so-called”, and “elites” ceased to be the mega rich or those born with silver spoons, but were redefined as educated people who questioned the self-interest orthodoxy. </p>
<p>The globe was being groomed for a profoundly different settlement than the one that grew out of the conflagration of war, one that ignored complexity, challenged the rule of law, bred oligarchs, and undermined fairness.</p>
<hr>
<p><em><strong>Further reading: <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-restorationist-impulse-why-we-hanker-for-the-old-ways-80880">The restorationist impulse: why we hanker for the old ways</a></strong></em></p>
<hr>
<h2>Understanding populism’s rise</h2>
<p>Millions of words have been written in an attempt to make sense of the recent global political disruptions that are conveniently grouped under the banner of “populism”. </p>
<p>Although newspaper sales are at their lowest since 1945, the hunger for news, information and analysis, and the expectation that it can be found, remains. Explanations are sought in personal experience, in nostalgia, or by slicing and dicing the data from opinion polls and voting patterns. </p>
<p>Professor Pippa Norris of Harvard University <a href="https://www.electoralintegrityproject.com/populistauthoritarianism/">calculates that</a> the populist vote (both left and right) in Europe has doubled since the 1960s to reach double digits. </p>
<p>Pauline Hanson’s One Nation has demonstrated with remarkable effectiveness a broader global trend: the ability of a relatively small voting bloc to catalyse a response from political parties that do not share their same extreme values.</p>
<p>Old class-based accounts are no longer sufficient to explain political behaviour, as was sharply demonstrated in the recent UK and French elections. The emerging consensus among political scientists is that cultural factors provide a better predictor of electoral behaviour – particularly education, age, gender, religiosity and attitudes to diversity. </p>
<p>These values can find expression on the left and the right. But they tend to appeal mostly to an older cohort who feel they have lost power and influence, whose worlds have been <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-restorationist-impulse-why-we-hanker-for-the-old-ways-80880">upended by economic and social change</a>. But, to put it crudely, their days are numbered.</p>
<p>The “war of ideas” has encouraged mistrust of experts and cynicism about institutions, undermined faith in a shared humanity irrespective of ethnicity or religion, and discouraged questioning of the neoliberal economic orthodoxy. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, the quiet post-materialist revolution that started in the 1970s has produced generations of people who are more open-minded, tolerant, trusting and accepting of diversity. The numbers suggest they are on the ascendancy.</p>
<hr>
<p><em><strong>Further reading: <a href="https://theconversation.com/discontents-identity-politics-and-institutions-in-a-time-of-populism-80882">Discontents: identity, politics and institutions in a time of populism</a></strong></em></p>
<hr>
<h2>Education and populism</h2>
<p>It is not really surprising that education – rather than income, gender or class – is the strongest marker of populist appeal.</p>
<p>This is not simply because you learn stuff at school, college or university, but because education provides the tools for dealing with complexity, for weighing and evaluating arguments, for seeking and testing information, learning from history and those who went before. </p>
<p>It also embodies a social contract, valuing expertise, teasing out right and wrong, tolerating difference and learning respect.</p>
<p>The populist public sphere is a degraded, distracted place where might is right and simplicity and “common sense” the answer to complex, multifaceted questions; where little is learnt from history, and respect is in short supply. </p>
<p>Yale professor and Holocaust scholar Timothy Snyder in <a href="http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/558051/on-tyranny-by-timothy-snyder/9780804190114/">On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the 20th Century</a> provides a wise compendium of caution and a few handy rules: </p>
<ul>
<li><p>defend institutions; </p></li>
<li><p>remember professional ethics; </p></li>
<li><p>believe in truth; and</p></li>
<li><p>do not pre-emptively obey but be calm, patriotic and courageous.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>In the “war of ideas” over the past few decades, incalculable amounts of money have been spent to undermine these hard-won values and undermine both institutions and checks and balances that, while not perfect, have produced unprecedented opportunities. </p>
<p>As those who turn up in large numbers to reclaim public spaces after terrorist attacks show, and those who demonstrate to demand equality illustrate, the appeal of authoritarianism is not necessarily innate, but is always ready to be challenged.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>You can read other essays from Griffith Review’s latest edition <a href="https://griffithreview.com/editions/perils-of-populism/">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81900/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julianne Schultz receives funding from the Australia Council for Griffith Review. She works for Griffith Review, published by Griffith Uni in partnership withText Publishing. She is a member of the editorial board of The Conversation.</span></em></p>
Making self-interest seem normal and a commitment to fairness an elite aberration has been a long-term project.
Julianne Schultz, Founding Editor of Griffith REVIEW; Professor, Griffith Centre for Creative Arts Research, Griffith University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/81682
2017-08-03T20:16:55Z
2017-08-03T20:16:55Z
Friday essay: the photographer, the island and half a million lifejackets
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180326/original/file-20170731-16184-1uyx8l5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An aerial shot of discarded life jackets on the Greek island of Lesvos.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tasos Markou</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Tasos Markou and his fiancé, Maria, were on their sofa avoiding Greece’s summer heat when a video of a man carting a toddler in a green wheelie bin turned up in their social media feeds. The place looked familiar: a Mediterranean coastal village, a street sign in Greek.</p>
<p>“Lesvos!” said Maria.</p>
<p>The clip showed the man climbing a steep road in the midday sun. The child was alive. More people were walking the roads, or slumped against buildings, or laying spread out on verges and shading themselves with jackets or thin cotton sheets.</p>
<p>Refugees had been making the sea crossing from Turkey since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, but this was something bigger. In the summer of 2015, tourists on Greek islands began sharing videos of people landing on beaches or wandering into town from the mountain roads. An internet news channel compiled the mobile-phone footage.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180814/original/file-20170803-14599-1u5fxwi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180814/original/file-20170803-14599-1u5fxwi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180814/original/file-20170803-14599-1u5fxwi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180814/original/file-20170803-14599-1u5fxwi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180814/original/file-20170803-14599-1u5fxwi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180814/original/file-20170803-14599-1u5fxwi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180814/original/file-20170803-14599-1u5fxwi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180814/original/file-20170803-14599-1u5fxwi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tasos Markou.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lois Simac.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Tasos put his laptop down and turned to Maria. “I need to go there,” he said.</p>
<p>In 2015, more than 800,000 refugees crossed the Aegean Sea to Greece, up from 40,000 the previous year. News media showed images of discarded fluoro-orange lifejackets and PVC boats bulldozed into massive piles on the island of Lesvos. Greek freelancer Tasos Markou was one of the first photographers to share those dramatic images with the world. His photos were published in major British papers and across Europe.</p>
<h2>A signal for help</h2>
<p>You can buy a factory-direct child’s lifejacket online for US $4.14 apiece. Shipping is free to most destinations. Some Turkish apparel shops have switched to selling lifejackets exclusively. Even kebab vendors saw an opportunity, and started hanging them above their counters. The orange colour is a signal for help; it communicates the courage and desperation of people on the move, hopes dashed at the borders while the rest of us watch on feeling powerless.</p>
<p>Lifejackets also allow us to think through global political and material circumstances. The strategic desire for control of fossil fuels in the Middle East gave rise to colonial interference, to new borders and conflicts; the burning of those fuels has increased the volatility of the climate, which influenced the severity of the drought preceding the uprising against Assad in Syria. The industrial use of petrochemicals and the globalised workforce made plastic lifejackets cheap enough to be used in sea crossings by hundreds of thousands of people fleeing war in Syria and Iraq.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180818/original/file-20170803-23530-1jhpnsr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180818/original/file-20170803-23530-1jhpnsr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180818/original/file-20170803-23530-1jhpnsr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180818/original/file-20170803-23530-1jhpnsr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180818/original/file-20170803-23530-1jhpnsr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180818/original/file-20170803-23530-1jhpnsr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180818/original/file-20170803-23530-1jhpnsr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180818/original/file-20170803-23530-1jhpnsr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Refugee cemetery, Lesvos.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tasos Markou</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Populist fear and anger are fuelled by more than economic and cultural insecurities. For more than a decade, experts have issued warnings about resource scarcity and the disruptive consequences of climate change. I want to try to consider our anxieties and fears, displacement and migration, with the social and the environmental combined.</p>
<p>A concept in the natural sciences offers a way to bring these strands together: the Anthropocene. Some scientists argue that humankind’s activities – deforestation, soil erosion, chemical pollution, species extinctions and greenhouse gas emissions – have altered Earth’s systems so much that we have entered a new geological epoch. The concept pushes our imaginations to think in vast timescales and expands debate beyond climate change to include the many other environmental pressures we face.</p>
<p>However, the Anthropocene narrative makes political claims that flatten historical difference, casting all people as responsible for problems the privileged created. If we can return contingency to the Anthropocene it will be a richer concept for thinking about our current circumstances.</p>
<h2>On Lesvos</h2>
<p>I first emailed Tasos last year when I sought permission to reproduce one of his photos. We began corresponding, and when I learnt he was continuing to document the plight of refugees in Greece I asked to interview him. We spoke regularly on Skype over several months.</p>
<p>In June 2015, Tasos flew from Thessaloniki to Lesvos with 500 euros in his pocket. He and Maria had been saving the money for a holiday. It was more than Maria earned in a month as a home-care nurse, but she urged him take his camera and go. Tasos headed north to the closest point to Turkey.</p>
<p>It took Tasos two hours to drive the island’s winding and mountainous roads to Skala Sikamineas, a fishing settlement at the coast. By then night had fallen.</p>
<p>The wind blew hard and Tasos thought he could hear voices on the sea. It was only the waves. He was about to head for a guesthouse when he looked down and saw traces of arrivals on the beach and rocks. Shoes, passports, backpacks, T-shirts, plastic water bottles and lifejackets. Hundreds of lifejackets.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180328/original/file-20170731-23754-1jtr7ig.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180328/original/file-20170731-23754-1jtr7ig.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180328/original/file-20170731-23754-1jtr7ig.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180328/original/file-20170731-23754-1jtr7ig.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180328/original/file-20170731-23754-1jtr7ig.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180328/original/file-20170731-23754-1jtr7ig.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180328/original/file-20170731-23754-1jtr7ig.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180328/original/file-20170731-23754-1jtr7ig.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Traces of arrivals on the beach and rocks.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tasos Markou</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“I realised this was not just rubbish,” said Tasos. “Each jacket meant a human life, a story of a crossing.”</p>
<p>The next morning, Tasos drove the rough roads along the northern coast and into the mountains. He saw people emerge from parks, fields and roadsides. Refugees and migrants had to walk 60 kilometres south to the port of Mytilene, where they could be assessed and issued with papers before boarding a ferry to mainland Greece and, from there, into northern Europe. </p>
<p>Some journalists and Lesvos locals were offering rides to the walkers. Tasos asked if he could help. Drivers were supposed to call the police and register their name, car make, licence plate, car-hire company, pick-up point and destination – a procedure designed to prevent smugglers exploiting refugees.</p>
<p>“My car was filled with people, against the roof, out the windows,” said Tasos.</p>
<p>By the time he made it to Mytilene it was 36 degrees. There were queues of men in their underwear at the public shower. Families sat under trees or statues or beside walls. Some tourists wound down their car windows, took a snap and drove on. Others handed food and water to exhausted people. Tasos followed the example. He spent the next three days buying water, interviewing and taking photos across Lesvos. Most of the refugees were from Syria; many were from Iraq and Afghanistan.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180807/original/file-20170802-14599-5majq1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180807/original/file-20170802-14599-5majq1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180807/original/file-20170802-14599-5majq1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180807/original/file-20170802-14599-5majq1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180807/original/file-20170802-14599-5majq1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180807/original/file-20170802-14599-5majq1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180807/original/file-20170802-14599-5majq1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180807/original/file-20170802-14599-5majq1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Men queuing for a shower in Mytilene.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tasos Markou</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>After three days Tasos’s money was gone. This was something you couldn’t understand in a single news article, thought Tasos. He was determined to follow the story.</p>
<h2>Stripping social causes</h2>
<p>The 15-year drought in the Levant that preceded the Syrian civil war was likely the worst in 900 years, <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/nasa-finds-drought-in-eastern-mediterranean-worst-of-past-900-years/">according to NASA</a>. Still, since the beginning of the conflict, some scientists and media have overstated the link. This has led to misguided conclusions about people, climate and migration.</p>
<p>In March 2017, ABC’s Four Corners aired an American documentary titled <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TKKcI-1Db8">The Age of Consequences</a>. It posed climate change and migration as risks to United States national security. The film warned of more terrorism and hordes of climate change refugees overwhelming countries and causing the collapse of states. </p>
<p>Refugees and migrants have often been represented as dangerous for wealthy nations and as “agents of chaos in the Middle East”, <a href="https://climatemigration.atavist.com/syria-and-climate-change">wrote Alex Randall of the UK Climate Change and Migration Coalition</a>. The standard narrative for Syria is that the drought forced farmers off the land, food prices rose and competition for resources among rival groups led to violence. Some campaigners on climate change have used populist fears over refugees as a tactic to try to build support for action on emissions.</p>
<p>Randall pointed out that drought and social grievances in Syria didn’t cause people to turn on each other – it united them. Different groups began mingling in urban centres in a way that Assad’s regime had tried to prevent. This led to protests and co-operation, which Assad’s authoritarian government responded to with violence.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180465/original/file-20170801-22140-6kw9m1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180465/original/file-20170801-22140-6kw9m1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180465/original/file-20170801-22140-6kw9m1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180465/original/file-20170801-22140-6kw9m1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180465/original/file-20170801-22140-6kw9m1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180465/original/file-20170801-22140-6kw9m1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180465/original/file-20170801-22140-6kw9m1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180465/original/file-20170801-22140-6kw9m1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Some of Tasos’s portraits of refugees and volunteers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tasos Markou</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To avoid “reducing our future to climate”, <a href="http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/661274">in the words of Mike Hulme</a>, professor of climate and culture at King’s College London, the concept of the Anthropocene could serve as a shorthand way for introducing broader ecological changes and historical timescales. </p>
<p>But the problem with the Anthropocene narrative is that it strips the social causes from ecological disruption. Not everyone is responsible for the Anthropocene and not everyone will experience it equally. </p>
<p><a href="http://rdcu.be/uFXR%20or%20http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v415/n6867/full/415023a.html">Paul Crutzen</a>, the Nobel Prize-winning atmospheric chemist who popularised the term, suggested the invention of the steam engine during the Industrial Revolution should be considered the start of the new epoch: the switch to fossil fuels “shattered” an energy bottleneck. </p>
<p>Humanities scholars approach this from a different angle: human ecologists <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/2053019613516291">Andreas Malm and Alf Hornborg</a> ask what the motivations were for investment in steam. Only the very wealthy could afford steam engines, and they “pointed steam power as a weapon” at colonies in Africa and the New World, extracting material resources and labour in plantations, mines and factories, completely reorganising ecological and social relationships. </p>
<p>The Anthropocene was founded on global inequity. Some have suggested “Capitalocene” as a more accurate moniker.</p>
<h2>Moments of hospitality</h2>
<p>On 20 August 2015, Tasos drove to Idomeni, a Greek town near the border with the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and a gateway to the “Balkans route”. It’s from here that refugees and migrants followed train tracks into Macedonia, northwards across the Balkan countries, and finally into Germany. </p>
<p>Tasos saw hundreds of people gathered on the rail lines. The Macedonian government had called a state of emergency and rolled barbed wire across the border. It wanted to slow the flow of people. Military and anti-terror troops stood at the border next to armoured vehicles. Tasos said they aimed guns and yelled, “Go back to Greece”.</p>
<p>People jumped with every new explosion and burst of gunfire. It began pouring rain and some sheltered under cardboard. Tasos was afraid. He hadn’t seen the crowds angry and confused before. He was covered in mud and his lens was destroyed. Stun grenades cracked in the distance.</p>
<p>A young man from Kashmir took Tasos’s arm and offered him shelter under a concrete railway culvert. The men gave him biscuits, water and cigarettes.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180808/original/file-20170802-16521-1q6j8z6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180808/original/file-20170802-16521-1q6j8z6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180808/original/file-20170802-16521-1q6j8z6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180808/original/file-20170802-16521-1q6j8z6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180808/original/file-20170802-16521-1q6j8z6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180808/original/file-20170802-16521-1q6j8z6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180808/original/file-20170802-16521-1q6j8z6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180808/original/file-20170802-16521-1q6j8z6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Men sheltering under a concrete railway culvert.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tasos Markou</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The photos that agencies and newspapers wanted were of human drama in extreme moments: people falling from boats, pulling children from the sea, landing on the beach with tears of fear and joy. Tasos began to wonder if these images helped. He wondered how he could convey moments such as the hospitality under the culvert.</p>
<p>In October Tasos returned to Lesvos. The small island was now receiving 200,000 people per month. The cemetery in Mytilene was running out of space. Camps were over capacity.</p>
<p>“People slept in boxes, old fridges, whatever they could find,” said Tasos.</p>
<p>Remarkably, international and Greek volunteers, authorities, locals and refugees collaborated to hold it all together. Fishermen in the northern village of Skala Sikamineas spent every night in their boats, guiding refugees to the shore, diving into the water and rescuing people. Women handed out sandwiches and fruit. They washed clothes and looked after children. They hugged and kissed those who made the crossing.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180816/original/file-20170803-23916-14ri4a2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180816/original/file-20170803-23916-14ri4a2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180816/original/file-20170803-23916-14ri4a2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180816/original/file-20170803-23916-14ri4a2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180816/original/file-20170803-23916-14ri4a2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180816/original/file-20170803-23916-14ri4a2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180816/original/file-20170803-23916-14ri4a2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180816/original/file-20170803-23916-14ri4a2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A woman on Idomeni gives onions from her garden to a new arrival.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tasos Markou</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Tasos drove volunteers from Skala Sikamineas to a cape at the northernmost point of the island. There, beneath the Korakas Lighthouse, the beach gave way to sharp rocks and cliffs. It was the most dangerous place to land on Lesvos from the sea. Many died in the attempt.</p>
<p>Tasos worked with two American volunteers who wore wetsuits and dragged lifejackets from the ocean and shoreline. The older one, Jeff, had holidayed on Lesvos with his parents in the 1980s. When he saw reports about the crisis he came over to help. The other American, Max, was trekking in Nepal in 2015 when the earthquake struck. He helped in the aftermath and it changed his life.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180332/original/file-20170731-5295-1aix4z3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180332/original/file-20170731-5295-1aix4z3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180332/original/file-20170731-5295-1aix4z3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180332/original/file-20170731-5295-1aix4z3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180332/original/file-20170731-5295-1aix4z3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180332/original/file-20170731-5295-1aix4z3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180332/original/file-20170731-5295-1aix4z3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180332/original/file-20170731-5295-1aix4z3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Korakas Lighthouse, on Lesvos (with Turkey in the background).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tasos Markou</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“We spent the days collecting lifejackets, and the nights helping people arriving on the beaches,” said Tasos. He saw a man collapse with hypothermia. He saw a hand rise from the ocean, waving for help.</p>
<p>Jeff and Max told Tasos to stop feeding the daily news and follow his own path. Tasos began to question whether he could continue as a photojournalist. Previously, some papers had used his photos out of context. News stories appeared one day and were gone the next. He wanted to be able to provide more depth.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I decided it wasn’t enough to just be a good person. You have to act. Lesvos changed me. It would change anyone who comes here.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Thinking about the different reception these refugees and migrants would have received in Australia or the UK, I asked Tasos why Greece, suffering as it is from austerity measures, was so generous. He said, “In Greece, we all have a story.”</p>
<p>Tasos’s great-grandfather was injured fighting the Germans in World War II. When a Nazi officer was killed, the Germans began massacring whole villages in the north. They burned the hospital where Tasos’ great-grandfather was being treated. Tasos’s grandfather was left an orphan; a family took him in, and when he was older he worked in Germany illegally, saving enough to build a house back in Greece – the house in which Tasos’s father was raised.</p>
<p>“We know about displacement,” said Tasos.</p>
<h2>‘First in my heart’</h2>
<p>In March 2016 the European Union, alarmed by rising popularism and right-wing nationalism, signed a controversial deal with Turkey to prevent further refugee and migrant crossings to Greece. Anyone who arrived after that date would be sent back to Turkey. In exchange, Turkey would receive more assistance for the nearly three million refugees it was hosting. The Balkan route was closed permanently.</p>
<p>Tasos was in Idomeni volunteering. “When we told the guys that the border was closed they didn’t believe it. They refused to leave.”</p>
<p>More people arrived at the bottleneck, swelling the makeshift camp to 12 000. Portable toilets overflowed. The Greek military delivered firewood but couldn’t meet demand. Refugees burned whatever was at hand to keep warm. They searched fields for food. Children shivered in the wet. A UN spokesperson described the situation as “misery beyond imagination”. Fences went up in Macedonia, Serbia, Slovenia, Hungary and Germany. Journalists dubbed it the “rise of the mesh curtain”.</p>
<p>“We weren’t the European Union anymore,” said Tasos.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180819/original/file-20170803-14599-1t8oz8h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180819/original/file-20170803-14599-1t8oz8h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180819/original/file-20170803-14599-1t8oz8h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180819/original/file-20170803-14599-1t8oz8h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180819/original/file-20170803-14599-1t8oz8h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180819/original/file-20170803-14599-1t8oz8h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180819/original/file-20170803-14599-1t8oz8h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180819/original/file-20170803-14599-1t8oz8h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A passport on the beach.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tasos Markou</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Volunteers and NGOs set up a network of storage facilities in the area, paying cheap rent for empty farm buildings. Tasos packed boxes, distributed food and translated from Greek to English. Greek authorities began transferring people to better-equipped camps in the cities. Around 50 000 displaced people were stranded in Greece after the EU–Turkey deal.</p>
<p>On Lesvos, people continued to take selfies to let loved ones know they’d made it to Europe.</p>
<p>“They didn’t realise they hadn’t made it to Europe,” said Tasos. “They made it to Greece.” No one knew how long they would be stuck there.</p>
<p>The series of photos that Tasos did sell – the aerial shots of half a million lifejackets piled up on Lesvos – provided enough money for him to continue volunteering. He thought a photography workshop might help occupy people during the wait. French photographer Lois Simac had a similar idea, so they partnered to run a twelve-week course in Thessaloniki. The camp there was set up in an abandoned paper factory from which it derived its name, Softex. Petroleum fumes drifted from the nearby oil refinery.</p>
<p>Only Syrians could pitch their tents inside the Softex building while Moroccans, Algerians, Eritreans and others slept in nearby disused train carriages without power, water or heating. Just over a thousand people stayed at the site.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180815/original/file-20170803-17995-1pvc0mg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180815/original/file-20170803-17995-1pvc0mg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180815/original/file-20170803-17995-1pvc0mg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180815/original/file-20170803-17995-1pvc0mg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180815/original/file-20170803-17995-1pvc0mg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180815/original/file-20170803-17995-1pvc0mg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180815/original/file-20170803-17995-1pvc0mg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180815/original/file-20170803-17995-1pvc0mg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An abandoned rail carriage where people were sleeping near the Softex camp in Thessaloniki.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tasos Markou</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Twelve participants signed up to the photography workshop. They named it Crossroads and decided to develop an exhibition. One of the keenest students was 20-year-old Mohammad from Syria. Tasos said that after each lesson Mohammad would be the first to email his assignments and results of experiments with the new techniques he’d learnt. Previously he’d spent a lot of time keeping to himself and drawing allegorical pictures about war. Now he was interacting. Tasos was impressed with his photographic work.</p>
<p>“I draw it first in my heart, and then I take the photo,” Mohammad told Tasos.</p>
<p>Mohammad was from a city in northern Syria that had expanded in the 1920s as a French military post. It was home to many Kurds, as well as Armenians who had fled the genocide, and Assyrians who fled Iraqi nationalists in the 1930s. Since the Syrian conflict began, the city had been the site of four major battles and control changed between Kurdish, ISIS and Assad-government fighters.</p>
<p>Tasos couldn’t help thinking about the people in Europe saying, “Why don’t they stay and fight?”</p>
<p>“Fight for what?” asked Tasos. “And for whom? There is no point dying for someone else’s war.”</p>
<h2>‘They say you turn boats around’</h2>
<p>The winter in Thessaloniki in 2016–17 was the most severe in 30 years. The pipes at Tasos’s apartment froze and burst. The city had to provide carted water. At the Softex camp, people warmed their hands around the building’s exterior vents. In the months since the closure of the Balkan route most of the Syrians at Softex had been relocated within Europe. Authorities allowed the Algerians and Moroccans to move from the abandoned trains into the Softex building.</p>
<p>I’d asked Tasos to question his workshop participants about Australia.</p>
<p>“First, I must ask you something,” he said to me, his face grave. “They say you turn boats around in the sea. Is this true?”</p>
<p>Tasos couldn’t believe it. Maybe it was because Greece is a seafaring country of many islands that this came as a shattering moral violation.</p>
<p>“They say Australia is a no-go zone,” said Tasos. “That it’s worse than Trump’s America.” Our political parties would be pleased this message made it to Syria.</p>
<p>Tasos said the refugees he spoke with have no intention of travelling to Australia. They want to stay closer to family in Europe. Most hope to return to Syria if the country still exists.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180817/original/file-20170803-23916-3d6c77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180817/original/file-20170803-23916-3d6c77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180817/original/file-20170803-23916-3d6c77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180817/original/file-20170803-23916-3d6c77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180817/original/file-20170803-23916-3d6c77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180817/original/file-20170803-23916-3d6c77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180817/original/file-20170803-23916-3d6c77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180817/original/file-20170803-23916-3d6c77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A rubbish dump full of lifejackets on Lesvos.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tasos Markou</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A month later Tasos said he had bad news. “Mohammad was beaten. He’s been in hospital for days.”</p>
<p>The uncertainty was weighing on the migrants and refugees. Money had run out and there was no way of making more in Greece. It was unlikely that anyone who was not Syrian would be granted permission to stay in Europe. Some in the camps preyed on the vulnerable. There were reports women had been sexually assaulted at the Softex camp and elsewhere in Greece. Mohammad was bashed with an iron bar.</p>
<p>“He’s such a sensitive guy,” said Tasos. “He would never fight back.”</p>
<p>There were tensions within the workshop group over the future of the Crossroads project. They didn’t have enough money to hire a translator so had to rely on volunteers and friends. Tasos and Lois were spending their time writing exhibition proposals and seeking legal advice. </p>
<p>On Lesvos, members aligned with the Greek neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn threw a Molotov cocktail at a café helping refugees. Unlike many parts of Europe, the Greek people hadn’t turned against the refugees and migrants yet, but they had started to ask how the government could manage. </p>
<h2>Photos crossing borders</h2>
<p>In 2016, writer James Bradley gave <a href="http://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/writing-on-the-precipice-climate-change/">a moving lecture </a> on the role of the arts in an age of global ecological transformation. He said he is uncomfortable with the term Anthropocene because “its assertion of human primacy reiterates the blindness that got us here”. Whatever we call it, said Bradley, we must recognise that something is different and the world we are creating presents challenges to every aspect of our societies.</p>
<p>I think bright-orange lifejackets say a lot about our times. They are sold to desperate refugees fleeing conflict, poverty and ecological disorder for the security of Europe, the US and Australia. The refugees come from places that the wealthy countries are bombing in wars that are, in part, a legacy of Europe’s late-imperialist carve-up of territory, of forced migrations, Cold War geopolitics, exploitation of fossil fuels and the rise of the privatised corporate war economy under the auspices of the “War on Terror”.</p>
<p>If we saw the larger forces at play, it might be possible to treat migration as an adaptation to the challenges of the Anthropocene rather than as a security risk. </p>
<p>By April this year, about half of the Crossroads participants had been relocated within Europe. Some of them met up with former Softex camp volunteers in France, Finland and the Netherlands. People have asked Tasos why he is helping 12 refugees when there are thousands stranded in Greece.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180334/original/file-20170731-21988-1ychz3s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180334/original/file-20170731-21988-1ychz3s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180334/original/file-20170731-21988-1ychz3s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180334/original/file-20170731-21988-1ychz3s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180334/original/file-20170731-21988-1ychz3s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180334/original/file-20170731-21988-1ychz3s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180334/original/file-20170731-21988-1ychz3s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180334/original/file-20170731-21988-1ychz3s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&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 remaining Crossroads group at the Softex camp Skype with Vienna as the Crossroads exhibition opens there.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tasos Markou</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“Ask those 12 people if their lives have changed,” said Tasos. “If everyone helped one person we’d all be happy.”</p>
<p>In May 2017, the Crossroads exhibition began to tour major cities, including Barcelona, Copenhagen, Izmir and Dubai. The first showing outside of Greece was in Vienna. Mohammad and the other refugees weren’t permitted to travel for the opening night so they used Skype to participate in a forum with the gallery audience. I asked Tasos if the group was excited.</p>
<p>“The guys had mixed feelings,” said Tasos. “They saw their photos travelling to places they can’t.” Their photos, they noted, moved faster than refugees.</p>
<p><em>POSTSCRIPT: The day before I submitted this essay Tasos, emailed with an update. Mohammad’s application had been decided, and he will be relocated to Norway.</em></p>
<p><em>This is an edited version of an essay republished with permission from <a href="https://griffithreview.com/editions/perils-of-populism/">Perils of Populism</a>, the 57th edition of Griffith Review.</em> <em>You can read other essays from The Perils of Populism <a href="https://griffithreview.com/editions/perils-of-populism/">here</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>For more information on Tasos Markou’s work visit <a href="http://www.tasosmarkou.net/">http://www.tasosmarkou.net/</a></em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81682/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cameron Muir receives funding from the ARC project, 'Understanding Australia in The Age of Humans: Localising the Anthropocene.' </span></em></p>
In late 2015, 200,000 refugees a month were arriving on the Greek island of Lesvos. Tasos Markou went there to photograph their plight - and ended up joining the locals to help the new arrivals.
Cameron Muir, Researcher, National Museum of Australia /, University of Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/80882
2017-07-30T20:09:32Z
2017-07-30T20:09:32Z
Discontents: identity, politics and institutions in a time of populism
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178586/original/file-20170718-22034-1wjivyh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Donald Trump constantly invoked the idea of political correctness gone mad in his presidential campaign.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Scott Morgan</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This piece is republished with permission from <a href="https://griffithreview.com/editions/perils-of-populism/">Perils of Populism</a>, the 57th edition of Griffith Review. Articles are a little longer than most published on The Conversation, presenting an in-depth analysis of the rise of populism across the world.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Fifteen years ago, economist Joseph Stiglitz published a book, <a href="http://books.wwnorton.com/books/globalization-and-its-discontents/">Globalisation and its Discontents</a>. For Stiglitz, globalisation meant:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… the closer integration of the countries and peoples of the world which has been brought about by the enormous reduction of costs of transportation and communication, and the breaking down of artificial barriers to the flows of goods, services, capital, knowledge and (to a lesser extent) people across borders. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>While the global economy has continued to expand, Stiglitz could not foresee the extent to which the movement of people would become a toxic political issue, as refugee flows and draconian measures to prevent them have increased.</p>
<p>Stiglitz was primarily concerned with the impact of globalisation on the world’s poorest countries. But he also acknowledged its impact on democratic institutions. </p>
<p>Contrary to the neoliberal belief that economic globalisation would ensure the triumph of Western-style democracies, it appears that democratic institutions everywhere have been weakened by their inability to satisfy an increasing number of voters. This was remarkably prescient, given Stiglitz was writing before the catalyst of the global financial crisis.</p>
<p>It is not difficult to find evidence for this claim. Despite some small gains in the past decade in a few African countries, liberal democracy has been on the retreat in several countries: Russia, Turkey, Thailand, Hungary. </p>
<p>In established democracies, major political parties have either been taken over by populist forces, as is the case for the US Republicans, or lost ground to them, as in France. </p>
<p>The apparent failure of globalisation seems to have energised the right to a greater degree than it has the left. In several countries, social democratic parties have lost much of their traditional support, with some of it even having swung to nationalistic and socially conservative movements.</p>
<p>The term “populism” is now so widely used that it seems equivalent with any political position not shared by the speaker. One of Australia’s more distinguished political commentators, Paul Kelly, <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/paul-kelly/beware-the-dangers-of-shortenled-leftwing-populism/news-story/ba241d652f60b6b78002038eea16e3da">consistently attacks</a> Bill Shorten for “populism” when he is really pointing to a mixture of opportunism and cautious appeals for greater equity by an opposition leader who is strongly committed to the processes of liberal democracy. </p>
<p>In contemporary usage, “populism” is generally understood to mean political movements and individuals who channel widespread alienation and frustration by claiming to speak for “the people” against forces that are said to be destroying cherished ways of life. “The people” in Western societies are, for the most part, implicitly understood to be white and Christian, blurring the line between race and religion. </p>
<p>In particular, attacks on Muslims are a hallmark of contemporary populism. There are versions of left-wing populism – as in Venezuela or Rodrigo Duterte’s Philippines, where racism is not an ingredient – but they are less relevant to the Australian experience.</p>
<p>The essential difference between populism and democracy is that democracy entails more than majority rule. <a href="https://edsitement.neh.gov/curriculum-unit/alexis-de-tocqueville-tyranny-majority">Alexis de Tocqueville’s warning</a> of the “tyranny of the majority” remains relevant today. The protection of political freedoms and minority rights is an essential test of democracy. </p>
<p>Majority support for slavery, racial discrimination or denial of equal rights to women does not make any of these things democratic. Populism feeds on a heady dose of philosophical nihilism, which sometimes seems to echo critiques of globalisation made by the left. </p>
<p><a href="http://insidestory.org.au/metaphysics-with-a-vengeance">In an article</a> on the rise of an alt-right movement straddling the Atlantic, Jane Goodall quotes one of its central figures, Reza Jorjani. She said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Tensions and disagreements were to be anticipated.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But they were clear in what they stood united against:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The alternative right unequivocally rejects liberal democracy.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Populism and identity politics</h2>
<p>Populist leaders not only attack the institutions of global capital, they also disregard the checks and balances of institutional democracy. </p>
<p>Vladimir Putin’s imprisonment of opponents, Donald Trump’s attacks on the media, Viktor Orbán’s attacks on immigrants and NGOs, Nicolás Maduro’s recourse to military courts and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s assaults on journalists and secular opponents are all justified in the name of protecting “the people”, and are legitimised by popular election. </p>
<p>This creates a dichotomy between “the people” and the (largely unspecified) “ruling elites”, despite the reality that populist leaders themselves are clearly part of the latter. </p>
<p>No matter. Their ability to channel anger and frustration at the status quo, and to promise easy solutions, seemingly grants them immunity from being attacked for their own exploitation of the system. Trump, Putin and Erdoğan are all notable for the extent to which they have profited personally from their control of state institutions.</p>
<p>As national economies are increasingly subject to the flows of international capital, the ability of governments to control them declines. This has resulted in increased economic inequality in wealthy countries and led to greater voter dissatisfaction – and a search for political scapegoats. An emphasis on nationalism is one manifestation of this search.</p>
<p>Nationalism is often assumed to emerge spontaneously from “the people” rather than, as is often the case, to have been carefully cultivated by political leaders. Commentators have stressed hostility to immigrants in fuelling the vote for Brexit in England (though not all of Britain) last year. But had several leading Tories, above all Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, not campaigned for withdrawal, it is unlikely that the referendum would have ended as it did. </p>
<p>While Trump won over a considerable number of white working-class Americans, his victory was equally due to the support of traditional Republican elites. And his administration is staffed by wealthy conservatives rather than the working men and women to whom his rhetoric appealed.</p>
<p>Such populists both denigrate the state and turn to it to repress those they see as “enemies of the people” – the <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-us-news-media-enemy-of-the-people-coverage-fixation-tv-west-wing-white-house-president-a7622216.html">phrase used by Trump</a> against the media. They distrust the intermediaries of liberal democracy – parties, pressure groups, media – preferring to resort to rallies and direct contact between leaders and mass audiences. They scorn the idea that politics is an elaborate system of building consensus through persuasion and mutual respect. </p>
<p>Hungary, whose leader proclaims he seeks an “illiberal democracy”, has perhaps the best current example of this form of populism in power: an elected government is attacking independent media and NGOs, while whipping up support through systematic scapegoating of refugees and, to a lesser extent, Jews and homosexuals. </p>
<p>Responding to a question about gay rights, Orbán <a href="http://hungarianspectrum.org/2015/05/22/viktor-orban-hungary-is-a-serious-country-where-gays-are-patiently-tolerated/">summed up</a> the language of contemporary populism more eloquently than either Trump or Pauline Hanson ever could: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Tolerance, however, does not mean that we would apply the same rules for people whose lifestyle is different from our own. We differentiate between them and us.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Populist attacks on “political correctness” have become shorthand for resentment against a whole set of social changes that unsettle people who feel what was once taken for granted is now under attack. </p>
<p>Trump constantly invoked the idea of political correctness gone mad in his campaign. And his victory was based on the collapse of old-style blue-collar jobs, and on Hillary Clinton’s failure to win over the educated white Republican women whom she assumed could not abide Trump, but who disliked her more. </p>
<p>In both the Trump and the Brexit vote, there was a deep undercurrent of racial resentment that was expressed through attacks on “political correctness”. But this was deeply entangled with basic economic concerns.</p>
<p>In the aftermath of Trump’s win, some commentators claimed the Democrats had become a party of special interests, unable to speak to the majority. One of Clinton’s supporters, historian Mark Lilla, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/opinion/sunday/the-end-of-identity-liberalism.html">wrote</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Some years ago I was invited to a union convention in Florida to speak on a panel about Franklin D. Roosevelt’s famous Four Freedoms speech of 1941. The hall was full of representatives from local chapters – men, women, blacks, whites, Latinos. </p>
<p>As I looked out into the crowd, and saw the array of different faces, I was struck by how focused they were on what they shared. And listening to Roosevelt’s stirring voice as he invoked the freedom of speech, the freedom of worship, the freedom from want and the freedom from fear – freedoms that Roosevelt demanded for ‘everyone in the world’ – I was reminded of what the real foundations of modern American liberalism are.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Lilla is only half-right. When Roosevelt made his demands they effectively excluded more than half the population: African, Latino and Native Americans, homosexuals – even women were in part excluded from the freedoms of the New Deal.</p>
<p>Too often, attacks on political correctness and identity politics assume a world in which rights and freedoms are equally available to all. In reality it is those who experience discrimination and disadvantage who most need to assert their identity. </p>
<p>Lamenting what he sees as a decline in Christian-based values, Kelly <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/paul-kelly/new-progressive-morality-rapidly-taking-over-from-christian-beliefs/news-story/c5f0c19f4f73d088f546fbd6b884befe">wrote recently</a> that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Politics is intruding into private and family life. Value judgements are being made in a way inconceivable two decades ago. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>But to argue this is to overlook the ways in which value judgements and state power have always shaped “private and family life” – abortion, adoption, adultery – and to overlook the position of privilege from which so much of the denunciation of identity politics stems. The women’s and gay movements emerged precisely because of the need to struggle against state-supported discrimination.</p>
<p>Identity politics can be both individual and collective. We assert ourselves – as women, as Indigenous, as queer – to emphasise both our particularities and our sense of belonging. </p>
<p>In so doing, identity politics implicitly breaks with the Enlightenment tradition of claiming us all as equal citizens committed to liberté, égalité, fraternité (though, in practice, the universal citizen of Enlightenment thought was a white male with property).</p>
<p>Asserting difference through the creation of social movements based on specific identities of race, language, gender and sexuality was a necessary step toward expanding citizenship to become genuinely universal and not, as social conservatives argue, a retreat from these values. </p>
<p>Yes, there are versions of identity politics that assert difference to justify prejudice and persecution. But that does not deny the need to build a sense of community and self-acceptance among people who are not fully included in dominant power structures.</p>
<p>In the contemporary world, the most obvious examples of the identity politics of hate come from extreme white nationalist groups, who claim an identity that is defined by superiority to all others.</p>
<p>It is ironic that many of the attacks on “identity politics” come from people who wish to privilege another form of identity – namely, the national. To assert “Australian values” is, after all, to declare a particular form of identity that carries with it specific entitlements. </p>
<p>Nationalism has been the model for certain forms of identity politics, and contains the same tensions between liberatory and repressive possibilities. Arguments for “national identity” too quickly become arguments for exclusion, with unpopular views denounced as unpatriotic. Tony Abbott <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/the-wests-high-culture-is-the-best-antidote-to-discrimination-20170503-gvy1ld.html">wrote of</a> attending an Anzac Day dawn service at which:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… the padre denounced political correctness as shutting the mouth, twisting the mind and warping the soul. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>But is the demand to adhere to “Australian”, as distinct from universal, values not just another form of political correctness?</p>
<p>It’s worth recalling American critical theorist <a href="https://newleftreview.org/II/3/nancy-fraser-rethinking-recognition">Nancy Fraser’s assertion</a> that both redistribution and recognition are essential for a just polity. Equality of access and opportunity depends upon both redistributive policies and a genuine acceptance of diversity. </p>
<p>Perhaps a third category needs to be added to Fraser’s terms: sustainability. The dismal failure to control carbon emissions over the past decade illustrates just how problematic this dimension has become.</p>
<p>Fraser argues that “struggles for recognition [can] be integrated with struggles for redistribution”, rather than portrayed as single-issue demands which have no bearing on economic structures. </p>
<p>As “identity politics” becomes increasingly understood as the politics of victimhood rather than empowerment, it is essential to remember that no one movement has a single identity, nor can it achieve liberation without larger social and political change.</p>
<p>The enthusiastic support of many corporations for same-sex marriage is a case study of embracing equality through recognition while failing to discuss the inequities of distribution or to think globally.</p>
<p>Qantas might well <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-21/qantas-boss-says-marriage-equality-makes-economic-sense/8373888">parade its support</a> for marriage equality in Australia. But this does not prevent its close alliance with Emirates, the official airline of a state that criminalises homosexuality, nor does it guarantee decent conditions for all its employees. </p>
<p>The current language of “equality” centres almost entirely on civic and political rights, not on social and economic equality. In human rights language, these are first- and second-generation rights. To people struggling to survive in a rapidly changing economy, this emphasis on “rights” can sound dismissive and elitist – one of the standard complaints about identity politics.</p>
<p>We need a politics of shared values rather than one based on separate identities. To speak personally: I am deeply committed to a struggle for queer rights. But that does not mean I feel a political bond with the many right-wing homosexuals who support groups such as Marine Le Pen’s Front National or Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom. </p>
<p>The danger, as Fraser points out, is that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… struggles for recognition simultaneously displace struggles for economic justice and promote repressive forms of communitarianism.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178588/original/file-20170718-22028-1g1gdm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178588/original/file-20170718-22028-1g1gdm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178588/original/file-20170718-22028-1g1gdm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178588/original/file-20170718-22028-1g1gdm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178588/original/file-20170718-22028-1g1gdm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178588/original/file-20170718-22028-1g1gdm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178588/original/file-20170718-22028-1g1gdm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hungary’s Viktor Orbán is known for his attacks on immigrants and NGOs.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Bernadett Szabo</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What populism means for political parties</h2>
<p>It has become commonplace to claim that the collapse of “rusted-on” support for the major political parties is due to a new form of cultural politics, pitting inner-city cosmopolitan “elites” against rural and outer suburbanites.</p>
<p>Liberal assistant minister Angus Taylor <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/connect-the-regions-rising-star-angus-taylors-solution-to-stop-the-trumpification-of-australia-20170302-gupkuq.html">reportedly claims</a> that cultural identity and political correctness are can explain Trump, Brexit and Hanson’s resurgence:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Political correctness, above all, is the thing I hear from people. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is a neat rhetorical device to avoid the role of growing inequality and resentment at rapid social change that the economic policies of his government do little to moderate.</p>
<p>In a similar vein, the columnists of the Murdoch press are obsessed with questions such as Safe Schools, same-sex marriage and hate speech, while insisting that most voters have little interest in these issues.</p>
<p>Reflecting on the 2016 federal election, former Liberal Party leader John Hewson <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/comment/theres-an-obvious-way-for-malcolm-turnbull-to-beat-the-politics-of-fear-leadership-20161026-gsbp73.html">wrote</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The whole political process over the past several decades has been an unsavoury race to the bottom, delivering little real/effective government … The last election … clearly revealed voters’ dissatisfaction.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In his judicious <a href="https://www.quarterlyessay.com.au/essay/2017/03/the-white-queen">Quarterly Essay</a> on Hanson, David Marr quotes political scientist Ian McAllister as saying that respect for the political class has fallen to its lowest level in recent history. </p>
<p>It is not surprising, nor necessarily troubling, that party loyalties are declining. The development of a multi-party system is not itself evidence of populism. The largest minor party in Australia remains the Greens, which, despite the fulminations of the Murdoch press, is committed to parliamentary processes and does not meet most definitions of populism.</p>
<p>When she governed with their support, Julia Gillard faced far more problems from within her own ranks – Kevin Rudd, Craig Thomson – than she did from the Greens.</p>
<p>Our political institutions are products of the 19th century. Our major parties were shaped in the 20th. But Australia today is a very different country, largely because of globalisation. </p>
<p>The opening up of the economy to global pressures, and a subsequent change in its nature, has meant greater affluence but also greater inequality. In the past three decades, the manufacturing industry has declined and whole communities <a href="https://www.blackincbooks.com.au/books/economy-not-society">have been destroyed</a> as factories and assembly plants have given way to apartment blocks and shopping malls. </p>
<p>The mining boom created a sudden surge of wealth in some areas, but much of that growth has slowed. And while some new jobs have been created in the meantime, they are more dependent on educational qualifications. </p>
<p>With these shifts has come a decline in blue-collar trade unions, and a rise in self-employment. In the past two decades union membership <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/national/trade-union-membership-hits-record-low-20151027-gkjlpu.html">has fallen</a> from about 40% of the workforce to well under 20%. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, the rapid development of the virtual economy and our dependence on electronic media continue to erode traditional jobs and change the very ways in which we organise our lives. Traditional divides between “work” and “leisure” are disappearing with the ability to remain hooked into the internet wherever we are.</p>
<p>Australia today has 10 million more people than it did in 1980 – a staggering growth that has made house prices and urban congestion major political issues in the capital cities. </p>
<p>Our population has become much more diverse, with a very high proportion having been born overseas. The subsequent emphasis upon diversity – not only of race and ethnicity, but also of sexuality and gender – is often the basis for bitter political divisions.</p>
<p>The collective impact of these changes has been to undermine the assumptions of mainstream politics, which are based upon structures and institutions that have little changed during the past century. Relatively few people retain deep loyalties to the major parties, which explains the rapid turnover in governments and the attraction of minor parties. </p>
<p>There are currently nine members of the Senate who are from parties named after individuals: Hanson, Nick Xenophon, Jacqui Lambie, Derryn Hinch. When I asked Hinch in a pre-election radio interview about the potential hubris of an eponymous party name he agreed, but said that were he to campaign for the Justice Party he’d poll far fewer votes.</p>
<p>This being said, it is easy to overstate the decline of votes for the major parties. One assumes most voters have some understanding of preferential voting, and are using their first preference to send a signal while still making an effective choice between a Coalition and a Labor government. Minor parties poll better for the Senate than the lower house because voters understand it is the latter that determines which party will form government. </p>
<p>More troubling is the hollowing out of the major parties, as fewer people join and participate, leaving them open to manipulation and branch-stacking. Approximately 100,000 people “belong” to political parties in Australia. In most cases this means no more than paper membership, often to support a particular faction or candidate. </p>
<p>Labor Party membership has increased since the decision in 2013 to give members a role in the choice of the parliamentary leader. Currently, it’s at more than 50,000 paid-up members. The Liberals have roughly 40,000, while the Greens membership is about 10,000. </p>
<p>Exact figures are very hard to find, but none of Australia’s political parties have a membership as large as that of the most popular AFL teams.</p>
<p>Increasingly, politicians are those who have worked their way up through the party machinery, often with little experience or knowledge outside their immediate political base. This in turn creates greater cynicism among voters, who are exposed to stories of corruption, self-interest and endless point-scoring. </p>
<p>The tendency of politicians on both sides to constantly denigrate and belittle their opponents is a major contributor to the corrosion of liberal democracy.</p>
<p>Growing cynicism about politics is also, in part, the product of neoliberal attacks on the state, which depict governments as disconnected from real lives and bent on taking away our money and our freedoms. </p>
<p>The past few decades have seen a systematic delegitimisation of the idea that the state exists to provide collectively what we cannot provide as individuals. This leads to declining commitment from more and more people to maintaining public services, and increases inequality. </p>
<p>For instance, as more parents want private schooling for their kids, the political and financial support available to the state system decreases, which widens the gap between school outcomes and, in turn, employment opportunities.</p>
<p>And the more universities position themselves as corporate enterprises, the more state support for higher education dwindles, despite political rhetoric about the need for greater knowledge and innovation.</p>
<p>The neoliberal economy has broken down many of the thick networks of voluntary associations that were fundamental to a liberal political culture. Not only have unions declined, so too have middle-class business and social associations that often provided the base for the conservative parties. </p>
<p>As church attendance has decreased, the influence of fundamentalist minorities across all faiths has increased, which is closely associated with the rightward shifts within the Liberal Party. </p>
<p>Yes, new forms of social and political networking have flourished this century, but they are often realised by little more than a Facebook like or signing an electronic petition. It’s unwise to over-romanticise the associative life of an earlier period, but there is a real difference between face-to-face interaction and “electronic activism”. </p>
<p>As the disciplines of meeting procedures and building acceptable compromises are sacrificed to instant tweets and ticks, politics becomes indistinguishable from other aspects of consumerism.</p>
<p>In a similar effect, where online media demand instantaneous coverage, commentary has come to replace genuine reporting – and with this comes a decline of civility in public debates. </p>
<p>2GB broadcaster Alan Jones’ <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/gillards-father-died-of-shame-alan-jones-20120929-26soa.html">appalling comments</a> on Gillard (that her father “died of shame”) followed a tendency in the media to address her as “Ju-liar”, rather than prime minister. </p>
<p>However, the left can be equally guilty of shutting out debate – about gay marriage, transgenderism, Islam – by branding anyone who expresses unease as bigots. </p>
<p>Instead of rational discussion, the media feed on crude polarisation. This is the basic presumption of the ABC’s Q&A program, which seeks out guests with dramatically opposing views, regardless of how absurd they will appear.</p>
<p>Too often, there is a lack of generosity from those seeking change who misread unease with the pace of change as bigotry and hostility. Where the left sees sexism, racism and homophobia, the right yells that its freedom of speech has been infringed upon. As writer Christos Tsiolkas <a href="https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2016/december/1480510800/christos-tsiolkas/second-coming">noted</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>There is a symbiosis that links the outraged liberal to the furious conservative, the radical activist to the enraged reactionary. It is the subtext that seems to define the contemporary moment: my rage is grievous and justifiable, and yours is ignorant and selfish.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178590/original/file-20170718-22028-10sbrhn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178590/original/file-20170718-22028-10sbrhn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178590/original/file-20170718-22028-10sbrhn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178590/original/file-20170718-22028-10sbrhn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178590/original/file-20170718-22028-10sbrhn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178590/original/file-20170718-22028-10sbrhn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178590/original/file-20170718-22028-10sbrhn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nine members of the Senate are from parties named after individuals, including Pauline Hanson.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Lukas Coch</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What for Australia?</h2>
<p>Liberal democracy in Australia, with its particular federalist inflections – a powerful upper house, a complex set of electoral systems, compulsory voting and tight party discipline – has manifold imperfections, but it also has certain strengths worth defending. </p>
<p>That governments are held accountable through free and fair elections and that freedom of speech and association are protected are important assumptions, even when there are clear failures to meet them.</p>
<p>Equally important are the institutional arrangements that ensure the workings of the system. It’s unprovable, but if the US had an independent electoral commission to set electoral boundaries and/or compulsory and preferential voting, the results of both the 2000 and the 2016 presidential elections might have been very different. </p>
<p>Despite its imperfections, Australia’s electoral systems mean a closer fit between voters’ intent and electoral outcomes than is true in other English-speaking democracies – with the exception of New Zealand, where a system of proportional representation has enabled good government since its adoption in 1996. </p>
<p>Interestingly, the Economist Intelligence Unit <a href="https://infographics.economist.com/2017/DemocracyIndex/">ranks Australia</a> in the highest sector for democracy, above both the US and the UK.</p>
<p>It’s important both to defend the institutions of liberal democracy and to question how they might be improved. For some theorists, the possibilities of the electronic age and the decline in traditional party membership open up a path towards forms of more direct democracy. </p>
<p>The political philosopher Simon Tormey <a href="http://au.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0745681964,subjectCd-PO17.html">has written</a> of the increasing tendency to bypass representative institutions in favour of direct action of various sorts: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The perception, increasingly, is that citizens don’t need representatives and politicians to make themselves heard or to act. They can do it for themselves in the expectation that others will want to join in or support their efforts …</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There are interesting moments of “deliberative democracy” being used to help resolve contentious issues by bringing together groups of interested citizens, such as South Australia’s <a href="http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/citizens-jury-overwhelmingly-rejects-nuclear-waste-storage-facility-for-south-australia/news-story/8340c103234775fffcf9b88b2aea6906">appointment of “citizens’ juries”</a> to consider the question of nuclear waste. </p>
<p>But, at some point, direct action needs to be translated into legislative and bureaucratic responses. And while new forms of consultation and participation might supplement representative government, they are unlikely to replace it. </p>
<p>When the federal government sought to resolve same-sex marriage through a referendum there was strong opposition from many of those most affected, who insisted on the primacy of parliament.</p>
<p>In the aftermath of the student and anti-war movements of the 1960s (more accurately the early 1970s), several radicals turned their attention to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_long_march_through_the_institutions">“long slow march through institutions”</a>. Tom Hayden, one of the authors of the Port Huron Statement, became a state legislator. Danny Cohn-Bendit, a leader of the May 1968 Paris movement, became a European parliamentarian. </p>
<p>What Donald Horne <a href="http://www.naa.gov.au/collection/explore/cabinet/by-year/1971-events-issues.aspx">termed</a> “the time of hope” in Australia (1966–72) was a period marked both by the emergence of the new left and new social movements and by Gough Whitlam’s reshaping of the Labor Party to offer a real alternative to the legacy of the Menzies decades. </p>
<p>The anti-Vietnam movement included several leading figures within the Labor Party, which came to power with a commitment to ideals that had been inspired by the anti-war, Indigenous, feminist and environmental movements. </p>
<p>In the following decade, Bob Brown went from leading protests against environmental destruction to become the leader of the Greens, and many of his parliamentary colleagues have followed similar trajectories.</p>
<p>We need strong social movements to keep pressure on governments, but we also need good people in government to develop and enact progressive policies. Many of my friends on the left have lost faith in the Labor Party, viewing it as corrupt and unable to either take on big business interests or defend human rights unambiguously. </p>
<p>Yet <a href="https://theconversation.com/national-conference-subdued-about-labor-revival-as-shorten-gets-his-way-44825">when I attended</a> Labor’s national conference in 2015, I was struck by the size and energy of two groups: the environmental activists and the refugee advocates. Their presence in the party reminds us that a Labor government is pressured from the left, a Coalition government from the right.</p>
<p>The rise of populism has created new rifts in the body politic – sometimes, as in France, displacing the major parties; sometimes, as in the case of Trump and Jeremy Corbyn, unseating dominant party elites. </p>
<p>Neither has happened in Australia. My hunch is that the dominance of the existing major parties will persist in the medium term, while the Greens seem unlikely to break through and become much more than a minor party with limited reach. The best prospect for countering a toxic mix of bigotry and rising inequality is a Labor government constantly pressured from “the left” by the Greens and significant social movements.</p>
<p>But nothing is inevitable in politics. Faced with the potential growth of populist right-wing parties – whether led by Hanson, Cory Bernardi, or someone yet to emerge – mainstream politicians need to recognise the cynicism of the electorate, and rebuild trust in the political system. </p>
<p>In a recent <a href="https://www.lowyinstitute.org/publications/2017-lowy-institute-poll">Lowy Institute poll</a>, nearly one-quarter of Australians said that “in some circumstances, a non-democratic government can be preferable”. It’s not clear what respondents understand by either “non-democratic” or “some circumstances”. But I suspect the response suggests ignorance rather than antipathy. </p>
<p>Despite well-meaning attempts to introduce civics into school curricula, there is a disconnect between the minority who follow politics in detail and the bulk of people who dutifully turn up to vote (the latter being an important protection against the triumph of demagoguery).</p>
<p>Populists thrive on a mix of passion and ignorance, and they need to be countered on both levels. The deep distrust between those who seek to effect change through mainstream institutions and those who work outside of them (through movements such as GetUp!) needs to be resolved, as both are important.</p>
<p>If politics is the art of the possible then what is possible is itself determined by political choices, and requires debate and coalition building. The greatest challenge for our political leaders is to demonstrate that politics matters, that while in some respects the state might take away from individuals, when managed properly it can ensure a richer life for us all.</p>
<p>There’s a <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a20660">New Yorker cartoon</a>, published just after Trump’s inauguration, of two corporate dudes in an office, one of whom says: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Part of me is going to miss liberal democracy. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Australia is not yet at that point. Our challenge is to simultaneously strengthen the institutions of democracy and re-imagine the role of government in a rapidly changing global environment.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Thanks to Robert Manne and Sean Scalmer for their comments in writing this essay.</em></p>
<p><em>You can read other essays from Griffith Review’s latest edition <a href="https://griffithreview.com/editions/perils-of-populism/">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/80882/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dennis Altman 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>
Populist leaders not only attack the institutions of global capital, they also disregard the checks and balances of institutional democracy.
Dennis Altman, Professorial Fellow in Human Security, La Trobe University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/80880
2017-07-27T20:16:51Z
2017-07-27T20:16:51Z
The restorationist impulse: why we hanker for the old ways
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178392/original/file-20170717-26940-v8kas2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Surely, things were easier in the past.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This piece is republished with permission from <a href="https://griffithreview.com/editions/perils-of-populism/">Perils of Populism</a>, the 57th edition of Griffith Review. Articles are a little longer than most published on The Conversation, presenting an in-depth analysis on the rise of populism across the world.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>The children come home from school to be greeted by their mother, who is wearing an apron. They then go off to play with their neighbourhood friends, from families very like their own. </p>
<p>After dinner, and after husband and wife have cheerfully washed and dried the dishes together, they all sit around the family TV watching <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046600/">Father Knows Best</a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/O64pR4IfYB0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Father Knows Best.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This image of stability, security and contentment is only slightly more ridiculous than the nostalgic illusions sometimes peddled by politicians and media. Right-wing populist politicians increasingly invoke an imaginary past, one that is selective at best.</p>
<p>The two most important and successful slogans of 2016 – Donald Trump’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/13/make-america-great-again-why-are-liberals-losing-the-war-of-soundbites">Make America Great Again</a>, and Brexit’s <a href="http://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/681706/Boris-Johnson-vote-Brexit-take-back-control">Take Back Control</a> – both appeal to moving from an unsatisfactory present back to a romantically remembered past.</p>
<p>It is wrong to cast these sentiments as conservative. Their proponents are not champions of the status quo, but rather want to overthrow it. </p>
<p>Conservatism at its best is prudent, celebrating the wisdom of the institutions and traditions that have come down to us, cautious about the possible unintended consequences of far-reaching change. It can easily ossify into inertia and complacency. But it is a very different sentiment from the angry renunciation of existing society.</p>
<p>“Which political party loves America?” <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/which-party-loves-the-usa/2015/12/20/9e44c83a-a745-11e5-8058-480b572b4aae_story.html?utm_term=.0fefb3267a04">asked</a> the veteran Washington Post columnist EJ Dionne in 2015. “Not the United States that once existed, but the flesh-and-blood nation that we live in now.” It was not the leading Republican candidates Trump and Ted Cruz. They cast the current version as “a fallen nation”. “They yearn for the United States of Then.”</p>
<h2>‘Restorationism’ and politics</h2>
<p>I want to use the term “restorationist” to describe this syndrome of evading the complexities and frictions of the present and the uncertainties and fears about the future by embracing the appeals of a mythical past.</p>
<p>I first encountered this suggestive concept in the work of the great scholar <a href="http://www.internationalnegotiation.org/about/faculty/robert-jay-lifton/">Robert Jay Lifton</a>, who served as an American air force psychiatrist in Korea and Japan in the early 1950s. </p>
<p>He then used his unique mix of expertise – in Asian studies, in war and as a psychiatrist – to write several groundbreaking books. They included studies of how American prisoners of war and Chinese defectors responded to Chinese brainwashing techniques; of the survivors of Hiroshima, <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Death_in_Life.html?id=CYqugorTJ68C">Death in Life</a>; of the long-term effects on Nazi doctors who participated in the Holocaust; and of the attitudes and experiences of American troops returning from the Vietnam War.</p>
<p>He <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=9XhpD1f6JoQC&pg=PA4&lpg=PA4&dq=Robert+Jay+Lifton+restorationism&source=bl&ots=fOS30M6AUq&sig=QD10LwrfOORXAo2xUbEBcvKikvg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNnaHusY_VAhVHspQKHQZVDfUQ6AEIMTAC#v=onepage&q=Robert%20Jay%20Lifton%20restorationism&f=false">used the term “restorationism”</a> in 1968 to describe the mood in some circles of American society. In the second half of the 1960s, the gains of the civil rights movement and increasing assertiveness among African-Americans, plus the disillusion with and increasingly critical dissent from the Vietnam War, as well as the embryonic feminist movement and student protests, had transformed the mood of American politics. He wrote:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Hence the spectre of white Americans, themselves psychologically dislocated and often financially beleaguered, rallying around [the racist presidential candidate] George Wallace …</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The attitude:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… is associated with a broader image of restoration – an urge, often violent, to recover a past that never was, a golden age of perfect harmony during which all lived in loving simplicity and beauty, an age when backward people were backward and superior people superior.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is not a concept that has been widely adopted in political science. Indeed, internet searches are most likely to turn up material on rehabilitating furniture and to a Christian sect that wanted to return to the principles of the early Church. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, if Lifton thought the concept captured a key element in the American mood in the late 1960s, half a century later it resonates even more strongly in political campaigns in many democracies.</p>
<p>In his recent Quarterly Essay, <a href="https://www.quarterlyessay.com.au/essay/2017/03/the-white-queen">The White Queen</a>, David Marr talks of the “fierce nostalgia” of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation supporters.</p>
<p>The social researcher Rebecca Huntley found the loss of trust and security a strong strain among Hanson’s supporters in her focus group research: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Once upon a time you could leave your door open. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>or:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>You could go to the pub and put your wallet next to your beer and go to the loo and you’d be surrounded by people just like you, people who would never even think to touch your wallet. But now you can’t do that.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>She found that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>What worries this group is the cultural, social slippage they feel in their life. They imagine their fathers’ and grandfathers’ lives were better, more certain, easier to navigate.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In her comeback before the 2016 election, <a href="http://www.onenation.com.au/current_affairs/hanson-kicks-off-her-fed-up-tour-tomorrow">Hanson announced</a> a Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Fed Up Tour:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>As I have travelled around the country, people are telling me they are fed up with losing the farming sector, they’re fed up with foreign ownership of our land and prime agricultural land, they’re fed up with the threat of terrorism in our country and the free trade agreements that have been signed, which are not in our best interest, and foreign workers coming to Australia…so hence the Fed Up tour.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This sense of a downward slide easily degenerates into conspiracy theories and a narrative of betrayal. Marr cites this extraordinary passage from Hanson’s 2016 tax and economic policy:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… restore Australia’s constitution so that our economy is run for the benefit of Australians instead of the United Nations and unaccountable foreign bodies that have interfered and have choked our economy since the federal government handed power to the International Monetary Fund in 1944.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Populism and decline</h2>
<p>There has been much attention paid to the widespread resurgence of populism. Restorationism in Western democracies is a subset of this. The term “populism” is often used loosely. For me, there are four defining characteristics.</p>
<ul>
<li><p>It pits a virtuous and homogenous in-group against a variety of out-groups. The view that the people have a single voice and viewpoint makes populism intolerant of diversity and disagreement.</p></li>
<li><p>The main animating force of populism is anger – directed both against the “elites” who have betrayed the people, and against the out-groups, especially immigrants, who threaten them.</p></li>
<li><p>Populism removes doubt from a complicated world. It transforms the complexities and ambiguities of political controversy into a search for enemies and culprits. It champions simple solutions, which no reasonable person could disagree with.</p></li>
<li><p>Populism is as much a political style as it is a set of beliefs. It matches its intolerance of various groups with a style of argument and conduct that is attention-grabbing and confronting. For the followers of populist leaders, offensiveness becomes evidence of authenticity, of their willingness to break through the hypocrisies of political correctness.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>There is a long-running debate about whether the explanation for the recent dramatic rise of populism is more economic or more sociocultural, although they are not mutually exclusive. In addressing this, we must remember that somewhat different factors may be at work in different countries, and that support for populist groups tends to fluctuate considerably. </p>
<p>And candidates and parties in different countries have very different levels of support. Trump <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2016">won 46%</a> of the presidential vote; Brexit <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_European_Union_membership_referendum,_2016">scored 52%</a> in the EU referendum, while the UK Independence Party <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/apr/20/ukip-won-its-anti-eu-push-can-it-escape-yesterdays-party-label-alan-travis">was fluctuating around 10%</a>; Marine Le Pen <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_presidential_election,_2017">won 34%</a> of the vote in the French presidential election, while Front National support is generally considerably less than that; and Pauline Hanson’s One Nation fluctuates around 10%.</p>
<p>The economic explanation gains credence in that a surge in support for populist groups followed the global financial crisis. </p>
<p>Similarly, there is a correlation between areas of populist sentiment and regions in economic decline or stagnation. The key states that gave Trump the presidency were the traditionally Democratic, but now rustbelt, states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and North Carolina.</p>
<p>The vote for Brexit was higher in the English provinces than in more prosperous London, while support for Le Pen was minimal in Paris and higher in the regions.</p>
<p>However, it is not the poorest groups that embrace populist movements, and there is no consistent data that shows support is related to economic insecurity. More telling is the association with economic pessimism. </p>
<p>Marr cites data in his essay showing that 68% of One Nation voters thought things were worse than a year ago, double the proportion in the rest of the electorate.</p>
<p>A <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/election/results/exit-polls">giant CNN exit poll</a> on election day in the US similarly showed that among the one-third of the electorate who thought that life for the next generation will be worse than today, Trump won 63-31. Of the slightly more who thought life would be better and among those who thought it would be the same, he lost by 38-59 and 39-54 respectively. </p>
<p>So, a narrative of decline seems to animate these supporters – whether or not it is part of their actual experience.</p>
<h2>What for uncertainty?</h2>
<p>On the other hand, the priority given to different issue areas suggests that economics was not Trump’s primary appeal.</p>
<p>Among those who thought foreign policy was the most important issue, and the half of the electorate who thought the economy was most important, Clinton won easily. But among those who thought terrorism or immigration were the most important issues, Trump won just as emphatically.</p>
<p>The evidence for the primacy of sociocultural factors is more compelling. The data shows a stronger correlation between education levels and support for Trump than it does for income levels.</p>
<p>Consider also that in the 2016 election, Trump won a majority of the more religious and evangelical voters even though he was the most obviously irreligious candidate in living memory. He is the first president to be married three times, with abundant evidence of his <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/10/07/donald_trump_2005_tape_i_grab_women_by_the_pussy.html">“pussy grabbing”</a>, predatory attitudes to women and a long record of unethical business practices.</p>
<p>Whenever he tried to parade his religiosity, his phoniness shone through. <a href="http://www.politico.com/blogs/2016-gop-primary-live-updates-and-results/2016/04/trump-favorite-bible-verse-221954">He said</a> his favourite verse in scripture was an eye for an eye, and that he had never had occasion to ask God for forgiveness. </p>
<p>In one speech, he segued effortlessly between the glory of God to a real-estate deal he had done and back again. And yet, according to the CNN exit poll, among people who attend church once a month or more, Trump won 54-42. Among those attending church less frequently, the devoutly Methodist Clinton won 54-40. </p>
<p>The explanation, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/faiths-mysterious-ways-in-the-2016-campaign/2016/04/10/fe866166-fdaf-11e5-9140-e61d062438bb_story.html?utm_term=.590e81d08224">according to Dionne</a> in the Washington Post, is that white evangelicals – a somewhat narrower grouping than church attenders – are now “nostalgia voters”:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… animated by an anger and anxiety arising from a sense that the dominant culture is moving away from their values.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Trump campaign was aimed squarely at these people, who felt that they had become “strangers in their own land”. It hammered the themes that they had been betrayed by their governing elites, which were either corrupt or incompetent. Equally, it played into resentments they felt towards outsiders; in Trump’s case, Mexicans, Chinese and Muslims.</p>
<p>In the other great electoral convulsion of 2016, where Britain voted to leave the European Union, restorationist sentiments were also in evidence. The liberal columnist Jonathan Freedland considered: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The ballot was less about the EU than it was a referendum on their own lives, as if Remain and Leave were synonyms for Satisfied and Dissatisfied. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Similarly, the conservative commentator Peter Hitchens said the question was:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Do you like living in 2016, and 52% of the population said no, actually, not much.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Again, supporters of the two sides had very different agendas. One survey found that among Leave voters questions of sovereignty (45%) and immigration (26%) were much more prominent than among Remain voters (20% and 2% respectively). In contrast, Remain voters were much more concerned with the economy (40% compared to 5% of Leave voters). </p>
<p>The British tabloids pounded the immigration issue, with at least 30 hostile front-page splashes in the Daily Mail in the months leading to the referendum, and 15 in The Sun. Former Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie thought that the referendum was won on immigration “by 1,000 miles”.</p>
<p>Brexit is the classic case of where the success in mobilising populist resentments achieved the opposite of what its followers were hoping for. Most Brexit supporters said they thought Remain would win, but enough lodged “protest” votes to change the result. It was only after their victory that any serious attention was paid to the actual process of disengagement. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://blog.lboro.ac.uk/crcc/eu-referendum/uk-news-coverage-2016-eu-referendum-report-5-6-may-22-june-2016/">thorough study</a> of media coverage of the referendum by researchers from Loughborough University found that in the six weeks leading up to the referendum, across the media there were just 1.8 articles a day on the formal process of withdrawing from the UK by triggering Article 50; but in the days afterwards suddenly there were an average of 49.5 items a day. </p>
<p>The ironic outcome was that many voters thought they were voting for simplicity, when in fact they set the country on a much more protracted, uncertain and complicated course than was apparent during the campaign.</p>
<h2>Supporters rarely the most oppressed</h2>
<p>It is often said that populism is good at promoting a mood of rebellion and discontent, but that the solutions it offers are illusory. However, it is argued, attention must be paid to the grievances of its supporters. </p>
<p>It may not be that building a wall along the Mexican border is an effective way of curbing illegal immigration, but the discontent with incoming illegal immigrants should be addressed.</p>
<p>Hanson may not have the answers to why her supporters are “fed up”, but the political system must be responsive to why they are fed up.</p>
<p>I think even this view is too indulgent. Those supporting populist leaders are rarely the most oppressed in society. And many of their attitudes do not reflect their direct experiences. </p>
<p>Take immigration, for example, the issue that above all others seems to drive right-wing populism. Marr found that 83% of One Nation voters want immigration numbers to be cut a lot, compared to just 23% of other voters. Also they were far more likely to think migrants increase crime (79% to 38%) and take jobs from other Australians (67% to 30%).</p>
<p>Nevertheless, what we are dealing with in these anti-immigration grievances is not direct experience so much as mediated views that the populists have adopted. Peter Scanlon of the Scanlon Foundation, which maps attitudes to migrants and race in Australia, told Marr:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I am disappointed by the older age group in Australia, particularly those living in regional areas where there are no migrants. It is an amazing fact to me that the most blowback we get is from people who don’t have any experience with them!</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Another social researcher told Marr that the attitudes were based on fears rather than experience:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>When you probe for personal experiences on anything they say about welfare or immigration, it’s always second and third hand. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In Britain, a 2014 Ipsos MORI poll <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/10/29/ipsos-mori-poll-wrong_n_6066800.html">found that</a> the British public thinks that one in five British people are Muslim when in reality it is one in 20, and that 24% of the population are immigrants when the official figure is 13%. </p>
<p>We are not dealing then with a spontaneous response growing out of lived experience, but with opinions and misperceptions that are cultivated and amplified in the wider environment, including by politicians and in the media.</p>
<p>Some insight into these processes may be found in the pioneering work of George Gerbner on TV violence in the 1960s and ’70s. Gerbner developed <a href="https://masscommtheory.com/theory-overviews/cultivation-theory/">cultivation theory</a>, which argued that the more TV people watched, the more likely they were to believe the real world resembles what they see on the screen. </p>
<p>Gerbner’s audience studies developed what he called the “cultivation differential”. He matched sociodemographic sub-samples, and within each looked at differences in the beliefs between “heavy”, “medium” and “light” viewers. Gerbner demonstrated that – within each demographic stratum – heavier viewers tended to be more conservative and more fearful. </p>
<p>He coined the term “mean world syndrome” to illustrate the point that heavy viewers were more likely to think they could be victims of violence, were more afraid of walking alone at night, overestimated the resources in society devoted to law enforcement, and expressed more mistrust of people in general. </p>
<p>Gerbner’s surveys also found fear of crime was higher among those less likely to be its victims, but who watched TV a lot, such as older people in small towns and rural areas. For Gerbner, it was the total TV experience that was important rather than any particular program. </p>
<p>In cultivating restorationist sentiments, there is a coincidence between trends in the news media and in parts of their audience.</p>
<h2>What role does the broadcast media play?</h2>
<p>In the digital age, with consumers having far more options, the mainstream news media have been suffering from a decline in the total audience and also from its splintering. </p>
<p>The earlier mass media age was one of constrained choices. In the 1960s, an advertiser could reach 80% of US women with a primetime spot on the three national networks. But, by 2006, to achieve the same reach would require the ad to run on 100 TV channels. </p>
<p>In the US in the 1970s, the audience for the news programs on three networks totalled 46 million, or 75% of those watching TV at the time. Despite substantial population growth in the following decades, by 2005 their total audience was down to 30 million, or about one-third of television viewers. By 2013, the combined audience had further declined to 22 million.</p>
<p>The most successful news start-up of the digital age has been Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News, launched in 1996. Murdoch at the time declared:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We think it’s about time CNN was challenged, especially as it tends to drift further and further to the left. We think it’s time for a truly objective news channel.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>According Roger Ailes, the person who was Fox News’ chief executive for its first 20 years:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Rupert [Murdoch] and I, and by the way, the vast majority of the American people, believe that most of the news tilts to the left.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Fox News is the most successful cable news operation in the US, but it typically gains just 1% of the viewing audience, a fraction of what the network news services get, and a minute fraction of what they used to achieve. “Success” means something different in the fragmented market of today. </p>
<p>Similarly, in commercial talk radio, “success” may mean a small share of the listening audience, let alone the total population. </p>
<p>Fragmentation has been accompanied by polarisation, in particular by declining trust among Republican voters towards the main news services. One analyst summarised it as:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Democrats trust everything except Fox, and Republicans don’t trust anything other than Fox. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The new market logic is more sectarian than in the old, “masser” media.</p>
<p>Structurally, there are increasing rewards for sectarian journalism. The sociologist Ernst Troeltsch, a colleague of Max Weber, <a href="http://marikablogs.blogspot.com.au/2009/03/ernst-troeltsch-on-church-and-sect.html">distinguished between</a> “church” and “sect”. </p>
<p>Church refers to an established religion, which finds reasons to be inclusive. Like the Anglicans, political parties are <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/john-howard-praises-the-liberal-partys-broad-church/8667306">keen to proclaim</a> they are a “broad church”. </p>
<p>Sects on the other hand are in the minority, and insist their members must be true believers, and are more rejecting of those that differ. With the fragmentation and polarisation of media audiences, the market rewards are increasingly for sectarian rather than centrist journalism.</p>
<p>A common way of describing the success of Fox News is to say that it catered to a more conservative part of the audience spectrum that the more liberal TV networks had neglected. This is essentially misleading. </p>
<p>Fox did not cover stories from a conservative point of view – it simply chose stories that suited its agenda. It would hammer its chosen stories and simply ignore others, such as when the American involvement in Iraq started to sour. It did not seek to promote debate, but to dismiss and scorn other views. </p>
<p>For example, rather than cover the complexities of healthcare policy, the trade-offs between expense and the reach and quality of care, Fox News simply denounced “Obamacare”. </p>
<p>Fox’s Sean Hannity said that Obamacare meant telling old people they may want to throw it all in rather than be a burden. Former Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin claimed that old people would:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide … whether they are worthy of health care.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Glenn Beck opined:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This is the end of prosperity in America forever if this bill passes. This is the end of America as you know it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A perceptive critic of the political consequences of this trend has been former president Barack Obama. He observed that a “Balkanised media” has contributed to the partisan rancour and political polarisation that he acknowledged worsened during his tenure. News consumers are now seeking out only what they agree with already, thereby reinforcing their partisan ideology. </p>
<p>Obama bemoaned the absence of a common baseline of facts underpinning the political debate and accused the Republicans of peddling an alternate reality.</p>
<p>Hanson has made many claims about Muslims, <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2016/election-2016-pauline-hansons-big-senate-win-and-what-she-plans-to-do-with-it-20160703-gpxc2n.html">even arguing</a> that Islam’s “religious aspect is a fraud”. Despite police denials, she has continued to assert that halal certification was financing terrorism and that Muslims were seen dancing and celebrating on the streets of Sydney after 9/11. </p>
<p>She asked:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Do you honestly want to see the legal age for marriage lowered to nine for little girls? Do you want to see hands and feet cut off as a form of punishment? Do you want to see young girls going through female genital mutilation?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Even if refutations of these claims occur in quality media, they may be powerless to penetrate the alternate reality subscribed to by her supporters.</p>
<h2>The decline of newspapers</h2>
<p>A related trend is also underway in newspapers. The circulation of print media has radically declined. </p>
<p>In 1947, almost four metropolitan newspapers were sold for every ten Australians. By 2014, only one was sold for every 13 Australians. The newspaper penetration rate was thus less than one-fifth of what it had been in 1947. </p>
<p>Although newspaper sales lagged behind population growth for decades, it is only in the 21st century that individual titles have declined in absolute terms. And their circulation now is very much tied to an older demographic.</p>
<p>A similar decline has also been evident in Britain, especially among the tabloids. The biggest-selling newspaper, Rupert Murdoch’s Sun, now only sells just over one-third of the copies it sold at its peak. </p>
<p>Instead of seeking to appeal to new audiences, the tabloids’ strategy seems to have been to double-down on appealing to their core demographic by becoming ever more aggressive. But sometimes the old attack dogs still have some bite. </p>
<p>There was a strong overlap between the tabloid readership and those who voted for Brexit. As Katrin Bennhold <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/02/world/europe/london-tabloids-brexit.html">wrote in The New York Times</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Their readers, many of them over 50, working class and outside London, look strikingly like the voters who were crucial to the outcome of last year’s referendum on membership in the European Union.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>On the night of the referendum, Tony Gallagher, the editor of The Sun, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jun/24/mail-sun-uk-brexit-newspapers">texted a Guardian journalist</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>So much for the waning power of the print media.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Tabloid newspapers, commercial talk radio and Fox News all thrive on a continuous diet of confected outrage. The targets are ever-changing but endless – elites, political correctness, reverse racism, terrorist dangers, soft treatment of criminals, and so on. </p>
<p>In March 2016, the headline story in The Daily Telegraph <a href="http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/invasion-of-the-history-rewriters/news-story/d18774ad2553314898261298cef4e17d">stated that</a> University of NSW students had been told to refer to Australia as having been “invaded”. The paper had discovered the university’s “Diversity Toolkit”, a guide to suggested language on some aspects of Australian history. It consulted historian Keith Windschuttle and a fellow from the Institute of Public Affairs, who said the guidelines suffocated “the free flow of ideas”.</p>
<p>That morning, several radio commentators joined in the denunciation of the university. Kyle Sandilands, for example, denounced the university’s “bullshit” and the “wankers who were trying to rewrite history”.</p>
<p>It transpired that the guidelines, which are not obligatory, had been in place for four years and had provoked no complaints. What, then, made them so newsworthy? It is a typical “culture war” story. The topic had no substantial importance, did not touch its readers’ immediate lives, but fitted the preferred narrative of ‘political correctness’ running against traditional views. </p>
<p>Culture wars are appealing to sectarian journalism because they offer easy copy with few demands on gathering and verifying evidence. They provide easy ammunition for the risk-free expression of outrage. </p>
<p>Insults to patriotism are a common target. During the EU referendum, The Sun had a union jack-draped front cover urging its readers to “BeLEAVE in Britain”.</p>
<p>One annual story pursued by Fox News is the “war on Christmas”. In December 2010, Fox reported that an elementary school in Florida had banned “traditional Christmas colours”. Several programs covered the story, but no-one called the school district – the entire story was a lie; all the bluster and outrage had no basis.</p>
<p>In December 2012, The O’Reilly Factor devoted more than three times as much airtime to the “war on Christmas” than it did to actual wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and Gaza.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178389/original/file-20170717-14296-gctmrg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178389/original/file-20170717-14296-gctmrg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178389/original/file-20170717-14296-gctmrg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178389/original/file-20170717-14296-gctmrg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178389/original/file-20170717-14296-gctmrg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178389/original/file-20170717-14296-gctmrg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178389/original/file-20170717-14296-gctmrg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">There was a strong overlap between the newspaper readership and those who voted for Brexit.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Peter Nicholls</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Generational politics</h2>
<p>One key in the rise of restorationist sentiments is the shift in generational politics. </p>
<p>The ageing society produces an ageing electorate, so that older voters are proportionally more important. </p>
<p>No generation is politically homogenous. While older voters have always tended to be more politically conservative, contrast those reaching retirement now compared with those doing so in the 1960s and ’70s. That generation had lived through an economic depression and a world war followed by what the economic historian Angus Maddison said was the greatest period of economic growth in world history, from the late 1940s to 1973. </p>
<p>And the benefits of affluence led to a tangible improvement in the quality of life. More people owned their own home than ever before. They were the first generation in which the benefits of having a car, a washing machine and a TV were widely diffused. They had a broadly optimistic view of social progress and were confident about their children’s prospects.</p>
<p>Although the last generation has also been one of substantial economic growth and, overall, living standards have risen, it has also been a time of more economic insecurity and displacement as well as growing inequality. The major “victims’ of many of these changes have been the younger generation, who face, for example, much higher housing and childcare costs.</p>
<p>But in many ways it seems that it is the older generation that has become more pessimistic. Perhaps it is the constancy of change, the questioning of old certainties, and a seemingly much more unpredictable world that has induced in some of them a cultural fatigue.</p>
<p><a href="http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/VUCA-volatility-uncertainty-complexity-and-ambiguity">VUCA</a> is an acronym coined by the US military in the 1990s standing for Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity, to capture the radical unpredictability of the contemporary world. VUCA has now also become part of management jargon to highlight how the need for rapid response to unforeseen developments brings a new urgency to organisational responses. </p>
<p>But have the media and our political processes adapted to a VUCA world? We have a news media that technologically has global reach, but where the news values are still often very parochial. A world that is genuinely complex and difficult seems even more threatening and inexplicable by how it is covered in the news.</p>
<p>We have political controversies guided by the narrow logic of party advantage, in a barren spectacle that alienates many. Many citizens find it tempting to disengage. </p>
<p>Surely, things were easier in the past.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>You can read other essays from Griffith Review’s latest edition <a href="https://griffithreview.com/editions/perils-of-populism/">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/80880/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rodney Tiffen 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>
There has been much attention paid to the widespread resurgence of populism. Restorationism in Western democracies is a subset of this.
Rodney Tiffen, Emeritus Professor, Department of Government and International Relations, University of Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/79188
2017-06-19T06:45:23Z
2017-06-19T06:45:23Z
Science can be beautiful, but please don’t call it basic
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173271/original/file-20170611-18375-1iz6f8r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Fishing boats docked at Hobart, Tasmania </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/rmonty119/17076317322/in/photolist-SbseoK-pBysTy-UvXqdE-ShpfbQ-9NiUux-7ZmkR3-aqy7u1-7Wea9c-5hzUUi-psaFmb-9d1k9v-i3ivAf-9dfoVP-BKmNYC-p3a8Uu-pk719K-9dccng-ecrhyb-7ESAA3-6mJdBc-dFzKJa-7AUXhe-MK7sw-9dfoQ4-74U3ZX-aT8x48-aWHfMT-acPKqX-MK7dj-AQftHv-BEnQsT-Riy2LJ-vfzcqQ-aWHj76-eciPkJ-obA5au-ecdcDk-eckDEB-BKmQow-BC5pPb-5hEhzf-uekHz-MKeyv-Be9J9V-49W9Kj-85qiiW-7tppws-s1YAdb-NP3HqM-6mNoqf">rmonty119/flickr </a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This piece is republished with permission from <a href="https://griffithreview.com/editions/millennials-strike-back/">Millenials Strike Back</a>, the 56th edition of Griffith Review in which Generation Y writers address the issues that define and concern them.</em></p>
<p><em>The following is an extract taken from <a href="https://griffithreview.com/articles/modern-science-modern-life-beautiful-process-barriers-to-effective-research/">Modern Science, Modern Life</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Research underpinning fundamental scientific concepts or mechanisms of disease is referred to as “basic science”. </p>
<p>I detest the term. </p>
<p>It conjures up images of mundane, uninteresting, simple lab work, but this is rarely the case. No two days are the same. </p>
<p>And more importantly, basic science provides the crucial foundations for research pathways and is essential for identifying opportunities for innovation. </p>
<p>Perhaps it should be called discovery science? You can’t always see the potential applications for basic research; indeed, the applications may not even exist in our lifetime. Isaac Newton surely did not anticipate his universal law of gravitation being involved in the implementation of satellite technology.</p>
<h2>Funding scientific research</h2>
<p>Unfortunately, basic science remains one of the least attractive kinds of science to fund, especially in Australia. Our country is lagging behind as a result. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"855574811258400768"}"></div></p>
<p>Australia is ranked 19th overall on the <a href="https://www.globalinnovationindex.org/gii-2016-report#">Global Innovation Index</a> and just 73rd for “<a href="https://www.globalinnovationindex.org/analysis-indicator">innovation efficiency</a>”, which compares how much research input, across all fields, is turned into commercial output. </p>
<p>I wonder how much better we’d do if our National Health and Medical Research Council funded more than the <a href="https://www.nhmrc.gov.au/grants-funding/outcomes-funding-rounds">current 18%</a> of submitted research proposals. Of this funding, basic science receives proportionately <a href="https://www.nhmrc.gov.au/grants-funding/research-funding-statistics-and-data">little</a>. </p>
<p>While investing in science that has more obvious and direct commercial outputs appears to make more economic sense than investing in basic science, you can’t take market logic and apply it to science. Some of its greatest achievements began with an accidental discovery or an unexpected result. This is the beauty of science.</p>
<p>For example, the discovery that stomach ulcers were caused by a bacterium called <em>Helicobacter pylori</em> was, in part, a beautiful accident. Australian Nobel laureates <a href="http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2005/press.html">Barry Marshall and Robin Warren</a> stumbled across the existence of this bacteria after their lab technician forgot to discard the experiment before the Easter holiday period. </p>
<p>Marshall and Warren wanted to confirm their observations that bacteria were present in the location of the stomach ulcer, so they had been collecting samples from people with diagnosed ulcers. The lab technician had seeded those samples onto a culture plate with a nutritious jelly and left them to grow for two days (as per standard bacterium-growing protocols). Nothing grew, and they didn’t find the evidence they were hoping for. </p>
<p>As it turns out, leaving them in the incubator for five days was key. It was the necessary step they didn’t know was missing.</p>
<h2>Measuring value</h2>
<p>The pressure to perform and publish also stifles the research landscape. A scientist’s worth is apparently quantifiable. We are judged on the volume and impact of our work.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"765938749016453121"}"></div></p>
<p>The number of papers we write and the number of times those papers are cited are turned into a single number: an <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/102/46/16569.abstract">h-index</a>. Technical skills, teaching and mentoring aptitude, passion, and experimental rigor don’t feature in the metrics. Some of the most brilliant scientists I have encountered exhibit all of these qualities, but do not have glowing h-indices to show for it.</p>
<p>Scientists and funding bodies generally acknowledge that the h-index is imperfect; however, the score still carries considerable weight, and can be key in deciding funding success, fellowships, promotions and, ultimately, a person’s ability to continue being a scientist. </p>
<p>In my eyes, this definition of success is wrong. A scientist with a high h-index, but who performs poor-quality research, does not embody success. Another problem is that scientific journals have an aversion to publishing negative results or minor findings, which, in turn, impacts researchers’ h-indices. A scientist who has spent years on an experiment that fails to yield a positive result may not have the opportunity to publish their work because journals want a juicy story: a new pathway discovered, a paradigm shift, something done with flashy new technology, or a potential cure. </p>
<p>This can come at a huge cost when the perceived value of the headline usurps the quality of the data or its interpretation, and, after many failed attempts at replication, the data gets retracted. This pressure on scientists to report significant results, especially unusual or breakthrough findings, in turn exposes the research itself to bias.</p>
<h2>Public views of science</h2>
<p>The bias in scientific reporting also flows on to the public. <a href="https://theconversation.com/essays-on-health-reporting-medical-news-is-too-important-to-mess-up-68920?sr=10">Journalists</a> trawl academic journals for articles they can turn into splashy headlines and too often report half-truths, premature assumptions, and over-exaggerated extrapolations of data. </p>
<p>According to the media, there’s a new “treatment” reported for <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-causes-alzheimers-disease-what-we-know-dont-know-and-suspect-75847">Alzheimer’s Disease</a> every month. In reality, there is still no cure for Alzheimer’s Disease in humans.</p>
<p>Furthermore, if an experiment doesn’t have a positive result and therefore is not published, others are likely to waste time, money and resources repeating that work in the future. However, scientists are nothing if not problem solvers and pushed back against this tendency in recent years. For example, the journal PLOS ONE started a collection for all negative, null and inconclusive results, aptly titled <a href="http://collections.plos.org/missing-pieces">The Missing Pieces</a>. </p>
<p>It is refreshing to see that the requirement for significant results is no longer the only path to publishing research, but there’s still a long way to go.</p>
<h2>A lonely road</h2>
<p>A year ago, I was treading a very lonely path through science. </p>
<p>There were no funds for me to research full time in Hobart and I wasn’t able to move away for similar work elsewhere for family reasons. Instead I was fortunate to be able to do another job that I love: I taught full-time at a university while caring for my parents, and spent almost two years doing neuroscience research for free. You could say that I made it hard for myself, but I was determined.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173243/original/file-20170610-4774-bqocfi.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173243/original/file-20170610-4774-bqocfi.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173243/original/file-20170610-4774-bqocfi.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173243/original/file-20170610-4774-bqocfi.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173243/original/file-20170610-4774-bqocfi.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173243/original/file-20170610-4774-bqocfi.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173243/original/file-20170610-4774-bqocfi.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173243/original/file-20170610-4774-bqocfi.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Observing peripheral nerve cells, or neurons, under the microscope.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source"> Lila Landowski</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I received a small grant for the materials necessary to complete the work. A portion of the grant was intended as a stipend; however, with the increasing cost of materials, I forfeited this to buy what I needed to perform what I saw as essential research. </p>
<p>I was also the only scientist working on peripheral nerves – in this case, nerves in the skin – in the institute’s laboratory at the time. I couldn’t benefit from collective knowledge, nor could I share the workload. Most weeks I worked around 80 hours, and often more. I didn’t resent this because I thought it was what I needed to do to keep up in the industry, but I later discovered that my efforts had instead disadvantaged my research career: taking time off work to be a carer or to have a child would have been accounted for in my research profile as a “career break”. </p>
<p>Oblivious to this, I’d tried to do it all while the research clock kept ticking and my h-index was diluted. I could have easily dropped off the radar.</p>
<p>I had been fighting so hard for the career I love, but the seemingly endless setbacks left me heartbroken and demoralised. I lamented on social media:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If only we, as scientists, could be judged on our passion and enthusiasm, our zest for driving new lines of inquiry, on our ability to ask the challenging questions, and for our genuine scientific skills.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Science is supremely beautiful, but I know it can be brutal and unforgiving if you stray from the well-worn pathways. Many people struggle, not fortunate enough to secure a job, a grant or a mentor to keep their passion alive. The issues with research practice and publication can be infuriating, particularly when the path you want to follow hasn’t been paved yet.</p>
<p>I am one of the lucky ones. My supervisor <a href="http://www.utas.edu.au/profiles/staff/health/david-howells">Professor Howells</a> is a true advocate for junior researchers and is both my hero and my mentor. Rather than beating my own passage through the challenges of research, we face them as a team. </p>
<p>And it made all the difference: I’ve secured considerable funds to keep my research work going for the next three years. It’s safe to say that my heart is filled with hope.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/p/BDUt9J8I31Z","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/79188/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dr Lila Landowski receives research funding from the Royal Hobart Hospital Research Foundation and The Mason Foundation, and her salary is funded by a National Health and Medical Research Council grant.</span></em></p>
Science is supremely beautiful, but can also be brutal and unforgiving if you stray from the well-worn pathways.
Lila Landowski, Neuroscientist, University of Tasmania
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/75839
2017-05-07T19:37:43Z
2017-05-07T19:37:43Z
Off the plan: shelter, the future and the problems in between
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167639/original/file-20170503-4113-1xqmwh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Are the millennials doomed to be nomads, locked out of the home-ownership market forever?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/24952851@N00/4648198581">sharon_k/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This piece is republished with permission from <a href="https://griffithreview.com/editions/millennials-strike-back/">Millennials Strike Back</a>, the 56th edition of Griffith Review. Selected pieces consist of extracts or long reads in which Generation Y writers consider the issues that define and concern them.</em> </p>
<hr>
<p>It’s early 2017, and the first lists of the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/2017/01/23/sydney-has-the-second-most-unaffordable-housing-in-the-world/">most unaffordable housing in the world</a> have dropped. Oh boy. I’ve been waiting for this since the great <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-smashed-avo-debate-misses-inequality-within-generations-70475">smashed-avocado-versus-home-deposit showdown</a> of 2016. It’s gratifying. There’s my current city, Melbourne, holding sixth place for third year running. Go! </p>
<p>And there’s my old city, Sydney, right up at number two. Other Australian capitals might not make the top ten but they are each awarded a rank of “severely unaffordable”. </p>
<p>Reading lists like this gives me a shot of serotonin straight to the soul. There it is now: pleasant smug! Validation! I feel like I will never be able to afford a home because I will never be able to afford a home. It’s not millennial whinging. There is data. There are studies; lists.</p>
<p>In Hong Kong, the city that has topped the lists for as long as I’ve been reading them, a think-tank alleged that it would take a couple under 35 14-and-a-half years to save enough for a deposit on a small apartment. The government, <a href="http://www.scmp.com/article/1648543/build-youth-hostels-young-people-who-cant-afford-homes-says-hong-kong-think-tank">the think-tank advised</a>, should get out in front of the crisis and build “hostels” for young people to live in while they save. </p>
<p>It’s an evocative real-estate dystopia: rows of young people prostrate in bunks, exhausted, saving every cent of their income for their own tiny box in which to teeter on the edge of one of the most densely populated islands on earth. </p>
<p>I can close my eyes and picture myself there: earplugs and herbal sleeping tablets lined up beside my bunk where I lie reading <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jul/28/william-gibson-neuromancer-cyberpunk-books">William Gibson’s Neuromancer</a> with a torch, before drifting off to dream of warehouse conversions.</p>
<p>At its most basic level, real estate is code for the amount of private space you can draw around your body. Owning a home also has deep cultural and economic connotations. A home owner is a member of a street, a community. They are a successful adult human. They own a piece of the pie, the dream.</p>
<h2>Desperation behind the dream</h2>
<p>In the era of late capitalism, the American dream throws around words like liberty and freedom and insists that, in America, a person who works hard can achieve anything. The home emerges as a site in which to exercise those freedoms. </p>
<p>In Australia, we have a more recent and explicit version. Our great Australian dream ditches the appeal to higher values and insists that hard work and real estate are essential for a good life. It goes so far as to predicate success and happiness on a steadily appreciating quarter-acre block with a brick veneer on top.</p>
<p>Every Australian of my parents’ generation seems to have a story about a terrace home with water glimpses they almost bought for 20 grand and a hand job. These stories – monotonous, formally identical with those of lottery tickets lost or found – bubble up with the warm beer at intergenerational social events.</p>
<p>They sour the coleslaw and cause sausage chunks to stick in the throat. “Did I tell you about the three-bedroom terrace on the harbour that your mother and I…” says Dad, again. I plug my ears with indignation.</p>
<p>Some people his age bought those houses and are now wealthy. In Australia, real-estate investment is <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-housing-boom-is-remaking-australias-social-class-structure-66976">class consolidation</a>. Being locked out of the house market is, for middle-class young people, like having the privileges your status implied suspended indefinitely. Stamped with some official line:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The middle class is currently under review. Check back later.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In 2014, Australia’s federal treasurer stated, like a dullard commenter on an online op-ed, that “<a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-06-09/joe-hockey-accused-of-insensitivity-over-sydney-house-prices/6532630">if housing was unaffordable, no-one would be buying it</a>”. He advised entitled young people that the first step to buying a house is “getting a good job that pays good money”. </p>
<p>Right. Yep. Got it. I’ll make a list of great advice I’ve been given regarding home ownership and put this pearl right up next to “move somewhere cheaper” and “don’t eat out”.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/F_eQJ6VULNs?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Then-treasurer Joe Hockey says if housing was unaffordable no one would be buying it.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In Australia, as in many parts of the world, population growth has led to housing shortages and <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-housing-issues-should-the-budget-tackle-this-is-what-our-experts-say-73751">high purchase and rental costs</a>. Unsustainable sprawl creeps from the perimeters of capital cities into the scrub and farmland beyond. </p>
<p>We suffer from a lack of housing diversity: four-bedroom McMansions are out of reach for lower-income families; tiny apartments in toaster buildings are suitable only for students, singles and short stayers. Inner-city real estate is unaffordable; outer-suburban life isolated, unless you happen to be one in a growing number with multiple families in apartments <a href="https://theconversation.com/can-lower-income-buyers-build-housing-wealth-too-18418">on the outskirts of the city</a>, in which case your troubles are bigger than mine.</p>
<p>Unsurprisingly, homelessness is on the rise in cities, and yet the view that the fault for this lies with the individual still holds prominence. In Melbourne in January 2017, while the mayor reportedly began talks about the <a href="https://theconversation.com/ban-on-sleeping-rough-does-nothing-to-fix-the-problems-of-homelessness-71630">forced removal of the homeless</a>, the Victoria Police chief commissioner <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/melbourne-cbd-rough-sleepers-are-pretending-to-be-homeless-victorias-top-cop-graham-ashton-20170119-gtune7.html">insisted</a> that the people who are sleeping rough are not homeless at all but “choosing to camp” because “there’s more people to shake down for money” in the summer, when the tennis is on. </p>
<p>And in winter, the <a href="https://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwj8st7rttLTAhXCJpQKHXE-Dj8QFgglMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.heraldsun.com.au%2Fnews%2Fvictoria%2Frough-sleepers-say-melbourne-best-city-in-australia-for-homeless%2Fnews-story%2Fd805e02f31e5016e29652eedae010efa&usg=AFQjCNHgzLSduddGcA_uduzWQeSW-2kWhA">Herald Sun insisted</a> that homeless freeloaders were flocking to Melbourne for “free food, clothes, showers and dental treatment”.</p>
<p>Housing unaffordability is <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-housing-affordability-crisis-in-regional-australia-yes-and-heres-why-71808">not limited to capital cities</a>. Australia also achieves a global ranking of “severely unaffordable” for areas outside these cities: Wingecarribee and Tweed Heads in NSW, the Gold Coast and the Sunshine Coast in Queensland are all brightly decorated. In 2015, the median price for a house in the Bendigo suburb of Ascot <a href="http://www.news.com.au/national/tasmania/regional-centres-beyond-big-capitals-have-had-very-good-year/news-story/89fa240b53805741fd25c39e6e20d27d">rose 31%</a>. </p>
<p>And there are other problems in the regional centres too. A friend recently came back to the city from a desert town where she had been living for more than seven years. She wanted to reconnect with city life, needed the infrastructure that was there, but also, at 35, she wanted to settle in her desert home but fracking is affecting the groundwater. “I just can’t afford to buy a house in a city that will have no drinking water in five years,” she said.</p>
<p>She wasn’t referring to her bank account. Sometimes buying a piece of land brings a whole new insecurity. Officially declared “affordable” places like Karratha, Port Hedland and Kalgoorlie in Western Australia, and Gladstone in Queensland, <a href="https://theconversation.com/housing-still-out-of-reach-for-many-even-as-rents-fall-in-post-boom-western-australia-76461">quake in the aftershock of the mining boom</a>. </p>
<p>What kinds of investments were these places before, and then after their minerals were extracted from the area? What kinds of homes are they now?</p>
<h2>Seeking escape from rental</h2>
<p>Increasingly, we rent our homes. As a renter, your life is intensely scrutinised and regulated. As a landlord, not so much. Rent is unregulated, expensive and <a href="https://theconversation.com/rental-insecurity-why-fixed-long-term-leases-arent-the-answer-73114">getting more so</a>. A Harvard University-run study <a href="http://time.com/4042690/average-rents-high-america/">predicts</a> that by 2025, 15 million North American households will spend more than half their income on rent. </p>
<p>My own experience as a renter is of begging and hustling for small repairs, being treated as a suspect and an enemy by the people I pay a third of my income to, and finally, inevitably, being booted out unceremoniously when the market looks tasty. Sometimes it’s humiliating. When I got the keys to my first rental in Melbourne, there was a shrivelled roast chicken in the oven. </p>
<p>Sometimes you have to do low-level crime. We all know that bidding on rental properties is technically illegal, but we also need a place to live and will pay whatever we can. Above all, the renter must treat the real estate agent like a high-ranking government official. I wear high heels when house hunting, I carry a smart black folio full of documentation. I lick arse and smile “thank you”.</p>
<p>It’s unsurprising then that the dream endures. To have your own space. To be free of the rent grind. To put nails in the wall and plant a garden. To have a pet. These are seductive adult fantasies we have been training for since we were children playing house.</p>
<p>Despite my lack of a stable income, I have been obsessively monitoring the real-estate websites for years, typing in search words like wishes on stars. I was surprised one morning when I discovered that my bank – lack of stable income and infamy of the sub-prime mortgage crisis notwithstanding – was more than happy to pre-approve me for a home loan. </p>
<p>My jaw dropped in disbelief when the hold music cut out and the kind young man on the other end of the phone line said: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Good news, Miss Doyle: we can pre-approve a loan of $330,000. You can go and start bidding today!</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It was a Saturday. I was hungover. Melancholic. Looking for distraction from the adult fantasies of others being beamed at me via my Facebook feed. I had been despondently browsing real-estate sites and called the bank on a whim. I flushed with a strange pride when the operator evaluated and praised my “good financial conduct”. </p>
<p>He was not concerned with my smattering of casual employment. He could see all the way back to the school banking program, to those dollar-coin deposits. Back then, I used a bank-supplied plastic moneybox. It was a space alien, squat, not grey but orange, descended from far-flung intergalactic civilisation to recruit six-year-old terrestrial banking customers.</p>
<p>The man in the call centre could follow my financial life story from these coerced beginnings all the way to the overcautious adult I had become. He could see, at a glance, the ten-dollar bottles of red, the vast sums spent on rent and my tricky method of never letting my credit card debt exceed my savings, carefully balancing the two so that I have both the illusion of thrift, and of largesse. </p>
<p>He could see enough to surmise that I’m the kind of gal who could service a fat loan. Doesn’t that sound dirty? Service my fat loan.</p>
<p>Besides, what’s the worst that could happen? I take a third job to meet my repayments and avoid homelessness? I’m forced to sell early and the bank takes the property price along with my repayments? I give up one set of illusions about my freedom to feed another? I would merely be joining the vast majority of my peers who carry debts they cannot pay down.</p>
<h2>Blowing the budget at the auction</h2>
<p>Full of adrenaline and aspiration, I dragged my partner to an auction.</p>
<p>“Welcome to Edgewater Towers,” declared a framed print advertisement from the 1960s. “Fabulous Manhattan living comes to Melbourne.” The print hung strategically in the lobby of what must have been one of the first high-rise housing developments in inner-suburban Melbourne. </p>
<p>I had just finished watching the final season of Mad Men. To me, it was a pop-cultural omen. The apartment for sale – three conservatively valued rooms with views of a rollercoaster – had shag carpet on the wall. In my mind, I was already rubbing up against it singing “Zou bisou bisou”.</p>
<p>A small crowd squeezed into the lounge room-cum-kitchen.</p>
<p>“I think you should buy it,” my sweetheart whispered.</p>
<p>“I don’t even know how to bid.”</p>
<p>“Do you want me to do the bidding?”</p>
<p>Neither of us mentioned how the last home-ownership conversation we had involved living on a boat. All at once we were ready for a new life. We were ready to make our own great Australian dream come true.</p>
<p>The auctioneer opened the bidding at a quarter-of-a-million dollars.</p>
<p>My sweetheart squeezed my hand. “Should I?”</p>
<p>I felt the sweaty pressure on my hand. Ignored the expectant look.</p>
<p>“$450,000,” said a voice from the back.</p>
<p>Annnd, we’re out.</p>
<p>Our hands slackened. We giggled foolishly as the rollercoaster rattled and crashed like nothing you would find in Manhattan. I suddenly remembered that in 1979 it came right off those brittle wooden rails and crashed into playground lore forever. </p>
<p>Perhaps someone stood in this very apartment and watched it splinter and fall, listening to the screams, unable to finish their aperitif. That person probably bought the joint for 20 grand and a hand job.</p>
<p>“Five hundred thousand.”</p>
<p>A gasp went up.</p>
<p>I looked around at the auction contenders. A woman with a flash handbag and a severe hairstyle, gripping a black folder, refusing to smile at her eager 20-ish daughter. A 50-something couple in his-and-hers boat shoes. A young woman who, when the auctioneer goaded her by suggesting another bid might secure a beach lifestyle in time for summer, admitted she “already owns one in this building”.</p>
<p>“Even better – buy this for a higher price and your own goes up in value,” said the auctioneer. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is one smart investor.”</p>
<p>Finally, a couple in their late 30s secured the place. She looked pregnant. He looked shaken. They may just have gone $200,000 over budget but you have to follow the dream.</p>
<h2>All in it together</h2>
<p>Some young adults are taking ingenious routes to secure their piece of the dream. </p>
<p>My friend Liza, her two sisters, their parents, partners and children all went in on the mortgage on a huge stucco palace in a rapidly gentrifying inner-western suburb of Sydney. The home, with its columns, fancy brickwork and outdoor pizza oven, was probably built by a successful Italian family some time during the disco era.</p>
<p>Liza’s family have split the house into multiple apartments. They all live together, sharing babysitting duties and gardening in a way that is sometimes utopic and sometimes smothering.</p>
<p>“There are downsides,” she says. “Like, I look out my window and there’s my whole family standing there. I don’t really get the option to not engage. It can be hard to establish boundaries. But the pros outweigh the cons for sure.”</p>
<p>“Were you into it from the start?” I say.</p>
<p>“I was pregnant. I was also alone. It was kind of a case of having a plan versus having no plan, you know?”</p>
<p>I do know.</p>
<p>“I couldn’t afford to buy, or even rent anything on my own. At least not anywhere I would want to live. I probably would have brought up Henry-Lee in a share house rather than move out to the middle of nowhere,” she pauses. “That probably sounds really bourgie.”</p>
<p>I understand this cringing feeling. There is something yuck about middle-class people in Australia whining about housing, insisting on living in the suburbs we like to socialise and work in. </p>
<p>There is something yuck, too, about newspapers insisting that Australian children need backyards and that apartment living is totally unsuitable for families. But the idea of Liza and her child in an apartment hours from her friends and family, her work and community makes me anxious.</p>
<p>“I was just thinking the other day how lucky all our kids are. They get their own space, but there are always other kids around to play with. Plus my sisters and I help each other with the domestic stuff, and we all chip in for a cleaner,’ she says, washing that feeling away.</p>
<p>Multi-generational households are <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-adult-children-stay-at-home-looking-beyond-the-myths-of-kidults-kippers-and-gestaters-68931">becoming more popular</a> globally. In 2012, The Independent <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/beating-the-housing-shortage-one-home-three-generations-7626973.html">reported</a> there were more than 500,000 households containing three generations or more in the UK. They predicted another 50,000 to be added by 2019.</p>
<p>Arrangements like Liza’s are not wholly innovative, of course, but hark back to other places and times. The "nuclear family” is, tellingly, a term that came to prominence during the postwar prosperity my parents came of age in.</p>
<p>It’s all a matter of spin, though. Inner-urban millennials with the resources and skills to turn the shed into a tiny house can be celebrated for their ingenuity and ethics. Well-heeled siblings who pull together to buy together are adapting to a cut-throat market. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, people living in public housing, squats or on the street are treated with the disdain our culture reserves for the poor. And adults who live with their parents for too long are lambasted as “<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-adult-children-stay-at-home-looking-beyond-the-myths-of-kidults-kippers-and-gestaters-68931">kidults</a>”.</p>
<p>In Japan they are dubbed the <em>parasaito shinguru</em>, “parasite singles”, and scapegoated for social problems ranging from the ageing population to the recession. In the US, they are “boomerang children”, because when you throw them out they come right back to you. In Italy, a cabinet minister described adults who live with their parents as <em>bamboccioni</em>, translated variously as “big babies” or “big dummy boys”.</p>
<p>At 33, Alex is a <em>bamboccione</em> of the Melbourne suburbs, though his mother would never use that term. He is a conscientious person. I met him singing in a community choir, to give you an idea. I did not know then, as we reached for Justin Timberlake harmonies, that Alex was still living his in his parent’s brick home on a Ramsay-Street-from-Neighbours-esque cul-de-sac along with his two younger brothers and, at various other times, his older sisters and their partners.</p>
<p>He explains:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I did move out for a little while. The rent was huge, and the house was cramped and kind of a dump. At some point I had to come home for financial reasons and then I just stayed. I mean, it’s really nice out here.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Alex shows me his bungalow at the edge of an extensive and neatly trimmed lawn. He has a bed that looks too short for him, an old lamp and a La-Z-Boy recliner. There are books piled up in neat stacks. He has tacked a couple of newspaper prints to the wall above an old upright piano. It could be the room of a studious teenager.</p>
<p>“I don’t know if I’m, you know, infantilised, because my mum is just over there,” he laughs, pointing to the big house behind us. ‘I suppose it took me a long time to find myself. I was in my late 20s before I started to understand who I was and what I wanted, or what I didn’t want, which is sometimes an easier place to start.“</p>
<p>Alex doesn’t want the same things as me. He doesn’t want to work full-time. He doesn’t want kids. He doesn’t want to pay rent. He embodies every reason the media exploits in labelling my generation as irresponsible kidults. I ask Alex what he thinks about that and he laughs.</p>
<p>"I think ‘fuck off’! I have been responsible since I was 17. I just happen to live at home because that way I can save. And because I like it here. My brothers are here too. We all get along. We look after each other.”</p>
<p>In the big house, Alex introduces me to his family for the first time. His mother, Kathy, gives me a broad, warm hug. She has a wonderful smile. There’s a cheese platter. There’s champagne with strawberries and some kind of flower in the bottom of the glass. </p>
<p>It’s warm and gorgeous here. Like a TV family. A window above the dining table looks onto a reserve where neighbourhood dogs chase sticks and roll jubilantly in the cut grass. A soccer ball bounces against a fence.</p>
<p>“I told my neighbours you were coming around and they said to send you over to them,” says the matriarch. “No-one can get rid of their kids round here.”</p>
<p>A heavily pregnant daughter and her partner pick at a plate of crudités.</p>
<p>One by one, sons emerged. Healthy, suntanned men. They work together as electricians and their new vans are parked on the front lawn. One just returned from a hiking trip with his buddy.</p>
<p>“Do you think you will ever move out?” I ask the youngest.</p>
<p>“I think Mum might be giving me a nudge,” he smiles, cutting another piece of smoked gouda.</p>
<p>Kathy’s face contracts into a happy wince.</p>
<p>“You should get a sense of it,” she says.</p>
<p>I get the feeling that in this family moving out is an important experience, like travelling. Something you can always come home from.</p>
<p>We plate up four kinds of barbecue and switch from champagne to shiraz. I joke about wanting to move in too and Kathy laughs, pleased. Then her face settles into a look of utter seriousness.</p>
<p>“You are always welcome.”</p>
<p>She tells me about how she was shipped off to boarding school from the farm and never went back. After high school, she trained as a nurse, living in dormitories, guarded by nuns until she and some friends could afford to rent their own house.</p>
<p>“It was all so much fun!” she said. “But these are different times.”</p>
<p>Kathy graduated from nursing school into marriage and moved from that house into this one. I don’t covet this life, of course. It feels so far away from my reality. When, at 11pm, I start to say goodbyes, Kathy looks hurt.</p>
<p>“Do you have to leave?” she says.</p>
<p>I wish I didn’t. If this was my family, I might get myself another wine, another bowl of ice-cream and nap on the couch in front of the tennis. Though I also might not. I was out of home at 17, aching for life to start. </p>
<p>At that age adulthood meant independence; it’s only now that I see it also means connection. How do you find this sense of permanence and community when the most pragmatic part of you life – your home and neighbourhood – is leased to you on a 12-month basis?</p>
<h2>Taking the communal route</h2>
<p>Seeking my own alternatives, I take off early one Sunday in December and drive east to the oldest intentional community in Victoria. I found out about the open day on the community website. </p>
<p>There is a manifesto there, which talks about the isolation of the suburban nuclear family. It talks about pollution, crowding, unaffordable rent, lack of public infrastructure and loss of community. It was written in the ’70s, but still resonates today.</p>
<p>On arrival, I find I am not the only millennial this picture of boomer-era radicalism appeals to. Frankie, a 30-year-old from the affluent bayside suburbs of Melbourne, is commune shopping. She has known “since high school” that she wanted a different kind of living arrangement. She’s single, polyamorous, optimistic and scathing of nuclear families and suburban life. </p>
<p>Perhaps “scathing” is too strong a word. Her opinions are all tempered with careful university-learnt defensiveness that reminds me of interviews with Lena Dunham. She prefaces every opinion with disclaimers like, “I hear what you are saying and I totally respect that but…”</p>
<p>We wander around the grounds of the commune with three residents: John, Emma and Ethan, whose ages range from mid-40s to 60s. Clusters of houses, organised by personality and lifestyle, are dotted in clearings in the bush. One cluster belongs to young families with kids, another to single people in their midlife, still another to retirees.</p>
<p>“This is the best cluster,” declares Ethan, waving his hand across a small glen like a wry lord. “For this is where I live.”</p>
<p>He shows us the mudbrick and straw-bale homes favoured by the community members. They remind me of the house I was born in, an architecture of mid-century optimism. The houses ostensibly share a garden but they are separate dwellings. No commune members toil there à la the paintings of socialist realism. Frankie looks disappointed.</p>
<p>“Do you have much time all together?” she asks.</p>
<p>The communalists exchange searching looks.</p>
<p>“I think we had a thing last Christmas?”</p>
<p>Frankie looks destroyed.</p>
<p>“At the beginning all we did was build. We kept saying to one another, won’t it be great when the building is done so we can get down to community building? What we didn’t realise was that working hard together like that was the community,” says John, summing up the plight of all utopians: once you build your paradise, you have to live in it.</p>
<p>We women hang back as the tour continues. We bash our way through the scrub and casually get to the core of each other’s lives, with the skilled precision possessed by most female outsiders. </p>
<p>Frankie, so earnest she sears my corneas, reminds me of Julianne Moore’s character in the movie Safe with her sensitivity to city toxins and her yearning to be sucked into a pristine bubble. Emma, on the other hand, is pragmatic, tempering her New Age affirmations (“you have to be the change you want to see in the world”) with some refreshing frankness. She tells me, confidentially:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I’m not one of these vagina worshippers. A lot of that menstrual moon goddess stuff goes on up here but you can leave me right out of it, that’s for sure.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>If I lived here, we would be BFFs in no time.</p>
<p>“What’s your story?” Frankie asks me, breaking the morose silence.</p>
<p>I feel a flush of guilt. I know that I will probably write about this. I’m an exploiter! I want to say. A parasite! Don’t talk candidly with me.</p>
<p>But actually we three have a lot in common. I’m drawn to this kind of arrangement for similar reasons to Frankie and Emma: I want a community; I don’t want to work three jobs to service a city mortgage; I don’t want kids of my own but I like the idea of having them around, especially the teenagers. Emma is proud to have become a confidant for many young people here at difficult times. </p>
<p>I want long evenings talking politics, literature and floor plans while the possums scurry through the scrub and the dogs bark in the valley below. </p>
<p>And I’m an uncomfortable mass of contradictions, as they all are. I’m territorial but desperate for connection, like John, pragmatic yet idealistic like Emma, competitive and irreverent, like Ethan, 30 and searching for a satisfying life, like Frankie. Oh please love me, shelter me, have me at your collective table!</p>
<p>“I want to find out more about the alternatives,” I say instead.</p>
<p>Frankie nods enthusiastically.</p>
<p>A car pulls up to us, the occupants smiling broadly, sizing us up.</p>
<p>“Are any of you interested in the Deans’ place?” the driver asks.</p>
<p>“We’ll talk about that later,” John mutters.</p>
<p>It’s as though we’ve been suddenly and unceremoniously undressed. Ezmay tries to cover by making a joke about hawkers but it falls flat. The beast of real estate has run a sharp claw through the scrim of ideals. A tiny tractor moves a flock of sheep through a green square below us. Rows of olive trees stand to salty attention.</p>
<p>“So there are vacant houses for sale here?”</p>
<p>“Yes,” says John. “We have one that has been empty for almost five years. There was one family who were interested but the cluster has to vote unanimously in favour of them. The last buyers didn’t get the vote.”</p>
<p>“How much is it?”</p>
<p>John stalls. He talks about shares and full membership petitioning and how moving onto the commune is a process. He talks about the future and the past, and about the philosophy of the place.</p>
<p>Finally he gives us a number.</p>
<p>Annnd, I’m out.</p>
<h2>Building the Base</h2>
<p>Later, safely ensconced in the unintentionality of the city, I wonder what my generation’s model for intentional living would be? Are we too jaded and locked out for utopian aspirations?</p>
<p>Al doesn’t think so. I read about the 20-year-old “entrepreneur and change-maker” in an article on a real-estate website. Al believes in the power of our generation. He insists we are at a better moment in history than we think we are.</p>
<p>Currently, he is focusing his change-making drive on the way millennials arrange their lives. His newest business endeavour is Base, a “project which seeks to create and invest in spaces and experiences to cultivate communities, culture and personal growth”. </p>
<p>What this means is that Al has found a way to capitalise on both the need for young people to share space in an increasingly expensive rental market, and their need to feel as though their lives are making an impact in a time when activism and getting involved in the community are a matter of clicking “Share” on Facebook. </p>
<p>Al’s vision for Base is a “curated share house” for “nomadic change-makers”. Think of a cross between Big Brother and a commune in an inner-city warehouse. And all the locks on the doors will open with an iPhone app. That’s an important feature. Al repeats it twice.</p>
<p>The idea for Base came to him when he was doing the festival circuit, introducing crowds at Rainbow Serpent and Burning Man to his vision for “living onely”, that is, “coming together, alive”. In his TEDx Talk, he asks an audience of 14-year-olds:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>What if we could work together to create the abundance, the sustainability and the love that we truly are? We are a rainforest, the sun can be a shared vision … My mission is to become the mycorrhizal fungi that the trees use to communicate.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In my experience, share houses usually communicate via notes and suggestively placed cleaning products, but that is the past – the future is Base, abundant, onely, fungal.</p>
<p>On the phone, Al comes across as an ardent young man with a tick-like propensity for dropping nonsensical motivational platitudes. “You only see the wind when it causes a disturbance,” he tells me, as he multitasks, fielding my questions while driving to his next appointment. “That’s a quote I like to use.”</p>
<p>Al believes in the power of the internet. In sharing. He likes diagrams and permaculture. He took the idea for Base to an incubator, one that “incubates people rather than ideas”. He toured similar ventures in the US, then came back to Australia, looked for a corporate sponsor and began curating the Base applicants.</p>
<p>“They had to be hungry and driven. With a clear idea of where they are going. Being driven towards something. Or away from something.”</p>
<p>“We asked them, ‘If you had the wealth of Bill Gates would you drive it in a particular direction?’ We asked them their favourite colour, why they are wearing the shoes they are wearing. All these choices are important. You drive the car you drive for a reason.”</p>
<p>I swallow.</p>
<p>“We want to use the space as an incubator. Some of the profits will be to develop the space. But a portion will go into a hedge fund to invest in the ideas that come out of the space. The ideas that come out of Base will be a lot more heart-centred,” he says. “We want to create exponential impact … And residual impact.”</p>
<p>After a spate of press coverage (an article about Base went minor-viral in a look-at-this-douchebag kind of way), Al is making connections that are less about social change and more about real estate. If he can play his cards right, he’ll become a new kind of ideologically packaged pseudo-landlord, a real estate “curator”.</p>
<p>“We want to create a culture,” he insists, as though he was actually born and raised in an incubator and emerged just yesterday, sticky feathered and tweeting. “The culture can be seen as the wind, we want to create the wind. That’s just a little analogy I use.”</p>
<p>“Cool,” I reply. Because what else can you say?</p>
<p>It’s easy to rag on Al. He is, among other things, his very own real-estate dystopia. The one where young people are so desperate to control their space and make money from it to boot that they are willing to draw up minor cosmologies and enlist everything from ancient ritual to actuarial principles to make it seem meaningful.</p>
<p>But like all canny investors, he also has some insights into what is trending – in this case, the way that younger people live now, and will in the future. </p>
<p>Al insists that his generation (it’s my generation too, though I feel curmudgeonly beyond belief) are more nomadic and more connected, via the internet, and that living arrangements need to make space for this. </p>
<p>Base will have “nomad rooms” for short stays because the occupants might have “collaborators” across the world who they haven’t met in real life. Its occupancy will fluctuate, a continual flow of new ideas and perspectives filtering through the space, incubating everything, fungal and otherwise.</p>
<p>I’m fairly sure that Al has never read Neuromancer, with its evocation of youth in storage, renting their bodies and minds while they save money and energy through induced hibernation. I soon realise that for Al, sleeping, flesh and living-as-we-know-it are increasingly temporary burdens. </p>
<p>Al’s future is post-human, not in the Gibsonian sense but in the way anticipated by Ray Kurzweil, who insists that soon we will reach the singularity – a point where technology hits the exponential curve, nanobots self-replicate and we can saturate the universe with intelligence.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/1uIzS1uCOcE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Ray Kurzweil discusses the coming singularity.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“Living is life,” Al says. “It’s not just where we actually, uh, sleep. Living is exactly that: life.”</p>
<p>I hang up the phone. A feeling of desperation rises in my gullet. Another dystopia emerges from the echo of the interview. I close my eyes and see scribbled diagrams of the concept of onely unfurl across the sky, blocking the sun (“a shared vision”), the stars and every private thought you ever had. The whole universe becomes real estate for our asinine self-contemplations.</p>
<p>I need to get out of the house and into the anonymous streets. I want to interact with the world as it is, as it appears to me immediately. I want to experience the kind of connection I find in being just one more human trying to get along in an imperfect but pleasant day to day.</p>
<h2>Dystopia on display</h2>
<p>I ride my bike through the backstreets of my increasingly gentrified neighbourhood. There is a development site every couple of blocks. Lately it seems that the advertisements for these off-plan apartments are aimed particularly at my demographic. They show happy bearded men on bicycles and long-haired women in bespoke tunics at cafes, reflecting the neighbourhood back at itself, insisting that you – yes you – belong here. Buy-in now.</p>
<p>A few years ago, a study of water usage revealed how many new apartments are empty, owned by investors who would rather wait out the term of appreciation rather than bother with renters. “<a href="http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/ghost-tower-warning-for-docklands-after-data-reveals-high-melbourne-home-vacancies-20141111-11kkxz.html">Ghost Tower Warning</a>”, ran the headline.</p>
<p>I ride past an old warehouse site with banners out the front. It looks like a display suite and I am drawn in, despite myself, yanked through the doors by my real-estate obsession. The warehouse is actually filled with a local university’s interior architecture graduate exhibition. </p>
<p>I wander around, looking at the models and plans, struck by the depressingly urgent contexts they take on. Projects cite increasing urban homelessness; the need for public space in the face of diminishing residential area per capita; the need for meaningful intersections between architecture, the body and everyday life. Architecture as a way to endure increasingly volatile environmental conditions: scourge, scarcity.</p>
<p>The images and models, however, all look oddly similar. Greyscale figures in their 20s and 30s – some alone, some in couples, a few children – stand in and walk through stark, minimal, hyper-functional spaces. The labels read, “Toilet Pavilion”, “Bathing Pavilion”, “Meditation Alcove”. It’s the design equivalent of a “Keep Calm and Carry On” sticker. </p>
<p>One project shows a skeletal substructure of a building in a catastrophe-ravaged scene. Fortunately, the architect had the foresight to anticipate this calamity and the blackened core of his building is a perfectly pleasant, usable space. In the drawing, a young couple gaze unthinkably at an artwork hanging on a steel beam. We know it’s art (presumably flood and fire resistant) because it’s in a frame.</p>
<p>In other images, people are just staring at the exposed brick as though this, in view of events, has become an anchor for calm reflection. Through all of these stark, designed worlds tramp lone, youthful figures wearing headphones – suggesting rich inner worlds, even though they live in a bunker and must wander forever through the ruins of the city.</p>
<p>Looking around the actual space of the exhibition, I see we are performing a very similar reality. We are young people alone or in pairs. Staring at beams and exposed brick, listening to something privately through headphones. Contemplating shelter, the future and the problems that arise between.</p>
<p>We are all anticipating, aestheticising, buying and selling our crisis.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This is an edited extract from Briohny Doyle’s forthcoming book, Adult Fantasy, to be published with Scribe in June 2017.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/75839/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Briohny Doyle 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>
Owning a home has deep cultural and economic connotations. A home owner is a member of a street, a community. They are a successful adult human. They own a piece of the pie, the dream.
Briohny Doyle, Sessional Lecturer, School of Communication and Creative Arts, Deakin University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/75848
2017-04-30T20:02:24Z
2017-04-30T20:02:24Z
Your sons and your daughters: mental health in the age of overtime
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164964/original/image-20170411-26741-o2ibi7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In a country consistently rated as one of the world’s most liveable, we’ve somehow developed a deadly disregard toward our own welfare.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Joel Carrett</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This piece is republished with permission from <a href="https://griffithreview.com/editions/millennials-strike-back/">Millennials Strike Back</a>, the 56th edition of Griffith Review. Articles are a little longer than most published on The Conversation, and present an in-depth analysis of the challenges facing the oft-criticised millennial generation.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Weary working warriors of Australia, we need to talk about what your heroic long hours, your selfless overtime, and your lack of self-care is doing to our nation’s mental health.</p>
<p>I’m looking at anyone who associates the word “millennial” with young people who seem to feel entitled to the “good things” in life but are unwilling to put in the hard work to earn them; anyone who thinks being overworked and underpaid is a normal way to start your career.</p>
<p>Without a doubt, you’re going to experience some deep-seated resistance to what I am about to say. It’s not your fault; your work ethic has been conditioned with each and every pay cheque, and I’m about to undermine it. But you need to hear this, for the good of us all. </p>
<p>So, for the love of God, will you do yourselves the favour of putting aside your well-meant anxieties and hard-earned wisdoms for a minute, and just listen?</p>
<p>First up, let me lay out my privilege. I’m a PhD student currently investigating the genetics of mental illness – post-natal psychosis, to be precise – at the University of Cambridge.</p>
<p>I’m incredibly lucky: I’m studying at a university consistently ranked in the world’s top five; I have a partial scholarship and a well-funded lab; and my college graduate-student committee supplies me with a steady stream of free tea, biscuits and well-written magazine essays. </p>
<p>Before Cambridge I was a resident of <a href="http://www.anu.edu.au/study/accommodation/student-residences/bruce-hall">Bruce Hall</a>, the first (and best) residential hall at the Australian National University. Again a partial scholarship, again a very well-run and funded program, and again a student committee and college infrastructure that facilitated a warm, vibrant and welcoming community. I’ve done pretty well so far.</p>
<p>And now, my motivation for sticking my neck out: my mental health. It’s never been top notch, and it was probably never going to be (which is kind of how I ended up studying its inheritance and manifestation). </p>
<p>Both sides of my family have depressive tendencies, and I’m <a href="https://www.whatdoescismean.com/whatdoescismean/">cis-female</a> – which, depending on what you read, gives me a higher chance either of suffering depression or communicating that I’m depressed. </p>
<p>After several undiagnosed “rough patches” in my late teens and early twenties, I finally ended up on an SSRI medication after succumbing to a crushing state of depressive exhaustion in the first year of my PhD, most likely precipitated by the British winter. I currently function pretty well as long as I minimise sources of mental, emotional and physiological stress in my life. And there’s the bind.</p>
<p>I openly embrace my high-achiever-type neuroses, but my studies aren’t the biggest risk to my hard-earned homeostasis. You’d be forgiven for assuming so: not a week seems to go by without a Guardian article describing anxiety and depression in students. But data on the cause has been thin on the ground. </p>
<p>Fortunately, in 2014, the Graduate Assembly of the University of California, Berkeley, administered a survey investigating graduate-student wellbeing. The <a href="http://ga.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Well-Being-Report-Deck.pdf">resulting report</a> found 47% of responding PhD students, and 37% of masters students, “reach the threshold considered depressed”. </p>
<p>First out of the top-ten predictors was career prospects. Academic progress was seventh on the list, behind physical health, living conditions, academic engagement, social support and financial confidence. Makes sense to me. </p>
<p>Tiring as it can be to spend all day in my departmental library engaged in a battle of wits with the living, breathing thing that is my thesis, I love the freedom and flexibility that comes with student life. </p>
<p>What puts me at risk of a low patch is cramped rooms and uncomfortable single beds, overcooked cafeteria meals and under-equipped student gyms, and lacking an income that permits minor creature comforts, let alone achieving the milestones of modern adulthood: buying property, building a community, saving for a distant holiday and a very distant retirement. </p>
<p>Happily, if all goes relatively well, I should submit my thesis halfway through this year, defend it shortly after that and, with my newly Oxbridged CV, secure a well-paying job. But despite the double bed on my horizon, I’m deeply troubled by what leaving student life will do to my mental health.</p>
<h2>A worsening ‘balance’</h2>
<p>We’ve been “having the conversation” about mental health in Australia for a few years now. As a result, slow, ponderous change is occurring within the leviathan of a system intended to protect and care for people in crisis. </p>
<p>But all the awareness campaigns have had little effect on the “garden variety” mental illness that’s actually causing most of the disability and death.</p>
<p>Even if you (still) think we’re merely medicalising the normal ups and downs of life, you’ve got to admit there are a lot of people in a lot of pain. You may have heard that, on average, <a href="http://www.mindframe-media.info/for-mental-health-and-suicide-prevention/talking-to-media-about-mental-illness/facts-and-stats">one in five adults</a> experience anxiety, mood disorders or substance abuse every year. </p>
<p>You may even have heard that the <a href="http://www.aihw.gov.au/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=60129556207">leading cause of disease burden</a> within the 15-44 age bracket is “suicide and self-inflicted injuries” for males and “anxiety and depressive disorders” for females. These statistics can only relate to what people are actually diagnosed with, or will admit to.</p>
<p>The hard data is much more dire. <a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/by%20Subject/3303.0%7E2015%7EMain%20Features%7EIntentional%20self-harm:%20key%20characteristics%7E8">Cause-of-death statistics</a> released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in 2015 revealed that suicide is the leading cause of death for people aged 15-44, and the second-leading cause for those aged 44-54 – regardless of gender.</p>
<p>The number of lives lost to suicide is simply too great for the “serious” mental illnesses – debilitating depression, bipolar and psychotic disorders – to be the main cause. What’s killing us is common despair. In a country consistently rated as one of the world’s most liveable, we’ve somehow developed a deadly disregard toward our own welfare.</p>
<p>The Australian way of life is highly ranked across almost every dimension in the <a href="http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/">OECD Better Life Index</a>, from income and housing, through social connection, education and health, to civic engagement and environmental quality. But when it comes to work–life balance we’re far below the average. We’re 29th, in fact, below the US and UK (and Chile and Slovenia and Hungary and…), and things show no sign of improvement. </p>
<p>In 2014, The Australia Institute <a href="http://www.tai.org.au/sites/defualt/files/P99%20Walking%20the%20tightrope.pdf">reported</a> that work-life balance had worsened for 42% of the workforce in the previous five years. In addition, the proportion of workers reporting improvement was only a few percentage points larger than those reporting no change at all. </p>
<p>The greatest problem was longer hours, many of which weren’t even paid; almost A$110 billion of hours were effectively donated in the year of the report.</p>
<p>What’s the big deal about work–life balance? A little hard work and a few years of long hours never hurt anybody, right?</p>
<p>Give me a dollar for every time someone says it’s a rite of passage for the young, it’s a valiant sacrifice by working parents or, most crucially, it’s just how things are and we cannot change it, and I’d have enough for a house deposit. Here’s where the urge to slam my head into the nearest solid object becomes almost overwhelming, because when work-life balance goes awry, the first thing to suffer is mental and physical health.</p>
<p>When people are short on time, they simply don’t prioritise personal care anymore. I’m talking about eating, sleeping, exercising – the holy trinity of basic, essential personal maintenance. </p>
<p>We know that not getting enough quality sleep is <a href="https://psychcentral.com/lib/sleep-and-mental-health-disorders/">intimately connected</a> to mental illness risk. Exercise too: aside from the physical benefits, regular exercise can have <a href="http://www.apa.org/monitor/2011/12/exercise.aspx">huge effects</a> on our mood. And evidence emerging from cutting-edge labs suggests that diet might have a <a href="https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/a-to-z/d/diet-and-mental-health">crucial role</a> in influencing neurochemicals via the billions of bacteria living in our guts.</p>
<p>If you’re stressed, exhausted and unwell, your mind and body become drastically less able to deal with the challenges life throws at us – everything from maintaining healthy personal relationships to riding the waves of global change. </p>
<p>And if you’re not in the habit of taking time out for your mental health, when those challenges hit us, we can become anxious and/or depressed, or simply function less well in life. This state of poor functioning makes people more likely to end up in the awful spiral that leads to suicide. We know this, and yet we seem unable to do anything about it.</p>
<p>The World Economic Forum and the Harvard School of Public Health estimate the <a href="http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Harvard_HE_GlobalEconomicBurdenNonCommunicableDiseases_2011.pdf">global cost of mental health conditions</a> at around US$2.5 trillion, with almost two-thirds of this coming from indirect costs – loss of productivity and income resulting from disability and death. </p>
<p>For Australia, the estimated costs of lost productivity are in the billions. In 2014, <a href="https://www.headsup.org.au/docs/default-source/resources/bl1269-brochure---pwc-roi-analysis.pdf?sfvrsn=6">PricewaterhouseCoopers estimated</a> mental-health-related absenteeism costs the Australian economy A$4.7 billion annually, while presenteeism costs A$6.1 billion. And if all the hours of unpaid overtime were given to work seekers as paid work, unemployment could be virtually non-existent.</p>
<p>Change is possible, but only if you, my working warriors, are willing to allow it – if you let go of the toxic idea that this is “just how things are”. </p>
<p>Some of the socioeconomic tools necessary are already being trialled and implemented in such diverse environments as Silicon Valley and the Scandinavian bloc. With some tweaking, experimenting and help from your friendly neighbourhood millennial, they can be made to work for Australia too.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164965/original/image-20170411-26733-1jif53b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164965/original/image-20170411-26733-1jif53b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164965/original/image-20170411-26733-1jif53b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164965/original/image-20170411-26733-1jif53b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164965/original/image-20170411-26733-1jif53b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164965/original/image-20170411-26733-1jif53b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164965/original/image-20170411-26733-1jif53b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Not getting enough quality sleep is intimately connected to mental health risk.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Change the definitions of work and rest</h2>
<p>At its most basic, the solution to what maligns us is rest. When we properly account for all the “work” a person does in a day by adding caring, training, travelling and maintaining to the equation, and then acknowledge that work with a proper allowance of time and resources, we will ease a great amount of the psychological-turned-physiological stress plaguing us.</p>
<p>In my second year at Cambridge I was elected as our college graduate-committee welfare officer. It was my job to try to improve and protect the mental welfare of more than 200 high-achieving, workaholic, more-than-slightly neurotic Cambridge students. </p>
<p>It’s a task I still have in an unofficial capacity – how could I not?</p>
<p>I can’t stop my friends and fellows from working long hours if they want to. Some of them are even physiologically capable of it – but most of them aren’t. Yet they won’t look after themselves until someone gives them permission. </p>
<p>And my most effective tool for doing that is changing their definition of “work”. Because, really, work is anything that is not rest. That’s why discussions about the “unpaid economy” have been going since the notion of GDP was created and defined in the 1940s.</p>
<p>What the UK calls the <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/releases/householdsatelliteaccounts2011to2014">“household satellite account”</a> includes child care, transport, nutrition, household maintenance, clothing and laundry, adult care and volunteering – all tasks that have a paid equivalent. </p>
<p>If you are teaching your child to read, or helping with homework, you are working. If you’re cleaning or mending for yourself or someone else, you are working. If you’re helping a loved one through a rough patch, whether by accompanying them to appointments, cooking them a nutritious meal or just providing a listening ear, you are working.</p>
<p>So, in reality, if the nature of work is properly taken into account, we’re working far more than eight hours a day, five days a week. And we’re therefore not allocating enough time and resources for rest. </p>
<p>Proper rest means self-care or leisure: socialising, playing games, working on hobbies. These are states of flow and immersion, the roots of the current mindfulness movement. </p>
<p>Is it any wonder that hands-on crafts such as colouring, knitting and collaging have gained popularity in the past few years, when we’re working harder than ever, for longer than ever and with less time to recover than ever. </p>
<p>Whip out a colouring book and a set of pencils and you can rapidly put yourself into a state where all you’re thinking about is staying within the lines and which colour to use next. Your heart rate drops, your blood pressure eases: you are at rest. </p>
<p>One of the reasons social media and smartphones can be so “addictive” is their ability to instantly distract you, to suck you into a state of pseudo-flow. The hypnotic progression of beautiful photos on Instagram, the ability to tap into your inner child and send dorky pictures on Snapchat – used improperly, these are drug-like quick fixes, embraced by a population desperate for rest.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164787/original/image-20170411-31875-16226m1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164787/original/image-20170411-31875-16226m1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164787/original/image-20170411-31875-16226m1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164787/original/image-20170411-31875-16226m1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164787/original/image-20170411-31875-16226m1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164787/original/image-20170411-31875-16226m1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164787/original/image-20170411-31875-16226m1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Whip out a colouring book and a set of pencils and you can rapidly put yourself at ease.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>New problems, old solutions</h2>
<p>But what to do? </p>
<p>One solution is a <a href="https://theconversation.com/universal-basic-income-the-dangerous-idea-of-2016-70395">universal basic income</a>: giving people free money. The idea is not new; it’s actually been done before. </p>
<p>Alaska has been successfully reducing poverty and inequality for more than 35 years by <a href="http://basicincome.org/news/2016/09/alaska-us-amount-2016-permanent-fund-dividend-1022/">providing universal dividends</a> from the use of national assets – in its case the money came from oil resources, but it could also come from as varied sources as mineral and water rights or financial infrastructure and intellectual property. </p>
<p>And in the 1970s, Canada <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2014/12/23/mincome-in-dauphin-manitoba_n_6335682.html">ran an experiment</a> that provided a basic living wage for all two-parent, two-child families in the town of Dauphin, Manitoba, that were earning less than CA$50,000. In just four years, Dauphin had increased high-school completion, decreased doctor and hospital visits, and boosted mental health.</p>
<p>Universal basic income is a <a href="https://theconversation.com/universal-basic-income-the-dangerous-idea-of-2016-70395">radical concept</a>. But it’s shown enough promise that Silicon Valley start-up incubator Y-Combinator has decided to <a href="https://qz.com/696377/y-combinator-is-running-a-basic-income-experiment-with-100-oakland-families/">test it</a> in Oakland, California. Local, state and federal governments are also working on trials in <a href="http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/3/6/14007230/kenya-basic-income-givedirectly-experiment-village">rural parts of Kenya</a>, in <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/06/netherlands-utrecht-universal-basic-income-experiment/487883/">urban Utrecht</a>, in <a href="https://qz.com/914247/canada-is-betting-on-a-universal-basic-income-to-help-cities-gutted-by-manufacturing-job-loss/">Ontario</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/03/finland-trials-basic-income-for-unemployed">Finland</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jan/08/universal-basic-income-glasgow-welfare-revolution">Scotland</a>. </p>
<p>For governments and businesses, universal basic income offers a way to simplify welfare, bolster the wages of the new “precariat”, and prepare for the coming mechanisation of huge swathes of the workforce in the near future. </p>
<p>Used properly, it could also be a huge boon for mental health. Consistent provision of a safety net could reduce the impulse to keep working instead of taking time to rest and recover. It could make leaving an unhealthy work situation easier, putting pressure on employers to keep their workplaces healthy. And, finally, it could allow for measuring and monetising the unpaid economy.</p>
<p>As a young and inexperienced student, a universal basic income calls out to my lefty soul. But the solution could be even simpler: reduce the numbers of hours people have to spend at work. </p>
<p>A Melbourne Institute study <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/workers-over-40-perform-best-with-three-day-week-25-hours-melbourne-institute-study-a6988921.html">made waves last year</a> when it found that the optimal working week for the over-40s was only 25-30 hours: six hours a day, or a three-day week. </p>
<p>And, as multiple trials in Sweden <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/business-38843341">have shown</a>, a six-hour workday with no cut in wages can actually increase profit by boosting productivity. Workers also tend to be happier and healthier, leading, in time, to increased productivity.</p>
<p>Another way to free up time for rest could be literally changing the way we live.</p>
<p><a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1080/00050067.2010.482109/abstract">A survey</a> of more than 6,000 students from two major Australian universities found that students had better-than-expected mental health if they were living in university residences, with parents, or with a partner and/or family. </p>
<p>Living with community brings more benefits than reducing rent and warding off loneliness. When tasks such as cooking, cleaning and care work are divided, each person has more time for self-care and leisure. What’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-co-housing-could-make-homes-cheaper-and-greener-39235">now being called “co-housing”</a> – a model where communal spaces exist but each inhabitant or family has more private space than the average flatmate – is already gaining popularity with young professionals and creatives alike. </p>
<p>On a large scale, as in university residences, co-housing could even create jobs – for example, in communal kitchens. Living densely could also help solve the problems of urban sprawl threatening Australia’s economic and environmental sustainability, by reducing commuting times and enabling better resource sharing.</p>
<p>So, the solutions are out there, just waiting to be applied in our economically blessed Australian context. Yes, they involve sweeping change, long-term planning and pie-in-the-sky thinking, but so did the huge social schemes implemented by the last generation to be born in a time of plenty and grow up in an era of increasing instability.</p>
<p>The solutions of the postwar reformers are faltering now, faced with vast changes in technology, society and environment – but the youth of today are equal to the challenge.</p>
<p>The Pew Research Centre <a href="http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/files/2010/10/millennials-confident-connected-open-to-change.pdf">has named millennials</a> “the most educated generation ever”. They’re clever, they’re informed, they’re driven, they’re charitable, they’re idealistic. And, most of all, they are desperate to reject the unhealthy working hours, unsustainable wages and unrealistic goals of modern employment.</p>
<p>Desperate enough to brush off labels of entitled, lazy and naive in order to pursue a way of living that they feel in their hearts must be right. They can and will change your lives for the better, if only you let them.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>If you are feeling distressed or are concerned about a friend, family member or work colleague, call <a href="http://www.lifeline.org.au">Lifeline</a> 13 11 14, <a href="http://www.suicidecallbackservice.org.au">Suicide Call Back Service</a> 1300 659 467, or <a href="http://www.kidshelp.com.au">Kids Helpline</a> 1800 55 1800.</em></p>
<p><em>You can read other essays from Griffith Review’s latest edition <a href="https://griffithreview.com/editions/millennials-strike-back/">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/75848/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Courtney A Landers 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>
All the awareness campaigns have had little effect on the ‘garden variety’ mental illness that’s causing most of the disability and death.
Courtney A Landers, PhD Candidate in Mental Health Genetics, University of Cambridge
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/76458
2017-04-30T20:01:35Z
2017-04-30T20:01:35Z
Fighting the common fate of humans: to better life and beat death
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167142/original/file-20170428-15086-15blist.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Can technology help us to beat death?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock/Zwiebackesser</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This piece is republished with permission from <a href="https://griffithreview.com/editions/millennials-strike-back/">Millenials Strike Back</a>, the 56th edition of Griffith Review. Selected pieces consist of extracts, or long reads in which Generation Y writers address the issues that define and concern them.</em> </p>
<hr>
<p>The oldest surviving great work of literature tells the story of a Sumerian king, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Gilgamesh">Gilgamesh</a>, whose historical equivalent may have ruled the city of Uruk some time between 2800 and 2500 BC.</p>
<p>A hero of superhuman strength, Gilgamesh becomes instilled with existential dread after witnessing the death of his friend, and travels the Earth in search of a cure for mortality. </p>
<p>Twice the cure slips through his fingers and he learns the futility of fighting the common fate of man.</p>
<h2>Merging with machines</h2>
<p>Transhumanism is the idea that we can transcend our biological limits, by merging with machines. The idea was popularised by the renowned technoprophet <a href="http://www.kurzweilai.net/ray-kurzweil-biography">Ray Kurzweil</a> (now a director of engineering at Google), who came to public attention in the 1990s with a string of astute predictions about technology. </p>
<p>In his 1990 book, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Age-Intelligent-Machines-Ray-Kurzweil/dp/0262610795">The Age of Intelligent Machines</a> (MIT Press), Kurzweil predicted that a computer would beat the world’s best chess player by the year 2000. It <a href="https://www.wired.com/2011/05/0511ibm-deep-blue-beats-chess-champ-kasparov/">happened in 1997</a>.</p>
<p>He also foresaw the explosive growth of the internet, along with the advent of wearable technology, drone warfare and the automated translation of language. Kurzweil’s <a href="https://futurism.com/kurzweil-claims-that-the-singularity-will-happen-by-2045/">most famous prediction is what he calls</a> “the singularity” – the emergence of an artificial super-intelligence, triggering runaway technological growth – which he foresees happening somewhere around 2045.</p>
<p>In some sense, the merger of humans and machines has already begun. Bionic implants, such as the <a href="http://www.cochlear.com/wps/wcm/connect/au/home/understand/hearing-and-hl/hl-treatments/cochlear-implant">cochlear implant</a>, use electrical impulses orchestrated by computer chips to communicate with the brain, and so restore lost senses.</p>
<p>At <a href="https://svhm.org.au/home/research">St Vincent’s Hospital</a> and the <a href="http://research.unimelb.edu.au/">University of Melbourne</a>, my colleagues are developing other ways to tap into neuronal activity, thereby giving people natural control of a robotic hand.</p>
<p>These cases involve sending simple signals between a piece of hardware and the brain. To truly merge minds and machines, however, we need some way to send thoughts and memories.</p>
<p>In 2011, scientists at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles took the first step towards this when they <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21677369">implanted rats with a computer chip</a> that worked as a kind of external hard drive for the brain. </p>
<p>First the rats learned a particular skill, pulling a sequence of levers to gain a reward. The silicon implant listened in as that new memory was encoded in the brain’s hippocampus region, and recorded the pattern of electrical signals it detected. </p>
<p>Next the rats were induced to forget the skill, by giving them a drug that impaired the hippocampus. The silicon implant then took over, firing a bunch of electrical signals to mimic the pattern it had recorded during training. </p>
<p>Amazingly, the rats remembered the skill – the electrical signals from the chip were essentially replaying the memory, in a crude version of that scene in The Matrix where Keanu Reeves learns (downloads) kung-fu.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/V8ZdGmgj0PQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The Matrix: I know king fu.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Again, the potential roadblock: the brain may be more different from a computer than people such as Kurzweil appreciate. As <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/nicolas-p-rougier-201211">Nicolas Rougier</a>, a computer scientist at Inria (the French Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation), <a href="https://theconversation.com/silicon-soul-the-vain-dream-of-electronic-immortality-52368">argues</a>, the brain itself needs the complex sensory input of the body in order to function properly.</p>
<p>Separate the brain from that input and things start to go awry pretty quickly. Hence sensory deprivation is used as a form of torture. Even if artificial intelligence is achieved, that does not mean our brains will be able to integrate with it.</p>
<p>Whatever happens at the singularity (if it ever occurs), Kurzweil, now aged 68, wants to be around to see it. His <a href="http://www.fantastic-voyage.net/">Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever</a> (Rodale Books, 2004) is a guidebook for extending life in the hope of seeing the longevity revolution. In it he details his dietary practices, and outlines some of the 200 supplements he takes daily.</p>
<p>Failing that, he has a plan B.</p>
<h2>Freezing death</h2>
<p>The central idea of cryonics is to preserve the body after death in the hope that, one day, future civilisations will have the ability (and the desire) to reanimate the dead.</p>
<p>Both Kurzweil and de Grey, along with about 1,500 others (including, apparently, Britney Spears), are <a href="http://thenewdaily.com.au/life/tech/2015/06/19/can-buy-immortality-200000-want/">signed up to be cryopreserved</a> by <a href="http://www.alcor.org/">Alcor Life Extension Foundation</a> in Arizona.</p>
<p>Offhand, the idea seems crackpot. Even in daily experience, you know that freezing changes stuff: you can tell a strawberry that’s been frozen. Taste, and especially texture, change unmistakably. The problem is that when the strawberry cells freeze, they fill with ice crystals. The ice rips them apart, essentially turning them to mush. </p>
<p>That’s why Alcor don’t freeze you; they turn you to glass.</p>
<p>After you die, your body is drained of blood and replaced with a special cryogenic mixture of antifreeze and preservatives. When cooled, the liquid turns to a glassy state, but without forming dangerous crystals. </p>
<p>You are placed in a giant thermos flask of liquid nitrogen and cooled to -196°C, cold enough to effectively stop biological time. There you can stay without changing, for a year or a century, until science discovers the cure for whatever caused your demise.</p>
<p>“People don’t understand cryonics,” says Alcor president Max More in a YouTube tour of his facility. “They think it’s this strange thing we do to dead people, rather than understanding it really is an extension of emergency medicine.”</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/uBUTlNu90Xw?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Alcor president Max More.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The idea may not be as crackpot as it sounds. Similar cryopreservation techniques are already being used to preserve human embryos used in fertility treatments. </p>
<p>“There are people walking around today who have been cryopreserved,” More continues. “They were just embryos at the time.”</p>
<p>One proof of concept, of sorts, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2781097/">was reported</a> by cryogenics expert Greg Fahy of <a href="http://www.21cm.com/">21st Century Medicine</a> (a privately funded cryonics research lab) in 2009.</p>
<p>Fahy’s team removed a rabbit kidney, vitrified it, and reimplanted into the rabbit as its only working kidney. Amazingly, the rabbit survived, if only for nine days. </p>
<p>More recently, a new technique developed by Fahy enabled the perfect preservation of a rabbit brain though vitrification and storage at -196°C. After rewarming, advanced 3D imaging revealed that the rabbit’s “connectome” – that is, the connections between neurons – was undisturbed.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the chemicals used for the new technique are toxic, but the work does raise the hope of some future method that may achieve the same degree of preservation with more friendly substances.</p>
<p>That said, preserving structure does not necessarily preserve function. Our thoughts and memories are not just coded in the physical connections between neurons, but also in the strength of those connections – coded somehow in the folding of proteins.</p>
<p>That’s why the most remarkable cryonics work to date may be that performed at Alcor in 2015, when scientists managed to glassify a tiny worm for two weeks, and then <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25867710">return it to life with its memory intact</a>.</p>
<p>Now, while the worm has only 302 neurons, you have more than 100 billion, and while the worm has 5,000 neuron-to-neuron connections you have at least 100 trillion. So there’s some way to go, but there’s certainly hope.</p>
<p>In Australia, a new not-for-profit, <a href="https://southerncryonics.com/the-project/">Southern Cryonics</a>, is planning to open the first cryonics facility in the Southern Hemisphere. </p>
<p>“Eventually, medicine will be able to keep people healthy indefinitely,” Southern Cryonics spokesperson and secretary Matt Fisher tells me in a phonecall.</p>
<p>“I want to see the other side of that transition. I want to live in a world where everyone can be healthy for as long as they want. And I want everyone I know and care about to have that opportunity as well.”</p>
<p>To get Southern Cryonics off the ground, ten founding members have each put in A$50,000, entitling them to a cryonic preservation for themselves or a person of their choice. Given that the company is not-for-profit, Fisher has no financial incentive to campaign for it. He simply believes in it.</p>
<p>“I’d really like to see [cryonic preservation] become the most common choice for internment across Australia,” he says.</p>
<p>Fisher admits there is no proof yet that cryopreservation works. The question is not about what is possible today, he says. It’s about what may be possible in the future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/76458/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cathal D. O'Connell 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>
How far would you go to better your life, to live longer, to beat death? And how much can technology help us in that quest?
Cathal D. O'Connell, Centre Manager, BioFab3D (St Vincent's Hospital), The University of Melbourne
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/69988
2017-02-20T03:18:34Z
2017-02-20T03:18:34Z
Diminishing city: hope, despair and Whyalla
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/152778/original/image-20170115-11834-r1ue2q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">With the steelworks under a cloud, Whyalla continues to fluctuate between hope and despair.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/sauer-thompson/9704697501/in/photolist-fMz7sH-2NB7jQ-57TVpm-57TTzh-57TUZU-57TVfS-57TUWh-57PGNr-57TVcb-57PFBt-2NvLci-mhQWMZ-57PFxe-9oe38A-2NvKmr-53QTn-53Q3X-57TTXd-57TUd5-57TUDm-57TTDo-57TUg9-57PFVP-57TU1b-57TUqA-57PGBM-57PH52-57TVt5-rrV4Zo-57TV83-2NwMmX-53Q41-57TUiU-57TUtL-HaPK8-57PGje-57PFRP-57PFY4-53QKQ-57TUzN-53Q3U-57PGav-57PGwc-53QKR-53QKT-53QKV-HaPKp-2NwJ5r-ak3oZc-2NAdwE">Gary Sauer-Thompson/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This piece is republished with permission from State of Hope, the 55th edition of Griffith Review. Articles are a little longer than most published on The Conversation, presenting an in-depth analysis of the economic, social, environmental and cultural challenges facing South Australia, and the possibilities of renewal and revitalisation.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Exactly 50 years ago, in the spring of 1966, my family left Pennington Migrant Hostel in Adelaide to drive up Highway 1 to Whyalla. Our destination, BHP’s Milpara hostel, was a full day’s journey away in a second-hand faded blue Ford Zephyr.</p>
<p>As recently arrived migrants from Britain, the drive would take us into an utterly unfamiliar landscape: the red-soil and saltbush country of South Australia’s upper Eyre Peninsula.</p>
<p>We were not alone. Whyalla was booming. BHP’s steelworks had opened the year before, the shipyard’s orders book was healthy, while ore from Iron Knob was being shipped from Whyalla in increasing quantities – my father was to work in BHP’s diesel locomotive repair shop. </p>
<p>The Stanleys – like many of Whyalla’s newcomers, working-class Britons (in our case Liverpudlians) – were optimistic about our future in a brand-new Housing Trust semi-detached in a dirt-pavement street on the city’s expanding western fringe: this was the new start in a new, sunny country for which we had left rainy, grey Liverpool.</p>
<p>We were surely not alone. Thousands of other migrants were arriving in the city. In our first year there the Housing Trust constructed over 600 houses. In the decade of the 1960s, Whyalla’s population doubled from 14,000 to 30,000. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/154659/original/image-20170129-29641-1ayh4qn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/154659/original/image-20170129-29641-1ayh4qn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/154659/original/image-20170129-29641-1ayh4qn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=253&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154659/original/image-20170129-29641-1ayh4qn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=253&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154659/original/image-20170129-29641-1ayh4qn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=253&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154659/original/image-20170129-29641-1ayh4qn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=318&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154659/original/image-20170129-29641-1ayh4qn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=318&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154659/original/image-20170129-29641-1ayh4qn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=318&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">BHP helped its employees to build substantial ‘staff’ houses as Whyalla expanded during the war years. These are in Bean Street, named after the compliant SA parliamentary draughtsman who produced the bill that met the needs of ‘The Company’ in developing Whyalla.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">BHP Archives</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The newcomers reflected an extraordinary ethnic diversity – booklets promoting the city to migrants spoke of 45 or more ethnic groups living there. The largest groups in the late 1960s came from the British Isles, from elsewhere in Australia and from Europe (mainly Germany, the Netherlands, Yugoslavia, Spain and Poland). </p>
<p>BHP and the City Commission aggressively promoted the city’s advantages. A 1964 BHP promotional booklet extolling its climate, facilities, community amenities and lifestyle (one my family almost certainly read) ended: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>This, then, is Whyalla: a place where a young community leads a busy, sunlit life, a city which is growing, always growing.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But the growth of the 1960s stopped in the following decade, when the population had reached around 34,000. In 1978, BHP launched the last of the 64 ships built in Whyalla, bringing to an end the 20-year boom begun with the construction of the steelworks. Between 1977 and 1983, the Housing Trust built only 120 houses. Whyalla began a gradual contraction, one that continues still.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/154656/original/image-20170129-30413-1svrw27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/154656/original/image-20170129-30413-1svrw27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/154656/original/image-20170129-30413-1svrw27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154656/original/image-20170129-30413-1svrw27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154656/original/image-20170129-30413-1svrw27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154656/original/image-20170129-30413-1svrw27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154656/original/image-20170129-30413-1svrw27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154656/original/image-20170129-30413-1svrw27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Construction of the blast furnace and associated wharf just before the second world war drew thousands of workers and later their families from the depressed Eyre Peninsula and the Mid North.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1980, sociologist Roy Kriegler published <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Working-Company-Control-Whyalla-Shipyard/dp/0195505751">Working for the Company</a>, an analysis of “work and control” informed by his time as a labourer in the shipyard’s final years. He identified what he saw as an intractable dynamic of alienation among those who worked for BHP, a malaise of lack of commitment that infected the city as well as its industrial workplaces.</p>
<p>Kriegler, writing in the wake of the shipyard’s closure, ended his final chapter with a prediction: “Company Town to Ghost Town”. Reports of Whyalla’s demise were premature, but he was not alone in his pessimism.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/152779/original/image-20170116-11792-vbpf5e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/152779/original/image-20170116-11792-vbpf5e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/152779/original/image-20170116-11792-vbpf5e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152779/original/image-20170116-11792-vbpf5e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152779/original/image-20170116-11792-vbpf5e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152779/original/image-20170116-11792-vbpf5e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152779/original/image-20170116-11792-vbpf5e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152779/original/image-20170116-11792-vbpf5e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&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 first of 64 vessels built at the shipyard before it closed is now the centrepiece of Whyalla Maritime Museum.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/waynethomas/465878074/in/photolist-HaKjA-HaPJX-HaKkQ-2NvJCk-HaPKa-HaKmJ-teXEFH-57TTR7-fSkU3R-fPxSYZ-dHZd12-dJ5DCG-dJ5Doj-9tXAdF-mTLMuC-dHZdfk-9Wj4ZX-szB8v8-j2v5DV-HaPKZ-HaKkE-2NB9jd-r69PRF-53QKS-2NAca3-2NvRZg-53Q3Y-41EK7h-53Q3V-41EMWu-2NvGuR-8Umqwd-8Umqxd-8jjdZo-8jg3z4-8jg4Bx-2NAebU-Heqwy-HeqwA-q99icU-Hqoa6m-Heqwu-8jjexy-axo9AP-a2UabG-9Wj4YK-mGYnk-oWKg3z-tw7MDj-j2vnro">Wayne Thomas/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The shipyard’s closure coincided with the growth to maturity of the children of the migrant generation of the 1960s like me. It became usual for young people to leave Whyalla. Among the 75 or so members of my own, very large matriculation class of 1974 many left Whyalla for work or study (as did I). At the 30-year reunion in 2004, no more than two or three still lived in Whyalla. </p>
<p>Many of those remaining found limited opportunities for work and little sense of fulfilment. A survey of drug problems in Whyalla by the Drug and Alcohol Services South Australia in 1985 found “no positive community feeling about Whyalla”, and that “the entire social life of Whyalla revolves around alcohol”. </p>
<p>Not surprisingly, one-quarter of the young people interviewed said they drank “because there is nothing better to do in Whyalla”.</p>
<h2>Living through times of hope and despair</h2>
<p>I came to know several of Whyalla’s incarnations. I had grown up there in the boom years, had worked at the steelworks in vacations, and while driving taxis became closely acquainted with Whyalla’s pub and clubs. I also wrote a Litt.B. thesis about the town’s voluntary war effort during the second world war, which the council published. </p>
<p>Through that research I gained an understanding of both the earlier wartime boom and of the insular little community it had disrupted. And because I continued to visit the city, over the ensuing 40 years I saw it diminish.</p>
<p>The shipyard’s closure hit Whyalla hard, but it went down fighting. Community workshops cast about for ideas to generate a sustainable economy. Ideas to diversify the city’s economy included rabbit farming, a ferry (or even a bridge!) across Spencer Gulf and exploiting the ever-elusive tourist dollar. None came to much. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155133/original/image-20170201-12659-1g10bi1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155133/original/image-20170201-12659-1g10bi1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155133/original/image-20170201-12659-1g10bi1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=329&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155133/original/image-20170201-12659-1g10bi1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=329&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155133/original/image-20170201-12659-1g10bi1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=329&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155133/original/image-20170201-12659-1g10bi1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155133/original/image-20170201-12659-1g10bi1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155133/original/image-20170201-12659-1g10bi1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Looking
up Patterson Street, the main street of ‘old’ Whyalla, to the second world war defence emplacements, one of the city’s many features that the council attempted to turn into tourist attractions.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Peter Stanley</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>From the 1980s, Whyalla became better known for providing a home for welfare recipients than for producing ships and steel – its Housing Trust stock allegedly enabled beneficiaries in Adelaide to be offered accommodation if they were willing to move to Whyalla. </p>
<p>With the arrival of Indo-Chinese, South American and East African refugees in successive decades, Whyalla maintained its ethnic diversity. This included a small community of Indigenous people, some Barngala, the region’s original inhabitants.</p>
<p>Looking back over the century since BHP renamed the little ore-shipping port of Hummock Hill Whyalla in 1914, we can identify cycles of hope and despair against the larger rhythm of expansion and then contraction. </p>
<p>For at least 50 years Whyalla has seen optimism and idealism but also, if not despair, then its close neighbours, alienation and apathy. The city has seen repeated contests between hope and pessimism. Both seem to be embedded in the city’s culture, in its people’s repeated responses to the challenges of their situation.</p>
<h2>Postwar boom upset the old stability</h2>
<p>Whyalla had been a tiny company town until the late 1930s. It was simply an ore jetty and a railway workshop, loading iron ore from Iron Knob, 50 kilometres away in the Middleback Ranges. </p>
<p>In its first incarnation as a small ore-shipping port, Whyalla had been remarkably stable. The 1934 federal electoral roll, for example, listed some 800 voters, but the surnames of five families accounted for a tenth of residents. Whyalla seemed free of the sectarianism endemic to Australia 80 years ago – the town’s Catholic and Anglican ministers played in the town’s orchestra. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/152783/original/image-20170116-11834-hsc3qn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/152783/original/image-20170116-11834-hsc3qn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/152783/original/image-20170116-11834-hsc3qn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152783/original/image-20170116-11834-hsc3qn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152783/original/image-20170116-11834-hsc3qn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152783/original/image-20170116-11834-hsc3qn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152783/original/image-20170116-11834-hsc3qn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152783/original/image-20170116-11834-hsc3qn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Premier Thomas Playford opens the Morgan-Whyalla pipeline in 1944, ending years of water shortages and enabling residents to plant gardens to make the town more pleasant. As the Murray River’s salinity rose, the water quality declined, becoming virtually undrinkable.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/sawater/5928703906/in/photolist-a2Ua7S-dgTMPu-6r8FVY-5FBvhr-e3LHhn-68ZAFu-NBAqe-nWc8CS-H9K3fc-dmQv9x-ngmBFr-j2xsRE-72dQRG-u3CkTi-y2zEb1-E1cxqk-E9rF9z-E9rF9e-DGjVP1-Dc3YWc-DzXuev-DzXu8P-E9rFgD-E9rFfB-DbHAm1-E1cxAR-DGjVLq-E1cxz8-Dc3ZaD-DbHAoL-E1cxyr-E77DDw-CnBbZm-E1cxCp-Bd9gni-E9rF7k-CEbphN-E9rFbP-DbHAoA-D4ybDv-y2zEbw-rBehPq-j2uGjK-B2eMxW-vWY58e-Mz5Vac-LK4KLp-Mwpjk3-MwpfT3-MbPvkQ">SA Water/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the late 1930s, the Playford state government persuaded (and subsidised) BHP to build a blast furnace, and a shipyard followed in 1940. </p>
<p>The town’s expansion upset the old stability. During the second world war the town grew from fewer than a thousand inhabitants to nearly 7,000, most drawn from the economically depressed Eyre Peninsula and Mid North. </p>
<p>The war years brought hardship – many families attracted to the town by war work lived in tents and shacks in what was called “Siberia” – but also a sense of hope after years of worldwide, national and local economic depression. People built their own houses, bought them under the company’s scheme or sought Housing Trust homes – small, but well-built and secure after the rural poverty many had known. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/154658/original/image-20170129-29621-uddtjm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/154658/original/image-20170129-29621-uddtjm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/154658/original/image-20170129-29621-uddtjm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=197&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154658/original/image-20170129-29621-uddtjm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=197&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154658/original/image-20170129-29621-uddtjm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=197&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154658/original/image-20170129-29621-uddtjm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=247&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154658/original/image-20170129-29621-uddtjm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=247&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154658/original/image-20170129-29621-uddtjm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=247&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">These Housing Trust homes in Goodman Street were built to house the many people who migrated to Whyalla to work in the shipyard and the blast furnace in the early 1940s. Residents’ groups agitated to have the streets sealed, the cost of which was a factor in BHP accepting calls for elected local government in 1945.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">BHP Archives</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155127/original/image-20170201-12675-1xlqk9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155127/original/image-20170201-12675-1xlqk9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155127/original/image-20170201-12675-1xlqk9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=326&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155127/original/image-20170201-12675-1xlqk9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=326&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155127/original/image-20170201-12675-1xlqk9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=326&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155127/original/image-20170201-12675-1xlqk9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155127/original/image-20170201-12675-1xlqk9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155127/original/image-20170201-12675-1xlqk9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Houses in the same area of Whyalla South 60 years later show how Murray water helped ‘green’ the city. What will happen as the wartime housing stock ages is a pressing question.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Peter Stanley</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But the war also saw tensions between old residents and new. Established residents dominated the town’s social organisations, especially its voluntary war effort. Newcomers were, however, active in pressing for civic improvements and for improved working conditions in the company’s shipyard and blast furnace. </p>
<p>Under the leadership of trade unions and groups such as the Housewives’ Association, newcomers pressed for price controls, new schools, bread and postal deliveries, telephone and bus services, cheaper water and better housing. They expressed a powerful idealism characteristic of a generation that fought and worked for a better world.</p>
<p>While established residents accepted the company’s paternalism, newcomers (almost all from rural South Australia) pressed for representative local government. BHP, reluctant to pay for the larger, more expensive town services but equally loath to relinquish control, engineered a compromise in the form of a town commission. </p>
<p>The commission, established by the state government in 1944, comprised three representatives each of company and residents, chaired by an independent commissioner, Charles Ryan (who held the position from 1945 to 1970). </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/152775/original/image-20170115-11831-1ipjv3d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/152775/original/image-20170115-11831-1ipjv3d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/152775/original/image-20170115-11831-1ipjv3d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1196&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152775/original/image-20170115-11831-1ipjv3d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1196&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152775/original/image-20170115-11831-1ipjv3d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1196&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152775/original/image-20170115-11831-1ipjv3d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152775/original/image-20170115-11831-1ipjv3d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152775/original/image-20170115-11831-1ipjv3d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">BHP was ‘not very pleased with the results’ of the first town commission election – it later sacked an employee, Eric Stead, who had been elected as a residents’ representative.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/55873497">Trove/National Library of Australia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The commission reflected idealism, pragmatism and paternalism. The elections for the first town commission in 1945 revealed the extent to which many of Whyalla’s newcomers yearned for a better society. The three ratepayers’ representatives included Eric Stead, a member of the Communist Party and an embodiment of the “progressive” movements in the town. </p>
<p>“Naturally, we are not very pleased with the results,” the company’s director in Whyalla reported to head office in Melbourne.</p>
<p>Stead’s election reflected, of course, the Communist Party’s popularity generally at the end of the war. But it also disclosed the deep yearning for a better life among a generation traumatised by economic depression and war; Whyalla’s new houses and company-subsidised services could provide that life.</p>
<p>Many of those attracted in wartime moved on after 1945, but those who stayed formed an enlarged “old Whyalla” – notably loyal to the paternalist BHP (naturally, known to residents simply as “the company”). That stability was disrupted once more from the late 1950s. Again supported by a state government (still Playford’s), BHP built a steelworks at Whyalla. This created the boom that brought the Stanleys and tens of thousands of other newcomers to the city.</p>
<h2>A city of contradictions</h2>
<p>Whyalla’s sense of itself as a community – as distinct from the dismal catalogue of deprivation on a range of socio-economic indicators – has never been clearer than in the Australian Frontier report of 1973, at the height of the second boom. </p>
<p>Produced by a Melbourne social research consultant in response to a request by the new Whyalla City Council (which supplanted the commission in 1970), the report investigated the “Factors Influencing the Stability of Whyalla”. It drew on a “Community Self Survey” co-ordinated by a Congregational Church social worker, Don Sarre, notable because it reflected the views of residents rather than planners. </p>
<p>Sarre’s report documented two contradictory themes. One was of physical or social hardship and deprivation. It noted the concern of doctors and nurses at the incidence of boredom, isolation and depression, and that at least half – and perhaps two-thirds – of respondents had no firm intention to remain in Whyalla. </p>
<p>Sarre identified the “inadequacy of the nuclear family” as a key cause of instability – most newcomers to the city (over half migrants or their Australian-born children) had no extended families and the support they could offer. </p>
<p>But among those who remained (which included some of the Stanleys), people expressed yearnings for facilities and conditions that would enable them to make a home in a place not immediately seen as hospitable, or even (at the height of summer) habitable.</p>
<p>They valued “the ease of making good friends” in the city and its healthy climate, and they had aspirations and desires. Their wishes expressed a powerful positive vision. They wanted better educational opportunities for their children, more parks and gardens and, above all, better and more local control over their community. </p>
<p>Don Sarre, reflecting on the report 40-odd years later, recalled that the aspects that most struck him in retrospect were the energy with which Whyalla’s newcomers built a community and the quality of community leadership evident in the city’s expansionary period. </p>
<p>For example, teachers staffing the dozen primary and four high schools were often graduates, “bonded” or posted to the country and bringing a quality of youthful, professional enthusiasm that matched the aspirations of their pupils’ parents.</p>
<h2>Decline stretches over decades</h2>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/152781/original/image-20170116-11806-123sqrs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/152781/original/image-20170116-11806-123sqrs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/152781/original/image-20170116-11806-123sqrs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=715&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152781/original/image-20170116-11806-123sqrs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=715&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152781/original/image-20170116-11806-123sqrs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=715&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152781/original/image-20170116-11806-123sqrs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152781/original/image-20170116-11806-123sqrs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152781/original/image-20170116-11806-123sqrs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">From a peak of 34,000 in the 1970s, Whyalla’s population had shrunk to 27,000 last decade and is now 22,000.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/9557815@N05/5092981590">Abi Skipp/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Despite this idealism, by the 1990s the city had slipped to be the state’s third-largest city (after Adelaide and Mount Gambier). This was a reflection of Whyalla’s decline rather than growth elsewhere. </p>
<p>Visiting at least annually, I observed how shops closed, shopping centres became increasingly shabby and houses and then entire blocks of Housing Trust houses fell derelict and were then demolished. </p>
<p>Signs of Whyalla’s decline were everywhere: driving in from the airport, my mother’s litany would be “there’s another Trust house knocked down”; but she’d also express pride at “the new leisure centre” or “the new Harvey Norman’s”. </p>
<p>The local newspaper, the Whyalla News, begun in 1940 as a weekly, went to twice weekly in the 1950s and thrice weekly in the 1970s. It then declined, losing pages, advertisers and readers. It now appears once a week again, like many country newspapers permanently on the brink of closure. </p>
<p>The decline of the city’s human infrastructure can be seen in the case of its Protestant churches. In the early 1970s, nonconformist congregations supported half-a-dozen clergymen and several other social and community development officers. Now the Uniting Church has one minister in the entire city, though arguably the need for the social and spiritual support that churches represent could not be greater.</p>
<p>On virtually any socio-economic measure in the 1990s, Whyalla scored more poorly than other cities in South Australia, even in the state’s “iron triangle”. Whyalla’s Department of Community Welfare office, a 1990 study revealed, had the highest per-capita number of “clients” in the state. </p>
<p>On an index of “relative socio-economic disadvantage”, Whyalla at 911 was below Port Pirie and its lead residues (at 921), Port August at 943, Mount Gambier at 957 and genteel Victor Harbour at 1,011. </p>
<p>The study also revealed shockingly high levels of domestic abuse, as suggested by the numbers of women seeking shelter. One area of just eight streets around Jenkins Avenue produced 201 “clients” (though a similar-sized area in the city’s east produced just one).</p>
<p>In the face of these grim realities, Whyalla had its boosters. The council remained resolutely positive, even though most initiatives failed to deliver the benefits promised. The Whyalla News seemed to have a generic news story permanently set, ready to be deployed, beginning with the headline “[insert name of company] plans will bring jobs”. </p>
<p>Sue Scheiffers’ privately published 1985 history of the city, A Ribbon of Steel, though appearing a decade after the shipyard’s closure, was sub-titled Whyalla Surges Ahead. Her book catalogued a relentless succession of development, urban amenities and civic progress. </p>
<p>As a serial grey nomad, in the 1980s and ’90s, my mother became a one-woman travelling embassy for Whyalla, persuading dozens of fellow caravanners in parks all over Australia that, regardless of its reputation, Whyalla was a paradise.</p>
<h2>Determinedly sunny despite it all</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/152797/original/image-20170116-16922-l1p9zv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/152797/original/image-20170116-16922-l1p9zv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/152797/original/image-20170116-16922-l1p9zv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152797/original/image-20170116-16922-l1p9zv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152797/original/image-20170116-16922-l1p9zv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152797/original/image-20170116-16922-l1p9zv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152797/original/image-20170116-16922-l1p9zv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152797/original/image-20170116-16922-l1p9zv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">High rates of chronic illness keep Whyalla Hospital busy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.sahealth.sa.gov.au/wps/wcm/connect/public+content/sa+health+internet/health+services/hospitals+and+health+services+-+country+south+australia/eyre+peninsula+western+hospitals+health+services/whyalla+hospital+and+health+service">SA Health/Government of South Australia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Of the migrants of the 1960s who remained, the environment in which they lived now actively harmed their health. Epidemiological surveys by the state’s Department of Health in 2005 established shocking figures of chronic illness. </p>
<p>Whyalla’s residents manifested significantly worse health than people in comparable towns. Rates of lung cancer were “significantly higher” – more than 50% greater – as were chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (77% more), alcoholic liver disease (70% more) and chronic hepatitis (330% more). The report had been prompted by long-standing concern about the red dust emitted from the steelworks, and especially its iron ore-processing “pellet plant”.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, the early 1990s brought yet another wave of consultants’ investigations, facilitated workshops and strategic planning, again with wildly optimistic outcomes. The report of a planning weekend among city council elected officials and employed officers in 1991 came up with extravagant ideas, such as developing a resort for Asian honeymooners and redeveloping the local racecourse and golf course to attract international punters and players. </p>
<p>The workshop considered several scenarios for Whyalla in 2001. While accepting its remote, hot and dry location and its “dirty” industry, participants nevertheless foresaw it at worst becoming a “pleasant backwater”. They even then thought that “ghost suburbs” might generate visitors. </p>
<p>One positive scenario for an “innovative, entrepreneurial, attractive human and humane” city sketched out a “green, almost tropical environment” based on recycled water and tourist attractions (such as a large sculpture park) that would, naturally, “put Whyalla on the international tourist circuit”.</p>
<p>Despite the city’s unpropitious situation and its precarious economic base, its people – and especially its city council – remained doggedly optimistic. In the 1990s, after two decades of decline, a brief and, as it turned out, almost fruitless movement aspired to make Whyalla an exemplar of the new “ecocity” movement.</p>
<p>The council, in association with the Adelaide-based Centre for Urban Ecology, endorsed plans to generate power from Whyalla’s abundant sunshine, creating a “green city”: a paradoxically enticing vision for a place that received only 270 millimetres of rainfall but over 300 sunny days annually.</p>
<p>An “eEcopolis”, as its proponents called it, involved “creating vibrant human settlements … shaping a healthy economy in keeping with ecological principles [and] promoting social justice and wellbeing”.</p>
<p>The ecocity push reflected Whyalla at its most optimistic. In <a href="http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/15403010?q&versionId=18099349">Whyalla Why Not?</a>, sustainable city theorist Paul Downton espoused the visionary idea that Whyalla could become “internationally renowned as a centre of the global solar industry, as well as being a major tourist destination”. </p>
<p>Downton wrote a short story, set 25 years in the future, painting a bold vision of a solar-powered city living in harmony with its environment and enriched by “green” industries. The ecocity idea set out to “reinvigorate the city, not only in environmental terms, but economically and culturally”. </p>
<p>The Whyalla of 2021 it envisaged would have “a seriously major rock music industry” and would have made multiculturalism work. Its population would have doubled but its jobless rate would be the lowest in Australia.</p>
<p>The vision of Whyalla as an ecocity offered an idealistic vision, as passionate as the boosters’ prophecies of growth 30 years before. It failed, killed by lack of investment. Its only reminder is a water-recovery plant near the city’s racecourse, its bare red-earth berms giving no idea of the passion that inspired it.</p>
<p>That the would-be ecocity’s economy remained fundamentally dependent upon mining and processing minerals, using coal-generated power and water brought from the ecologically failing Murray River, remains a sad and tragic irony.</p>
<h2>Quest continues in a new century</h2>
<p>In the early years of the 21st century there was a further burst of optimism, based on the <a href="http://150.101.83.163/page.aspx?u=89">promotional slogan</a> “Whyalla: Where the Outback Meets the Sea”. In 2005, the council was promoting the city hopefully: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Long a steel and ship-building hub, Whyalla is now experiencing a tourism renaissance based around its proud industrial history and natural phenomena.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In truth, tours of the steelworks attracted few visitors. The tourist promotion office was now putting its eggs in the baskets of the Whyalla Maritime Museum, itself based on the preserved second world war corvette HMAS Whyalla (the first ship built in the shipyard, launched in 1941 and in 1987 hauled ashore). </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/152780/original/image-20170116-11834-kqu83h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/152780/original/image-20170116-11834-kqu83h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/152780/original/image-20170116-11834-kqu83h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=775&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152780/original/image-20170116-11834-kqu83h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=775&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152780/original/image-20170116-11834-kqu83h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=775&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152780/original/image-20170116-11834-kqu83h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152780/original/image-20170116-11834-kqu83h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152780/original/image-20170116-11834-kqu83h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Whyalla promotes the giant cuttlefish as a tourist attraction, but a cuttlefish-led revival is unlikely.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/southoz/3606759354/in/photolist-7rSFyL-6uHzU7-6uHAVY-6uHt7m-6uFwe4-6uDieT-6uDkr8-6uHFpU-6uDoGX-6uHxNd-6uHCC5-6uFmw4-6uHBuw-6uHEW3-6uDucD-6uHwpC-6uDnnV">southoz/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Even more, they hoped for a boon from fishing tourism, from the annual angling festival, and from the exploitation of the giant cuttlefish, which swarm in the waters of nearby False Bay. While the lure of Spencer Gulf’s snapper and kingfish has failed to attract gourmet travellers, the cuttlefish do attract a thousand or so divers each winter. </p>
<p>Successive mining or processing proposals, boosting the prospects and benefits of aquaculture, betalene (an algae used in food manufacture) or the processing of titanium dioxide, came to nothing; more is hoped from reports that Indian energy giant Adani might develop a solar-power plant in one of the city’s huge – but virtually unoccupied – industrial estates. Sometimes the city’s main product seems to be consultants’ reports and optimism in industrial quantities.</p>
<h2>Isolated, but no cultural desert</h2>
<p>For all that the city has become smaller and poorer, Whyalla remains (as the town commission’s 1965 booklet put it) “a city of contrasts”. Alongside the pub-club-bingo and poker-machine culture that seemingly characterises the city, it is also, paradoxically, a place with greater access to culture than comparable communities. </p>
<p>Partly because of its isolation and perceived disadvantages, the state government and other agencies have long made special efforts to bring culture to Whyalla. I first heard Mozart’s Eine kleine Nachtmusik live in the Nicholson Avenue primary school library, because South Australia’s arts council sent a string quartet on tour in about 1973. </p>
<p>The opening of what is now the Middleback Arts Centre in 1985 has given Whyalla residents an impressive program of theatre, music, ballet and other performances. </p>
<p>Nor is the culture all imported. The Whyalla Players have performed musicals annually since 1956, and not just the traditional Rogers and Hammerstein or Gilbert and Sullivan repertoire, but also complex and recent works such as Phantom of the Opera or Cats.</p>
<p>Again, this activity suggests a triumph of optimism over the city’s unpromising background of deprivation. Ironically, the Middleback Arts Centre is located in the same precinct that houses government and church employment and welfare offices.</p>
<p>This ambivalence can be detected in the reflections of resident writers published in anthologies produced by successive incarnations of the Whyalla Writers’ Group (WWG). In 2001, Julie Drogemuller, in her poem The Beauty of Whyalla, reflected lyrically:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Her eyes</p>
<p>are the lights</p>
<p>that shine</p>
<p>in the clear starry nights.</p>
<p>And her name is Whyalla.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Contributors to another WWG anthology, Iceblocking in Red Haze, expressed the disaffection seemingly endemic among the city’s “youth”. In a piece featuring a sustained diatribe beginning “I hate Whyalla”, an anonymous author ended her piece, paradoxically, by writing fondly of:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… the red sand, the saltbush, the desert … the RED HAZE, my home Whyalla.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/152785/original/image-20170116-16945-1hxh7p0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/152785/original/image-20170116-16945-1hxh7p0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/152785/original/image-20170116-16945-1hxh7p0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152785/original/image-20170116-16945-1hxh7p0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152785/original/image-20170116-16945-1hxh7p0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152785/original/image-20170116-16945-1hxh7p0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152785/original/image-20170116-16945-1hxh7p0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152785/original/image-20170116-16945-1hxh7p0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&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 red sand, the saltbush, the desert, the RED HAZE … not everyone loves Whyalla’s setting.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/mikecogh/27249910836/in/photolist-fMz7sH-fAaUfN-oWKg3z-csX3zC-fzVQVP-csX5aA-oWtFjP-2NwLFa-eXiMKf-HRCmHm-eX7yLx-fSbuut-eXiGXs-2NBa6u-37mBSe-r3yHJj-rH7mJr-NPA6c7-NPzZ3o-NPzV1W-N2KNyK-N32Uqy-MzKoNh-HTWZSc-HTWUYV-HzTP8u-HvYV7U">Michael Coghlan/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Ideas, we’ve had a few</h2>
<p>As this suggests, while arguably a community in perpetual crisis, optimism can be found – not least in the pages of the city’s newspaper. Jan Vrtelka, a Czech migrant, wrote dozens of letters to the Whyalla News in the mid-noughties. He later published a selection of over 60 of them under the telling title of All for Whyalla. </p>
<p>Vrtelka’s optimism for Whyalla’s potential seemed boundless. He too advocated developing coastal resorts and remaking the railway to Port Augusta – which had carried passengers for only two years before closing in 1978 – to ship cattle to Darwin for export to Asia. He also proposed desalination plants, a medical school and university to make it the “education hub of western South Australia”. </p>
<p>The coastal track to Port Augusta, he claimed, could rival Victoria’s Great Ocean Road, if only it were sealed. He urged the introduction of dog-sledding (on sand) and land yachts (on mudflats near the city).</p>
<p>Whyalla, he thought, should plan for a city five times its present size: entice refugees to settle, he argued – perhaps having himself fled Soviet oppression.</p>
<p>Jan Vrtelka’s pride in Whyalla was not unique. Like my mother, he regarded Whyalla’s heat as invigorating and its generally fine weather as without parallel. It was as if the authors of BHP’s boosting booklets of the 1960s lived on. </p>
<p>Vrtelka’s optimism was at least rooted in an awareness that things really were pretty crook. He knew that the city’s population had declined more rapidly than in any comparable second city in any state in the world. He understood the notion of “a diminishing city” – an oft-used catchphrase – but he struggled against it.</p>
<h2>Still defying the uncertainty</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155130/original/image-20170201-12664-u8g7kp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155130/original/image-20170201-12664-u8g7kp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155130/original/image-20170201-12664-u8g7kp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155130/original/image-20170201-12664-u8g7kp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155130/original/image-20170201-12664-u8g7kp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155130/original/image-20170201-12664-u8g7kp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=655&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155130/original/image-20170201-12664-u8g7kp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=655&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155130/original/image-20170201-12664-u8g7kp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=655&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dating from 1940, the frieze on the Hotel Spencer depicts the blast furnace, a relic of Whyalla’s first industrial boom.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Peter Stanley</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Whyalla’s economic decline appears to be terminal. Ore mining in the Middleback Ranges brings modest benefits; as did the Santos natural gas development at Port Bonython on nearby Point Lowly in the 1990s. The development of BHP Billiton’s copper and uranium mines at Olympic Dam has not contributed much to Whyalla’s economy. </p>
<p>BHP divested itself of the steelworks in 2000 to OneSteel, later taken over by Arrium Steel, with each transfer costing jobs. Over the decade the total workforce in the steelworks – once 6,000-strong – fell to around 1,600. In April 2016, Arrium called in administrators and offered the plant for sale. </p>
<p>Today, the future of the steelworks remains uncertain. If it were to close, not only would Australia lose its only manufacturer of “long steel” products, but without its principal employer Whyalla would be mortally wounded, economically and socially. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/152786/original/image-20170116-16949-15sk3pi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/152786/original/image-20170116-16949-15sk3pi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/152786/original/image-20170116-16949-15sk3pi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=289&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152786/original/image-20170116-16949-15sk3pi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=289&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152786/original/image-20170116-16949-15sk3pi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=289&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152786/original/image-20170116-16949-15sk3pi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=363&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152786/original/image-20170116-16949-15sk3pi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=363&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152786/original/image-20170116-16949-15sk3pi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=363&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Whyalla, where the outback meets the sea … or where the steelworks used to be?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/9557815@N05/5186939954/in/photolist-q1Mihq-pTwSCL-dJ5DCG-Hqoa6m-fPxSYZ-8Umqwd-fSamSy-8Umqxd">Abi Skipp/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Fundamentally, the question is whether an industrial community can survive in the harsh environment of the upper Eyre Peninsula. Arrium Steel’s collapse may reflect the structural impossibility of attempting to make steel in such a place, rather than merely chronic mismanagement and a worldwide glut of steel.</p>
<p>But amid the predictions of economic collapse and the social dislocation that would inevitably follow, optimistic voices are also heard. </p>
<p>The city council’s 2015–16 strategic plan predictably aims to create “a vibrant, attractive city offering our community a diverse range of sustainable economic, social, environmental and cultural opportunities”, creating “an energetic, harmonious, integrated community actively involved in shaping Whyalla for current and future generations”. </p>
<p>Just as deprivation and despair are an ineradicable part of Whyalla’s inheritance, so too are optimism and hope. A recent visit to the city disclosed new homes privately built where Housing Trust units had been demolished and, as well as many “For Sale” signs, new businesses opening (a perennial triumph of optimism over economic reality in the city). </p>
<p>Amid forebodings of doom, quixotic headlines characterise the Whyalla News: “Afloat with hope”; “City on the mend”, “Whyalla expands to great future” and, of course, “Jobs boost for region”. </p>
<p>The local council has launched a rebranding that will, they hope, attract tourists. (The Whyalla News cartoonist – who happens to be my elder brother – suggests that instead of “Where the outback meets the sea” it adopt “Where the steelworks used to be”). With the death in 2016 of Jim Pollock, long-term mayor named in obituaries as a “Whyalla warrior”, no fewer than seven candidates are standing for election as mayor: they all have positive visions for the city’s future. </p>
<p>On the way to the airport I stopped off at a magnificent exhibition of quilts by the Whyalla Quilters. The group’s members had produced over a hundred pieces, a startlingly characteristic expression of the creativity that Whyalla’s people can display.</p>
<p>No-one is really sure what “Whyalla” means in the language of the Barngala people: they were devastated culturally before anyone thought to ask. It may mean “place near water” (“Where the outback meets the sea”), or it may mean (in the classic Indigenous response to a white questioner) “I don’t know”.</p>
<p>Whyalla: I don’t know.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>The author is grateful to Don Sarre, Ingrid and Stephen Stanley, Naomi Haldane and Ana Morris of the Whyalla Library Service, and Teresa Court of the Whyalla City Council. His work has also been published in Griffith Review 9 and 48.</em></p>
<p><em>You can read other essays from Griffith Review’s latest edition <a href="https://griffithreview.com/editions/state-of-hope/">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/69988/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Stanley 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>
Decades of expansion for Whyalla were followed by decades of contraction. Whyalla has seen optimism and idealism but also, if not despair, then its close neighbours, alienation and apathy.
Peter Stanley, Research Professor in the Australian Centre for the Study of Armed Conflict and Society, UNSW Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/70265
2017-02-09T02:39:13Z
2017-02-09T02:39:13Z
God bless the footy: dissent and distractions
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150226/original/image-20161215-2529-10jzqkr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Before the AFL, there was the much better, much cooler, much more local SANFL.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/heatherw/15303946066/in/photolist-pjmHZ5-grh2p4-8FVYjk-dhN86T-pm7wMM-p4TLxy-dhN83u-grgZEH-grggR4-dhN5bd-dhN3SL-dhN5ZU-dhN2Rc-dhN7EJ-grgGUb-8FZ9YJ-p4UAgX-dhN6UW-dhN6DY-grfKH7-dhN8gE-8FZaod-dhN49u-8FZ9MA-dhN3Z8-dhN4DT-dhN75u-dhN4qK-dhN5qX-pm7pQv-p4UarY-8FZ9G3-8FVY2n-dhN7t5-dhN7yF-dhN3pw-grgi9p-p4UesU-dhN6rm-grgFw1-pmmYyQ-grgttJ-dhN3yN-grgzfU-dhN3Gb-dhN5VK-grgDqY-grgaFi-8FZazq-grgC1U">heatherw/flickr</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This piece is republished with permission from State of Hope, the 55th edition of Griffith Review. Articles are a little longer than most published on The Conversation, presenting an in-depth analysis of the economic, social, environmental and cultural challenges facing South Australia, and the possibilities of renewal and revitalisation.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>When it comes to colourful and controversial views, the long-time mayor of Port Augusta, Joy Baluch, set elite standards. She <a href="http://www.slsa.sa.gov.au/archivaldocs/oh/OH862.pdf">said in 2008</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I hate sport.</p>
<p>I’ve never had time for it, been too busy looking after a family, you know, surviving. It’s a waste of time. I hate football and tennis and golf … and if ever the Asians are going to come in it’s going to be on grand final day … And they’ll just take over peacefully.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I’m not sure exactly which Asians she imagined would swarm South Australia on grand final day, destroying our white-bread, white-skinned way of life. Perhaps all the Asians – the Chinese and the Indonesians, the Japanese and the Koreans, the Vietnamese and the Thais – slaughtering innocent women and children with nothing but the power of kung fu, riding their Suzuki motorbikes, eating butter chicken and guzzling Chang beer after a solid day’s conquering.</p>
<p>The term “Asians” – whether she used it here thoughtlessly, provocatively or jokily – is symptomatic of Baluch the plain-speaking dissenter. But so too is her attack on sport. Few things are more shocking and inexplicable to huge numbers of South Australians (<a href="http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/09/08/1062901996932.html">weird murders notwithstanding</a>) than someone willing to have a dig at the footy.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.saints.com.au/news/2013-05-29/the-man-with-the-killer-approach">Alan Killigrew</a>, a Victorian who came to Adelaide in 1959 to coach the Norwood Football Club, offers a more <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=my-4EKn2SiEC&pg=PA75&lpg=PA75#v=onepage&q&f=false">conventional and comforting view</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>After all, what is a football club? It is grass in the middle, posts at the ends, and bricks and mortar. It’s people that give it soul. A football club is a living body.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I’ve heard family and friends describe their church in exactly these terms. Footy isn’t just the dominant spectator sport and topic of conversation in South Australia. It’s a salve. It’s a community binding agent. It’s the best entertainment going, even in the digital age. </p>
<p>It’s a mass obsession, especially when one of the local AFL teams – the Crows or the Power – sits high (or low) on the ladder.</p>
<h2>A love for Norwood</h2>
<p>Before the AFL, there was the much better, much cooler, much more local SANFL.</p>
<p>When I was nine years old and living in the lead-smelter city of Port Pirie, not too far from Baluch’s Port Augusta, Norwood made the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_SANFL_Grand_Final">1978 SANFL Grand Final</a>. Never mind Asians: little green men from outer space could have landed their spaceship while Dad and I watched the last quarter on the TV in our lounge room on Three Chain Road.</p>
<p>Norwood – the mighty Redlegs – were 29 points down at three-quarter time against Sturt, who had only lost once all season. The ’Legs were only so close because Sturt had kicked poorly in front of goal. </p>
<p>Norwood’s then coach, Bob Hammond, <a href="http://www.redlegsmuseum.com.au/ON_FIELD/PREMIERSHIPS/1978.aspx">told his players</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>You can win it if you believe you can win. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Inspired – enraptured, perhaps – the players surged. In the chaotic final minutes, umpire Des Foster awarded Norwood’s Philip Gallagher a mark – or was it a free kick? – the legitimacy of which Sturt supporters still dispute. On a tight angle, “Gags” kicked the winning goal.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8q3u_7YN_h4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The ending to the 1978 SANFL Grand Final.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the nearly 40 years that have passed, I have never strayed far from that spot in front of the TV, too tense to breathe as the clock ticked down: nothing could have mattered more. </p>
<p>I can still feel the disbelief, the ecstasy, as the final siren went and Dad lifted me off the ground and over his shoulder. Most especially, I will never lose my righteous fury at Mum and Dad, who had refused to let me get the train down to Adelaide to go to the game. My older brother Matt witnessed history that day from the concrete terraces of Footy Park, and that’s the reason he has done so well in life.</p>
<p>Norwood’s 1984 premiership was even more memorable, although I wasn’t even in the country. By then, I was a painfully shy teenager living with my parents in Logan, Utah, in a valley between two stunning mountain ranges and surrounded by Reagan-hugging Mormons. </p>
<p>That year, Norwood came from fifth, winning three knockout finals to make the grand final against Port Adelaide. On the Monday after the final, the family back home mailed us a VHS tape of the game. While we waited for it to arrive, nobody would tell us whether we’d won. Finally, Grandma Allington, under extreme pressure from her loving son and grandson, muttered down the phone in her faux grumpy way:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I promised I wouldn’t tell you who won. But if I did tell you, you’d be very happy.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>When the tape finally arrived in the mail, we couldn’t play it because the US used the NTSC television display system. At a friend’s place – we had no video player ourselves, although we had access to something like a billion TV stations – we fast-forwarded the tape and, with electronic snow for vision, listened to the commentator’s distorted voice call the final seconds, his voice slow and deep:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Theeeeere … itttttt. Issssss … it’sssssss … alllllll … ovvv-errrrrr.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It was a couple of weeks before we found a kind stranger with a set-up that allowed us to watch the game.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/mzU06TU781U?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Highlights of the 1984 SANFL Grand Final.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Footy embedded itself in my childhood life in deeper ways than winning games and the occasional premiership. I researched everything about football. More importantly, I felt everything. I cried one night in 1980, when Port Adelaide’s Russell Ebert won his fourth Magarey Medal and so deprived Norwood’s Michael Taylor of what was rightfully his.</p>
<p>I wasn’t only consumed by the season in progress. One day, Dad took me to meet an old man called “Wacka” Scott, who let me hold his two Magarey Medals (1924 and 1930). </p>
<p>Another time, I traipsed around a suburban cemetery to find the grave of “Topsy” Waldron, who played in Norwood’s first year in 1878 (Norwood were premiers on debut). In his book commemorating the centenary of Norwood, <a href="http://www.blaqbooks.com.au/index.php?route=product/product&path=64_129&product_id=600">Red and Blue Blooded</a>, Mike Coward wrote:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Waldron died a pathetically lonely man. He believed only his Norwood Football Club loved him.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But perhaps most of all my love for footy and for Norwood was about family. I loved reading old newspaper clippings of my grandpa’s football exploits. Harold Allington was a defender who played 56 games for Norwood between 1931 and 1935; he won the 1934 best and fairest; he played for the state; he had a clean pair of hands.</p>
<p>He was also – and this was the part I loved the most – injury-prone. The Advertiser reported on May 17, 1935:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This year he is still the shuttlecock of misfortune. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>He broke his collarbone, missed ten games from a single concussion, did an elbow, badly bruised his hip, and more.</p>
<p>My favourite clipping detailed the day Grandpa cut off the middle toe of his right foot while chopping wood in the backyard: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Allington, who was wearing slippers at the time, limped into the kitchen unseen, and despite great pain prepared some hot water in which to bathe his foot.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>How he managed to chop off one toe – why not two toes? why not half his foot? – was forever a mystery to me.</p>
<p>I was almost as proud of Dad, who played a couple of trial games for Norwood in the early 1960s. He could have made it – or so I’ve always believed – but he was at theological college at the time. One day the coach, Alan Killigrew, spoke to Dad after training. He said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>You’ve got to choose between football and God.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>To my everlasting regret, Dad chose God.</p>
<p>It’s been several years since I’ve been to a Norwood game, although I occasionally watch them on television. I have followed the Crows, the made-up club <a href="http://www.afl.com.au/news/2014-02-05/crows-to-don-sa-jumper">“for all South Australians”</a>, since their first game in 1991, but never with the same messianic fervour with which I followed Norwood. </p>
<p>Perhaps most importantly, being a Crows fan allows me to retain my culturally embedded and familial hatred of Port Adelaide. I go to the occasional game at the cathedral otherwise known as the new Adelaide Oval (South Australians will line up to tell you it’s a “world-class stadium”), and I watch replays of high-quality matches. </p>
<p>But despite my fading fervour, I retain a version of a football-is-everything mentality. Partly, I’m nostalgic for my childhood. Partly it’s because it’s still, on a good day, a magnificent spectator sport. And partly it’s because I miss my grandpa.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150224/original/image-20161215-2539-5m3fbf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150224/original/image-20161215-2539-5m3fbf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150224/original/image-20161215-2539-5m3fbf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150224/original/image-20161215-2539-5m3fbf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150224/original/image-20161215-2539-5m3fbf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150224/original/image-20161215-2539-5m3fbf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150224/original/image-20161215-2539-5m3fbf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In South Australia, you’re traditionally either a Port Adelaide fan or you hate them.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The off-field reigns supreme</h2>
<p>These days, though, I find myself more interested in footy analysis, rumour and realpolitik than in actual games. </p>
<p>The AFL is a legitimate and sometimes compelling space in which to consider a range of political, cultural and social issues, including racism, reconciliation, sexism and misogyny, the deification of the alpha male, the profile of elite women’s sport, the use and misuse of “team first” philosophies, the carnivalised meaning of Anzac Day, the sanctity of Good Friday, performance-enhancing drugs, illicit drugs, gambling, the proliferation of sledging in public and workplace discourse, and more. </p>
<p>The AFL’s own approach to these issues is sometimes awkward, sometimes PR-driven and sometimes tokenistic. But, at other times, they display some sophistication. Often, it’s a bit of both – and in any case, footy fans are hardly the only subset of Australian citizens who struggle to engage constructively with complex issues.</p>
<p>But my interest in off-field matters goes deeper still, by which I mean shallower still. The AFL’s trade period in 2016 threw up its usual mix of players trying to leave clubs and clubs trying to push players out. For a week in October, I was transfixed by <a href="http://www.afl.com.au/news/2016-10-10/carlton-star-bryce-gibbs-requests-trade-to-adelaide">the possibility</a> that Bryce Gibbs might leave the Carlton Football Club, even though he has three years to run on his contract, and come home to Adelaide. </p>
<p>I worried about what player or draft picks the Adelaide Crows would give up to get him. Not Mitch McGovern, surely, who could be anything; not Charlie Cameron – please, no – who Eddie Betts has taken under his wing. In the end, Gibbs <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-news/afl-trades-2016-bryce-gibbs-stays-at-carlton-after-adelaide-trade-falls-through-20161020-gs6v0p.html">stayed put</a>, with the Crows <a href="http://www.afc.com.au/news/2016-10-20/crows-decline-to-meet-carltons-demands">announcing</a> they “were not prepared to meet Carlton’s unrealistic demands”.</p>
<p>These are the sorts of footy issues that capture my interest: which coach is about to get sacked? Which player has filmed himself snorting a white substance and whacked it up on the internet? Was Norwood’s 1984 premiership – coming from fifth when the finalists came from a top five only – a greater achievement than the Western Bulldogs’ <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-01/western-bulldogs-break-the-drought-with-22-point-win-over-swans/7895386">2016 AFL triumph</a> from seventh to premiers?</p>
<p>Only parochialism can deal with an unanswerable question: Norwood is by definition better than the Western Bulldogs or Footscray or whatever they’re calling themselves this week, and South Australia is by definition better than Victoria.</p>
<p>All this is harmless fun, innocent downtime. But think back to Joy Baluch, who suggested that we’d be too distracted on grand final day to notice an Asian invasion. </p>
<p>Leaving aside Asians, Baluch is onto me – but the situation is more insidious than she suggests. Footy chat doesn’t <em>distract</em> me. I don’t find myself wondering why I am listening to Trade Radio – yes, for a couple of weeks after grand final day, there’s such a thing as a digital nine-to-five talkfest on club negotiations over player movements, real and imagined. </p>
<p>I seek out Trade Radio, specifically seek it out to avoid confronting other, harder, messier things. I’m a political junkie who can’t bear to hear things I don’t want to hear, just as a kid I couldn’t bear to watch Norwood lose.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150033/original/image-20161214-18914-vp1glh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150033/original/image-20161214-18914-vp1glh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=363&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150033/original/image-20161214-18914-vp1glh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=363&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150033/original/image-20161214-18914-vp1glh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=363&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150033/original/image-20161214-18914-vp1glh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150033/original/image-20161214-18914-vp1glh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150033/original/image-20161214-18914-vp1glh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Carlton’s Bryce Gibbs (right) requested a move home to Adelaide in the recent AFL trade period.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Joe Castro</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Politics and footy</h2>
<p>As Cory Bernardi, senator for South Australia, has grown in prominence, he has begun to remind me of the giant Christ the Redeemer statue that looks down on the city of Rio de Janeiro. </p>
<p>But chiselled Cory is fully animated. He is a faith-fuelled greed-is-good humanoid who invites and incites ridicule, allowing him cover to get on with the business of saving souls; bringing the national budget back into balance; keeping heathens offshore; <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/cory-bernardi-to-be-sent-to-united-nations-20160301-gn7al2.html">fixing the UN</a>; making his (now-former) Coalition colleagues appear more centrist and moderate than they are; and scaring people silly.</p>
<p>As political activism goes, whinging about Bernardi is an increasingly lame act. This is a bloke who offers his opponents fresh ammunition every time he aggressively expresses his unpleasant and anachronistic ideas. </p>
<p>But when, say, Jacqui Lambie <a href="http://theaimn.com/day-day-politics-house-shambles-no-just-chaos/">tees off at Bernardi</a> – “prostitutes are far more honest, sincere, humane and compassionate, and better bang for buck than Senator Bernardi will ever be able to deliver” – I laugh, but then I cringe (and not only because sex workers can surely be humane and compassionate human beings).</p>
<p>Taking a stand against Bernardi means – or might mean – taking a stand against family, neighbours, friends, colleagues. It means being willing to scratch at a veneer of community conviviality and solidarity.</p>
<p>At a certain point, I want to get through my day in a good mood, without feeling the need to scream “Who the hell did you vote for?” at the bloke in the car next to me at the lights. I want to deny Bernardi’s public existence, just as I want to avert my gaze from youth unemployment rates, just as I want to pretend that the bodies in the barrels murders didn’t happen in a suburb in the city I call home. </p>
<p>Instead, I want to think about something truly unjust, like why Norwood never got its own team in the AFL. And so – very often – that’s exactly what I do. It’s a free country, after all.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150032/original/image-20161214-18885-1dmaxm2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150032/original/image-20161214-18885-1dmaxm2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150032/original/image-20161214-18885-1dmaxm2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150032/original/image-20161214-18885-1dmaxm2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150032/original/image-20161214-18885-1dmaxm2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150032/original/image-20161214-18885-1dmaxm2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150032/original/image-20161214-18885-1dmaxm2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">As political activism goes, whinging about Cory Bernardi is an increasingly lame act.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Mick Tsikas</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>South Australia and dissenters</h2>
<p>Privilege, distractions, parochialism, state pride, complacency, conformity, passivity: these are natural resources that South Australia has in abundance. We can put a positive spin on them too. </p>
<p>In <a href="http://www.wakefieldpress.com.au/product.php?productid=207">Drawing the Crow</a>, his book about South Australia in the 1950s and ’60s, academic Adrian Mitchell says that Adelaide’s long-time moniker as the City of Churches:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… identifies not a freak nor architecture nor a rampaging wowserism, either current or in the past, but a lifestyle of civic steadiness, regularity and propriety, the values of its founding settlement, in both its English and German constituency.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I recognise my Adelaide – I recognise myself – in Mitchell’s description. And it leaves me deeply uneasy.</p>
<p>In 1957, the year Port Adelaide beat Norwood by 11 points in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1957_SANFL_Grand_Final">grand final</a>, historian Douglas Pike published <a href="http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/10713883">Paradise of Dissent: South Australia, 1829–1857</a>. Pike’s book – at times riveting, at times dense, at times tedious – opens with these resonant lines:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>South Australia was settled in 1836 by men whose professed ideals were civil liberty, social opportunity and equality for all religions. Though each of these ideas was moulded in England, each was a protest against English practice. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The first colonists, Pike says, arrived harbouring dissatisfaction with the pace of reform in England: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Only the impatient departed.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The South Australian self-perception of exceptionalism – a “sense of difference”, as historian Derek Whitelock puts it – emerges from these origins and this origin story. </p>
<p>And South Australia has indeed had its fair share of dissenters. There is Catherine Helen Spence, the feminist, electoral reformer, social activist, preacher and writer. Spence thought:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>My work on newspapers and reviews is more characteristic of me, and intrinsically better work than I have done in fiction. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Maybe, but her politically charged fiction resounds still, not least a foray into science fiction in which her terminally ill protagonist trades the last couple of years of her life for “one week in the future”.</p>
<p>South Australian dissenters, including Baluch and Bernardi, have often operated within the political sphere. My favourite colonist is <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/finniss-boyle-travers-2044">Boyle Travers Finniss</a>, who, in 1856, was the first premier of South Australia under responsible government, when the local Legislative Council revised South Australia’s constitution to achieve self-government. </p>
<p>In 1864, Finniss led an expedition to select a site for the capital of the Northern Territory. After he insisted on surveying a swamp, some of his men sailed for Singapore, while six others acquired a seven-metre boat and floated all the way to Champion Bay in Western Australia. </p>
<p>Finniss straddled a line between dissenter and misguided visionary, between principled outlier and dogmatist, between self-confidence and delusion. </p>
<p>American legal scholar Cass Sunstein argues that democracies need dissent; he warns against an excess of conformity. But he also condemns “political correctness” – which he calls “squelching those who reject left-wing orthodoxy” – while acknowledging, correctly but unhelpfully, “we do not need to encourage would-be dissenters who are speaking nonsense”. </p>
<p>Is Bernardi speaking nonsense on behalf of South Australians? It depends who you ask.</p>
<p>And then there is the grand political dissenter of the 20th century, premier and superhero Don Dunstan, who dragged the state – and, to a lesser extent, the Labor Party – into the modern world, and towards something much more resembling a just world, a fair world, a diverse world, a creative world, a food-loving world.</p>
<p>But in time, the phrase “paradise of dissent” has become a slogan, detached from the complex and messy history Pike told. We don’t need Pike’s observation that conformist tendencies kicked in early in the new colony. We don’t need to think about the practical limits of the religious, cultural and political freedoms imagined by the new establishment.</p>
<p>And it’s best, still, that we don’t think too deeply about our treatment of the land’s original inhabitants. In our complacency, we need only know that South Australia was planned (like a kit home), was convict-free (at least in theory) and that it has produced a bumper crop of dissenters (like a tomato plant in a Mediterranean climate). </p>
<p>We need only bask in the afterglow of the Dunstan era, not protect and extend its legacy. We need only know, or believe, that we are exceptional. According to Mitchell:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>What South Australians have done, perhaps more doggedly than those in any other region, is to veil or reserve their own regional identity – not because of any sense of inadequacy or unfitness, but because that is the particular character of the South Australian. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Again, I recognise this South Australia; again, I recognise myself in this South Australia. But such recognition offers us a hole to crawl into that is deep and deceptively warm. </p>
<p>It offers us the chance to pretend that South Australia, in its distinctiveness, is merely the sum of its better parts. It offers us the chance to imagine that South Australia, a place that exports uranium and has a long association with defence industries, stands aloof from the world.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150223/original/image-20161215-2509-rf3ac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150223/original/image-20161215-2509-rf3ac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150223/original/image-20161215-2509-rf3ac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150223/original/image-20161215-2509-rf3ac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150223/original/image-20161215-2509-rf3ac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150223/original/image-20161215-2509-rf3ac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150223/original/image-20161215-2509-rf3ac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">As premier, Don Dunstan dragged South Australia into the modern world.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Portrait Gallery/Anthony Browell</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The best dissenter of all …</h2>
<p>In the end, in the neoliberal and memed world we have created, everything’s a competition. So I’ll call it: the best-ever South Australian dissenter isn’t Catherine Helen Spence or Don Dunstan or Cory Bernardi. The best South Australian dissenter is also the best footballer ever. </p>
<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garry_McIntosh">Garry McIntosh</a> was a small, muscled, goateed, hairy, unkempt rover who threw himself into packs, didn’t mind a bit of violence for a good cause, and who changed the course of history with his hardball gets and his handballs: premierships, Magarey Medals, an altered perception of the Norwood Football Club.</p>
<p>In 1982, the North Melbourne Kangaroos drafted “Macca” into the VFL, but he stayed home. When the Crows were formed, eight years before Macca eventually retired, he still wouldn’t shift from the SANFL. </p>
<p>Did he shun the AFL out of love of the local, out of parochialism, to make a stand against a national league, or as a lifestyle choice? Or did he understand his own limitations: was he just too slow to play in the best competition in the land?</p>
<p>When Macca was added to the SA Football Hall of Fame, <a href="http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/sport/afl/loyal-macca-in-a-league-of-his-own/story-e6freckc-1226445148911">he insisted</a> he had no regrets because he’d got to play for Norwood:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>But if I were an 18-year-old kid now – with the mentality there is now – things would be different. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Macca hasn’t yet been inducted into the Australian Football Hall of Fame. Now there’s an injustice, or a distraction, worth protesting about.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>A full version of this essay, along with others from the Griffith Review’s latest edition, is available <a href="https://griffithreview.com/editions/state-of-hope/">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/70265/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Patrick Allington 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>
Footy isn’t just the dominant spectator sport and topic of conversation in South Australia. It’s a salve.
Patrick Allington, Lecturer in English and Creative Writing, Flinders University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/72058
2017-02-02T19:06:25Z
2017-02-02T19:06:25Z
Friday essay: the silence of Ediacara, the shadow of uranium
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155075/original/image-20170131-3259-1d7av1s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Marcoo was a 1.4 kilotonne ground-level nuclear test carried out at Maralinga in 1956. The contaminated debris was buried at this site in the 1967 clean-up known as Operation Brumby.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As an archaeologist working in the remote areas around Woomera and the Nullarbor Plain, my understanding of South Australia was first informed by rocks and soil. This was a landscape of fossils and <a href="http://paleoportal.org/index.php?globalnav=fossil_gallery&sectionnav=taxon&taxon_id=109">trace fossils</a> – the preserved impressions left by the passage of a living body through sediment – jostling for attention. On this land surface, SA presents an arc extending from the “death mask” fossils of early multicellular life to the human leap into the solar system. Sure, you might say, this could be said of other locations on Earth. But here it seems laid bare for any who can read the distinctive pattern of signs.</p>
<h2>The silent shore</h2>
<p>This was once a shoreline in a silent world. Throughout some terrifying ice ages, when glaciers reached almost to the equator, microscopic single-celled creatures held on to life in the freezing oceans. As the ice sheets retreated, warmer shores opened up on the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gondwana">Gondwana supercontinent</a>, including what would later become the Flinders Ranges. Microbes swarmed together in mats to colonise the sandy sea floor. Wind and water were the only sounds, but there was nothing yet with ears to hear them.</p>
<p>The rhythm of the waves created undulations on the sea floor, to which the microbial mats cleaved. For millions of years the green ocean carpet flourished in the shallow waters. Around 635 million years ago, new forms of multicellular life appeared as additional tiers in this simple ecology. Creatures similar in appearance to fern fronds anchored themselves in the mats by a round root-like hank. Others took the form of segmented worms squashed into round pancakes. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155079/original/image-20170131-3251-w7wzf7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155079/original/image-20170131-3251-w7wzf7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155079/original/image-20170131-3251-w7wzf7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155079/original/image-20170131-3251-w7wzf7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155079/original/image-20170131-3251-w7wzf7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155079/original/image-20170131-3251-w7wzf7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155079/original/image-20170131-3251-w7wzf7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155079/original/image-20170131-3251-w7wzf7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fossil of an Ediacaran worm.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Far from “<a href="http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/red-in-tooth-and-claw.html">nature red in tooth and claw</a>”, this was nature basking in the sun, in no hurry to change. Storms were the most dramatic events to occur over millions of years. The surges of water these produced would drag the button holdfast of the fronds across the sandy ocean floor, leaving a crackled trace until the wave passed and left it swaying again. In one of these storms, a sudden influx of loose sediment was dragged over some fronds, knocking them flat and covering them with silt. There was too much weight to break free and these limbless, toothless creatures had no way to burrow out.</p>
<p>Gondwana drifted, split, folded and, around 540 million years ago, uplifted, raising the ocean floor to form the slopes of a mountain range.</p>
<p>The fossilised fronds and pancake worms of the fauna from the <a href="http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/vendian/ediacaran.php">Ediacaran geological period</a> (635–542 million years ago) are now on display at the South Australian Museum. The ripples in the stone cast shadows that allow you to almost see the shimmering of the shallow water. The “elephant skin” texture – where the hank of a single fern frond was dragged in the storm surge – is visible in the stone, as is the wiggly path or trace fossil of a small worm that escaped burial.</p>
<p>In effect, South Australia is the trace fossil of an earlier continent, or an earlier planet – perhaps not even this one. The Ediacara fauna are vastly different to present life on Earth, and may provide an analogue for life elsewhere in the solar system.</p>
<h2>The dust giants</h2>
<p>In the <a href="http://www.livescience.com/40311-pleistocene-epoch.html">Pleistocene era</a>, starting from about 1.8 million years ago, the ice sheets advanced again. With so much water locked away in the ice, vast plains were exposed on the continental shelf. Plant communities died off and soil formation slowed as temperatures and rainfall decreased. No longer consolidated by vegetation, sediments were blown away in the cold winds. <em>Aeolian</em> is the word, like a harp with a dry rustling sound. The sand traversed huge distances and settled into waves of dunes reflecting the wind direction. The leaching of iron stained their quartz sands Martian-red.</p>
<p>Low saltbushes and bluebushes were studded across the dunes at the edge of the ranges, with occasional forests of large saltbush. Giant kangaroos, three metres high, were as tall as these forest canopies. They loped along the dunes with their smaller cousins, sometimes venturing to the open grasslands that stretched to the distant coast of Sahul.</p>
<p>The carnivore <em><a href="https://australianmuseum.net.au/thylacoleo-carnifex">Thylacoleo carnifex</a></em> roamed the plains, stalking <em><a href="https://australianmuseum.net.au/palorchestes-azeal">Palorchestes azael</a></em> and other herbivores. Waterholes were perilous places where the giant snake <em><a href="http://www.prehistoric-wildlife.com/species/w/wonambi.html">Wonambi naracoortensis</a></em> coiled in wait. Taking shelter from the cold wind in a limestone cave, Aboriginal people might have looked out to see the huge shadows of a herd of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diprotodon">diprotodons</a>, the marsupial “rhinoceros”, or <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/a-case-of-mistaken-identity-for-australias-extinct-big-bird-52856">Genyornis</a></em>, the two-metre-tall flightless bird. If these animals were reptiles, we would call them dinosaurs.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155266/original/image-20170201-29911-m4jdoj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155266/original/image-20170201-29911-m4jdoj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155266/original/image-20170201-29911-m4jdoj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155266/original/image-20170201-29911-m4jdoj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155266/original/image-20170201-29911-m4jdoj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155266/original/image-20170201-29911-m4jdoj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155266/original/image-20170201-29911-m4jdoj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155266/original/image-20170201-29911-m4jdoj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Wallaby skin water carrier.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Stuart Humphreys © Australian Museum</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At the height of this cold, dry period – 30-19,000 years ago – a person might have seen the ocean only a few times across their lifespan. A nacreous abalone shell, excavated at <a href="https://www.academia.edu/27094779/A_Technological_Analysis_of_Stone_Artefacts_from_Allens_Cave_South_Australia_Thesis_Abstract_2016">Allen’s Cave</a> on the Nullarbor Plain and dated to 18,000 years ago, speaks of a journey hundreds of kilometres overland to the shore. Specialist knowledge was needed to travel far from permanent or regular water sources: how to find water-bearing roots, rock wells, and Artesian springs. Perhaps more was needed too: <a href="https://australianmuseum.net.au/wallaby-skin-water-carrier-pre-1885">kangaroo-skin water bags</a>, the endurance to carry a coolamon of water for miles without spilling a drop. The desert sands and the porous limestones of the Nullarbor don’t hold water reservoirs, and the aridity turned the lakes to the west and north of the Flinders Ranges into salt.</p>
<p>Aboriginal people would have noted but passed over the sedimentary rocks that preserved the Ediacara fauna. Instead, they searched for <a href="https://www.mindat.org/min-960.html">chalcedony</a>, <a href="https://www.mindat.org/min-994.html">chert</a>, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silcrete">silcrete</a>. With an understanding of how these stones fracture, you can make a cutting edge sharper and more sterile than a metal surgical blade. Glassy veins of such stone, nacreous in their own way, occur throughout the Nullarbor plain.</p>
<p>Countless scholarly papers describe the climatic conditions and biological record of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Glacial_Maximum">Last Glacial Maximum</a>. Between the lines of these papers we can catch a glimpse of how Aboriginal people may have experienced these landscapes. In the field, I look for traces of their life where the red dunes are exposed – a stone tool or the ashes of a hearth, perhaps. Mining companies, however, would mostly prefer these traces vanished.</p>
<h2>A line in the sand</h2>
<p>The ice melted again, and water inundated the great coastal plains. The megafauna were long gone, leaving the regular kangaroos, emus and wombats behind to compete with new migrants: sheep, cattle, camels and rabbits. The livestock, particularly cattle, thrived on saltbush.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155082/original/image-20170131-3274-18q8gdx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155082/original/image-20170131-3274-18q8gdx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155082/original/image-20170131-3274-18q8gdx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=866&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155082/original/image-20170131-3274-18q8gdx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=866&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155082/original/image-20170131-3274-18q8gdx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=866&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155082/original/image-20170131-3274-18q8gdx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1089&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155082/original/image-20170131-3274-18q8gdx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1089&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155082/original/image-20170131-3274-18q8gdx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1089&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">George Goyder.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It was still arid out in the north and centre, though droughts lasted just a few years instead of thousands. The years 1863–66 were particularly severe. The Surveyor-General of SA, <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/goyder-george-woodroffe-3647">George Goyder</a>, was sent out in 1865 to define the area where reliable rainfall divided agricultural from grazing land. In the absence of rainfall records, he observed geology and vegetation to create a line stretching over 3000 kilometres, from Pinaroo on the Victorian border to Ceduna in the far west. South of the line was dominated by mallee scrubs, and the north by saltbush and other chenopods.</p>
<p>A few years later, seasons had improved. The bold bought land above the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goyder's_Line">Goyder Line</a> for cropping. This line was not, however, just a mark on a map; as successive drought oscillations continued, farmers were forced back south, abandoning homesteads and even whole towns, the crumbling remains of which are still visible today.</p>
<p>In the process of settlement, trees were cut down for fence posts, telegraph poles and firewood. On the treeless Nullarbor Plain, soil was stabilised by delicate <a href="http://www.soilcrust.org/crust101.htm">biological crusts</a> formed from lichens and bacteria. The hard hoofs of the livestock cracked them like the toffee shell on a crème brûlée, and the dust blew again.</p>
<p>In 1945, the CSIRO scientist RW Jessup was sent to investigate soil erosion in arid areas of South Australia. He noted the degeneration caused by the combined effect of rabbits and stock. When rabbits reached plague proportions and began to run out of food, they ate the young shoots and ringbarked trees. Fast growing species could bounce back, but slower trees like mulga and myall suffered the most, especially in the absence of Aboriginal firing regimes to germinate seeds. Jessup noticed the Precambrian rocks but did not stop to look for fossils. He was more focused on the windblown sands: evidence of how pastoralism was recreating the arid conditions of the Pleistocene.</p>
<p>The same year saw the end of the Second World War. Far away in another hemisphere, a <a href="http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/wernher-von-brauns-v-2-rocket-12609128/">rocket capable of reaching outer space</a> had been built and <a href="http://www.atomicheritage.org/history/bombings-hiroshima-and-nagasaki-1945">two atomic bombs deployed</a>. These events would shape the world for decades to come, and leave their imprint in the outback of South Australia.</p>
<h2>Uranium and rockets</h2>
<p>In 1946, there were many people roaming the South Australian deserts. One was geologist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reg_Sprigg">Reg Sprigg</a>, searching for uranium to supply the growing demand for nuclear weapons. He started with the old <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_Hill">Radium Hill</a> mine in the east, and surveyed Mount Painter in the Flinders Ranges, before coming to the Ediacara Hills in the north of the ranges. On the gentle slopes, he was struck by ancient sandstone slabs, generally a poor type of stone for fossil preservation. But he’d seen fossils in this sort of rock before. The round impressions that he saw looked like flattened jellyfish and large segmented worms, but the rock was clearly Precambrian – an age when only single-celled animals were supposed to exist.</p>
<p>The discovery was initially received with scepticism. Some argued that the shapes were natural phenomena. Others disputed the dates. It wasn’t until the discovery of similar fossils in Namibia, Siberia and other locations, and the support of some University of Adelaide academics, that the Ediacara fauna were acknowledged to be genuine. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155084/original/image-20170201-3265-13oq03n.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155084/original/image-20170201-3265-13oq03n.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155084/original/image-20170201-3265-13oq03n.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=779&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155084/original/image-20170201-3265-13oq03n.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=779&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155084/original/image-20170201-3265-13oq03n.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=779&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155084/original/image-20170201-3265-13oq03n.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=979&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155084/original/image-20170201-3265-13oq03n.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=979&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155084/original/image-20170201-3265-13oq03n.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=979&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Spriggina fossil.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The creatures then received names. <em><a href="http://paleoexhibit.blogspot.com.au/2015/02/dickinsonia-from-ediacaran-biota.html">Dickinsonia</a></em> was the flat pancake worm. The jellyfish turned out to be mostly the discoid holdfast of the frond-shaped <a href="https://museumvictoria.com.au/melbournemuseum/discoverycentre/600-million-years/timeline/ediacaran/charnia/">Charnia</a>. Reg Sprigg lent his name to the mysterious segmented <em><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spriggina">Spriggina</a></em> species – maybe a worm, maybe a frond, maybe something like the later trilobites. </p>
<p>While Reg Sprigg continued his search for uranium deposits, men from the Army’s Survey Corps were on the gibber plains around Mount Eba, mapping an area the size of England to enclose a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woomera_Test_Range">rocket test range</a>. The Anglo-Australian Joint Project was established to develop weapons for Britain, and Australia hoped, through this arrangement, to gain a greater defence capacity to fend off Asia. The German V-2 rocket, which had devastated London in the last months of the war, would form the basis of this new weapon system.</p>
<p>Senior British military personnel took a flight to see the proposed area for themselves. They flew over the Central Aborigines Reserve on the borders between South and Western Australia, the direction in which the future rockets would be launched. To their eyes, the red desert recalled another: the white sands around the <a href="http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/trinity-atomic-bomb-site">Trinity site in New Mexico</a>, USA, where the first atom bomb was exploded in 1944. The Australian author <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Southall">Ivan Southall</a> described this view later in 1962: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Here it was, one of the greatest stretches of uninhabited wasteland on earth, created by God specifically for rockets.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Hidden in plain sight</h2>
<p>Aboriginal people became a trace fossil in the land deemed empty – hidden in plain sight. <a href="http://www.kokatha.com.au/">Kokatha</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitjantjatjara">Pitjantjatjara</a>, <a href="http://nativetitle.org.au/profiles/profile_sa_adnyamathanha.html">Adnyamathanha</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barngarla_people">Barngarla</a> people lived on missions around the state, and gathered in coastal towns that offered them the employment that the rocket range had promised but didn’t deliver.</p>
<p>At this time, white Australians thought Aboriginal occupation had been a few thousand years at most, and many believed Aboriginal people were dying out – the inevitable result of the “stone age” being superseded by the “space age”.</p>
<p>Ironically, it would take American chemist <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1960/libby-bio.html">Willard Libby’s</a> invention of radiocarbon dating in the 1940s – an idea that came to him when working on the atomic bomb for the <a href="http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/einstein/peace-and-war/the-manhattan-project/">Manhattan Project</a> – to establish the much deeper antiquity of occupation. <a href="http://www.anu.edu.au/news/all-news/vale-emeritus-professor-john-mulvaney">John Mulvaney’s</a> 1962 excavation of Kenniff Cave in Queensland used radiocarbon to obtain a date of 19,000 years ago, during the Last Glacial Maximum.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155078/original/image-20170131-3279-gjdmlr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155078/original/image-20170131-3279-gjdmlr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155078/original/image-20170131-3279-gjdmlr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=957&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155078/original/image-20170131-3279-gjdmlr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=957&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155078/original/image-20170131-3279-gjdmlr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=957&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155078/original/image-20170131-3279-gjdmlr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1203&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155078/original/image-20170131-3279-gjdmlr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1203&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155078/original/image-20170131-3279-gjdmlr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1203&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Black Arrow rocket, Woomera.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1947, on the first reconnaissance for a place to build the township that would service the rocket range, surveyors found tens of thousands of stone tools at Phillip Ponds. Recognising that evidence of Aboriginal occupation also meant the presence of water, they selected this location for the <a href="http://homepage.powerup.com.au/%7Ewoomera/town.htm">Woomera Village</a>, named after the wooden spear-thrower used by Aboriginal people in many parts of Australia. The street names in the new town were sourced from a vocabulary compiled by HM Cooper, published in 1948 as <a href="http://digital.slv.vic.gov.au/view/action/singleViewer.do?dvs=1485930873895%7E603&locale=en_US&metadata_object_ratio=10&show_metadata=true&VIEWER_URL=/view/action/singleViewer.do?&preferred_usage_type=VIEW_MAIN&DELIVERY_RULE_ID=10&frameId=1&usePid1=true&usePid2=true">Australian Aboriginal Words and Their Meanings</a>.</p>
<p>In the following decades, Australian scientists designed sounding rockets for upper atmosphere research and worked on British long-range ballistic missiles like the <a href="http://www.armaghplanet.com/blog/blue-streak-uks-cold-war-rocket.html">Blue Streak</a>. They also collaborated with the US in establishing another new technology: tracking the satellites that were planned for launch in the <a href="http://www.nas.edu/history/igy/">International Geophysical Year</a> of 1957–58. In 1957, the world’s first satellite, Sputnik 1, sent its distinctive beep into the ether. The Space Age had begun.</p>
<h2>Radioactive</h2>
<p>My trips to the <a href="http://www.defence.gov.au/woomera/about.htm">Woomera Prohibited Area</a> are sometimes to advise mining companies about heritage issues, and sometimes to do my own research on Australia’s space program. One day, I’m taken out to the derelict structures once used as launch pads for a unique hybrid rocket.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/pvcHO4WieV0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>The satellite launcher <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_(rocket)">Europa</a> was a collaboration between six European nations and Australia in the early 1960s. The two launch pads stand on the edge of a blindingly white salt lake. Rock art sites can be found on outcrops and boulders around the lower edge of the steep shores. Against the wind, I imagine the tremendous roar of the rocket’s engines and think of Ivan Southall’s description of the landscape in his 1962 book, Woomera:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It’s almost like you are living in another world, just as though you had been shot off in a spaceship and let down on some strange planet where men had never been before.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Writing about Woomera and Maralinga, Southall constantly emphasises the silence of a landscape where, he avers, even Aboriginal people speak in undertones. This seems supremely ironic when you think of rocket engines roaring, or the more sinister blast of an atom bomb. From 1956 to 1963, Australia supported Britain in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_nuclear_tests_at_Maralinga">a series of nuclear tests</a> at two locations outside Woomera’s perimeter, Maralinga and Emu Field. Southall visited Emu Field in 1962 where</p>
<blockquote>
<p>sprayed with yellow paint, and silent in the sand, are abandoned trucks and jeeps and weapons once too hot to handle. There, near the bomb towers that vanished, the very surface of the desert has become as glass.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155072/original/image-20170131-3244-j4qjj0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155072/original/image-20170131-3244-j4qjj0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155072/original/image-20170131-3244-j4qjj0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155072/original/image-20170131-3244-j4qjj0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155072/original/image-20170131-3244-j4qjj0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155072/original/image-20170131-3244-j4qjj0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155072/original/image-20170131-3244-j4qjj0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155072/original/image-20170131-3244-j4qjj0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Green-tinged nuclear glass at Maralinga.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The vitrified sand is the same iron oxide-coated sediment of the Pleistocene aeolian dunes, now with a greenish tinge like a cheap wine bottle. Such nuclear glass is highly collectible, and is sometimes called trinitite after the glass from the Trinity site in New Mexico.</p>
<p>The resonances of these tests aren’t fading any time soon. Generations of Aboriginal people and white Australians still suffer the effects of exposure to radiation. The shadows of the radioactive fallout – the “black mist”, as many Aboriginal people call it – are almost inescapable when you travel west in this state.</p>
<p>At Woomera, I go to look at the grave monuments in the cemetery on the hill outside the town. There are multiple still births and infant deaths, often in the same family. People don’t like to talk about it, but there are stories of women wailing in the streets, driven by unassuagable grief. A local urban myth held that if a pregnant woman stood on the hill facing Maralinga during a bomb test, the sex of the foetus would be revealed in x-ray silhouette.</p>
<p>On the far west coast we’re walking through the saltbush and tyre-piercing bluebush to a rock hole, where some of the traditional owners want to carry out maintenance by clearing the accumulated weeds and dirt. On our way we pass an unusual farm shed. It’s made of radiation-proof lead, scavenged from Maralinga by the landowner. I learn that such scavenging has distributed the artefacts of rockets and bombs all over the state.</p>
<p>On another day, the women are driving up the Ooldea track towards the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Australian_Railway">transcontinental railway line</a>. One roasted a wombat the night before and distributes chunks to us. As we gnaw on the bones, the women point out campsites off to the side of the track. You can’t necessarily see anything from the road, but the locations are loaded with memory. These are places where they camped during the trek from the Maralinga lands down to the coast. It wasn’t safe to stay, but leaving creates its own devastation.</p>
<p>Finally, I’m here at Maralinga. Despite four phases of remediation, there is so much to catch the archaeologist’s eye. No doubt the last people in white radiation suits to leave the site after the 2000 <a href="https://industry.gov.au/resource/Documents/radioactive_waste/martac_report.pdf">clean-up</a> thought all the residues of the hot yellow machines and bomb towers were safely interred in the burial mounds. I’m used to working at the scale of stone tools, though, and find the surface is scattered with small artefacts like broken ceramics and beer cans. </p>
<p>What really sticks in my memory are ephemeral traces of human presence. Along the wire of a perimeter fence, someone has looped bits of metal and twist ties in a line. A square grid has been drawn in the gravel near a radio tower. The tyre tracks of earth-moving machinery around and over the large burial mounds make me think of rover tracks on Mars.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155071/original/image-20170131-3269-1meucf2.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155071/original/image-20170131-3269-1meucf2.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155071/original/image-20170131-3269-1meucf2.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155071/original/image-20170131-3269-1meucf2.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155071/original/image-20170131-3269-1meucf2.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155071/original/image-20170131-3269-1meucf2.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155071/original/image-20170131-3269-1meucf2.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155071/original/image-20170131-3269-1meucf2.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Decorated fence at Maralinga.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This land is already a nuclear waste dump. The locations and proposals change, but the same apparent “emptiness” that brought rockets, nuclear tests and detention centres now attracts commercial interest in storing nuclear waste from other nations. It’s the end of a cycle that starts with the mining and export of Australian uranium. The redistribution of uranium is a very <a href="https://quaternary.stratigraphy.org/workinggroups/anthropocene/">Anthropocene</a> process, part of the dismantling and reassembling of the planet.</p>
<p>In the end it will all be buried, all become an archaeological site. Long after the molecular structure of the human-made materials has broken down, the uranium and plutonium will still be decaying. Future archaeologists may find it difficult to determine if these radioactive deposits are natural or cultural. Maybe the distinction will be irrelevant.</p>
<h2>Epilogue: the wind</h2>
<p>The story isn’t quite over yet, though. The Ediacara fauna gave their name to a new geological period, and while their relationship with contemporary species is still hotly debated, they have changed the way life on Earth is viewed.</p>
<p>The megafauna had largely disappeared by 10,000 years ago. The role of Aboriginal people in their extinction is also hotly debated, though archaeological evidence does not support the “overkill” hypothesis. New genetic studies are now pushing back the date of Aboriginal arrival in Australia to more than 60,000 years ago.</p>
<p>The Goyder Line is <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-12-02/goyders-line-climate-change-wheat-wine-grapes/6919276">shifting south</a> under the impacts of climate change.</p>
<p>Reg Sprigg, who died in 2008, established the Arkaroola Sanctuary in the Flinders Ranges. The Mars Society of Australia selected it as their primary <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2004/03/23/1071845.htm">Mars analogue landscape</a> to pursue both planetary science and practical aspects of Mars colonisation.</p>
<p>After becoming the fourth nation in space with the launch of the <a href="http://homepage.powerup.com.au/%7Ewoomera/wresat.htm">WRESAT-1 satellite</a> in 1967, Australia’s ambitions have languished. Woomera is still a busy test range, but we are no longer at the forefront of space exploration.</p>
<p>Maralinga has been handed back to its traditional owners. You can visit as a tourist.</p>
<p>The wind has been a constant theme. Once the dominant sound in the Ediacaran world, now it drives giant wind turbines supplying power to the state.</p>
<p>One planet’s past may be another’s future. The Ediacarans have vanished from South Australia, but deep time is always waiting to burst through the crusts of the surface. In the words of Ivan Southall:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In the most barren regions, the most lifeless regions, strange things happen after rain. Primitive crustaceans suddenly stir in the saline mud, reminding one of the dawning of time.</p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p><em>This essay first appeared in Griffith Review State of Hope, the 55th edition of Griffith Review.</em></p>
<p><em>The author thanks Hilda Moodoo, Wanda Miller, Eileen Wingfield, Andrew Starkey and many others who have generously shared their knowledge.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/72058/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alice Gorman is a member of the Advisory Council of the Space Industry Association of Australia and the Alternate State Delegate for the South Australian Chapter of the Australian Association of Consulting Archaeologists Inc</span></em></p>
History is writ large in the remote areas around Woomera and the Nullarbor: from the fossils of microscopic, cell-like creatures to ancient stone tools to the deitrus of rocket tests and the painful legacy of the Maralinga atomic blasts.
Alice Gorman, Associate Professor in Archaeology and Space Studies, Flinders University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/70266
2017-01-31T19:05:33Z
2017-01-31T19:05:33Z
Dunstan, Christies and me: growing up in the ‘Athens of the South’
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150664/original/image-20161219-24307-1qnfi34.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Chris Wallace (centre) in 1966 with brother Ron and father Arch.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Chris Wallace</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This piece is republished with permission from State of Hope, the 55th edition of Griffith Review. Articles are a little longer than most published on The Conversation, presenting an in-depth analysis of the economic, social, environmental and cultural challenges facing South Australia, and the possibilities of renewal and revitalisation.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Adelaide’s golden age began when the Beatles flew into town on June 12, 1964, electrifying the citizenry out of their country-town torpor into a screaming mass on the streets. It ended when a <a href="http://www.milesago.com/people/dunstan-don.htm">dressing-gowned</a> Don Dunstan resigned office on February 15, 1979 – the last day of the most exciting state government Australia has ever seen. </p>
<p>I spent most of that period in South Australia’s excellent state education system, basking in the glow of a premier who seemingly made the earth move and stars pan gloriously across the heavens in a small city that, for once in its life, felt like the very centre of the universe. No joke.</p>
<p>In the “infant industry” era of the 1950s and 1960s, South Australia had its economic development policy down pat: subsidise big manufacturers to set up shop, and support them with state-funded infrastructure. A continuous flow of <a href="https://museumvictoria.com.au/immigrationmuseum/discoverycentre/your-questions/ten-pound-poms/">“ten-pound Poms”</a> arrived to fill the production lines.</p>
<p>Cherry farmer and conservative premier Tom Playford brought – and sometimes outright bought – industrial development that otherwise had no business being in a place as beautiful and isolated, and economically irrelevant to the rest of Australia, as Adelaide.</p>
<p>Thus Chrysler and General Motors were there (forever after on the public teat). Chrysler nestled alongside Port Stanvac in the south, while General Motors Holden set up plant to Adelaide’s north.</p>
<p>GM Holden’s workers lived in Elizabeth: hot, flat and poor. Chrysler (subsequently Mitsubishi) workers lived in seaside Christies Beach, working-class winners in the geographic lottery of immigrant blue-collar work.</p>
<p>In March 1965, Frank Walsh beat Playford despite the latter’s gerrymandering – or <a href="http://www.sahistorians.org.au/175/documents/the-playmander-its-origins-operation-and-effect-on.shtml">“playmandering”</a>, as it was dubbed – and became premier. Walsh may have led Labor to victory for the first time in 32 years, but industry policy continued the Playford way.</p>
<p>Two years after Walsh’s victory, Dunstan, his attorney-general, succeeded him. For 12 years under Dunstan – briefly punctuated by two years of conservative government under Steele Hall early on – Adelaide was the “Athens of the South”, and Don its philosopher-king.</p>
<h2>A working-class enclave</h2>
<p>Port Stanvac oil refinery brought my family from Cronulla to Christies Beach, newly designated by town planners to become a working-class enclave in the midst of the beautiful Fleurieu Peninsula. </p>
<p>My parents had been match-made by workmates at Kurnell Oil Refinery in Sydney. Arch worked in the field, Bobbie in the mailroom; Arch was divorced, Bobbie widowed with two sons and a house in Cronulla. Arch disliked his Kurnell boss, a bad-tempered Welshman who borrowed £20 and never repaid it. It wasn’t the £20 but the principle, Arch would say. </p>
<p>So, when in 1962 the chance to work on the new refinery start-up of Standard Vacuum Oil Company – the Far East joint venture of Standard Oil of New Jersey and Mobil – he grabbed it. Arch fell in love with the Fleurieu’s stony coastline, wild St Vincent Gulf waters, stunning vineyards and almond groves, and pure Mediterranean climate.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150666/original/image-20161219-24274-1psgzqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150666/original/image-20161219-24274-1psgzqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150666/original/image-20161219-24274-1psgzqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150666/original/image-20161219-24274-1psgzqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150666/original/image-20161219-24274-1psgzqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=737&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150666/original/image-20161219-24274-1psgzqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=737&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150666/original/image-20161219-24274-1psgzqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=737&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Chris Wallace arrives in Adelaide in 1962.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Chris Wallace</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At Port Stanvac, Standard Vacuum Oil not only got naming rights to a bit of the South Australian coast but an adjacent public housing estate laid on as well. When we arrived in Christies Beach, forerunners of the tens of thousands of families who would move there in ensuing decades, it was golden paddocks as far as the eye could see, all the way down to the sea – part of Lambert and Rosa Christie’s 1895 farm established on the traditional lands of the Indigenous Kaurna people. </p>
<p>The first six Housing Trust homes had been built, and we moved into one. A supermarket and doctor’s surgery went in soon after, as hundreds of other Housing Trust houses sprang up around us. The speed was astonishing. </p>
<p>Opposite the shops is a little park with a bronze sculpture by John Dowie from 1965 of two seated Aboriginal warriors, called The Rainmakers, donated by immigrant German businessman Eugen Lohmann – the only pointer to the producer of the near-instant and, for the time, highly liveable mass housing all around it.</p>
<p>Lohmann’s company Wender and Duerholt made prefabricated camp accommodation (<em>Baracken</em>) during the second world war, and afterwards switched to making pre-cut timber-framed houses at high speed to replace houses razed in the war. </p>
<p>Lohmann, watching Berlin being divvied up and wanting a safe haven, moved his business to South Australia in the 1950s. He won contracts to build 500 houses at a time in the rapidly expanding city – including, in the early 1960s, Christies Beach. </p>
<p>As a small child, that Dowie bronze seemed to me like a miracle from the outside world, the only original artwork for miles and seemingly the only visible Aboriginal reference on land on which, until relatively recently, the <a href="http://adelaidia.sa.gov.au/subjects/kaurna-people">Kaurna people</a> had still lived.</p>
<p>In fact, the school teacher next door and her family had Aboriginal heritage. Across the road was a German engineer, his Austrian ex-opera-singer wife and their children. Arch had been in the RAAF in the second world war, Rudy a pilot in the Luftwaffe; now they were workmates at the refinery and the sons of both families were in the RAAF air cadets together.</p>
<p>There was a cop and his family, and an old petrol tanker driver and his wife. There was a secretary from the refinery and her husband. </p>
<p>Everyone had kids, sprinklers and front porches. On summer nights – stinking hot in a way only Adelaide can be – people would sit in the dark on their front steps and have street-wide conversations, yelling from front step to front step, quaffing local d’Arenberg and Pirramimma wines poured from glass flagons while their kids frolicked. </p>
<p>Andy from up the road and I would tear along the pavement on our trikes and, when one of us yelled “bomb!”, stack them sideways onto the grass, enacting obliteration in a Cold War nuclear strike. We were five years old.</p>
<p>Arch collected the flagons, acid-etched circles around them and popped the bottoms off to make individual glasshouses for seedlings. Our backyard became an Eden of homegrown vegetables, bountiful fruit trees and well-loved pets. Nature was everywhere in that patch of suburbia rapidly assembled in the service of industry, surrounded by the Fleurieu’s stunning beauty. When the next-door cat broke into the hutch housing our baby rabbits, my brother stuck his air gun out the kitchen window and shot it. </p>
<p>Every so often, a refinery workmate would drop off snapper in a bucket of seawater just caught from his boat in St Vincent Gulf. Come winter, there was mushrooming – strolling through green, wet Willunga paddocks with eyes peeled, knife in hand. </p>
<p>In summer it was off to the farm of Dutch friends, the Boerema family, on the Onkaparinga River in Old Noarlunga to pick the warm, sweet strawberries thriving on the river flats. </p>
<p>And there was swimming and burning and peeling at the beach, home to grey nurses and white pointers that had food enough to leave us alone. And always, trips to McLaren Vale cellar doors, yarns with the winemakers, discussions about the last vintage and the next.</p>
<p>All year round, lanky lads came round to work with my two teenage brothers on their hotted-up bombs. Arch put in a garage with a pit so the boys could work standing up under their engines. Bobbie made sandwiches, a whole sliced loaf at a time, and ferried them out to the amateur mechanics. </p>
<p>The local police knew my brothers. After all, they lived among us. Their knocks on our front door were mostly to complain about, and sometimes to issue a summons over, noisy exhausts or drag-racing – and once because one knocked over a power pole, taking the Christies Beach electricity supply with him.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150667/original/image-20161219-24263-dljik5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150667/original/image-20161219-24263-dljik5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150667/original/image-20161219-24263-dljik5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150667/original/image-20161219-24263-dljik5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150667/original/image-20161219-24263-dljik5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=589&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150667/original/image-20161219-24263-dljik5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=589&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150667/original/image-20161219-24263-dljik5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=589&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Arch Wallace (second from left) at Port Stanvac Refinery, 1970.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Chris Wallace</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Don Dunstan’s first crack</h2>
<p>There was submerged racism too – but only against the English. </p>
<p>The ten-pound Poms quickly swamped our half-dozen houses on all sides as Wender and Duerholt popped up houses quicker than our Sunbeams popped up toast. “Whinging Poms” was heard muttered under the occasional breath, but not too loudly because they were everywhere and, in any case, many became our mates.</p>
<p>Politics was a rolling discussion. Arch had been a shop steward in his youth, talent-spotted but not tempted by an invitation to join the Communist Party while a 20-something shale miner in the Capertee Valley – now a World Heritage site, and the second-largest canyon in the world.</p>
<p>Bobbie’s mother, whom we visited annually on our trip “home” to Sydney, was a Tory with a vicious set against Gough Whitlam. She was convinced he dyed his eyebrows. </p>
<p>On the 1,395-kilometre drive from Christies Beach to Cronulla in the unairconditioned, seatbeltless Holden, with Arch chain-smoking Kool cigarettes and Bobbie wrangling damp flannels for our necks, I anticipated the political discussions to come. </p>
<p>Grandma got some pushback, not least because Gough and Margaret Whitlam were shire residents too when we lived in Cronulla and gave Arch and Bobbie their own children’s no-longer-needed bassinet for me.</p>
<p>I learnt that politics could be complicated. Arch leaned left, yet argued swing voters were the only smart ones since they make and break governments. Grandma may have been a Whitlam-hating Tory by temperament, but at the same time was a fierce Australian nationalist of the England-hating kind. </p>
<p>Over slices of passionfruit sponge and hands of euchre – she was a terrific card player – Grandma recounted bitter stories from her Lancashire childhood, before her father moved the family to New South Wales. Her own grandfather had been killed down the mines, a hundredweight of coal the compensation; her father was a coalminer too, risking the same fate, or at least <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-black-lung-and-why-do-miners-get-it-51649">“black lung”</a>. </p>
<p>As a child, half her day was spent in school, the other half working in a Wigan cotton mill – this in the early 20th century. Walking home from church on Sunday mornings, the whole town reeked of boiled cabbage, she said with vaudevillian disgust. </p>
<p>England is a terrible place, she would say – a terrible, terrible place. The briny air and blue skies of Cronulla were tonic indeed. But NSW had Bob Askin as premier, simultaneously a dull and shifty man. I knew that when we got back to Adelaide – though it would never truly be home since it seemingly took five generations to become a local – exciting Don Dunstan would be there.</p>
<p>Arch taught me to read from newspaper headlines starting with those in the biggest, simplest font. Unsurprising, then, at eight years old for me to argue the case for Dunstan and Labor in the run-up to the 1968 election at a neighbour’s barbecue. </p>
<p>Dunstan was the one. He cared about, and spent money on, health, education and the arts. He was a moderniser, a thespian, a poet, cook, fashion plate, policy wonk, tastemaker and defender of rights for women, Aboriginals and people from other cultures. </p>
<p>He recognised – he embodied – difference. He was smooth. He was from “now”. He made Adelaide exciting. He made us exciting by association. Exciting people moved to Adelaide because of him and what he did to the place. They all came at once and gave exciting locals context. We didn’t realise they would all leave at once after the Dunstan party was over, and that many of us would leave too – though, to be truthful, I started planning my getaway at four years old. </p>
<p>After decades of South Australian slumber, he stirred hope. Our futures seemed limitless. Today we would say he was cool, a rock star. Too good to be true? Too good to last? We didn’t ask.</p>
<p>But having succeeded Frank Walsh during the previous term of government, in 1968 Dunstan had to be elected premier in his own right to continue leading Adelaide out of the musty, late 19th-century cupboard it had been locked in, further into the contemporary world.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150670/original/image-20161219-24299-uohpvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150670/original/image-20161219-24299-uohpvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=607&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150670/original/image-20161219-24299-uohpvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=607&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150670/original/image-20161219-24299-uohpvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=607&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150670/original/image-20161219-24299-uohpvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=763&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150670/original/image-20161219-24299-uohpvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=763&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150670/original/image-20161219-24299-uohpvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=763&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Chris Wallace with the family dog Brandy, 1971.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Chris Wallace</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Toward a more cosmopolitan society</h2>
<p>All good drama requires reversals, however, and at the 1968 election the gerrymander delivered Dunstan’s, despite my backyard advocacy. Votes in country seats were worth multiples of those in the city. </p>
<p>Dunstan Labor’s comfortably superior vote translated into a hung parliament, which the Steele Hall-led Liberal and Country League controlled with support from a lone conservative independent promised the speakership. </p>
<p>Dunstan railed publicly, rallying huge crowds against the gerrymander. Hall – himself a small-l liberal – was sufficiently embarrassed to make electoral reforms presaging Dunstan’s election <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Australian_state_election,_1970">in 1970</a>, at which point the Dunstan decade proper began.</p>
<p>It is difficult to convey how conventionally narrow and “white bread” mainstream life was in Adelaide. There was an Italian restaurant in Hindley Street with red-and-white-check tablecloths where you could get good spaghetti, considered the height of cosmopolitanism. Eventually, a Chinese restaurant opened on the esplanade at Christies Beach. Revolutionary. </p>
<p>The parochialism of most locals was something of a wonder to we blow-ins. Not that we were sophisticated cosmopolitans – far from it. But we had tuned into South Australia’s powerful sensory pleasures. </p>
<p>The salt, the sea, the maritime air, the lush green grass burnt to pale straw under the bluest skies and brightest sun in the Southern Hemisphere; fresh fish from seas bordering the whitest sand, like something from Homer.</p>
<p>Meanwhile the world, in the form of the pragmatic multinational meritocracy of the refinery, sat around our dining table. A Texan executive, a Jewish chemist, an African-American engineer, the Native American wife of the refinery co-worker who brought us snapper, a young Australian engineer just “finished off” at Mobil’s expense at Princeton. </p>
<p>Then there were the two Malaysian-Chinese women, Hoe Yee and Hoi Mee, who lived with us for a while, sponsored by a local service organisation to fortify their nursing education for use back home. Hoi Mee brought a suitcase stuffed with rice and matches with her, fearing shortages in little-known Australia. </p>
<p>With my parents, two brothers and me, Hoe Yee and Hoi Mee made seven people in a 100m² house with three bedrooms and one bathroom. No-one thought twice, the density of living not a matter for remark. The then-exotic aromas of Malaysian cooking wafted from our kitchen and up the street to the fascination of neighbours.</p>
<p>In 1970, the same year Dunstan’s continuous nine-year run in power began, we moved from Christies Beach to Old Noarlunga – from Housing Trust territory to the bucolic beauty of the southern vales proper. </p>
<p>Arch and Bobbie bought three blocks of land on the banks of the Onkaparinga, and produced endless bounty: organically grown fruit and vegetables from the chocolately, sun-blasted loam built up over millennia as the Onkaparinga flowed, flooded and subsided again and again. </p>
<p>Indigenous Kaurna women had legendarily hid in the riverbank to avoid the raiding parties of neighbouring tribes. By 1970, the only Indigenous residents in Old Noarlunga were a family who lived in the one public house inside the Onkaparinga’s horseshoe-shaped riverbend. I didn’t understand why, when I tried to talk to their daughter at school, I got short shrift.</p>
<p>My paternal grandmother told me tales of riding horses through swollen creeks and otherwise playing in the bush with the Aboriginal kids she had grown up with in Far North Queensland. Why not us? I get it now. Wish I had then.</p>
<p>Our Christies Beach neighbours bought the adjacent block. Each family built new homes – ours 120m², theirs 130m² – fantastically large compared to the old ones. It was still the era of one bathroom per house, but the creep had begun: instead of lounge-dining rooms, each house had a separate lounge and a kitchen dinette. The neighbours put in a ten-metre in-ground pool, an unheard-of luxury – even above-ground pools were rare. </p>
<p>The two families wore a path dubbed the “Birdsville Track” across the vacant block between them, going back and forth to poolside barbecues at their place, barbecues under the cotoneaster tree at ours – bottles now, not flagons, of wine from Coriole and Seaview just over the hill tucked under the adults’ arms. </p>
<p>The sentimental favourite at ours was when Arch picked the summer’s first corn cobs, Bobbie stripped off their papery sheaths and silky hair and served them hot, smothered in wedges of melting butter and grainy salt – a peasant ritual of the deepest satisfaction. </p>
<p>Similarly basic, and sometimes more exotic, pleasures were to be had at the homes of new best friends “Vicky” and “Old Pred”, charming and cultivated Eastern Europeans – Russian and Hungarian respectively and, in retrospect, possibly living under assumed names. </p>
<p>If you wanted to get lost in the world, becoming organic fruit and vegetable farmers on a few acres of river loam in the crook of the Onkaparinga River was and remains hard to beat. </p>
<p>The juxtaposition of Vicky and Pred’s sophistication with the old stone house and beat-up peasant farming clothes they wore was stark, Pred’s beret the only gesture to the old life, whatever that old life might have been. The political chat, domestic and international, was always good.</p>
<p>Dunstan measured up well. Reform after reform rolled through, anticipating the Whitlam government’s social democratic push. Dunstan cut a dash, up the front steps of Parliament House on North Terrace in pink shorts, reciting poetry atop an elephant at the zoo, pioneering “living apart together” when he and his second wife married but chose to live in separate, nearby houses. </p>
<p>Adelaide during the golden years gave one licence to be different. Don was different, different from any premier before or since. I was always going to be different, but if he could be different that made it so much more OK for the rest of us to be different too.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150673/original/image-20161219-24307-g8npdl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150673/original/image-20161219-24307-g8npdl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150673/original/image-20161219-24307-g8npdl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150673/original/image-20161219-24307-g8npdl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150673/original/image-20161219-24307-g8npdl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=737&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150673/original/image-20161219-24307-g8npdl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=737&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150673/original/image-20161219-24307-g8npdl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=737&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hoe Yee, Hoi Mee and Chris Wallace in 1968.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Chris Wallace</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Struggles with education</h2>
<p>I skipped a class at Christies Beach Primary School, doing Year 3 and 4 in the one year: 1968, the year of my first Dunstan advocacy.</p>
<p>The teachers were good, the school well led, the classes orderly and standard of education decent. Nearly everyone’s father, and some of their mothers, worked at the refinery or Chrysler. There were few obvious social problems, though I did wonder why April, who sat in front of me in Year 5, shaved her legs. There was bullying but it was survivable. </p>
<p>The school inspector was diligent and liked to even things up in class. Once he posed me a spelling question I would likely fail – a lesson in humility – then posed an easy one to a struggling classmate, to build his confidence. </p>
<p>In a working-class school, this boy was from one of the poorest families. Awed at being singled out by the school inspector, he sat stunned, red-faced, and wet his pants. The sight and sound of that trickle of urine falling from his shabby grey school trousers to the shiny lino floor beneath his bench seat still tugs at my heart. I hope things turned out well for him. We all had to learn how to survive somehow.</p>
<p>I survived through truancy. I was a regular truant from Year 5 on. I had bad hay fever, or bad whatever-it-took, and would stay home and listen to my brothers’ LPs on the stereogram. The Beatles’ Rubber Soul and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band were favourites. </p>
<p>It wasn’t the school’s fault. It was the days before stretch tasks or opportunity classes. They did their best to make school lessons less boring, jumping me ahead to later-year English classes, but it wasn’t enough. </p>
<p>Home was more interesting. The music. The political chat. Older brothers to roughhouse with after they came home from their apprenticeships in the afternoon. Monday Conference, Four Corners and This Day Tonight on black-and-white ABC TV. The world came into our living room. Change was afoot.</p>
<p>High school loomed. I won a half-scholarship to an establishment grammar school in Adelaide: motto, <em>Virtute et Veritate</em>. The local doctor sent a short typed note of congratulations to my parents – to me, an astonishing gesture of personal recognition. </p>
<p>The grammar school posted the uniform list. I read it with anthropological fascination: gloves, hat, prescribed shoes and socks, prescribed underwear even. Another world. </p>
<p>But there was a rock musical coming up at Christies Beach High School. I went. It was fantastic – long hair, loud music, kids hanging from the rafters, making it all happen. Goodbye grammar school scholarship, hello Christies Beach High: motto, Work, Life, Play.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150674/original/image-20161219-24276-1j7l0kj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150674/original/image-20161219-24276-1j7l0kj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=873&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150674/original/image-20161219-24276-1j7l0kj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=873&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150674/original/image-20161219-24276-1j7l0kj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=873&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150674/original/image-20161219-24276-1j7l0kj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1097&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150674/original/image-20161219-24276-1j7l0kj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1097&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150674/original/image-20161219-24276-1j7l0kj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1097&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Chris Wallace with her parents, 1976.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Chris Wallace</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The world changes</h2>
<p>I began at Christies Beach High in February 1972. That month I saw Led Zeppelin play at Memorial Drive Tennis Club, accompanied by one of my brothers. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Led_Zeppelin_IV">Led Zeppelin IV</a> was so new that when the band played Stairway to Heaven hardly anyone knew it. </p>
<p>At the other end of the year, in November, Dunstan danced onstage in the finale of Hair. </p>
<p>In between, his government passed legislation establishing the South Australian Theatre Company and the South Australian Film Commission, passed the Age of Majority (Reduction) Act, the Corporal Punishment Abolition Act, the Ombudsman Act, the Daylight Saving Act, the Community Welfare Act and the Coast Protection Act, as well as consumer protection laws and occupational health and safety laws, among a raft of other initiatives.</p>
<p>That same month, the federal opposition leader, Gough Whitlam, delivered his 1972 federal election campaign speech at Blacktown Town Hall in Sydney. Arch brought home a portable reel-to-reel tape recorder and I taped the great man’s words:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Men and women of Australia … </p>
</blockquote>
<p>It was electrifying. Even the promise to sewer Sydney’s western suburbs seemed visionary when the words fell from Whitlam’s lips. </p>
<p>When we took the tape recorder back to the refinery, not even the pervasive sickly sweet hydrocarbon vapours could dampen my mood. The world was a huge and beneficent place of endless hope and opportunity, where the state was a force for good if only conservatives would get out of the way. Or so it seemed.</p>
<p>Christies had nearly 2,000 students on two campuses with a huge, treeless oval in between. It had a rough reputation. </p>
<p>Years later, when I was a young journalist working in (Old) Parliament House, the local MP would point across King’s Hall and proclaim:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Her! See her? She went to Christies High and survived! </p>
</blockquote>
<p>But really it was just working class, with all the attendant difficulties, including homes with few or no books and little tradition of reading. There were teenage pregnancies, drugs – but remarkably few given the size of the school. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150671/original/image-20161219-24303-8a3xqk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150671/original/image-20161219-24303-8a3xqk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150671/original/image-20161219-24303-8a3xqk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=948&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150671/original/image-20161219-24303-8a3xqk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=948&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150671/original/image-20161219-24303-8a3xqk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=948&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150671/original/image-20161219-24303-8a3xqk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1191&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150671/original/image-20161219-24303-8a3xqk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1191&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150671/original/image-20161219-24303-8a3xqk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1191&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bobbie Wallace, 1978.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Chris Wallace</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The outstanding things about Christies were the incredible teachers and systematic encouragement to get you to make the most of what you had – when you weren’t surfing, that is.</p>
<p>Sometimes that encouragement simply came through trust and decent resources. The art teachers, whom we loved, for example, trusted us to hang out in the art rooms at lunchtime. </p>
<p>One break I was flicking through H.H. Arnason’s <a href="https://www.pearsonhighered.com/product/Arnason-History-of-Modern-Art-Paper-cover-6th-Edition/9780136062066.html">History of Modern Art</a> – I’m not sure whether it was a school resource or belonged to the teacher, but it was out in the open where, had we really been delinquents, it would have been nicked.</p>
<p>I came across Paul Klee’s <a href="http://www.artinthepicture.com/paintings/paul_klee/sinbad-the-sailor/">Sinbad the Sailor</a>: it flicked a switch in my head. Art was it. </p>
<p>The following year I began painting large, hard-edge abstract minimalist artworks. Teachers bought them. At the end of Year 11 I decided to drop out of school to go to Paris and be a painter. Arch refused to sign my passport application. Reluctantly, I returned to school for Year 12. That’s when Christies Beach High came into its own.</p>
<p>You can cage a questing student and create trouble for everyone, or you can give them their head and see where it leads.</p>
<p>Each morning in Year 12, I would go to school and get my name ticked off the roll. Then often, upon the bell for first period, I would walk out the gate and grab a train at the station across the road into the city. </p>
<p>First stop: State Library of South Australia, to read. </p>
<p>Second stop: Art Gallery of South Australia, to look at art. </p>
<p>Third stop: Adelaide University Bookshop, or perhaps the Mary Martin Bookshop in Gawler Place – then still owned by Mary Martin and Max Harris – to read books for free, careful not to bend the spines; then the train back to Christies Beach. </p>
<p>There was a lot of thinking time each way. How civilised having the train station right next to the high school. How intelligent of the school to let me regularly walk out that gate when the mores of the day said I should be locked up.</p>
<p>How kind the teachers were who let me sit, after a few weeks’ diligent swatting, the exams at the end of the year anyway – except perhaps the art teacher who asked archly, when I came to deliver my portfolio of works for Year 12 art:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Are you still enrolled?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The world had changed by then. The Whitlam government had been dismissed; constitutional coup author Malcolm Fraser was prime minister instead of electrifying Gough. The state had ceased being an unequivocal force for good. </p>
<p>I was shocked – but then, I was young and naive. Finding out life was not entirely just, like discovering that life is not entirely meritocratic, was essential learning. </p>
<p>And, by now, a strange animus had begun to swirl around Dunstan. The conservatives got him in the end, a miasma of rumour undermining a good man and excellent premier, destabilising and corroding his government. The dressing-gowned resignation was still some way ahead, but you could sense it coming.</p>
<p>I had left town by then. At 16 years and 51 weeks old, I got on a bus to ANU in Canberra and too rarely returned. Adelaide’s golden age left an enduring imprint.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150672/original/image-20161219-24303-3dq28p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150672/original/image-20161219-24303-3dq28p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150672/original/image-20161219-24303-3dq28p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150672/original/image-20161219-24303-3dq28p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150672/original/image-20161219-24303-3dq28p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150672/original/image-20161219-24303-3dq28p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150672/original/image-20161219-24303-3dq28p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Chris Wallace takes a selfie, 1976-style.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Chris Wallace</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p><em>You can read other essays from Griffith Review’s latest edition <a href="https://griffithreview.com/editions/state-of-hope/">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/70266/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris Wallace receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p>
For once in its life, under the premiership of Don Dunstan, South Australia felt like the very centre of the universe.
Chris Wallace, ARC DECRA Fellow, Australian National University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.