Australia

The Republican Movement is Back

I’m reposting this Conversation article by Denis Altman, to mark my backing of the new model being set up by the ARM.

The republic debate is back (again) but we need more than a model to capture Australians’ imagination

The Australian Republic Movement has just released their preferred model for a republic.

It would see Australia’s parliaments nominate candidates for head of state, who would be put to a popular vote of all Australian voters. The head of state’s term would be for five years.

For the past two decades, the Australian Republic Movement has not had a position on what model should be used. So what does this development mean?

The 1999 referendum

Australia’s 1999 republic referendum is widely believed to have failed because republicans were divided on what model to adopt. The proposal for a president chosen by the federal parliament was opposed by many republicans, who insisted only a directly elected head of state was acceptable. Whether another model could have succeeded is unknowable.

The idea of a republic has essentially been on the political back burner since the referendum.

Major polls suggest declining support for a republic. Interestingly, support for change is weakest among younger age groups, who would have no memory of the earlier campaign.

Under former leader Bill Shorten, Labor proposed a two-stage popular vote to get to a republic: one to decide in-principle support for a republic, and if that succeeded another to decide how. However the issue is unlikely to feature prominently in the upcoming election campaign, set to be dominated by COVID and the economy.

After Queen Elizabeth

As the end of Queen Elizabeth’s reign approaches, the Australian Republic Movement has reignited the debate, following two years of consultation. Central to their campaign is the claim:

Australians should have genuine, merit-based choice about who speaks for them as Head of State, rather than a British King or Queen on the other side of the world.

Monarchists will retort that we already have an effective head of state with the governor-general, who for all practical purposes exercises the powers granted to the monarch. Ever since 1930, when the Scullin government appointed the first Australian-born governor-general, Sir Isaacs Isaacs, against the opposition of King George V, it has been clear this choice rests with the prime minister.

Becoming a republic would essentially be a symbolic, if important act. The republic movement claims we need the change so “our future, more than ever, will be in Australian hands”, but it is hard to see what effectively would change.

The biggest hurdle for republicans is the reality that Australia is already an independent nation, with only sentiment and inertia linking us to the British crown.

Most Australians, when pressed, struggle to remember the name of the current governor-general or to explain their role.

Over the past several decades, prime minsters have seemed increasingly presidential. Indeed, one might have expected a head of state to be more visible as a unifying force during the past two years of the pandemic, but Governor-General David Hurley’s messages have gone largely unnoticed.

A hybrid model

To find an acceptable means of removing the link to the crown, the republic movement is now proposing a hybrid plan. The media response to this has been at best lukewarm.

This model retains the basic premise of the Westminster system, namely that effective power rests in the hands of a parliamentary majority. A directly-elected president can be compatible with parliamentary government – this is the system in Ireland and several other European countries – although it would need strict constitutional limitations on the powers of a president.

But former prime minister Paul Keating lashed the hybrid idea, saying it would undermine the prime minister’s authority and lead to a dangerous “US-style” presidency.

Former “yes” campaign leader and prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has also criticised the proposal as unlikely to get the required support of voters, because it

will be seen by many to embody the weaknesses of direct election and parliamentary appointment models but the strengths of neither.

Indigenous recognition

Becoming a republic would require significant rewriting of the Constitution, which would then need to be ratified by a majority of voters in a majority of states. Such a significant undertaking should see us imagine more than just a name change for the head of state.

One of the major shifts since the 1999 referendum is the growing demand from Indigenous Australians for recognition that sovereignty was never ceded, and the scars of colonial occupation and expropriation remain.

As historian Mark McKenna writes:

The republican vision of Australia’s independence […] must finally be grounded on our own soil and on thousands of generations of Indigenous occupation.

A republican movement that begins with the Uluru Statement from the Heart, rather than concerns about the symbolic links to the British crown, is a project more likely to capture the imagination of Australians.

Dennis Altman, VC Fellow LaTrobe University, La Trobe University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

January 28, 2022 0 comment

Australia

Climate Change: Things Australians Are Doing About It

Reference: ABC Online: Future Australia

While the Federal government has come to the party at the COP 26 (Glasgow) on net zero CO₂ emissions by 2050, our 2030 targets still fall far below what’s needed to keep temperature rises to 1.5 degrees Celsius. But Australian states and some powerful—as well as many ordinary—individuals are doing a lot about tackling climate change problems head on.

Solar Panels

In Australia, 2.7 million households have solar panels on their roofs. Cheap solar, both on farms and roofs, has forced a change to the electricity market, encouraging big power generators to embrace a fully renewable future. The head of the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO), claims that, given the low cost of renewables, there will be certain times when 100% of Australia’s power will be supplied by renewables by 2025. (ABC Online)

South Australia

Since 2016, when a storm storm knocked out power lines across the state, causing widespread blackouts, SA now has the most reliable grid in the nation, and five years on from 2016, power prices have dropped. SA boasted 100 per cent renewables last October—with 78 per cent of that from rooftop solar—and 60 per cent of their energy for 2020 from renewables!

SA has also shown the rest of the country and the world how a fully renewable grid could work, by building Australia’s first big battery at Hornsdale in 2018. The Tesla Battery has saved South Australia $166 million in its first two years. Other states are following suit, and more than 31, 000 people installed batteries in their homes in 2020. Both battery and solar panel prices are dropping. (ABC Online)

The Federal Government & The Transition

The Australian power grid is huge, and moving from coal-fired power plants to renewables requires courage and commitment. Malcolm Turnbull was trying to set up a comprehensive national energy policy for doing just that when he was overthrown. The Federal Government makes the rules that run the grid, and the current lack of clarity is an obstacle for businesses wanting to invest in renewables and storage. It’s been left to the states, individuals, and companies acting on their own to fill the leadership gap.

The lack of emissions standards encapsulates the dynamic Australia faces this decade. All transitions are painful, but the transition from coal is underway and the federal government says it’s on board. But they’re not yet doing the things required to speed it up and make it as easy as possible to move to the next stage.

New South Wales

NSW recently announced a renewable energy zone in the New England area with capacity for 8 gigawatts of renewable power. They got offers from businesses to build plants for 34 gigawatts of wind, solar and storage.

Dubbo farmer Tom Warren has discovered that sheep can graze under solar panels. It’s happening in other parts of the world, in France, for example. In the most recent drought, while other nearby farms needed additional feed for more than 18 months, his flock only needed it for three months. More and more farmers are turning to solar panels to provide that. And the benefits go both ways: planting crops underneath and around solar panels reduces the temperature and increases moisture.

Queensland

Mining billionaire Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest yesterday announced that Central Queensland would soon be home to the world’s largest hydrogen manufacturing facility. It is expected to make Queensland a renewable energy superpower, with predictions the plant will double green hydrogen production across the globe. The renewable energy flooding our grid could be turned into hydrogen and stored to be used when the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow, or shipped overseas to other countries who don’t have the same renewable resources we do. He’s also planning to build the world’s largest solar farm in the Northern Territory to power a giant sun cable via Singapore to Asian countries.

Tasmania

The Meat and Livestock Association announced earlier this year the entire industry would become carbon neutral by 2030. Our agriculture emissions are 12 per cent of total emissions, and almost all are from livestock. Asparagopsis grows like a weed all year round in Tasmania, and the CSIRO found that it reduces methane by as much as 99 per cent when fed to cattle. It makes the cows fatter and healthier and farmers can spend less on feed. Tasmanian startup Sea Forest is aiming to be the first in the world to produce this plant at scale. Western Australia is also stepping up with initiatives in this area. See ABC News article: Poo Eating Beetles.

Electric Cars

For Australia to be on track to do our bit in keeping warming to 1.5C above historical levels we need 76% cars to be electric by 2030. Because we don’t build cars here, we will need to go with the flow, and every major carmaker, with the exception of Toyota, has committed to ending internal combustion engines by 2035. And there’s a race on to dominate the EV market. In Australia electric car sales tripled in the past two years. EVs are on track to become as cheap as other cars, with half the operating costs some time during the decade.

Business Backing

Unlike earlier times when this country has tried to argue the need for climate change initiatives, there is now evidence business has come to the party, and is ready to invest in renewables. Within a matter of three years, the Business Council of Australia has changed from seeing emissions reduction as economy wrecking, to describing a 45-50 per cent reduction in emissions as pragmatic and a chance for ambitious investments. The BCA is now embracing a future low-carbon world, and predicting that the economy could grow by a trillion dollars over the next 50 years, as industry moves to cheap and clean electricity.

The Future

It’s currently cheaper to build new renewables supported by batteries than to build coal-fired power plants. At some point, it will be cheaper to build renewables than it is to run existing fossil fuel power plants. (ABC Online)

We are among the largest emitters per capita in the world, and exports to other resource-needy countries triple our footprint. But if Australia can supply Asia with cheap, abundant renewable energy and carbon-neutral materials, we could make a critical difference, while pumping money into our region for decades to come.

Will Australia step up in time?

December 5, 2021 0 comment

Australia

Pandemic States of Australia:

A Hermit State Forever More?

The normally united states of Australia, have entered a chequered phase of mistrust and anger. Victoria hates New South Wales for not locking down sooner and more severely. (Tongue in cheek!) We here in New South Wales sometimes envy Victorians with their sensible leader/s, while our Gladys has had to go before ICAC (Independent Commission Against Corruption). Newly elected Premier of NSW, Dominic Perrottet, conservative Catholic and father of six, (with another on the way), wants to open up to the world. The image of a chess board is not exact, but it does reflect the fact that two colours, blue and red, tend to head off against one another in this conflict. The Liberal (blue!) states of New South Wales, South Australia, and Tasmania tend to face off against the (red) Labor ones of Victoria, Queensland, and Western Australia. In truth it’s the premiers who push their own colour and brand of ideology in this way. And don’t forget that the Federal government is blue at the moment.

The states’ responses to closing borders to other states, may have seemed draconian, but they worked well while Australia had vaccine shortages. For the past three months, NSW and Victoria have suffered through tiresome and economically disastrous lockdowns. I’m in NSW, so I mustn’t forget to emphasise that Victoria had the world’s longest lockdown: 18 months or more through two winters. Not surprisingly, Victorians have celebrated freedom day, recently, with dancing in the streets. Vaccination rates are now above 70 percent, and both states are reopening. Queensland premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, is reopening her state on December 17, when vaccination rates are predicted to hit 80 percent. Tasmania will open at 90 percent and the ACT on November 1. Mark McGowan in WA will likely follow NSW’s approach and open up once vaccination rates hit 80 percent. However, like SA and the NT, he must be cautious about exposing the high indigenous populations in his state to the virus.

Should the same logic apply to reopening international borders now? Vaccination rates of 80 percent and over could be used as the line in the sand for reopening the country to the world. ‘We can’t remain a hermit state forever,’ as Dominic Perrottet has said, putting the PM on notice. If NSW is happy to welcome visitors from Victoria—the latter recorded a Covid caseload of 2200 on October 22—then it should be safe to allow tourists or others from France, for example, which has had a much lower viral caseload by population. In any case, all arrivals would be fully vaccinated and tested before arrival.

Prime Minister Morrison wants to let in only Australian citizens in the beginning. Qantas is not dragging its feet, expecting to reinstate 11, 000 workers it stood down because of lockdowns by December.

Australian tourism and educational industries are suffering while Mr Morrison delays making a move on reopening to the world. He should take a page from the states, who have met the challenge of the pandemic on all fronts, by encouraging high vaccination rates, employing contact tracing and other measures to reduce rates and spread of the virus, and encouraging citizens with positivity and incentives.

October 25, 2021 0 comment

Australia Books

What we’re reading Down Under:

On the beach…

I live at Coogee, close to the beach in a unit with my husband of 45 years. Coogee Beach is located on Sydney’s famous Coastal Walkway, which stretches from Bondi Beach to Maroubra Beach. The name Coogee is taken from a local Aboriginal word “koojah” which means “smelly place”. Mountains of seaweed collect on the beach at times due to winds and tide influences. But daily beach cleaning by Randwick City Council ensures that the sands are pristine and soft white, stretching along the 200 metre shoreline of the bay. The beach is partly protected by a rocky outcrop called Wedding Cake Island, and shark nets have been laid nearby, so that few sharks have been seen in the area for many years. There are four seawater pools along the foreshore from north to south.

Australians are great sun and sea worshippers, and many are lucky enough to live near the ocean. They are also reputed to be great readers of books. This post combines those two pastime passions within it.

It was the first hot Sunday and a crowd had spread out across the sands at Coogee Beach. I walked along the foreshore and saw that many people of all ages were reading books, paperbacks stuck in the sand, or held high by sunworshippers on their backs on towels; some were reading on electronic devices, but I had to eschew those for this post. I saw that most sunbathers had settled down at a safe distance from one another, that is, despite the look of the crowd in the header photo, taken from high up.

I’ve been in the habit of noticing, for some time, what people read on the beach at Coogee. Always from a safe distance, and with my mask on, during these anxious times. This day, as I looked from the shoreline with my 20:20 vision (since cataract surgery), I noted down the titles on my iphone; sometimes I slipped cautiously between bodies, to view a look up closer. Never talking, always at a safe distance…

Here are some of the books being read this day…

21 Lessons for the 21st Century, by Yuval Noah Harari: This book highlights the biggest challenges in the modern world, and it offers advice on making sense of and navigating such transitional times. (Shortform Readers)

Gone Girl: Gillian Flynn: A 2012 crime thriller by an American writer. The sense of suspense in the novel comes from whether or not Nick Dunne is involved in the disappearance of his wife Amy. (Wikipedia)

A Little Life: Hanya Yanagihara: A stunning “portrait of the enduring grace of friendship” about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. A masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century. (Goodreads)

The Hunted: Gabriel Bergmoser: Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide – an electrifying, heartpounding, truly unputdownable thriller.

The Promised Land : Barach Obama: A memoir by the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017, including the killing of Osama Bin Laden.

Songbirds: Christy Letferi: A beautifully crafted novel, intelligent, thoughtful, and relevant, by the author of The Beekeeper of Aleppo. (Allen&Unwin)

Against All Odds: Craig Challen & Richard Harris: The inside account of the Thai cave rescue and the courageous Australians at the heart of it

I Catch Killers: The Life and Many Deaths of a Homicide Detective, by Dan Box & Gary Jubelin: Australia’s most celebrated homicide detective, leading investigations into the disappearance of William Tyrrell, the serial killing of three Aboriginal children in Bowraville and the brutal gangland murder of Terry Falconer. During his 34-year career, former Detective Chief Inspector Jubelin also ran the crime scene following the Lindt Cafe siege. (Booktopia)

Karma: Sadhguru: A new perspective on the overused and misunderstood concept of ‘karma’ that offers the key to happiness and enlightenment, from the internationally bestselling author and world-renowned spiritual master Sadhguru. (Penguin)

China Rich Girfriend: Kevin Kwan: a satirical 2015 romantic comedy novel. It is the sequel to Crazy Rich Asians a novel about the wealthy Singapore elite. Kwan was urged to write the sequel by his publishers after the initial success of Crazy Rich Asians. (Wikipedia)

Midnight’s Children: Salman Rushdie: It portrays India’s transition from British colonial rule to independence and the partition of India. It is considered an example of postcolonial, postmodern and magical realist literature. (Wikipedia)

Sorrow & Bliss: Meg Mason: In the hands of its acerbic narrator – dealing with a crushing mental illness – even the darkest material is handled lightly, and is all the more powerful for it. (Guardian)

Girl, Woman, Other: Bernardine Evaristo, the Anglo-Nigerian award-winning author of several books of fiction and verse fiction that explore aspects of the African diaspora: past, present, real, imagined. Her novel Girl, Woman, Other won the Booker Prize in 2019. (Goodreads)

How to Win Friends & Influence People: Dale Carnegie: American writer and lecturer and the developer of famous courses in self-improvement, salesmanship, corporate training, public speaking and interpersonal skills. Born in poverty on a farm in Missouri, his most famous book first published in 1936, a massive bestseller that remains popular today. (Goodreads)

Your Erroneous Zones: Wayne Dyer: A popular American self-help advocate, author and lecturer. His 1976 book Your Erroneous Zones has sold over 30 million copies and is one of the best-selling books of all time. It is said to have “brought humanistic ideas to the masses”. (Goodreads)

A recent survey of Australian reading habits provides insights into contemporary preferences, behaviours and attitudes of Australians towards books and reading. The Australia Council has partnered with Macquarie University on this third and final stage of their three-year research project titled ‘The Australian Book Industry: Authors, Publishers and Readers in a Time of Change’.

Reading the reader: A survey of Australian reading habits

October 13, 2021 0 comment

Australia

The Pandemic Down Under

Coronavirus (COVID-19) SARS-CoV-2,

The Australian Government is managing the COVID–19 outbreak in Australia as a health emergency. A glossary of terms in daily use in the media in Australia in response to this virus tells the story of how it is managed here. The Main Goal: To keep the numbers of infections and deaths as close to zero as possible. At the moment, nearing the end of August, this is way off target. Even one death from this disease is lamentable, however, overall deaths are below the thousand mark in Australia…

Pandemic: The word “pandemic” comes from the Greek “pan-“, “all” + “demos,” “people or population” = “pandemos” = “all the people.” A pandemic affects all (nearly all) of the people. By contrast, “epi-” means “upon.” An epidemic is visited upon the people. A pandemic is an epidemic of an infectious disease that has spread across a large region, for instance multiple continents or worldwide, affecting a substantial number of people. (Wiki)

Epidemiology: The study of determinants of disease across populations, and of ways to reduce the impact of these diseases on the health of the community. Epidemiological research is central to the Doherty Institute’s role in addressing health conditions related to infection and immunity in Australia and globally.

Peter Doherty: See his recent book: An Insider’s Plague Year.

Epidemiologists: On the frontline. See this article in the Guardian that peaked my interest.

The Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine has been provisionally approved by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) for people 18 years and older. AstraZeneca uses an inactivated viral vector.

The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine has been provisionally approved by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) for people 16 years and older. Uses an oily bubble to package, that is, a new technology.

Covid Sites: Venues, suburbs and places in Australia listed as containing the Covid-19 virus

Contact Tracing: The process of identifying all people that a COVID-19 patient has come in contact with in the last two weeks. Contact tracers have usually worked with measles and HIV. Health departments in each state are employing dozens of qualified epidemiologists and other specialists to carry out this task. (See article https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-16/meet-the-contact-tracers-fighting-coronavirus-in-australia/12151302) Genomics is another way of tracing contacts being used in Australia.

Mystery Cases: Cases that cannot be sourced to an initial case are considered the most dangerous.

Case Numbers While Infectious: A prime task of the contact tracers is to discover which people were infectious while in the community. (Alt. Cases Active in the Community)

Quarantine: Even though you are well, you may have been in contact with someone with COVID-19. In such cases, you must stay in quarantine for 14 days to prevent the spread of the virus.

Exposure Sites: All the places that are being indentified as having COVID-19 infections.

High Risk Places: This could be venues such as bars, dance halls, church, and anywhere that people congregate in large numbers.

Infectious Period: The incubation period is the time between being exposed to the virus and the onset of symptoms. With Covid, incubation can be 1 to 14 days. Most people, 4-6 days after exposure.

Tests for Covid: Throat and Nasal swabs are taken and sent to a lab. for analysis.

Preventative Measures: Hand washing, Wearing of masks, Vaccinations, Staying Home, Distancing.

Lockdowns: Since the Delta variant has reached our shores, the government has moved to stop people from moving more than 5 or 10 kilometres from their place of residence. Movement between borders has also been brought in.

Bubble Partner: Someone a single person can nominate as a buddy for exercise and social engagement while in lockdown.

Local Government Areas of Concern: (LGAs) Areas where the virus has been located or spread to.

Waste Water Fragments: Are viral fragments found in sewage, alerting authorities to the need for testing in the LGA.

Vaccination Hubs: Large centres for administering Astrazenica and Pfizer vaccinations have been established in parts of the states, e.g. at Homebush Olympic Park in Sydney. (See this article about a hub in Lakemba)

Delta Variant of Covid-19: The Delta strain is more severe as well as being harder to contain. More examples of children being infected.

Overseas Acquired: It’s almost impossible and undesirable for Australia to remain a fortress continent.

Wage subsidies: Government pays workers and small businesses compensations during lockdown.

August 17, 2021 0 comment

Australia

Swimming Pools and Happenings in Coogee

The Mardi Gras festival for the Gay and Lesbian community (LGBTQ) occurred as usual in March, within stricter guidelines than in the past, because of Covid. Randwick Council showed great initiative in promoting a rainbow coloured walkway on the steps at Coogee Beach. It brightens up the area and makes a statement about supporting stigmatised peoples, including gays, lesbians, trans and First Nation peoples.

The Eora people were a vast and complex Indigenous group of family and kin relations who occupied the area where I live today in Coogee. Their territory spread from the Georges River and Botany Bay in the south to present Sydney Harbour and north to Pittwater at the mouth of the Hawkesbury River, then west along the river to where Parramatta is today. It is said that the men swam on the north end of Coogee Beach and the women at the south side. If this is true, it is mirrored by certain practices today.

We have four rock or tidal pools in Coogee, Giles’s at the north end of the beach, and the Ross Jones Memorial Pool at the other end. A little further along the coast is the Women’s Pool, built in 1886.

Wylie’s Baths are on the other side across the rocks from the Women’s Pool.

The Coogee Ladies Pool used to be known as McIver’s, named for Rose McIver, from a swimming family who ran it until 1922. It is the only pool in Australia granted a 1995 exemption under the Anti-Discrimination Act of 1977 to operate for women and children only. It’s not the same as the exclusive Australian Club on Macquarie Street, the country’s oldest gentlemen’s establishment, which has drawn prime ministers and wealthy males to join its hallowed walls, and has still not as yet taken firm steps to invite women to become full paying members.

Like Balmain’s Dawn Fraser Baths, several long-time swimmers had been entrusted with keys to open up early for pre-dawn swims and to close up on sunset. Sometimes Muslim women in burkinis attended and topless women liked to sunbathe there, taking refuge from perverts, who were the reason for a fence being erected by the council.

Controversy erupted recently after the new operators of these ladies baths stated on their website: “Only transgender women who’ve undergone a gender reassignment surgery are allowed entry.” The mind boggles at the idea of the committee women enforcing this!

There had been an authoritarian atmosphere at the pool of late, with lots of restrictions and a loss of the welcoming, leisurely atmosphere and spirit the place once had. Long term members wanted to give the pool back to the community. It had lost its soul and ethos under this management.

After a well-attended public meeting, the managing committee was ousted by the council, with a new interim president and committee elected to run it. The club’s website now says the pool “provides a safe place for women of many ages, religions, and backgrounds” and “a sanctuary of healing, acceptance, and security”.

Nearby Wylie’s Baths is also a wonderful place, with some of the spirit of the old Coogee’s Ladies Baths. Mina Wylie (1891 – 1984) was one of Australia’s first two olympic swimmers, along with Fanny Durack. There’s a statue of Mina Wylie on the top level of Wylie’s baths.

May 4, 2021 0 comment

Australia

Boat People to Australia: a revisit

In 2015, I titled this post “A Crafty, Callous and Curmudgeonly Crew”, which was a boating metaphor for the members of cabinet at the time. I found their lack of compassion towards refugees and their use of extremist language, quite shocking and depressing. I have decided to republish the post with some amendments, including the title. Thankfully, opponents of false and mealy-mouthed language are beginning to speak out.

The worst offenders have been silenced, especially since the racially inspired atrocities committed by an Australian man in Christchurch recently. This is what happens when good people choose to remain silent. The perpetrator of the murderous rampages in New Zealand was from Grafton, my own town of origin.

2019: A Revisit and a Re-edit of this story

This is a story about history, and about politics in Australia during the past two decades. It looks at the shift to the extreme right in conservative parties during this time. It also focuses on language, and the importance of choosing the right and proper words. The unfortunate slippery slide away from good choices, has given birth to disastrous consequences, particularly as it relates to racism. Multiculturalism, when it is government inspired, is a bulwark to racism. This brand of multiculturalism reigned proudly in Australia, before its partial dismantling began in 2001.

This is not to blame only the conservative side of politics in Australia. Mistakes and false language have occurred on all sides of politics.

The (Almost) Genocide

We’ve always had boat people coming to Australia. Our ancestors arrived here in ships from England. The First Fleet is the name given to the eleven ships which left Great Britain on 13 May 1787 to found a penal colony, that became the first European settlement in 1789. It was a dangerous voyage with many deaths from sickness.

For the Aboriginal people it ended very badly with almost total genocide, from both disease and killings.

the-first-fleet-1788

The First Inhabitants

The Aboriginal people must have arrived here by boats from South East Asia, estimated to have been about 51,000 years ago. I grew up in Grafton, on the north coast of New South Wales, during the fifties and sixties. I was, perhaps, sensitive to occurrences, at least on an unconscious level, that had occurred in the Clarence region before my time. Later on, I discovered that it was one of these places linked, at least by the Clarence River, to atrocities carried out by the white settlers. These happened during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As an adult, I referred in my writings to “the hidden underbelly” of Grafton, where “the ley lines are infected with negative veins”. Memories from childhood always stirred up polarised images of light, alongside disturbing dark ones. As a writer, it was the latter that cried out to me, like voices from the dead.

In the eighties, my sister Susan alerted me to the book by Rory Medcalf: Rivers of Blood: massacres of the Northern Rivers Aborigines and their resistance to the white occupation 1883-1870, published in 1989. Finding this book was like an epiphane for me. It can be found in libraries and by referencing it in Trove.

The Vietnamese “Boat People”

The term “boat people” entered the Australian vernacular in the 1970s, with the arrival of the first wave of boats carrying people seeking asylum from the aftermath of the Vietnam War. Over half the Vietnamese population was displaced in these war-torn years, with most emigrating to other Asian countries. Some embarked on the voyage by boat to Australia. http://www.aph.gov.au. I taught English to some of these refugees as an Adult Migrant English Teacher during this time. We welcomed the immigrants with open arms, the government allotting funds for offering language classes, accommodation assistance and cross-cultural programs. That all changed in August, 2001, under John Howard’s government. That could also be the beginning of the end for the “Multiculturalism Australia” brand as we knew it before that time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tampa_affair.

boat-people-vietnam

So what happened as a consequence of the shift to the extreme right? Why the sudden change and the secrecy that set in surrounding government operations in regard to refugees?

Our government had taken on aspects of certain notorious boat people of the past: the Bounty’s Captain Bligh, for example. Instead of “Land Ahoy! Land Ahoy!” all we heard now from our leader was “Stop the boats! Stop the boats!” No matter the procedures and processes used. But real and truthful information to the Australian public about those used by the government were absent.

The number of people arriving by boat in Australia was very small, and minuscule by comparison with the intakes in other countries.

According to the Refugee Council of Australia, in 2010-11, Australia received 11,491 asylum applications. Less than half of these (5,175) were from asylum seekers who arrived by boat. Over the same period, 2,696 Protection Visas were granted to refugees who arrived by boat. This is just 1.3 per cent of the 213,409 people who migrated to Australia during the year.

The Conservative Government of 2014

Scott Morrison, federal Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, told the 44th Federal Parliament in its first sitting in 2014: ‘We are going to hold the line, we are going to protect the borders…. This battle is being fought using the full arsenal of measures.’

In an article in the Age newspaper, Prime Minister Abbott defended the secrecy of the ”battle”, saying, ‘if we were at war we wouldn’t be giving out information that is of use to the enemy just because we might have an idle curiosity about it ourselves’.

If you refer to that newspaper, or to any Australian newspaper this month (March, 2019), a story about the horrific massacre of worshippers in a Christchurch mosque appears on the page. The perpetrator of this unspeakable act was raised in Grafton and attended the Grafton High School. Is this what happens when extremist views are propounded via rhetoric, by the governments of the day?

Is this why we have seen thousand of victims placed in terrible conditions in offshore asylums?

Both sides of parliament are to blame for this; we, the people, must speak up and choose wisely when we vote.

When did the Slippery Slide Begin?

Ex prime minister, John Howard and his government, started the whole negative slide with untruthful claims of “babies overboard” https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/11/peter-reith-abc-children-overboard-david-marr. This was during the Tampa event that changed events forever: http://theconversation.com/australian-politics-explainer-the-mv-tampa-and-the-transformation-of-asylum-seeker-policy-74078.

It was when John Howard looked like he was going to lose the elections that the cabinet resorted to this tactic. Since then, there have been many members of parliament, as well as commentators, willing to carry on the extremist and fake rhetoric. Perhaps member Tony Abbott is the shining example, Howard’s ancestral son.

Once a government resorts to secrecy, a dangerous precedent is set up, and this was corroborated by our ex-Liberal Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser’s summation of Tony Abbott as a “dangerous politician” way back in 2011, reported in “The Conversation” at the time. See another article on this at https://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-08-23/malcolm-fraser-calls-abbotts-team-australia-divisive/5691550

Please, no more mealy-mouthed language and racist rhetoric! Show us some respect…

The Conservative Government of 2017 led by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, in spite of its inability to find a proper solution to the treatment of asylum seekers, was at least more respectful in its use of language towards refugees. Then Turnbull “got the chop” by the most conservative members of his party.

And for a short while, the ugly voices rose up once again.

Let’s hope that a change in government this year, will bring about a more considered and compassionate stance on these issues. I write this on 23rd March, 2019, with a state election occurring today. The environment, health and education are the major “bread-and-butter” issues for me at state level.

NB: Bad choices have been made on both sides of parliament. And ex-Prime Minister John Howard was instrumental in changing the gun laws that have made Australia a safer place.

March 22, 2019 7 comments

Art Australia

Spring Happenings in Sydney

Whenever I walk through Sydney Hyde Park, past the Archibald Fountain, along Art Gallery Road, and up to the steps of the Art Gallery of NSW, I remember our six-year-old son, Joel, asking why the names of the Ninja Turtles were displayed at the top of the facade. He’d just had a six-year-old Teenage Mutant Ninja birthday party with green costume and a turtle birthday cake. It was difficult to explain that Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Donatello were the names of very famous Italian Renaissance artists.

September 24, 2018 0 comment

Australia Books Childhood

Memories of Greek Cafés

A recently published book by two researchers into the role of Greek families in the cultural history of Australia, got me thinking back to my childhood in the Clarence Valley of the forties and fifties. Effie Alexakis and Leonard Janiszewski have been researching this topic for decades. They now work at the Macquarie University in Sydney.

In the early 20th century, many migrants from Greece emigrated to Australia, often to escape war and its aftermath, and to find economic salvation. Some of the milk bar and café owners who came to Grafton, my place of birth, were from the island of Kythera, lying opposite the south-eastern tip of the Peloponnese peninsula. Their descendants back home, called Australia “Big Kythera”, and even today, the islanders often speak English with an Aussie twang.

September 3, 2018 6 comments

Australia Travel

Magnetic Island will pull you in…

Magnetic Island

Magnetic Island is part of the Great Barrier Reef. Just outside our unit is a marked underwater reef that one can follow, either with a snorkel or by renting a flat board, to view the coral. The island is shaped like an equilateral triangle. Each side of the triangle is 11 kilometres in length. The edges are scalloped by numerous inlets or bays, with sandy beaches where you can swim during the “safe” season.

Magnetic Island is a suburb of Townsville, which is only a 20 minute, 8 kilometre ferry ride away. A very independent and environmentally aware population of 2,000, resides on the island. The council has erected a large solar panel, which enables the island to supply 40% of their electricity needs, given that they are blessed with over 300 days of fine weather. It’s part of the “dry tropics” with rain falling only in summer. The guide who drove a group of us around the island has brought up his young family here and is passionate about it.

June 28, 2018 0 comment

Australia

The republic debate is back (again) but we need more than a model to capture Australians’ imagination

The 1999 referendum

After Queen Elizabeth

A hybrid model

Indigenous recognition

Solar Panels

South Australia

The Federal Government & The Transition

New South Wales

Queensland

Tasmania

Electric Cars

Business Backing

The Future

A Hermit State Forever More?

On the beach…

Here are some of the books being read this day…

Coronavirus (COVID-19) SARS-CoV-2,

2019: A Revisit and a Re-edit of this story

The (Almost) Genocide

The First Inhabitants

The Vietnamese “Boat People”

The Conservative Government of 2014

When did the Slippery Slide Begin?

Please, no more mealy-mouthed language and racist rhetoric! Show us some respect…

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Magnetic Island