tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/peter-garrett-2353/articlesPeter Garrett – The Conversation2016-09-23T06:32:35Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/657132016-09-23T06:32:35Z2016-09-23T06:32:35ZWhat do the newspapers ‘really’ tell us about the lock hospital histories?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138914/original/image-20160923-25496-149zil2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The facilities were poor and some inmates were subjected to unsuccessful experimentation with a "vaccine" that used arsenic compounds.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Hospital Ward Dorre Island/State library of Western Australia</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article was co-authored by Kathleen Musulin, a Malgana/Yawuru woman living in Carnarvon and a member of the Carnarvon Shire Council lock hospital memorial working group.</em></p>
<p><em>Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this article contains images of deceased people.</em></p>
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<p>In February 1911, Perth newspapers published detailed reports about <a href="https://theconversation.com/acknowledge-the-brutal-history-of-indigenous-health-care-for-healing-64295#comment_1086610">lock hospitals</a>, where Aboriginal people said to have “venereal diseases” were incarcerated on two remote islands off the coast from Carnarvon, Western Australia.</p>
<p>The articles recorded that 55 operations were conducted under anaesthesia on Bernier and Dorre islands during the year to June 30, 1910, in rough, makeshift conditions. Several inmates were also subjected to unsuccessful experimentation with a “vaccine” containing arsenic compounds that had previously <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/25283119?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">been tested</a> on British soldiers with syphilis. </p>
<p>Sourced from the medical superintendent’s annual report, the articles also told of difficult, often dangerous conditions sailing to the islands, the delivery of mail and stores, visits of inspection by government officials and others, and the hard work done by Aboriginal inmates on the islands.</p>
<p>Arrivals and departures of staff and patients were also recorded, with brief mention of Nurse “Batison” arriving on Bernier Island on February 7, 1910. Readers who saw the recent SBS documentary <a href="http://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/video/758958659515/who-do-you-think-you-are-peter-garrett">Who Do You Think You Are?</a>, exploring the ancestry of musician Peter Garrett, will know that this reference was to his grandmother, Emily Bateson. </p>
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<p><strong>Further reading:</strong> <a href="https://theconversation.com/acknowledge-the-brutal-history-of-indigenous-health-care-for-healing-64295">Acknowledge the brutal history of Indigenous health care – for healing</a></p>
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<p>Garrett and his grandmother shared birthdays – 70 years apart – and were close. But he cannot remember ever hearing her talk about the years she spent at the lock hospitals. His journey to Dorre Island earlier this year, retracing her footsteps, was one of emotional discovery.</p>
<p>Many people – including those working in the health sector – are likely to share Garrett’s shock in learning about the lock hospitals, which inflicted incalculable traumas on Aboriginal people, wrenching them away from families and country. Thus one family’s story can be seen as a metaphor for the wider invisibility of so much traumatic colonial history. </p>
<p>Equally, comments during the documentary by Carnarvon residents Kathleen Musulin, a Malgana/Yawuru woman (a co-author of this article), and Bob Dorey, a Yinggarda/Malgana man, are a reminder that these traumatic histories remain present in many peoples’ lives.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138931/original/image-20160923-25460-1l5aez0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138931/original/image-20160923-25460-1l5aez0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=319&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138931/original/image-20160923-25460-1l5aez0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=319&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138931/original/image-20160923-25460-1l5aez0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=319&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138931/original/image-20160923-25460-1l5aez0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138931/original/image-20160923-25460-1l5aez0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138931/original/image-20160923-25460-1l5aez0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Bob Dorey shows Peter Garrett a photograph of Aboriginal people in neck chains, a reminder of the cruelty of ‘collection’ methods.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Screenshot/Who Do You Think You Are/ SBS</span></span>
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<p>As with so much brutal colonial history that was subsequently written out of the textbooks through “<a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08164649.2011.621175">systemic white ignorance</a>”, many details about the lock hospitals were widely reported and publicly known at the time. Journalists visited them on a number of occasions, and detailed accounts were also written by <a href="http://uwap.uwa.edu.au/products/the-imago-e-l-grant-watson-australia">other visitors</a>, as well as one of the nurses. </p>
<p>A search of the National Library of Australia’s <a href="http://www.nla.gov.au/">Trove database</a> shows 274 newspaper articles mentioning the Bernier and Dorre lock hospitals during their years of operation, 1908-19. Fifty-seven per cent of these articles (157) were published in Perth-based newspapers, and 11% (31) were published interstate. </p>
<p>As the table shows, the intensity of newspaper coverage diminished as the years went on – coinciding with reduced staffing, resources and activity on the islands. </p>
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<p>Overall, the coverage was largely positive about the lock hospitals, reflecting the dominance of official and government views, which accounted for about half of the sources. As well, glowing comments by the writer and researcher Daisy Bates appeared widely – in contrast to her later, more often cited <a href="http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/6006222">assessments</a> of the lock hospitals as “a ghastly experiment”, and Bernier and Dorre islands as “the tombs of the living dead”. </p>
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<p>With the exception of a number of reports recording the high death rates on the islands, it is telling that most of the negative reports did not relate to concerns for the Aboriginal people. Instead, they tended to reflect concerns about cost or logistical difficulties. Some suggested that even more drastic measures should be used against Aboriginal people. </p>
<p>Other controversies included questions about the underlying rationale given for the hospitals, with reports suggesting that many inmates had ulcerative granuloma rather than syphilis. Professor Frank Bowden, an infectious diseases physician in Canberra who has seen photographs of patients with this condition that were published by a Carnarvon doctor <a href="http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/914307">in 1909</a>, believes they most likely had what is now known as <a href="http://www.sti.guidelines.org.au/sexually-transmissible-infections/donovanosis">donovanosis</a>, a now-rare disease that causes genital ulceration and can be spread by sexual and casual contact.</p>
<p>Some of these patients with granuloma were, however, injected with a new arsenic-based treatment for syphilis, <a href="http://pubs.acs.org/cen/coverstory/83/8325/8325salvarsan.html">Salvarsan</a>, described as “magical” in Perth newspaper headlines. While it went onto become a successful and effective treatment, this early version of the drug, also known as “compound 606”, <a href="http://pubs.acs.org/cen/coverstory/83/8325/8325salvarsan.html">became known</a> for its toxic side effects.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138913/original/image-20160923-25496-1uwn0j8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138913/original/image-20160923-25496-1uwn0j8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138913/original/image-20160923-25496-1uwn0j8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138913/original/image-20160923-25496-1uwn0j8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138913/original/image-20160923-25496-1uwn0j8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138913/original/image-20160923-25496-1uwn0j8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138913/original/image-20160923-25496-1uwn0j8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138913/original/image-20160923-25496-1uwn0j8.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>
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<span class="caption">Newspaper reports claim the trial vaccination, also known as 606, had ‘marked effects’.</span>
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<p>In latter years, when there were periods without a resident doctor on the islands, articles in the Carnarvon newspaper protested against the local doctor being called to attend the lock hospitals. Newspapers also recorded protests from Port Hedland residents about the last remaining patients from Bernier and Dorre being “dumped” in a lock hospital built there in 1919.</p>
<p>Despite the almost complete absence of Aboriginal people’s voices in the coverage, it is possible to discern something of their experiences. Visitors and staff on the islands often reported the “home-longing” of inmates. In a 1913 article, a Carnarvon resident commented: </p>
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<p>Ever since the Lock hospitals were established, natives are on the alert whenever police or inspector appears, and as soon as any examination takes place, word is sent round the country and diseased natives are off into the bush.</p>
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<p>When news broke of plans to close the hospitals, a Geraldton newspaper reported that Aboriginal people would be “greatly pleased” as “they looked on deportation to the islands with even greater aversion than a Russian regards enforced absence in Siberia…”</p>
<p>A nurse who wrote many articles about her time on the islands described medicine for rheumatism being made out of sandalwood, the women’s skills in hunting and making clothes, their cultural practices, and their pleasure in trying to teach her their languages. In one article, the nurse reproduces a song in an Aboriginal language that she said described the women’s “burning love” for their country.</p>
<p>Generally, however, the articles reveal the inability of white institutions and authorities to recognise and respect the humanity of Aboriginal people. Instead, they were pathologised, infantilised and dehumanised. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138919/original/image-20160923-25499-18icgd0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138919/original/image-20160923-25499-18icgd0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138919/original/image-20160923-25499-18icgd0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138919/original/image-20160923-25499-18icgd0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138919/original/image-20160923-25499-18icgd0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138919/original/image-20160923-25499-18icgd0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138919/original/image-20160923-25499-18icgd0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138919/original/image-20160923-25499-18icgd0.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>
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<span class="caption">News stories show how Aboriginal people were pathologised.</span>
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<p>There was little distinction between the disease and the people, reflected in references to “this menace”, “these diseased pariahs”, and “the evil”. The newspapers’ framing of disease and Aboriginal bodies as one and the same supported and enabled discriminatory policies that promoted segregation and human rights abuses. </p>
<p>In one of the familiar patterns of colonisation, Aboriginal people themselves were often blamed for having diseases that had in fact been introduced. The traumatic impacts of the lock hospital policies were underplayed. Newspaper articles, like the official reports, routinely referred to “the collection” of people, a term that does not remotely convey the reality of forced removal from family and homelands, often in cuffs or chains.</p>
<p>Newspaper reports also show officials and others promoting the lock hospitals as humanitarian, benevolent work, while also acknowledging that Aboriginal people viewed them as a gaol and that force was required to recruit “patients”. </p>
<p>The lock hospital episodes can be seen as archetypal projects of colonisation, whereby the “narrative of benevolent intentions serves the state well in reproducing relations of domination and subordination” – a critique <a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2824292">more recently made</a> of income management.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138921/original/image-20160923-25457-1gdtgtf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138921/original/image-20160923-25457-1gdtgtf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138921/original/image-20160923-25457-1gdtgtf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138921/original/image-20160923-25457-1gdtgtf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138921/original/image-20160923-25457-1gdtgtf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138921/original/image-20160923-25457-1gdtgtf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138921/original/image-20160923-25457-1gdtgtf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">One newspaper report said the male patients’ labours on the islands had saved ‘hundreds of pounds’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">State Library of Western Australia</span></span>
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<p>The reporting of the WA hospitals is part of a larger story; research by Dr Lynore Geia (co-author of this article) in her home community on Palm Island has <a href="http://researchonline.jcu.edu.au/25465/">revealed</a> the ongoing impact of the history of medical institutionalisation on nearby Fantome Island, as well as the effect of negative media coverage on peoples’ lives and well-being.</p>
<p>The lock hospital episodes and related governmental, professional and media discussions helped lay a foundation for a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/deficitdiscourse/?ref=page_internal">deficit-based portrayal</a> of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people that continues to be seen across many spheres, often resulting in <a href="https://www.mup.com.au/items/163714">problematic policy “solutions”</a>. </p>
<p>The 2007 NT Intervention has been identified as the ultimate example of <a href="http://insidestory.org.au/managing-the-optics-of-the-intervention/">media-driven policymaking</a>, resulting in large part from the culmination of the “perfect storm” of media hysteria, conservative political agendas and policy opportunism. </p>
<p>Connections can be drawn through to the present day from the institutional racism of white structures of government and media that enabled the lock hospital policies. The impacts of racism in society’s most powerful institutions, including health care and the media, continue to affect adversely the health and well-being of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.</p>
<p>Two of this article’s authors, as Indigenous women, have deep personal insights into the ongoing harmful impacts of negative media stereotyping and deficit-driven professional and public discourses. The other authors, as non-Indigenous women, acknowledge that our experience and understanding of these impacts is limited by the way mainstream institutions, including health care systems and the media, so often uphold our <a href="http://nationalseedproject.org/peggy-mcintosh-s-white-privilege-papers">white privilege</a>.</p>
<p>However, the deficit-framing of so much “<a href="http://arrow.monash.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/monash:151212">whitestream</a>” discussion is under challenge; Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander researchers are “<a href="https://www.academia.edu/10688690/Editorial_Issue_4_2014_Building_evidence_about_effective_health_promotion_in_Aboriginal_and_Torres_Strait_Islander_communities?auto=download">writing back</a>” and “changing the collective story of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities from one of deficit to one of strength and resilience”.</p>
<p>Contemplating the history of the lock hospitals gives those of us working in health, media and communications an opportunity to recognise and acknowledge the impacts of our fields’ practices, in the past and present, and to create stories that enable healing, rather than hurt. Moving forward in our respective practices involves acknowledging history, changing the narratives from deficit to strengths, and building better outcomes in real partnership and collaboration.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/65713/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Melissa Sweet received an Australian Postgraduate Award to support her PhD candidature. The APA ended in late 2015. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kerry McCallum receives funding from the Australian Research Council</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lynore Geia 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 lock hospitals inflicted incalculable traumas on Aboriginal people, wrenching them away from families and country.Melissa Sweet, Independent journalist and health writer; Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Sydney School of Public Health, University of Sydney; Founder of Croakey.org. PhD candidate, University of CanberraKerry McCallum, Associate Professor, Communication, University of CanberraLynore Geia, Senior Lecturer, Centre for Nursing and Midwifery Research, James Cook UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/642952016-09-21T04:09:52Z2016-09-21T04:09:52ZAcknowledge the brutal history of Indigenous health care – for healing<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138545/original/image-20160921-12478-19z1o9f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In the SBS documentary series Who Do You Think You Are?, Peter Garrett traces the history of his grandmother, who worked in the "lock hospitals" as a nurse.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/video/758958659515/who-do-you-think-you-are-peter-garrett">Screenshot/Who Do You Think You Are/ SBS</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article was co-authored by Kathleen Musulin, a Malgana/Yawuru woman living in Carnarvon and a member of the Carnarvon Shire Council lock hospital memorial working group.</em></p>
<p><em>Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains images of deceased people.</em></p>
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<p>In March, a small group of people joined the musician, environmentalist and former politician Peter Garrett on a deeply moving journey to a remote island, about 58 kilometres off the coast from the Western Australian town of Carnarvon.</p>
<p>For Garrett, the boat ride was retracing travels that his grandmother had made almost a century earlier, en route to Dorre and Bernier islands, where Aboriginal people were incarcerated on medical grounds between 1908 and 1919.</p>
<p>Part of the journey was filmed for the SBS documentary series, <a href="http://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/video/758958659515/who-do-you-think-you-are-peter-garrett">Who Do You Think You Are?</a>, which screened on Tuesday night. The episode revealed some of the history of Garrett’s grandmother, who worked on the islands as a nurse.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138539/original/image-20160921-12489-vnlh9o.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138539/original/image-20160921-12489-vnlh9o.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=320&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138539/original/image-20160921-12489-vnlh9o.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=320&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138539/original/image-20160921-12489-vnlh9o.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=320&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138539/original/image-20160921-12489-vnlh9o.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138539/original/image-20160921-12489-vnlh9o.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138539/original/image-20160921-12489-vnlh9o.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Peter Garret retraces the trip his grandmother made.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/video/758958659515/who-do-you-think-you-are-peter-garrett">Screenshot/Who Do You Think You Are/ SBS</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>For Kathleen Musulin, a Malgana/Yawuru woman living in Carnarvon (and co-author of this article), the trip to Dorre with Garrett was also an opportunity to connect with ancestors, particularly her great grandmother, who was one of hundreds of Aboriginal people imprisoned on the islands, many of whom <a href="http://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=850909632;res=IELAPA">died there</a>.</p>
<p>The stated reason for the removal of Aboriginal people to “lock hospitals” on Bernier and Dorre islands was “venereal disease”, though many questions surround this non-specific diagnosis, particularly given the role of police and non-medical people in diagnosing and removing people, often in chains and using force.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138415/original/image-20160920-11134-6sf29s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138415/original/image-20160920-11134-6sf29s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138415/original/image-20160920-11134-6sf29s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138415/original/image-20160920-11134-6sf29s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138415/original/image-20160920-11134-6sf29s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138415/original/image-20160920-11134-6sf29s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138415/original/image-20160920-11134-6sf29s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138415/original/image-20160920-11134-6sf29s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=563&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 plaque remembering those who were imprisoned and who died on the islands.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Memorial at Dorre Island</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Lock hospitals were an invention of the British Empire. In the 1800s, they were used to confine women in English garrison towns who were thought to be engaged in sex work and to have venereal disease, under a series of Contagious Diseases Acts designed to protect the health of soldiers rather than the prisoner-patients.</p>
<p>Following vocal opposition, lock hospitals were abandoned in Britain, although similar measures continued elsewhere in the British Empire into the 20th century. In Australia, <a href="https://www.academia.edu/11314535/On_Fantome_Island_A_History_of_Indigenous_Exile_and_Community">lock hospitals</a> for “common prostitutes” existed in Melbourne and Brisbane into the 1900s.</p>
<p>However, for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, lock hospitals operated in a different context – firmly rooted in the institutionalised racism of White Australia. Legislation providing for the “protection” of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people resulted in human rights abuses, intrusive surveillance, control, disruption, institutionalisation, and harm.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137503/original/image-20160913-19262-1xgobn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137503/original/image-20160913-19262-1xgobn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137503/original/image-20160913-19262-1xgobn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137503/original/image-20160913-19262-1xgobn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137503/original/image-20160913-19262-1xgobn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137503/original/image-20160913-19262-1xgobn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137503/original/image-20160913-19262-1xgobn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137503/original/image-20160913-19262-1xgobn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Facilities recorded extremely high death rates.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://purl.slwa.wa.gov.au/slwa_b4315403_3">Hospital Ward Dorre Island/State library of Western Australia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the early years of the Bernier and Dorre lock hospitals, inmates were subjected to invasive interventions, while in latter years there was little medical care. The facilities recorded extremely high death rates, as did a lock hospital that operated from 1928 to 1945 on Fantome or Eumilli Island in the Palm Island group near Townsville in Queensland.</p>
<p>The removal of people to Bernier and Dorre islands was occurring at a time when authorities sought to prevent sexual relationships between Aboriginal women and white men as well as so-called “Asiatics”, as enacted in the WA Aborigines Act of 1905. As historian <a href="http://aiatsis.gov.au/bio/dr-mary-anne-jebb">Dr Mary Anne Jebb</a> has observed in an unpublished manuscript, this legislation:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>…institutionalised Aboriginal women as immoral and intimacy between races as a problem which needed to be stamped out.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The lock hospitals were also interlinked with other traumas of colonisation, including the removal of Aboriginal people as prisoners or witnesses (mainly to do with the killing of stock), and the removal of children (some of the travelling inspectors who took away people with disease also took children). It was a time when senior doctors <a href="http://aiatsis.gov.au/sites/default/files/catalogue_resources/73502.pdf">considered</a> neck-chaining of Aboriginal people, often for prolonged periods, to be “humane”.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137502/original/image-20160913-19222-181i9xd.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137502/original/image-20160913-19222-181i9xd.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137502/original/image-20160913-19222-181i9xd.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137502/original/image-20160913-19222-181i9xd.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137502/original/image-20160913-19222-181i9xd.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137502/original/image-20160913-19222-181i9xd.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137502/original/image-20160913-19222-181i9xd.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">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The lock hospitals were interlinked with other traumas of colonisation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Library of Western Australia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Around the time of the lock hospitals, Aboriginal people in WA <a href="http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/21309181?selectedversion=NBD593200">were active</a> in drawing public and political attention to wide-ranging injustices, including police brutality, their exclusion from schools and general health services, and other policies of segregation.</p>
<p>While the early decades of the 20th century were marked by concern about venereal diseases in the wider population, the policies and practices for non-Indigenous people stood in stark contrast to treatment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. In 1911, a meeting of Australasian doctors <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Commonwealth-Australia-Quarantine-Publication-Venereal/dp/B0049ELNG8">recommended</a> that general hospitals and dispensaries, rather than lock hospitals, “should provide the necessary accommodation for venereal cases”.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137506/original/image-20160913-19266-m7sjbd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137506/original/image-20160913-19266-m7sjbd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137506/original/image-20160913-19266-m7sjbd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137506/original/image-20160913-19266-m7sjbd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137506/original/image-20160913-19266-m7sjbd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137506/original/image-20160913-19266-m7sjbd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137506/original/image-20160913-19266-m7sjbd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137506/original/image-20160913-19266-m7sjbd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Male Aboriginal patients outside the hospital at Bernier Island.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://encore.slwa.wa.gov.au/iii/encore/record/C__Rb1993091__SBernier%20Island%20Hospital%20--%20Photographs.__P0%2C4__Orightresult__X1?lang=eng&suite=def#attachedMediaSection">State Library of Western Australia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When many states introduced compulsory notification and treatment for venereal diseases for the general population following the first world war, non-Indigenous patients were provided with education and free treatment. By contrast, the lock hospitals of Queensland and WA provided penal rather than therapeutic conditions.</p>
<p>As a Yamaji researcher Dr Robin Barrington has <a href="http://espace.library.curtin.edu.au:80/R?func=dbin-jump-full&local_base=gen01-era02&object_id=242450">observed</a> of the Bernier and Dorre lock hospitals, they were:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>…places of imprisonment, exile, isolation, segregation, anthropological investigations and medical experiments made possible by laws of exception.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>At the time, even authorities acknowledged that Aboriginal people saw the Bernier and Dorre lock hospitals as penal institutions. In 1909, newspapers reported WA’s Chief Protector of Aborigines, Charles Gale, stating they were seen “as a sort of gaol”. </p>
<p>It was not only the island confinement that was punitive; people often faced traumatic long journeys, on foot and by ship, as well as long periods in prisons or other lock-ups awaiting transport to the islands.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138543/original/image-20160921-12478-f93vhi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138543/original/image-20160921-12478-f93vhi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=321&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138543/original/image-20160921-12478-f93vhi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=321&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138543/original/image-20160921-12478-f93vhi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=321&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138543/original/image-20160921-12478-f93vhi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138543/original/image-20160921-12478-f93vhi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138543/original/image-20160921-12478-f93vhi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Garrett says it would have been terrifying to be sent to to Dorre Island.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/video/758958659515/who-do-you-think-you-are-peter-garrett">Screenshot/Who Do You Think You Are/ SBS</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In an interview some weeks after his visit to Dorre Island, Garrett told me (Melissa Sweet) that it had made him appreciate how terrifying it would have been for those Aboriginal people taken there. He compared the lock hospitals to a form of “gulag”, and described the island’s harsh landscape.</p>
<p>He said: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Even by Australian standards, it is remarkably barren, remote, inhospitable and, to be there for weeks on end, never mind years on end, yes, it really brings you up with a start… You can’t fail but to come away with a very strong feeling of loss and of unhappiness and of confusion.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>During his short visit to Carnarvon, Garrett was struck by the lack of local acknowledgement for this internationally significant history. He noted, for example, its absence from a <a href="http://www.drd.wa.gov.au/projects/Community-and-Culture/Pages/Carnarvon-Heritage-Precinct-One-Mile-Jetty-Interpretive-Centre-.aspx">large new historical display</a> at the town’s landmark One Mile Jetty, from where many inmates and staff departed for the islands.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137501/original/image-20160913-19254-102r8xg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137501/original/image-20160913-19254-102r8xg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137501/original/image-20160913-19254-102r8xg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137501/original/image-20160913-19254-102r8xg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137501/original/image-20160913-19254-102r8xg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137501/original/image-20160913-19254-102r8xg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137501/original/image-20160913-19254-102r8xg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137501/original/image-20160913-19254-102r8xg.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">Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people want greater public acknowledgement of the Bernier, Dorre and Fantome island lock hospitals and their traumatic impacts.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">University of Western Australia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For Kathleen Musulin, visiting Dorre was a deeply moving and spiritual experience, which is part of a bigger journey to increase public awareness and understanding of the lock hospitals’ histories. Many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people want greater public acknowledgement of the Bernier, Dorre and Fantome island lock hospitals and their traumatic impacts, according to findings from my (Melissa Sweet’s) PhD research.</p>
<p>This is seen as important for healing and justice, with interviewees wanting the wider Australian community to know “what Aboriginal people went through”. Efforts are now underway, through a Carnarvon Shire Council working group, to develop memorials to pay respects to those taken to the islands.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138541/original/image-20160921-12458-ow8dgl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138541/original/image-20160921-12458-ow8dgl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=312&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138541/original/image-20160921-12458-ow8dgl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=312&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138541/original/image-20160921-12458-ow8dgl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=312&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138541/original/image-20160921-12458-ow8dgl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138541/original/image-20160921-12458-ow8dgl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138541/original/image-20160921-12458-ow8dgl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Peter Garrett and Kathleen Musulin on Dorre island.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/video/758958659515/who-do-you-think-you-are-peter-garrett">Screenshot/Who Do You Think You Are/ SBS</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Knowing and acknowledging this history is particularly important for health systems and professionals, given that current Australian health dialogue supports the development of <a href="http://catsinam.org.au/static/uploads/files/cultural-safety-endorsed-march-2014-wfginzphsxbz.pdf">culturally safe</a> services and practices, and this requires an understanding of one’s own profession’s historical complicity in such events.</p>
<p>Learning from history opens the way to moving forward with respect in health professions, to provide services that will ensure better health outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, many of whom continue to experience adverse and traumatising experiences with health care.</p>
<p>The lock hospitals are part of a wider history of medical incarceration, as exemplified by Fantome Island, which also housed a leprosarium for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people from 1940-73. These histories remain very present in the memories and lives of many families on Palm Island.</p>
<p>These and other episodes of medical incarceration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples can be seen as archetypal examples of the role of health care professionals and systems in colonisation, contributing to intergenerational traumas.</p>
<p>The Australian Psychological Society recently issued an <a href="https://www.psychology.org.au/news/media_releases/15September2016/">apology</a> for the profession’s role in contributing to the mistreatment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, including its failure to advocate on important matters such as the policy of forced removal, which resulted in the Stolen Generations.</p>
<p>Far more could be done across health systems to acknowledge the wider histories of harmful health care policies, systems and practices that institutionalised, excluded, segregated and harmed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Acknowledgement is one important step towards healing and reparation.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>* Our next article will investigate what can be learnt from the extensive newspaper coverage of the lock hospitals.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/64295/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Melissa Sweet received an Australian Postgraduate Award to support her PhD candidature. The APA ended in late 2015. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kerry McCallum receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lynore Geia 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>Hundreds of Aboriginal people were incarcerated on Dorre and Bernier islands for “venereal disease” between 1908 and 1919. The lock hospitals were penal rather than therapeutic institutions.Melissa Sweet, Independent journalist and health writer; Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Sydney School of Public Health, University of Sydney; Founder of Croakey.org. PhD candidate, University of CanberraKerry McCallum, Associate Professor, Communication, University of CanberraLynore Geia, Senior Lecturer, Centre for Nursing and Midwifery Research, James Cook UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/487282015-10-07T00:12:02Z2015-10-07T00:12:02ZWhatever the truth of Garrett’s story, it’s about gambling industry politics and influence<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97504/original/image-20151006-7375-fq0sz7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Former minister Peter Garrett retracted claims about receiving cash in an envelope from a representative of a gambling industry lobby group.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Marianna Massey</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Former federal minister Peter Garrett has <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-06/peter-garrett-retracts-details-of-alleged-clubs-nsw-money-offer/6831408">retracted</a> claims that he received cash in an envelope from a representative of lobby group Clubs NSW at a gambling industry event in 2004. He now says he received a cheque made out to his electorate office, which he returned.</p>
<p>Garrett’s retraction is a little remarkable. He was the source (in some detail) of the original story, in a book he’s launching next week, and via a new ABC documentary, KaChing!. We can only speculate as to his reasons for changing the story. </p>
<p>Clubs NSW <a href="https://twitter.com/political_alert/status/651328584045342720">“unequivocally rejected”</a> Garrett’s earlier claims.</p>
<p>Perhaps a little less remarkable, but worth some attention nonetheless, are the <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/national/investigations/political-donations-second-pokie-lobby-tips-45000-into-kevin-andrewslinked-fund-20150727-gillfi.html">significant amounts</a> that club and pub interests donated to a fundraising body linked to Liberal MP Kevin Andrews.</p>
<p>When he was in opposition, Andrews was responsible for developing Liberal Party policy on gambling. He put that policy into practice when he became minister for social services, dismantling the Gillard government’s already watered-down poker machine reforms. Andrews’ policy was announced in a video introduced by Clubs Australia and Clubs NSW CEO Anthony Ball. </p>
<p>Despite the apparent strangeness of donating to an organisation supporting the re-election of a Victorian-based MP, a Clubs NSW spokesperson said the donations were for “no particular purpose”. There is no suggestion that the donations directly influenced Andrews’ decision-making. But the Abbott government, in enacting its policy, abandoned gambling reform.</p>
<h2>The lobby’s profound influence</h2>
<p>Many people are concerned about the relentless promotion of sports betting. We’ll find out soon enough if this generates a new cohort of people harmed by gambling.</p>
<p>At the moment, however, <a href="http://www.pc.gov.au/inquiries/completed/gambling-2009/report#contents">80%</a> of the gambling harm in Australia, and A$11 billion out of a gambling total of more than $20 billion, <a href="http://www.qgso.qld.gov.au/products/reports/aus-gambling-stats/aus-gambling-stats-30th-edn-summary-tables-2012-13.pdf">comes via poker machines</a> in clubs and pubs. Sports betting, in contrast, is worth about $500 million a year.</p>
<p>There are about 200,000 poker machines in Australia. Half are in NSW. In 2012-13, people lost $5.2 billion on NSW machines. In 2014-15, Victorians lost <a href="http://www.vcglr.vic.gov.au/home/resources/data+and+research/data/">$2.6 billion</a> and Queenslanders <a href="https://secure.olgr.qld.gov.au/dcm/Gaming">$2.2 billion</a>. </p>
<p>Prior to the last two NSW state elections, the Liberal Party signed memorandums of understanding <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/comment/poker-machine-lobby-signs-another-private-deal-with-nsw-liberals-20141017-117sqy.html">with the clubs</a>. The clubs thus support the Liberals, and the NSW government seems keen to help them out. In July 2015, this took the form of permitting the cash payout of up to $5,000 in winnings. Previously this was limited to $2,000. More than this and the money was paid by cheque. </p>
<p>The limit for deposits on gambling load-up cards was also upped, from $200 to $5,000. The clubs say this is for convenience of their members. Of course, this has nothing to do with making it more likely that any winnings end up back in the clubs’ pokies.</p>
<p>In Queensland, under the guise of <a href="http://www.anglicanchurchsq.org.au/images/Anglican_Church_SQ_Gambling_Red_Tape_Reduction_Report_FINAL_08Jan15_rebadged.pdf">“red tape reduction”</a>, the now-ousted Newman government agreed to a batch of “reforms” to make life easier for club pokie operators. The new ALP government says it wants to wind back these “reforms”. Unfortunately, it has inherited a swarm of new casinos, with a second Brisbane casino approved, an additional casino on the Gold Coast being developed and a mega-casino <a href="https://theconversation.com/this-time-is-different-the-local-costs-of-cairns-new-casino-30253">proposed</a> for Cairns. </p>
<p>Other towns – or, more correctly, developers – are clamouring for casinos too. </p>
<p>In Victoria, the Labor government recently announced a <a href="http://www.justice.vic.gov.au/home/safer+communities/gambling/gaming+machine+arrangements+review">review</a> of poker machine entitlements. There are 30,000 poker machines in Victoria – about 27,000 in pubs and clubs and the balance in the casino. The internal review was announced late on a Friday night, so confidence that it will actually address the harms of gambling is low. There’s no commitment to publication of the review’s report. </p>
<p>Prior to the Victorian state election in 2014, pubs and clubs lobbied the state for the conversion of their 10-year entitlements to licences in perpetuity, as in NSW. That effort died with the election, but they haven’t given up. The government could expect a windfall of revenue from the conversion of entitlements to licences in perpetuity, and even more if it allowed more pokies into the state. As Paul Keating famously remarked:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Never get between a premier and bucket of money.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The harm done to people is, it seems, incidental to the $5 billion that <a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/DetailsPage/5506.02013-14?OpenDocument">flows into state treasuries</a> from gambling. Of this, 60% comes from poker machines.</p>
<p>Pokies are essentially <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9156.html">addiction machines</a> – computers housed in a retro box that combines a host of psychological tricks. Their sole purpose is to extract as much money as possible. By stimulating the production of neuro-chemicals, pokies do exactly what drugs do – give the user a pain-dulling reward. </p>
<p>The problem is, most people realise that heroin and ice are dangerous and addictive. When it comes to gambling, state governments give pokies the seal of approval, and the local pub or club is the dealer. Even worse, we know that pokies are cynically <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3109/16066359.2012.727507#.VhRAYI-qqko">concentrated in disadvantaged communities</a>.</p>
<p>State governments are legislators, regulators and beneficiaries of gambling. They are addicted to the revenue, and deeply conflicted as to their role. Even more troubling is that since 2008-09 poker machine operators have <a href="http://periodicdisclosures.aec.gov.au/">given</a> more than $6 million in donations to the ALP and the Liberal Party. Most of this has gone to the Liberals – more than $4 million.</p>
<h2>Is this a problem?</h2>
<p>Gambling operators exist because governments license them. They are, in many ways, the ultimate rent-seekers. Without government imprimatur, they have no revenue stream. </p>
<p>Should such businesses be permitted to donate to politicians or political parties? And should they be permitted to influence government, legislation and regulation as powerfully as they do? The gambling industry’s campaign against the Gillard government’s reforms was <a href="http://insidestory.org.au/the-lobby-group-that-got-much-more-bang-for-its-buck/">extraordinary</a>.</p>
<p>This is a lobby that knows how to wield power and does it with great expertise, backed by significant resources. As recent events in the US have shown, organisations like the National Rifle Association are <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/05/spare-me-this-sanctimonious-australian-self-congratulation-after-us-gun-massacres">entrenched in US politics</a>, almost certainly to the detriment of good policy and the public interest. Australia’s gambling lobby may well be in the same league.</p>
<p>Disclosure of political donations in Australia is poor – perhaps as bad as the rules governing politicians’ travel entitlements. Rorting the latter seems to be a bipartisan sport. Giving gambling operators what they want in return for donations, and in fear of their enmity, may well be another.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/48728/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Charles Livingstone has received funding from Victorian and South Australian governments (the funds for which were derived from hypothecation of government revenue to research purposes), from the Australian and New Zealand School of Government, and from non-government organisations for research into multiple aspects of poker machine gambling, including regulatory reform, existing harm minimisation practices, and technical characteristics of gambling forms. He has received travel and co-operation grants from the Alberta Problem Gambling Research Centre, the Finnish Institute for Public Health, the Ontario Problem Gambling Research Committee, and the Problem Gambling Foundation of New Zealand. He is a Chief Investigator on an Australian Research Council funded project researching mechanisms of influence on government by the tobacco, alcohol and gambling industries. He has undertaken consultancy research for local governments and non-government organisations in Australia and the UK seeking to restrict or reduce the concentration of poker machines and gambling impacts, and was a member of the Australian government's Ministerial Expert Advisory Group on Gambling in 2010-11. He is a member of the Australian Greens. He was interviewed for the forthcoming ABC documentary 'KaChing!', and provided some technical advice to its producers.</span></em></p>The gambling industry knows how to wield power, and does it with great expertise, backed by significant resources.Charles Livingstone, Senior Lecturer, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/311892014-09-08T05:05:49Z2014-09-08T05:05:49ZInsulation royal commission exposes fatal market flaws<p>The most important finding in the final report of the <a href="http://www.homeinsulationroyalcommission.gov.au/Pages/default.aspx">Royal Commission into the Home Insulation Program</a> is the one the Abbott government is least likely to heed. One of the two crucial flaws Commissioner Ian Hanger identified was the decision to build the Home Insulation Program (HIP) around a laissez-faire market-delivery model. By offering an easily accessed rebate, the Rudd government decided that start-up companies, not the public service, would have oversight of the program.</p>
<p>Hanger’s report also exposes the fact that this choice of business model, a “turning point in the [Home Insulation Program]”, was imposed on the then Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts (DEWHA) by forces close to then prime minister Kevin Rudd: the <a href="http://www.dpmc.gov.au/annual_reports/2009-10/html/chapter-3-domestic-policy/office-of-the-coordinator-general/">Office of the Coordinator-General</a> (a role Rudd created to oversee the stimulus measures) and Senator <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/insulation-blame-sheeted-home-to-alp-by-royal-commission/story-fn59niix-1227044453748">Mark Arbib</a>.</p>
<p>Former Labor attorney-general <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2014/s4078838.htm">Mark Dreyfus is right to say</a> that the A$20 million spent on the Royal Commission has not vastly altered the account of the insulation scheme that the previous eight inquiries had provided. The picture of a rushed program run by public servants with little understanding of the potential hazards of working in ceiling spaces was well-established.</p>
<p>Prime Minister Tony Abbott must also be lamenting the failure of the Royal Commission to confirm the multiple <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/insulation-blame-sheeted-home-to-alp-by-royal-commission/story-fn59niix-1227044453748">“direct personal warnings”</a> that Coalition MPs had claimed were issued to Rudd and Environment Minister <a href="http://www.petergarrett.com.au/">Peter Garrett</a>.</p>
<h2>A rush to outsource responsibility</h2>
<p>However, the findings do raise profound lessons for government. The dominance of market-knows-best ideology among the senior public service and Labor ministers and their staffers was critical to the mistaken and deadly assumptions behind the insulation program’s design. Linked to this, the commission has highlighted the disastrous role of private consultants and particularly the program’s <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/need-for-speed-won-over-safety-in-home-insulation-scheme/story-fn59niix-1227044309654">“external risk expert”</a>, Minter Ellison’s Margaret Coaldrake. Underpinning all these problems was the lack of program delivery experience and capacity within the environment department.</p>
<p>The Hanger report is the first to identify the abrupt imposition of a new delivery model, two months into the planning process, as a “critical” decision (page 4), “indeed the cause of later failures by the Australian government” (p. 157). Until a meeting on 31 March 2009, environment department officials had planned to contract major regional firms for recruiting, training and supervising the new insulation installer workforce.</p>
<p>This “regional brokerage” model (similar to that administered by the states in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Building_the_Education_Revolution">Building the Education Revolution</a> school halls stimulus program) itself relied on outsourcing, albeit to experienced companies with “skin in the game”. But Minter Ellison’s first risk assessment found the department’s inexperience made it virtually impossible that the contracts would be signed off in time for the July 1 roll-out announced by Rudd. Minter Ellison’s suggested treatment for this and most other risks was to transfer “the largest risks to third parties (effective outsourcing)” (p. 117).</p>
<p>As Hanger notes, it was likely this risk report that informed the decision by the Office of the Coordinator-General (OCG) and Senator Arbib (p. 106) to push for a wholly new model for the home insulation program. The resulting “market-delivery” (p. 127) rebate model was unilaterally imposed on environment department officials without warning at a meeting that Hanger found was “structured to impose the OCG delivery model on DEWHA” (p. 136).</p>
<h2>Letting the market rip</h2>
<p>Rather than contract large companies to deliver the program, the government would provide a Medicare-administered rebate coupled with a low-barrier-to-entry online registration system. Market forces would do the rest. It was this recipe of funding and easy registration that drove the 15-fold increase in installations as the number of installation companies grew from 200 before the insulation program to 8,359 (p. 2).</p>
<p>As well as a zeal for meeting Rudd’s July 1 roll-out deadline, the OCG-Arbib model was “designed to allow market forces to work and deliver the most efficiency/effectiveness without providing a centralised solution” (p. 128). It would be a “light-touch regulatory model” (p. 131) that would “let the market operate with few restrictions” (p. 131).</p>
<p>The insulation program was constructed in response to the Global Financial Crisis, which Rudd and others categorised as a crisis of “neoliberalism”. And yet the public servants, and even Labor ministers involved in designing the scheme, were driven by the notion that public involvement should be minimised while, in the words of the public servants, they “let the market rip” (p. 144).</p>
<p>And rip it did. Every month that the program ran, a year’s worth of insulation activity was generated. The government orchestrated this situation and Hanger has found (p. 3) that the government was responsible for the results:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>1.1.18 The reality is that the Australian Government conceived of, devised and implemented a program that enabled very large numbers of inexperienced workers – often engaged by unscrupulous and avaricious employers or head contractors, who were themselves inexperienced in insulation installation – to undertake potentially dangerous work. It should have done more to protect them. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The commission has found that even when government outsources work, “risk cannot be abrogated” (p.309). This has profound implications for the delivery of government programs by both sides of politics.</p>
<h2>The delusion of outsourcing risk</h2>
<p>As incredible as it may now seem, the public service saw the market-driven delivery model that relied on the ballooning of start-up companies as reducing the risk profile of the program. This can only be explained because the notion of risk that prevailed among program designers had nothing to do with the provision of a safe program.</p>
<p>Risk management was instead concerned to minimise the financial, political, legal and reputational risks to the Commonwealth. While shared across the insulation program management team, this concept of risk was embodied by the Minter Ellison risk expert Margaret Coaldrake. She told (p. 111) the commission:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The focus for the project was on risks to the Commonwealth and [the insulation program’s] implementation because the Commonwealth cannot manage a risk for someone else.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Hanger’s report sharply rejects Coaldrake’s understanding, saying (p. 119):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>That view is flawed … The risk to the Commonwealth of the [Home Insulation Program] includes the risk to the safety of one of its citizens undertaking work as part of the program.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Despite employing a “bevy” of risk experts, until the electrocution of 25-year-old insulation installer Matthew Fuller in October 2009, the risks facing installers were not mentioned in Minter Ellison’s 20-page central “Risk Register”. When questioned about this, Coaldrake told the commission that her role was merely facilitation and that no one in the department had informed her that workers could be injured as part of the program.</p>
<p>In fact, the commission uncovered evidence that injury to installers had been raised at an early DEWHA risk workshop. It was listed in early drafts of Coaldrake’s own risk register. However, between 10.54am and 12.05pm on 27 March 2009, this risk disappeared from the register, and neither Coaldrake nor any of the DEWHA staff redressed its omission during the crucial next six months of the program.</p>
<h2>Governments have lost in-house expertise</h2>
<p>Hanger finds that the Commonwealth did not have the in-house expertise to purchase and manage the “expert services” of Coaldrake (p. 312) whose role in the insulation program Hanger describes as “patently inadequate” (p. 5). </p>
<p>This finding echoes that of the <a href="http://www.news.com.au/national/breaking-news/final-report-on-school-building-the-education-revolution-released/story-e6frfku9-1226090773438">Building the Education Revolution Implementation Taskforce</a>, which found that state and territory education departments lacked the in-house skills and expertise to act as an “informed buyer” in dealing with the construction firms that delivered that program. Without in-house architects, planners and project managers, the government was open to accepting exorbitant management fees and unable to prevent sub-standard delivery.</p>
<p>Lack of public service capacity is the first point Hanger addresses in his lessons for the future. He notes (p. 301) that “the retention of outside experts did not always overcome the knowledge gaps that existed in the department”. </p>
<p>Hanger’s report paints a damning picture of the results of decades of outsourcing under the neo-liberal rubric of market efficiency and down-sizing. Unless public service capacity is rebuilt and the market-knows-best mentality inside the government replaced, it is only a matter of time before we repeat the mistakes of the home insulation program.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/31189/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jean Parker is affiliated with Solidarity.</span></em></p>The most important finding in the final report of the Royal Commission into the Home Insulation Program is the one the Abbott government is least likely to heed. One of the two crucial flaws Commissioner…Jean Parker, Assistant researcher, Macquarie UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/267112014-05-15T04:48:00Z2014-05-15T04:48:00ZRudd humbled, but real lessons of insulation scheme go unlearned<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48562/original/9xk5n87p-1400120371.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=10%2C14%2C2372%2C1529&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Rudd's legal wrangles: political theatre, but beside the point when it comes to improving public programs.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Dan Peled</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s understandable that coverage of Kevin Rudd’s appearance before the royal commission into the home insulation program should focus on the image of a former Prime Minister humbled over a policy that led to four people’s deaths.</p>
<p>But although some will revel in Rudd’s discomfiture, the commission sits oddly with the current government’s ostensible commitment to reducing waste and duplication. The commission’s <a href="http://www.homeinsulationroyalcommission.gov.au/About/Pages/TermsofReference.aspx">terms of reference</a>, which emphasise workplace safety considerations, seem to be about allocating blame for the program’s shortcomings, rather than learning lessons for improving public administration.</p>
<p>After an afternoon of legal wrangles on Wednesday, Rudd finally won permission to give his unredacted evidence on Thursday, in which he <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/15/kevin-rudd-given-no-warning-insulation-program-was-going-off-the-rails">claimed that he was not notified of problems with the scheme until after the deaths</a>.</p>
<p>The focus of the hearings so far – featuring former ministers <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/13/home-insulation-inquiry-mark-arbib-refuses-to-say-scheme-was-rushed">Mark Arbib</a> and <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/14/peter-garrett-denies-home-insulation-scheme-was-flooded-with-shonks">Peter Garrett</a>, and culminating in Rudd’s appearance – has been about who knew what, and when. Entertaining political theatre, but not a productive use of public resources.</p>
<h2>Deaths already investigated</h2>
<p>The Queensland Coroner has <a href="http://www.courts.qld.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/203374/cif-fuller-mj-barnes-rk-sweeney-ms-20130704.pdf">already handed down findings</a> into the deaths of three young workers (the fourth, Marcus Wilson, died in New South Wales). The brunt of the coroner’s criticism was aimed at the Commonwealth for having rushed the program, but blame was also directed to the state government, for lax enforcement of its own operations, and to businesses who probably breached the state’s <a href="https://www.legislation.qld.gov.au/LEGISLTN/CURRENT/E/ElectricalSA02.pdf">Electrical Safety Act</a>. Why go over old ground?</p>
<p>Rudd’s appearance is fodder for the tabloids, and a welcome distraction for a government trying to sell a <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/federal-budget-2014">tough budget</a>. But in focusing on his personal interactions with Arbib and Garrett, the story seems to do little more than confirm what journalist and academic Philip Chubb has already pointed out in his new book <a href="http://www.blackincbooks.com/books/power-failure">Power Failure</a> – that Rudd was a lousy manager, the kind of boss who wavers between indecisiveness and excessive haste.</p>
<p>It is unlikely that many of Australia’s 28 prime ministers, including Tony Abbott, would score highly in a test of managerial ability. Winning elections isn’t about administrative competence – that is the task of the professional public service. What is emerging from the commission’s hearings confirms the findings of the <a href="http://www.anao.gov.au/%7E/media/Uploads/Documents/2010%2011_audit_report_no_12.pdf">2010 Auditor-General’s report into the HIP</a>, which found that many of the problems resulted from systemic failures in public administration.</p>
<h2>Jobs, stimulus… and tragedy</h2>
<p>Before focusing on those problems, it’s useful to consider that report. It found that 1.1 million roofs were insulated, and 6000 to 10,000 short-term jobs were created, widely dispersed geographically. As a stimulus program it succeeded, and the scheme also <a href="https://theconversation.com/pink-batts-what-did-it-teach-us-about-building-better-buildings-21644">helped to boost sustainability</a>. It also resulted in tragedy.</p>
<p>The deaths of Matthew Fuller, Rueben Barnes, Mitchell Sweeney, and Marcus Wilson should not have happened. But it should also be pointed out that the rate of ceiling fires associated with insulation installation was <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/insulation-fire-risk-was-worse-before-rebate-20100303-pivv.html">almost certainly lower under the scheme</a> (see also <a href="http://www.crikey.com.au/2010/10/19/possum-insulation-fire-risk-the-data-is-in/">here</a>) than it had been before the program was implemented, and that the program <a href="http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollytics/2010/02/24/did-the-insulation-program-actually-reduce-fire-risk/?source=cmailer">was a catalyst for better regulation of the industry</a>. Yet fire risk is not included in the commission’s terms of reference.</p>
<p>Of course, none of this excuses the Rudd government. Had it applied the same standards as apply to road safety or pharmaceutical regulation, there would undoubtedly have been a much lower risk of fire, heat stroke or electrocution, and the insulation industry would probably not have suffered the reputational damage caused by fly-by-night operators chasing tasty subsidies. </p>
<p>Ultimately, our elected governments have to take responsibility for poor administration, even if those problems are not of their own making, but are the fault of the public servants who put the policies into practice.</p>
<h2>Lack of basic knowledge</h2>
<p>A problem clearly identified in the Auditor-General’s report, and emerging from the commission’s inquiries, is that the public servants involved simply did not realise that ceilings are risky places to work. Even if they had not heard of the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/19/foil-insulation-given-go-ahead-despite-three-deaths-in-new-zealand">three previous deaths in New Zealand involving foil insulation secured with metal staples</a>, the presence of life-threatening risk should have been common knowledge within the bureaucracy. </p>
<p>One might expect these public servants to understand high school physics such as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohm's_law">Ohm’s Law</a> and the basic principles of conductivity and thermodynamics – or at the very least, to know better than to send workers into roof spaces armed with metal staples. </p>
<p>As Tim Roxburgh of the Centre for Policy Development <a href="http://cpd.org.au/2012/09/public-works-public-skills">points out</a>, the Commonwealth public service has lost many of the practical skills once found in outfits such as departments of public works. Practical men and women have been replaced in the senior bureaucratic ranks by generic managers, with finely honed political sensitivity, and skill in writing speeches for ministers.</p>
<p>Another problem was that the Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts tried to run the program entirely from Canberra. Apart from some people associated with conservation programs, it had no presence elsewhere. There was no one who could get in a car to go and look at some installations, no one living and working in Brisbane with good contacts in the state government and the industry. </p>
<p>As warned by a much earlier royal commission, the <a href="http://apo.org.au/research/royal-commission-australian-government-administration-report">1976 Commission of Australian Government Administration</a>, the Commonwealth bureaucracy was already then becoming too isolated in Canberra.</p>
<h2>When something goes wrong, blame the government?</h2>
<p>It is unfortunate that a partisan vendetta seems to have overridden the chance for the royal commission to look at systemic problems in public administration. There will be future occasions when governments have to respond to sharp economic downturns or other emergencies, or want to put programs in place quickly, and unless they have a competent public service there will be more tragedies and mishaps.</p>
<p>Politicising the program’s shortcomings also reinforces the message that whenever something goes wrong, it’s the government’s fault. The attempt to sheet all blame on to the government of the day dulls any message about individual responsibility on the part of businesses, households and workers. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, Joe Hockey has just delivered a budget speech telling us all about the importance of taking individual responsibility. That’s much more the type of message that a government of right-of-centre persuasion would want to reinforce.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/26711/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ian McAuley 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>It’s understandable that coverage of Kevin Rudd’s appearance before the royal commission into the home insulation program should focus on the image of a former Prime Minister humbled over a policy that…Ian McAuley, Lecturer, Public Sector Finance , University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/264432014-05-13T05:00:52Z2014-05-13T05:00:52Z‘Green tape’ cuts: industry wins, locals and the environment lose<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48313/original/yth534c4-1399949646.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Part of Shoalwater Bay in Queensland, where the federal government blocked a major new coal port in 2008 over its "clearly unacceptable" environmental impacts".</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Freshwater_Bay_DN-SD-01-04615.jpg">Daniel E. Smith/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Deep cuts to <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/arenas-axing-would-mean-end-of-tony-abbotts-support-for-renewables-says-industry-20140512-zrae5.html">environmental programs</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/environmental-job-cuts-risk-a-repeat-of-gladstone-failures-26491">staff predicted in today’s federal budget</a> aren’t the only “green” cuts that Australians should be concerned about. </p>
<p>The federal government is currently holding an <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/parliamentary_business/committees/house_of_representatives_committees?url=environment/greentape/index.htm">Inquiry into streamlining environmental regulation, ‘green tape’, and one stop shops</a>, which looks set to completely change the way environmental regulation works across Australia. </p>
<p>Ultimately it risks creating a confusing array of rules and lower environmental standards, where the main winners will be mining and property development lobby groups. </p>
<p>The likely losers include local communities concerned about major new developments in their area; shared environmental assets that all Australians benefit from, including clean air and water; and unique animals, plants and habitats that, once lost, can never be brought back again.</p>
<h2>Handing more power over to the states</h2>
<p>The federal government has already embarked on a process of delegating project assessment and approval powers to the states, to establish its “one-stop shop” on environmental management. </p>
<p>It involves streamlining state and territory major project assessments, and the federal government handing over the final decisions on projects assessed under Australia’s <a href="http://www.environment.gov.au/topics/about-us/legislation/environment-protection-and-biodiversity-conservation-act-1999/about-epbc">main national environmental laws</a> to state and territory governments. (Read <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-one-stop-shop-for-environmental-approvals-19515">more here</a>.) A tight September deadline has been set for completing the process.</p>
<p>This “one stop shop” approach ignores the fact that the states have long proven themselves to be poor guardians of areas of national environmental significance. You don’t have to look far to find examples.</p>
<p>Take Shoalwater Bay, a heritage-listed area within the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, 70 kilometres north-west of Rockhampton. Although parts of the area are regularly used for military exercises, it remains one of the biggest areas of largely undisturbed areas Australia’s east coast, including being home to <a href="http://www.environment.gov.au/water/topics/wetlands/database/pubs/44-ris.pdf">internationally-listed wetlands</a>, and rare and endangered species such as dugongs and sea turtles. </p>
<p>In mid-2008, Waratah Coal <a href="http://www.miningaustralia.com.au/news/govt-considers-first-new-coal-port-in-25-yrs">appeared to have the backing of the then Labor state government</a> for its proposal to build a new coal port and 500-kilometre rail line through the region. The proposal had been declared a significant project by Queensland’s Coordinator-General (who thereby undertook the project’s environmental assessment) and approved, notwithstanding anticipated impacts on species and habitats.</p>
<p>But in September 2008, the then Environment Minister, <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2008-09-05/garrett-rejects-shoalwater-bay-coal-terminal/500786">Peter Garrett, stepped in</a> using federal environmental laws.</p>
<p>Without that <a href="http://www.environment.gov.au/minister/archive/env/2008/pubs/tr20080905.pdf">intervention</a> – which found that the project would have had “clearly unacceptable impacts on the high wilderness values of Shoalwater Bay and on the internationally recognised Shoalwater and Corio Bay wetlands” – the project would have proceeded.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/murray-darling-basin-plan-gets-off-to-a-very-slow-and-shaky-start-24732">Murray-Darling</a> river system is another a glaring example of how state self-interest is likely to trump public or national benefit unless there is an active and responsible role played by the federal government.</p>
<p>So why overhaul Australia’s environmental rules at all?</p>
<h2>The case for change</h2>
<p>The current federal “green tape” inquiry is based on the idea that Australia has too much environmental regulation, which is choking development. </p>
<p>That’s certainly the view of the mining and property development lobbies. While a 2012 NSW government survey found that the community considered regulation of those industries as <a href="http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/resources/community/130265WC12Rpt.pdf">being “too lax”</a>, there has been a strong industry push to reduce regulation.</p>
<p>A <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/House/Environment/Green_Tape/Submissions">joint submission</a> by the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association (APPEA), the Business Council of Australia (BCA) and the Minerals Council of Australia (MCA) argues that there is duplication between Commonwealth and State government environmental regulation. Yet it does not refer to specific legislation where this is the case.</p>
<p>The joint APPEA, BCA and MCA submission also refers to a number of unnamed companies who have suffered long delays and had to produce thousand-page environmental impact statements and spent millions on environmental approvals. These contentions are not backed by independent analysis of the cost of environmental regulation and how this may have changed over time.</p>
<h2>A different view</h2>
<p>I’ve worked in environmental law for 15 years, including with the Environment Protection Authority, and still teach law at university. For more than a decade have been with the <a href="http://www.edonsw.org.au/">New South Wales Environmental Defenders Office</a>, part of a broader <a href="http://www.edo.org.au/">Australian Network of Environmental Defenders Offices</a> (ANEDO).</p>
<p>And it’s based on all of that legal experiences that I’d strongly argue – along with my ANEDO colleagues – that the industry and government push to reduce national environmental regulation will prove to be bad for local communities and our environment.</p>
<p>In 2012, an ANEDO <a href="http://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/edonsw/pages/279/attachments/original/1380668130/121218Appendix1Reportontheadequacyofthreatenedspeciesandplanninglaws.pdf?1380668130">audit of threatened species and planning laws</a> found that “no state or territory biodiversity or planning laws currently meet the suite of Federal environmental standards necessary to effectively and efficiently protect biodiversity”.</p>
<p>And in March last year, <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Environment_and_Communications/Completed_inquiries/2010-13/epbcfederalpowers/report/%7E/media/wopapub/senate/committee/ec_ctte/completed_inquiries/2010-13/epbc_federal_powers/report/report.ashx">a federal senate inquiry</a> also found no substantive evidence that the existing regulatory arrangements were imposing unnecessary costs on business.</p>
<h2>Conflicts of interest</h2>
<p>If you’re still not sure where you stand on the handover of federal powers to the states, then just consider the conflicts of interest. </p>
<p>State governments may stand to gain tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in royalty payments if they approve major mining or coal seam gas projects. And in major infrastructure projects like port expansions or highways, the state may be both the proponent and approval authority. </p>
<p>Alternatively, if a major project requires the approval of the federal government, there is an extra level of checks and balances, reducing the risks of such conflicts of interest. </p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/26443/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jeff is the Executive Director of Environmental Defenders Office NSW, part of a national network of independently constituted and managed community environmental law centres across Australia. He is a Solicitor of the Supreme Court of NSW. Jeff is the Chair of the Australian Centre for Climate and Environmental Law, and is also a member of the Steering Committee for the Climate Institute and the Special Purpose Assessment Committee for the Contaminated Land Management Program administered by the Environmental Trust.</span></em></p>Deep cuts to environmental programs and staff predicted in today’s federal budget aren’t the only “green” cuts that Australians should be concerned about. The federal government is currently holding an…Jeff Smith, Chair, Australian Centre for Climate and Environmental Law, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/155732013-06-26T13:45:48Z2013-06-26T13:45:48ZRudd wins the game of thrones<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26248/original/xsfymrbb-1372251212.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Kevin Rudd is once again the Prime Minister of Australia.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Alan Porritt</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Labor has finally made the decision it ought to have taken long ago, but the counter-revolution has been extremely bloody and there are bodies all over the place.</p>
<p>Not only is there a new Prime Minister but a new deputy PM (Anthony Albanese), and a new Senate leadership combination (Penny Wong, Jacinta Collins).</p>
<p>Six cabinet ministers have quit the frontbench – Wayne Swan, Greg Combet, Stephen Conroy, Peter Garrett, Craig Emerson and Joe Ludwig. Garrett and Emerson will resign from Parliament at the election, as will Julia Gillard, who pledged before the ballot to go if she lost.</p>
<p>Rudd has been restored to the leadership three years to the week after he was pushed out.</p>
<p>In his mind, his return journey has all been about righting a wrong, seizing back what was his – the power, the Prime Ministerial Office, the Lodge.</p>
<p>This rang through his news conference tonight, when he said: “In 2007 the Australian people elected me to be their PM. That is the task that I resume today …”</p>
<p>Rudd’s tortuous course back has been costly to the party and contributed to, although is not responsible for, Gillard’s failures.</p>
<p>His 57-45 margin was comfortable but far from the draft he wanted.</p>
<p>The latest lunge at the leadership by the Rudd forces was much better organised than the one of February last year, let alone the March fiasco when Rudd didn’t stand.</p>
<p>One big difference is that caucus members, faced with horrifying public and private polls, have become more desperate.</p>
<p>It is a great pity they did not have the political nous and hard headedness to realise a year ago that he was their best option. Labor’s prospects would be much better.</p>
<p>Rudd has had to make a liar of himself, after he said in March he would never again be leader of the Labor party.</p>
<p>Today he took responsibility for going back on his word, saying three things had made him change his stand. These were requests from his colleagues, his belief that the Australian people deserved a competitve choice at the election, and his fear that without that Tony Abbott would win the greatest landslide since federation.</p>
<p>In the enthusiasm of tonight Rudd’s so flagrantly breaking his word is lost – seen as one of those things politicians do in these circumstances. Nevertheless it may fuel the cynicism in an already cynical electorate.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26247/original/bkqxf7pb-1372248670.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26247/original/bkqxf7pb-1372248670.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26247/original/bkqxf7pb-1372248670.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26247/original/bkqxf7pb-1372248670.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26247/original/bkqxf7pb-1372248670.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26247/original/bkqxf7pb-1372248670.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26247/original/bkqxf7pb-1372248670.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">
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<p>Bill Shorten’s deathknock (though not entirely unexpected) announcement that he was switching sides was important and symbolic – and also involved going back on his word. Only a few hours before the ballot his spokeswoman said he hadn’t changed position.</p>
<p>Shorten’s subdued mood was a massive contrast to three years ago when he helped mastermind, from a Canberra restaurant, the coup against Rudd.</p>
<p>Shorten made no public comments after the ballot.</p>
<p>For him it has been one of the most difficult times in his career. He has been agonising over what to do for the past three weeks, consulting widely. Sources say he only made a final decision in the last day or so, informing the PM late today.</p>
<p>He decided, as he said publicly, that a leadership change was in the best interests of the party, and that it was desirable to be straight with his colleagues.</p>
<p>One factor in his thinking was believed to be the prospect of Tony Abbott getting control of the Senate.</p>
<p>As a future leader of the opposition, it is in Shorten’s interest for Rudd to save as much of the furniture as possible and for the Senate to be kept in a combination of Labor-Green hands rather than swinging to the right.</p>
<p>Shorten did not seek anything from Rudd and nothing was offered.</p>
<p>Rudd will lift Labor’s primary vote, now 29% in this week’s Newspoll. The issue will be by how much - Abbott remains the election favourite.</p>
<p>The new PM is faced with an extraordinarily formidable task in reconstituting the government, pulling the party together, articulating a compelling agenda and fighting an election campaign.</p>
<p>He has to get ministers into key position immediately. Chris Bowen is set to be treasurer. Unfortunately Martin Ferguson, one of those who quit after the March leadership debacle, can’t be brought back because he has already announced his retirement from parliament.</p>
<p>Rudd has said nothing as yet about the election date. If he goes for a poll earlier than Gillard’s September 14 timetable, he will answer the prayers of many Australians.</p>
<p>An earlier date would also assist him with the immediate problems of division and disarray - the pressure will be on for unity – and it also would make maximum use of the honeymoon.</p>
<p>Julia Gillard has helped Rudd by her declaration that she would resign. Time will tell whether Rudd will be victim of leaks during the campaign, as she was, but there will be less motivation because there will be no one on a comeback course.</p>
<p>Rudd’s best quality is his public popularity.</p>
<p>In his news conference he condemned the negativity that has characterised federal politics and declared “I see my role as PM in forging consensus wherever I can”.</p>
<p>But he will not be able to get through just on popularity and generalities and uplifting rhetoric.</p>
<p>He faces tricky questions of policy. The first is what he does about the Gonski school funding program, which Gillard was talking up in parliament today.</p>
<p>Gillard has only two states signed up. Rudd is known to be sceptical about the program, and concerned about its expense. But if he wants to dump it that will be messy, the legislation passed parliament today.</p>
<p>More intractable is the problem of the boats. The opposition can blame Rudd for the restarting of the trade. Maybe he can dodge some of that but what is he going to propose to get the problem under control?</p>
<p>He also has to counter Abbott’s attacks on the carbon tax, by recalibrating the whole issue of carbon pricing - perhaps by promising to bring forward the trading scheme, which would lower the price.</p>
<p>Rudd tonight flagged a strategy of appealing to the youth vote and seeking to improve relations with business. </p>
<p>To young people he said: “I understand why you have switch off. It is hardly a surprise. But I want to ask you to please come back and listen afresh … With your energy, we can start cooking with gas.”</p>
<p>His pitch to business was: “I want to work closely with you. I have worked with you closely in the past, particularly during the GFC … We came through because we worked together. I am saying it loud and clear to businesses, large and small across the country, in partnership we can do great things for the country’s future”.</p>
<p>In her news conference Gillard mentioned the challenge of the hung parliament as well as party divisions for making her three years difficult.</p>
<p>Earlier, the two country independents Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott, who have kept her government afloat, announced they would not recontest their seats.</p>
<p>Their decision is an appropriate epitaph for this strange parliament, which sits for the last time tomorrow.</p>
<p>PS This is the second time that a dog called Reuben living at the Lodge has lost his elite accommodation. The first Reuben was owned by Paul Keating, defeated at the 1996 election. Coups are tough all round.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/15573/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan 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>Labor has finally made the decision it ought to have taken long ago, but the counter-revolution has been extremely bloody and there are bodies all over the place. Not only is there a new Prime Minister…Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/136152013-04-19T06:48:35Z2013-04-19T06:48:35ZBeaten but not Gonski: the wait for leadership on schools continues<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/22633/original/dc54pbn9-1366335377.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C0%2C4249%2C2828&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Prime Minister was unable to get agreement with the states on the government's school funding reforms.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Alan Porritt</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The A$14 billion federal government proposal based on David Gonski’s call for a better school funding system has <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-04-19/coag-fails-to-strike-school-funding-deal/4640110">not been agreed</a> to at this week’s COAG meeting. In fact, none of the states and territories signed up to the reforms.</p>
<p>The fact the states and the feds could not move forward is regrettable. Educators across the country now have to wait until June – the later deadline for government legislation – for the details. </p>
<p>It will simply add to the frustration and cynicism of those who have been waiting since the end of 2011, when Gonski submitted his findings to the Gillard government. </p>
<p>The delay has never been explained and for the many who care deeply about restoring fairness and lifting academic ambition in our public and low-fee Catholic schools, the folly of arguing all this out in a charged election year is a sore point. </p>
<p>A sustained advocacy campaign that involved all players might have helped promote something a bit more elevated than the usual neuralgic set of arguments around costs versus benefits. And it’s not as if the Government lacks fire-power. </p>
<p>Since 2008, the Commonwealth has poured A$2.3 billion into the <a href="http://smarterschools.gov.au/">Smarter Schools National Partnership</a> deal with the states and this has been primarily aimed at boosting performance in our poorest schools. </p>
<p>It’s been an important Labor initiative. So why haven’t they told us about it?</p>
<p>It’s reasonable to assume that when state education ministers convene regularly with their federal counterpart, Peter Garrett, that these issues are discussed. I’ve no doubt that Garrett has put a lot of mental sweat into finding an acceptable funding formula, although it was notable, when <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/schools-minister-peter-garrett-on-coag-meeting/4638520">Radio National’s Fran Kelly</a> asked him whether he had picked up the phone and spoken personally to his state counterparts, he suggested that the detail had been left to officials. </p>
<p>It’s as if there is a willful avoidance of any kind of genuine engagement. There’s plenty of jaw-jaw but hearts and minds aren’t connecting. </p>
<p>Conversation readers who like to get their weekly fix of political argy bargy on a Monday evening by flicking the remote to ABC Television’s Q&A will recall the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s3698638.htm">program last month</a> that featured Garrett and his opposition counterpart Christopher Pyne in front of a specialist audience of teachers, principals, academics and pupils. </p>
<p>The questions were thoughtful and challenging, starting with one of the Gonski review panel members, Ken Boston’s point that Australia now has “one of the most socially segregated education systems in the world.” But both politicians weren’t up for real debate. A pity because it’s not often that a network provides an hour of prime-time on single topic. </p>
<p>There were plenty of bromides about the need for “quality teachers” but a complete political pass from both the Minister and his would-be successor when the last questions turned on the issue of adequate financing of the universities that are required to train our future educators in a demand-driven system. </p>
<p>Associate Professor Debra Hayes from Sydney University’s Education Faculty was one of the questioners and this week she got her answer. Universities, whether training teachers or anyone else, will, again, have to do it more “efficiently” and absorb a cut of <a href="https://theconversation.com/should-universities-suffer-to-pay-for-school-funding-13472">just under a billion dollars</a>. </p>
<p>The sector was not expecting another hit, after last year’s <a href="http://theconversation.com/mid-year-budget-slashes-499m-from-research-support-10248">A$500 million reduction</a> in research funding, and felt completely blindsided. </p>
<p>The sheer perversity of boosting school funding by taking money off the very institutions who train teachers - and now required to do so to new Government-mandated professional standards - is a point that’s been made by all <a href="https://theconversation.com/funding-cuts-pose-challenges-for-the-university-business-model-13570">Vice Chancellors this week</a>.</p>
<p>Deb Hayes has no doubt about the outcome. “It means universities are likely to produce graduates who are less well-prepared to meet the challenges of working in schools, particularly complex settings where young people have not been well served by schooling, so its a pernicious cycle.” </p>
<p>Bigger lecture classes, fewer tenured academics, and more casual staff all take their toll, particularly when it comes to the all-important supervision of student teachers on professional placement. </p>
<p>“A dumb decision” is Hayes conclusion. And arguably, even dumber politics. Without a doubt last weekend’s announcement has made it that much harder for Labor’s Cath Bowtell to <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/alp-recycles-candidate-to-tackle-bandt-20120828-24ymq.html">re-claim</a> the inner city seat of Melbourne from the Greens’ Adam Bandt. </p>
<p>In spite of the <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/education/labors-top-five-goal-for-schools/story-fn59nlz9-1226463502869">stated ambition</a> of the government for Australia to be among the top five high performing countries in the world by 2025, we seem to stubbornly ignore the obvious lessons from countries as diverse as Finland, Singapore and Canada. Their systems record premium student performance, not because of any one-off factors, but because policy-makers work hard to get everything right. </p>
<p>They start from first principles, negotiate a stakeholder consensus, work like crazy on effective implementation, eschew fads, and above all, invest for the long term. If we could find a way to emulate this, that would be news worth celebrating</p>
<p>Unfortunately, here in Australia, without the same kind of consensus and policy management, we are left with delayed reforms and very little time left on the clock. It’s clear much more work will be needed to get real education reform and a fairer funding system.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/13615/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Maxine McKew is Vice-Chancellor's fellow at University Melbourne and a former Labor MP.</span></em></p>The A$14 billion federal government proposal based on David Gonski’s call for a better school funding system has not been agreed to at this week’s COAG meeting. In fact, none of the states and territories…Maxine McKew, Vice-Chancellor's Fellow, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/54532012-02-20T13:27:51Z2012-02-20T13:27:51ZGonski review: another wasted opportunity<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/7847/original/tdt2r8js-1329742650.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Gonski review presents a generational opportunity to reform our school funding system.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Graham Porrit</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="http://www.schoolfunding.gov.au/read-review-panels-final-report">Gonski Review</a> sought to create a new funding system for Australian schooling, because what we currently have is a mess. It was to be transparent, fair, financially sustainable and effective in promoting excellent outcomes for all students.</p>
<p>Gonski’s recommendations for a resource based funding model starts with a false premise. Since the <a href="https://theconversation.com/gonski-review-time-for-a-new-vision-for-australian-education-5340">Karmel Report </a>39 years ago we have witnessed a slow but ever increasing movement of taxpayer’s dollars from public schools to the private sector, all apparently on the basis of Commonwealth provision for school education on the principle of “need”. </p>
<p>The Gonski Review has accepted as <em>holy writ</em> that if parents decide <strong>not</strong> to send their child to the local public school, then the rest of the country is required to subsidise that choice. </p>
<h2>The cost of choice</h2>
<p>Why should a struggling worker on an average wage of $50,000 be asked to contribute to the education of the children of doctors and lawyers who have the financial capacity to choose to attend schools charging $25,000 after tax per student per annum. That worker doesn’t have the luxury of choice that the middle class have. </p>
<p>When we choose to use a tollway to shorten our trip, instead of the perfectly well made and safe public roads, we don’t expect that cost to be subsidised by others. When we choose to have surgery in a private hospital instead of going to a public ward, we also don’t expect a subsidy for that either. When we choose to fly business class when we could also go <em>cattle class</em> for much less, do we expect those in economy to help us out with that choice?</p>
<h2>An education marketplace</h2>
<p>Since the mid 1990s we have seen the adoption of neo-conservative policies by both Liberal and Labor in this country emanating from the USA and England. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/7848/original/65nwz3w7-1329742882.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/7848/original/65nwz3w7-1329742882.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/7848/original/65nwz3w7-1329742882.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/7848/original/65nwz3w7-1329742882.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/7848/original/65nwz3w7-1329742882.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/7848/original/65nwz3w7-1329742882.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/7848/original/65nwz3w7-1329742882.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Education Minister Petter Garrett and David Gonski at the launch of the review into school funding.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Tracy Neary</span></span>
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<p>In education under the mantra of <em>parental choice</em>, we have witnessed a flight of the middle class from local public school as a result of an unrelenting campaign of derision of public schools and their teachers as <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2004-01-20/pm-sparks-debate-on-public-school-values/122588">lacking in values</a>; being <a href="http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/more-news/bottom-of-the-class-for-aussie-students/story-fn7x8me2-1226274202152">poorly trained</a>; with <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/01/23/1074732603051.html">undisciplined classes</a> running amok with drugs; <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2010/s2843004.htm">bullying</a>; and <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/school-crackdown-dud-teachers-face-axing-in-deal-worth-millions/story-e6frg6o6-1226268272361">dud teachers</a> who need to be axed.</p>
<h2>Middle class flight</h2>
<p>At the same time more federal funds have been transferred from the public school system into the private sector, ostensibly to reduce school fees and thereby encourage the middle class to leave those families without money in <a href="https://theconversation.com/unfair-funding-is-turning-public-schools-into-sinks-of-disadvantage-751">sinks of disadvantage</a>. But no independent school has ever reduced their fees. On the contrary each year their fees typically far outstrip cost-of-living increases. </p>
<p>Many public schools have started to lose their middle-class families. This leads to social and cultural deficits created by this loss further making it difficult to cater for all students. The result is that schools in poorer areas have become residualised. <a href="https://theconversation.com/gonksi-review-tradition-or-reform-for-an-upside-down-system-5307">Professor Richard Teese</a> calls these “sink schools”, stripped of numbers and resources and repositories of failure.</p>
<h2>If it can be done in health …</h2>
<p>If only it was about more money. Extra funding [to the tune of $5 billion] would be most welcome in supporting the needs of the most disadvantaged children in this country. If the government wants to bring in a budget surplus and put taxpayers’ money where it is most needed, all it needs to do is stop funding the current practice of middle class welfare as it did with the removal of the Health Insurance Rebate.</p>
<p>But there is no guarantee that without <a href="http://voices.washingtonpost.com/class-struggle/2010/01/study_shows_how_dumb_we_might.html">changing what we are doing in schools</a>, how schools are organised and how we actually teach children from communities of disadvantage will more of the same actually make much difference.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/5453/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Zyngier 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 Gonski Review sought to create a new funding system for Australian schooling, because what we currently have is a mess. It was to be transparent, fair, financially sustainable and effective in promoting…David Zyngier, Senior Lecturer Faculty of Education, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.