Hymn To Our Big Brown Land. (VERY LONG!)
Oct. 29th, 2017 06:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
motgWritten a decade ago. I have nothing to add...
They’re A Weird Mob: Nino Among The Builders
In the mid-1950s, Australian journalist John O’Grady made the momentous decision to write up the experiences of Italian immigrants in Australia in his novel They’re A Weird Mob. Nino narrates his alleged autobiography, hiding (at first glance anyway) nothing, even his own rampant xenophobia. He is a journalist, and his boss tells him to emigrate to Australia for a while to write about the experiences. When he leaves Italy he is a true son of Liga Nord: he gets roaring drunk in a pub and bellows insults about Bloody Meridionali. This is the first hint that there is more to this book than meets the eye, for Italian Australians are predominantly the selfsame Meridionali he purports to despise.
Many would argue (I certainly would) that we were very fortunate in our Mediterranean immigrants. Coming from a largely failed polity, they discovered that Australia more or less functioned; and if you worked hard you could become far wealthier than you could ever have dreamed of being in The Old Country. Once they got over the inevitable culture shock of being called bloody wogs, wops, dagoes and Eyeties, most came to the astounding conclusion that they couldn’t believe their luck. It certainly worked for them; but it also worked for us. We got willing workers who did the mucky jobs we didn’t want to do; and they did them largely without complaint until they had served their time and became, if not affluent, at least comfortably well off. And most came to esteem the land which had given them sanctuary from war-torn, poverty-stricken Europe.
Nino’s book has dated badly. Female characters barely appear apart from Kay, the soon-to-be Mrs Culotta. The gender politics are stereotyped and no-one is examined too deeply: not even Nino himself. And when O’Grady’s imposture became known, some were highly indignant. This man has dared to speak for Italian Australians without being one of them! Appropriation indeed. Nevertheless, the book stands or falls for modern readers on how Italian Australians themselves read it. All the evidence suggests that they loved it, for it described their own experiences here with remarkable accuracy. To give O’Grady credit, he does not suppress the overt racism that was assuredly present. There is also linguistic comedy. At one point Nino asks the proverbial Man In The Pub about sharks on Sydney’s beaches. The man tells him the odds of being taken by a shark are a million to one and he’d be dead unlucky, so Nino asks where he can find a beach where he would be lucky to be taken by a shark. The intricacies of Aussie slang defeated many a migrant in those early days, and doubtless continue to do so.
It cannot be doubted that O’Grady’s view of the migrant experience is extremely White Picket Fence, in the Howardian sense. I do not know if John Howard has read it, but he would have liked it; especially Nino’s concluding exhortation to all adult migrants to learn to speak English. However that may be, O’Grady’s view of Australia certainly belongs to the same sunny, optimistic world-view. We could, and have, done a great deal worse. Is it realistic? I would argue that it is. Who am I to say? If the personal may ever be truly said to be the political, then I may claim some eye-witness expertise. I live in the village of Seddon in the post-industrial heartland of Footscray, so perhaps I may be assumed to have some knowledge of multicultural experience in practice. My municipality boasts over a hundred separate ethnicities. A century ago Scots Gaelic was spoken here. Now we have Sudanese, Amharic and Somali to add to Vietnamese, Polish, Serbian, Croatian, Greek, Italian, and all the rest. Are we really one big happy family? Emphatically, yes.
We hated the very idea of Romper Stomper, not because our racist underbelly had been pitilessly exposed, but because it was a flagrant and impudent lie. By the time the film was released in 1992 the inner west was a haven of multiracial tolerance. Hando’s gang at one point wear Footscray Football Club scarves; which was for us a calculated insult. But Melbourne’s intelligentsia never really got the western suburbs in those days. They did not come here until recently; and what they did not know they falsified. Had they done so, they might have heard the story of Peter Gordon’s Miracle On Barkly Street, and how his collectors had entered the predominantly Vietnamese Footscray market, and had their buckets stuffed with twenty-dollar bills. One rarely saw an Oriental face at the football then, but somebody had clearly explained to the traders that the survival of their football team is really important in their culture and it would be an act of kindness to help them out. It is unquestionably true that for a while during the Eighties, the European Ascendancy in Footscray was very wary of the Vietnamese. Partly because they were, at first sight, so very alien in face and custom; but mostly because there were so many of them all at once. Now there are Buddhist temples in the heart of Footscray, not to mention the gigantic statue of the goddess Kwan Yin on the banks of the Maribyrnong.
This did not happen by accident. One of the most mischievous delusions of right-thinking fantasists is that so long as everybody thinks the correct thoughts, then multicultural heaven will inevitably ensue. Nino O’Grady knew better, and so did we. Innumerable acts of kindness on both sides are necessary. It also helps that the inner west contains very few large suburban blocks with high fences behind which you can hide from your neighbours. It is also beneficial not to have merely two or three ethnic groups dominating your area. The more the merrier has always worked well for us. Above all, some form of visceral mutual respect is essential. When groups of Vietnamese were called Slant-Eyes, they would turn to the white boys and jeer Skippy! Skippy! If you can call your wouldbe tormentor Skip when he calls you Wog, or worse, then honour is satisfied, more or less. Skip has now passed into abeyance because it is no longer necessary. But at the time it was very useful, and counter-intuitively kept tempers under control.
One word more about Aussie politics Culotta-style. The other essential understanding is that everyone must give up something. When I first moved to Footscray, all the ethnic angst was Balkan-related. We hosted Serbs and Croats, to name but two. They had been mortal enemies in the Old Country. Much ink was wasted at the time about the Second World War and the respective roles of the two groups therein; but their feud was far older than that. The Serbs still remembered Kosovo Pralje, the scene of their defeat by the Ottomans in 1389. They also remembered being constantly cheated by Austrians and patronized by Croats, despite the fact that they had been the faithful border-guards of Catholic Europe. The two tribes were divided by religion as well as history. And just to keep the pot boiling, the local Croatian cultural centre was named after Ante Pavelic, Hitler’s bloodthirsty local deputy. Now it is called Hrvatski Dom (Croatian House), because Pavelic’s continuing public memorial would annoy the other mob so we won’t do it any more. The dominant Balkan ethnicity in my village is Macedonian, and they too had their moment in the spotlight during the mid-90s. If you ask now why the Star of Vergina is not flown in red and gold locally, you will be told that it would annoy the Greeks, so we won’t do it. Nor do the Greeks fly it in blue and white, because it is a disputed symbol. Everyone has agreed to play nice, and so amity is preserved.
I would argue that Footscray is Australia writ small. The same happy harmony of races does not always prevail elsewhere. Yet the alarmists who wanted to keep Australia white because our fragile peace would be shattered have been proved, thus far, absurdly mistaken. Everyone was appalled when the Cronulla riots were splashed over our TV screens in all their hideous technicolour. Yet there have been no repeat performances. And in what other country would leaders of the two rival gangs have met later and agreed that we can’t live like this and we have to stop doing it? It may well be that O’Grady’s rose-coloured vision is not so fanciful after all.
Beyond the Fatal Shore
How on earth did the improbable penal colony grow into such an enviable paradise on earth? Our European beginnings were unpromising enough. Many have laughed at Governor Phillip’s early attempts at local sustainability. Laughter is easy from an air-conditioned study. In an alien landscape, buffeted by undreamed-of heat and dust, it is not so easy to adapt. Yet adapt they did, and eventually flourished. Some historians like to portray America as the child of the Enlightenment. Yet Australia has far better claims to the laurel crown than the USA. The most flagrant example of this was the institution of slavery. They had it; we did not. Some have claimed that we enslaved the Aboriginals, yet this is rampant hyperbole. Indentured labour was not feasible for tribesfolk who could at any moment melt away into the outback, and frequently did so. To the sins of blackbirding, missionary abuse, unthinking, hideously misguided philanthropy, forcible conquest and dispossession, however, we must perforce plead guilty. Every other advanced nation on the planet did it and so did we. It is idle to pretend otherwise.
To claim, as some have done, that this amounted to a war of genocide is an overstatement. Torrents of indignation have been poured upon the notion of terra nullius. To assert that we did not recognize Aboriginal land ownership is to miss the point completely. Traditional land ownership in the European sense was non-existent on this continent. What the government found was an unbelievably complex web of interwoven easements, held by constantly shifting alliances and clans who could not, in law, be separately identified. Australia was settled by Evangelical Christians who wanted to treat the indigenous inhabitants justly, fairly and with as much equality before the law as could be achieved. When it came to land ownership they came, reluctantly, to the conclusion that it was impossible.
With the benefit of hindsight, a legal point was overlooked at the time. When Aborigines were tried for murder of whites, it would then have been possible to make a complete defence on the grounds that natives in law cannot be separately identified. The case would be that the government cannot have it both ways. If natives are separately identifiable, then they may be charged with crimes; but they may also own land. If they are not, then they may not own land; but neither may they be charged with anything at all, even unto murder. The point is easy to miss, for it was not made then and has been overlooked by almost all writers to this date. To the charge that white murders of natives went unpunished the record is unclear. On many occasions natives were beyond question slain with impunity. Yet Myall Creek may serve as a counter-example. Governor Richard Bourke insisted that the perpetrators of the unquestioned Myall Creek massacre be tried and hanged. It was a vastly unpopular act, achieved in the face of massive resistance on the part of what we may term White Australia; but Bourke got his wish. In this he was following in the footsteps of Phillip, who famously caused paintings to be made of what would happen to whites and Aboriginals alike if they killed each other. Both would be hanged. To claim, as many have done, that genocide was the government’s settled policy toward natives is an act of wilful myopia.
The Land With No Lairds
When the British planted their flag at Botany Bay, they brought a curious set of objectives with them. 18th century Britain’s need for a remote prison colony had become urgent since the loss of the American colonies. I would argue that the Whig aristocracy had allowed the American colonists to win their independence, since they would have been impressed by the demand of No Taxation Without Representation. Edmund Burke certainly was. As a result, General Burgoyne had been forced to uphold the Empire with an inadequate levy of British troops (many of them Indians) and King’s German Legionaries. Washington prevailed, but it is clear that this is because he was permitted to do so. When it really mattered to the British they were able to defeat Napoleon’s innumerable legions. Recognition at the highest levels of the justice of the American colonists’ grievances sealed Burgoyne’s fate.
As a result, the first settlers brought with them the clear knowledge that this time they would have to get it right. We will achieve a plantation, but not on the American model. And certainly not on the Irish model. Centuries of chronic mismanagement and savage brutality from Dublin Castle had reduced the Emerald Isle to a sullen rump of constantly mutinous natives. Insurrection produced repression which bred yet more insurrection. Locked in constant struggles with European tyrannies, England knew it could not allow Ireland an independent foreign policy. Yet the cruel measures taken to achieve stability in Ireland had guaranteed the very thing they feared most: Irish Anglophobia in its most virulent form. The policy of endless and arbitrary repression had triumphed, but at a terrible cost. Cast adrift on these fatal shores with a large population of Irish convicts, the first settlers knew that continuing to put the boot into the Irish was not a viable option. They would have to be given a stake in the new colony, and they were. In time the police force and the legal profession would take on a pronounced Irish flavour. Above all, there would be no lairds to lord it over them. A squattocracy we had, unquestionably. Yet all attempts to recreate a semi-feudal society here met with the brick wall of governmental obstinacy. They knew exactly what they were doing, which was to recreate a newer, brighter British society wherein the barnacles of failed policies in the Old Country would be dispensed with.
Many who have written about our convict past have been deeply shocked by the casual cruelty with which our unwilling settlers were treated. I would not seek to downplay this at all. The simple fact is that cruelty then was the industry standard everywhere. Painful death was universal, whether by child mortality, epidemics or starvation. So judicial punishments, to make the dubious point, had to be extreme. We want you to die in great pain because we wish to show what we think of your actions. However, the great wave of liberal humanitarianism in the 19th century did originate in Britain and it was mirrored faithfully here. I would argue that Australia’s first ruling class, when they weren’t being carpet-bagging Rum Rebellion freebooters, were Tories of the stamp of William Wilberforce. They appear to have decided the following. We will not have slavery in our dominions. We will, in time, embrace the wave of Factory Acts which protect workers from de facto slavery. We will gradually extend the franchise. Unencumbered by the restrictions of an ingrown and rapacious ruling class, we will allow more freedom to our freed convicts. And we will light the flame of liberty here. To a large extent, all of these objectives were attained.
One small example may suffice. Should you visit the town of Richmond in Tasmania, you may see the first Catholic church built in these colonies. Most of the considerable cost of this church was contributed by the (presumably Anglican) governor of van Diemen’s Land. But Tasmania has always been different. Many never get beyond the intolerable cruelty of Port Arthur. There is more to tell than that. For one thing, the museum in Battery Point contains an illuminating picture of the representatives of the Rum Rebellion being harangued by the local commander. Battery Point had been settled by Wellington’s invincible Peninsula veterans, and one can only conjecture what these men would have thought of the Rum Corps. The mutineers were packed off back home with, we should be disposed to imagine, scorn and contumely.
Eureka: Birth of a Nation Part 1
The myth of Eureka is an enduring mystery. Why a rebellion by xenophobic tax evaders (in Professor Geoffrey Blainey’s felicitous phrasing) could be regarded as a nation-defining moment is at first glance a vexing puzzle. The revolt was put down in ten minutes by Captain Thomas’ massively outnumbered battalion. What was considerably more interesting was the subsequent treason trials for thirteen of the defeated miners. All were acquitted in short order; but what is less well-remembered is that Justice Redmond Barry told the jury that a guilty verdict for any of the defendants would result in their execution by hanging, drawing and quartering. Why did he do this? I can only conclude that in his view, interest rei publicae ut sit finis litium. Or, in plain English, go away and sin no more. The rebellion had been put down, the foolish license fee was later abolished and replaced by a gold tax at the point of export. And let us all get on with our lives.
What would be better remembered from that time is that anti-Chinese sentiment was rampant, especially among the miners. At Lambing Flat, NSW, in 1861, the Chinese were set upon by an army of local miners, and the police were attacked in their turn and had to be repelled by a sabre charge. Thereafter Lambing Flat was deemed to have forfeited the respect of the government and its name was changed to Young. The same outrages would undoubtedly have occurred at Golden Point, Castlemaine, had not the miners been foiled by the awesome majesty of the law in the form of Constable Thomas Cooke, who defied them single-handed and faced them down. His memorial plaque at Castlemaine police station is one of the best-merited in Australia. What do we learn from this? That xenophobia is the curse of the aspirational classes? Maybe, but it did not come from the government or its representatives. And the time would come when Australia would learn to cherish its Chinese citizens. But it was not the case then.
Gallipoli: Birth of a Nation Part 2
Gallipoli is equally puzzling. Anglophobes love it because it is a golden opportunity to sink the slipper into the Mother Country. Our brave lads are led astray by incompetent British generals, but knuckle down to their impossible task and win imperishable glory. Yet it is a curious campaign upon which to hang a slouch hat. John Howard felt that Simpson and his donkey was a story which all migrants should know. Did he really know what he was saying? That John Kirkpatrick Simpson was a red-ragging British pacifist deserter? It would be pleasing to think so. Simpson’s story does however reflect something bloody-minded and contrary about the putative national character. One of his rescuees was later asked, in breathless tones, what the great hero had said to him. Apparently Simpson’s message was, in full: ‘Hop up on the donkey, mate.’
Should we be looking for a more fitting national monument from that war, we could do worse than embrace Allenby’s desert campaign of 1918. Allenby had been sent thither in disgrace by the autocratic and inflexible General Haig. The story goes that Allenby had called Haig a blithering idiot to his face. Sent to fail, he succeeded brilliantly, with minimal casualties. And the Australian Light Horse played a starring role, under our very own Brigadier Harry Chauvel. Our greatest cultural treasure of the day, Banjo Paterson, served the army in charge of our remounts. Legend has it that Paterson gave the best mounts to the troopers, while the broken-down nags went to the staff officers. One of Australia’s earliest feature films (Forty Thousand Horsemen) was made to commemorate the campaign. It is not a subtle film, but we could do a lot worse than revive it in preference to yet more agonizing over our failed attempt to take the Dardanelles.
The Federation of Compromises
Those of a nationalistic bent often complain that our Constitution is nothing but an Act of Parliament of a foreign land. You sometimes hear this in relation to cutting the apron strings of the Mother Country, and various other tiresome metaphors of adolescence. Yet the truth is that, unlike almost any other nation on earth, Australia had no rallying-cry to unite it. Federation had to be achieved by endless compromise, and it very nearly did not happen. Western Australia kept threatening to secede, and almost did in the 1930s. Should Australia ever seriously threaten to become a republic, we will probably lose them for good this time. The clash of special interests ensured that everything would be cobbled together. NSW was free-trade, Victoria was protectionist. We would be neither Washington nor Westminster, but a strange amalgam of both. We have Ministerial Responsibility (in theory at least) rather than true separation of powers; yet we have a Senate, which is allegedly the States’ House. Because despite a small but surprisingly noisy clamour from some would-be peers of the realm, we were not going to tolerate a House of Lords.
To borrow a modern phrase, where’s the bad? One thing everybody agreed on. We would retain common law jurisdiction, judicial independence, and universal suffrage. Yes, even to women. What was for the Old Country a long and tortuous road to suffrage was agreed to here with barely a whimper. After all, South Australia has had it for years and they haven’t sunk into the sea. Above all, we would be flexible, adaptable, and everybody would get a fair go. (Another Howardism, but it is an undeniable fact for the most part.) We would have a White Australia for as long as most people wanted it, but eventually we wouldn’t. And we would keep an eye out for storms abroad, and make the best deals we can under the circumstances.
In no area of public endeavor is the spirit of compromise more flagrantly expressed than in what are euphemistically known as industrial relations. We were one of the first countries to have thriving and active trade unions. They were fought tooth and nail by employers, here as everywhere else. ‘You scabbed, old son, in Ninety-One, and then once more in Ninety-Four’ is a slogan from the dark days of the 1890s Great Depression. Space does not permit a fully detailed comparison of trade unionism in Australia and Britain, but a broad outline may be discerned at once. While our unions in their glory days were every bit as militant as their British counterparts, a hard core of common sense may be discerned here which was conspicuously lacking in the northern hemisphere. It is possible to detect an underlying trend of One In, All In, unless you’re a criminal extortionist, in which case you’re going to jail and we won’t help you.
During the massive structural dislocations of the 1980s, it is instructive to compare the dominant figures in trade union history in the two countries. In Britain, Mrs Thatcher was blessed with Arthur Scargill, who, deaf and blind to the faintest semblance of economic reality, led his union over the cliff to shattering defeat. Here, Bob Hawke had Bill Kelty, who, incredibly, managed to persuade the ACTU that, in the short term, more work for less pay was the only way forward. If it means that we do ourselves out of a job because the government-union Accord will get us all the future benefits we need, then so be it. His job, as he saw it, was to get the best deal possible for his members. All Australians now should thank him for it.
MUA, Here To Stay
The Australian way of industrial relations was brought to a head during the 1990s with the Patrick lockout and picket line. Chris Corrigan had inherited a moribund stevedoring company with antiquated cranes, rusty docks and a demoralized workforce. Without massive investment in new plant it would be impossible for Patrick to remain in business, but Corrigan would not make such an investment without extracting considerable concessions from the Maritime Union of Australia. Corrigan decided to go in boots and all and hired a non-union workforce, daring the union to strike and be fined out of existence. For reasons best known to himself, he gambled on winning the media war against the relatively unknown John Coombes. Coombes confounded Corrigan by winning the media war easily, while Greg Combet and his legal team persuaded the Federal Court to rule in favour of the MUA.
The Patrick battle has been written up as variously a victory and a defeat for both sides. Yet the underlying reality is that both sides were obliged to give up something substantial. The MUA had to compromise on wages and conditions, while Patrick had to concede that dogs, balaclavas and employer-sanctioned thuggery were not something which would be tolerated in this country. As a result, the MUA remained a viable entity instead of taking the Scargill option. Union membership is undergoing a long-term decline which shows no signs of abating as yet. Employers hope that unions will just wither away; yet this may not happen. It simply depends on whether workers can see any value in belonging to one. Should employers seek to oppress their workforce excessively, the answer to that question may once more become yes.
Postmodern Capitalism
Once upon a time, to be a capitalist you required money to invest. We might call this traditional capitalism. The next (modernist) stage in the process was borrowing somebody else’s money and investing that. This phase was exemplified best in this country by Alan Bond. His rise and fall made an ugly tale, on any objective analysis, yet his analogues proliferated around the globe. When economies are deregulated without a proper understanding of what safeguards must by no means be abandoned, then modernist capitalism temporarily flourishes. For a brief but delirious time, Bond bestrode the Australian stage like a short, bad-tempered colossus until he was foolish enough to take on Tiny Rowland. As the British could have told him (had he been at all capable of listening to unwelcome advice) you do not take on the man who brought down Rhodesia. Rowland simply had his accountants perform an exhaustive, unofficial audit of Bond’s corporate finances and then calmly announced to the world that Bond was not only trading while bankrupt but had been doing it for years. Collapse of stout party indeed.
The new, postmodern form of capitalism was inaugurated during the dotcom boom in the 1990s. In this not entirely unpredictable take on capitalism, not only did you invest with other people’s money, the things you were investing in did not have to have any objective existence. The central issue was, as you would expect, that the people making the crucial decisions didn’t actually know anything about IT. They thought that they were making a frenzied land-grab in cyberland. The very idea that cyberland might be infinite, and that the net present value of anything in it be for all intents and purposes zero, had not occurred to them. In the 21st century there are now vast cyber-empires (Google, Amazon and Facebook, to name the obvious), but it does seem to be understood that a cyber-empire must actually provide some concrete services, whether in sales or advertising. Postmodern capitalism however continued to flourish in banking and financial services until the inevitable crash. The fundamental issue was that in the absence of either tight prudential oversight, or auditors being jailed for deliberately misleading signing off of accounts, then the fetid jungle of derivatives, CDOs and all the other postmodern euphemisms for bad and doubtful debts was allowed to flourish in all its grisly splendor.
Australia has been by no means immune from these manifold diseases. Yet while the USA and Europe slide into their inevitable Depression we have so far remained largely unscathed. The brick wall which awaits our trading partners will hurt us, yet we didn’t fall into the trap to anything like the same extent. Our federal Treasurer tells anybody who will listen about the success of our prudential regulation, although if he were honest he would give most of the credit to Glenn Stevens, the Reserve Bank governor, for whose steady hand at the helm we all have reason to give thanks. What is the reason for our relative immunity? Simply that we do not trust our banks with the keys to the Porsche. And why would we? Australian regulators have remained true to Adam Smith’s central vision, which includes a healthy distrust of the behavior and benevolence of joint stock companies. It is a pity that the USA did not follow our example.
Athens and Plataea
Speaking of the USA, it is a singular fact that despite decades of anti-American rhetoric, neither major party has ever done more than toy briefly with the idea of reassessing it. Casting off the alleged American yoke has never been on the table at all. It is worth asking why this is. An historical analogy might be in order here. Herodotus tells the tale of how the small town of Plataea in Boeotia asked the Spartans to be their allies, since as a small city in hostile territory they needed a powerful friend in the turbulence of 5th century BC politics. The Spartans replied that they lived too far away, and the Plataeans might often be carried away into slavery before Sparta could come to their aid. Advised instead to seek the help of Athens, Plataea did so.
To the famed battle of Marathon, Plataea was the only city which sent soldiers to aid the Athenians. Herodotus says they sent but one thousand. It was all the fighting men they had. After the glorious victory, celebrations were held and repeated, and the representatives of Plataea were given equal honour with those of Athens. In 1940, Sparta may be represented by Britain, and America by Athens. We were Plataea. It has entailed getting ourselves entangled in dubious wars from time to time, but the bedrock truth behind it is that neither major party thinks we can survive without a potent friend to help us out. Our powerful neighbours have made no attempt to conquer us, so the policy has at least the virtue of actual success in practice.
There are those who doubt America’s commitment to us. It is true that many Americans wonder if we speak English. Others ask us how we celebrate Thanksgiving, but this says far more about the isolationism of American sentiment. To these we might offer the following observation. There are allies and allies. The CIA once connived at the assassination of the president of South Vietnam. At the same time, what did they do here? They made a small donation to Quadrant magazine. Friendship indeed. Or, to take another issue dear to the hearts of many, how on earth did we manage to liberate Timor Leste? Could it have been managed without Uncle Sam waving the Stars and Stripes over the enterprise? To ask that question is to answer it. We may now be stuck with yet another small, nearly failed state on our doorstep, yet most would still think it had been worth it. It certainly appears to have hastened the democratization of Indonesia.
Making Things That Actually Work
Australians who despair of our corporate masters’ myopia have often complained that we invented all sorts of clever things, like the photocopier; and then allowed other countries to steal the idea and make a fortune from it. This is a little harsh, given that our small scale manufacturing has always struggled against the waves of international competition. There is some truth in this complaint, however. Smaller nations than we have managed hi-tech exports on the world stage, the obvious example being Finland. Australians also invented Wi-fi, using a little-known property of discrete Fourier transforms; but this time, if media reports are to be credited, we did manage our share of the royalties.
But there is more to our national talent for practical invention than this. Australia can justly claim that we invent institutions that work. Our banking regulations are the envy of the world. And while everyone complains about our health system, one fact remains unassailable. Every federal Health Minister receives his or her portfolio with the mission statement: Don’t be like the British NHS, and don’t be like the USA. We do not want either of these, and thus far have escaped both. What we have it is a cobbled-together patchwork, but it more or less works without bankrupting us. And its chief glory is the HACC program. HACC stands for Home And Community Care, and such is its unassailable position that no Health minister would dare to touch it. As far as is possible, we need to treat people at home. So let’s do it. It’s far cheaper, people are kept happier, it’s more responsive to what people actually want and you avoid the horrors of NHS medicine.
Cultural Adulthood: From Dame Edna to Roy and HG
It is a regrettable fact that Australian intellectuals have traditionally felt isolated under our harsh, southern sunlight. Australia thinks far more of its sporting heroes than any of its cultural icons. The practical upshot of this has been that most of those who have achieved in cultural terms promptly depart overseas for good and snipe at us at intervals for being boorish philistines. In traditional terms this is known as Coming The Raw Prawn, and it is an unattractive trait in anybody. As a result, mainstream Australia’s disdain for The Yartz was reinforced. One cultural icon who stayed put is Barry Humphries. Humphries and his several alter egos (the most famed of whom being Dame Edna Everage) certainly achieved everything he could possibly have asked for, yet he opted to spend the bulk of his life at home. He is in consequence an Untouchable: a curious sub-tribe of Australian society who are the licensed wits of our big brown land. I doubt I am alone in finding his caustic wit somewhat demeaning, despite his unquestioned skill. At bottom, Dame Edna belongs in the same class as Kath and Kim. Let’s make fun of the stupid bogans. Edna is only a superior creation because Humphries’ gigantic stage presence has raised his famous creation into something truly and literally monstrous.
Have we done better than this in other fields of artistic endeavour? A century ago we oscillated between Henry Lawson and Banjo Paterson. May one suggest that the replacement of Lawson by Paterson on our banknotes was a sign of maturity? Lawson’s reputation is now in (I would argue) well-merited eclipse. It is as if our nation has said Down with the morose drunkard: bring on the bloke who made a success of his life. What Paterson’s work demonstrates more than anything else is a big-hearted, kind, sympathetic man who not only did well himself but wished passionately for others to do so. In the field of literary novels, Australia has done passably well. I do not particularly admire our literary novels; but there: I don’t like anybody else’s either, and so am in justice disqualified from speaking about them. When Australians embraced the inner larrikin, however, occasional gems of comic writing came forth. Lindsay’s The Magic Pudding and Lower’s Here’s Luck deserve a far bigger audience than they currently have. More recently, Australia has produced a generous profusion of popular fiction the equal of anything overseas.
To return to Humphries for a moment. I would suggest that another sign that The Cultural Cringe (concerning which far too much has already been said and written) came to its final end quite recently. During the Sydney Olympics I happened to be in Seattle. The local TV was every bit as numbingly parochial as one would expect, but there was great excitement about Fatso The Fat-Arsed Wombat, the joyous creation of HG Nielson and Rampaging Roy Slaven, who were covering the Olympics for Australian TV. Parochial Americans may be, but nobody said they were stupid. They grasped at once the enormity of what was being presented, and they were delighted beyond words. For the Olympics are, or were, one of the world’s great Untouchables. The IOC might well be a farcically corrupt gang of petty princelings, but nobody would dare take aim at the Games themselves, surely? To see Greig Pickhaver and John Doyle blow a sustained raspberry at the absurdities of Graeco-Roman wrestling, gymnastics and the like, resembling nothing so much as a pair of erudite kookaburras in sole possession of a lunch buffet, was to see my beloved homeland take its rightful place on the world stage at last. Puncturing pretension and hyperbole at every stroke in a joyful funfair, these two for me fulfilled the promise that Humphries had earlier foreshadowed.
Among The Historians
Australia has not been well-served by its historians. Too often history has been rewritten as politics, and while it is folly to suggest that the two can ever be entirely divorced, what has occurred is that the two main contending tribes (roughly corresponding to the two major political parties) have retreated into armed encampments and spend their time sniping at each other across a wilderness of barbed wire and semantic entrenchment. Blainey has arguably been the best of them, but his appeal is perhaps not sufficiently broad to be embraced by all. Manning Clark was once the darling of the fashionable set; but for modern eyes his tedious self-dramatizing and nationalistic hyperbole have not worn well.
But (and it is a big but) our historians do have some excuse for their failure to capture the public imagination and bring our story to life. It is the simple fact that there is very little to compare it with. It is far easier to be a historian of the late Roman Empire, or Austria-Hungary, or even the Middle East, than it is to chart our curious history. From Stone Age hunter-gatherers through British penal colony to larrikin Commonwealth is a wildly improbable tale of success against the odds. Our nearest neighbours in social terms are Canada and New Zealand, and while their analogous development may take us some way, they will not provide much more than a thumbnail sketch. The former lives in the arctic shadow of its giant southern neighbour, while New Zealand is a bicultural paradox dwelling permanently in our penumbra. Their love-hate relationship with us is one little understood by Australians, and until we can disentangle its complexities we won’t even manage to understand them. We certainly haven’t to date.
Nino Redux
And so, cast adrift on our own less than fatal shores, we return to Nino. Are we a weird mob? For the rest of the world, emphatically yes. They don’t understand us. They do not get why we are so rude to our friends and uncharacteristically polite to our enemies. We are talkative, unpretentious (except perhaps for our artistic folks), friendly, flexible, hard-working and straightforward. Our children may devour American pop-culture, but they have not turned into Valley girls or gangstas. Perhaps it is the harsh southern skies, where fraud and self-deceit do not flourish. We have no Oprah, and behold, this is a very good thing. To travel the world as an Australian is indeed a joyful experience. They don’t understand us but they think we’re pretty cool, actually. So perhaps Nino was right all along.
They’re A Weird Mob: Nino Among The Builders
In the mid-1950s, Australian journalist John O’Grady made the momentous decision to write up the experiences of Italian immigrants in Australia in his novel They’re A Weird Mob. Nino narrates his alleged autobiography, hiding (at first glance anyway) nothing, even his own rampant xenophobia. He is a journalist, and his boss tells him to emigrate to Australia for a while to write about the experiences. When he leaves Italy he is a true son of Liga Nord: he gets roaring drunk in a pub and bellows insults about Bloody Meridionali. This is the first hint that there is more to this book than meets the eye, for Italian Australians are predominantly the selfsame Meridionali he purports to despise.
Many would argue (I certainly would) that we were very fortunate in our Mediterranean immigrants. Coming from a largely failed polity, they discovered that Australia more or less functioned; and if you worked hard you could become far wealthier than you could ever have dreamed of being in The Old Country. Once they got over the inevitable culture shock of being called bloody wogs, wops, dagoes and Eyeties, most came to the astounding conclusion that they couldn’t believe their luck. It certainly worked for them; but it also worked for us. We got willing workers who did the mucky jobs we didn’t want to do; and they did them largely without complaint until they had served their time and became, if not affluent, at least comfortably well off. And most came to esteem the land which had given them sanctuary from war-torn, poverty-stricken Europe.
Nino’s book has dated badly. Female characters barely appear apart from Kay, the soon-to-be Mrs Culotta. The gender politics are stereotyped and no-one is examined too deeply: not even Nino himself. And when O’Grady’s imposture became known, some were highly indignant. This man has dared to speak for Italian Australians without being one of them! Appropriation indeed. Nevertheless, the book stands or falls for modern readers on how Italian Australians themselves read it. All the evidence suggests that they loved it, for it described their own experiences here with remarkable accuracy. To give O’Grady credit, he does not suppress the overt racism that was assuredly present. There is also linguistic comedy. At one point Nino asks the proverbial Man In The Pub about sharks on Sydney’s beaches. The man tells him the odds of being taken by a shark are a million to one and he’d be dead unlucky, so Nino asks where he can find a beach where he would be lucky to be taken by a shark. The intricacies of Aussie slang defeated many a migrant in those early days, and doubtless continue to do so.
It cannot be doubted that O’Grady’s view of the migrant experience is extremely White Picket Fence, in the Howardian sense. I do not know if John Howard has read it, but he would have liked it; especially Nino’s concluding exhortation to all adult migrants to learn to speak English. However that may be, O’Grady’s view of Australia certainly belongs to the same sunny, optimistic world-view. We could, and have, done a great deal worse. Is it realistic? I would argue that it is. Who am I to say? If the personal may ever be truly said to be the political, then I may claim some eye-witness expertise. I live in the village of Seddon in the post-industrial heartland of Footscray, so perhaps I may be assumed to have some knowledge of multicultural experience in practice. My municipality boasts over a hundred separate ethnicities. A century ago Scots Gaelic was spoken here. Now we have Sudanese, Amharic and Somali to add to Vietnamese, Polish, Serbian, Croatian, Greek, Italian, and all the rest. Are we really one big happy family? Emphatically, yes.
We hated the very idea of Romper Stomper, not because our racist underbelly had been pitilessly exposed, but because it was a flagrant and impudent lie. By the time the film was released in 1992 the inner west was a haven of multiracial tolerance. Hando’s gang at one point wear Footscray Football Club scarves; which was for us a calculated insult. But Melbourne’s intelligentsia never really got the western suburbs in those days. They did not come here until recently; and what they did not know they falsified. Had they done so, they might have heard the story of Peter Gordon’s Miracle On Barkly Street, and how his collectors had entered the predominantly Vietnamese Footscray market, and had their buckets stuffed with twenty-dollar bills. One rarely saw an Oriental face at the football then, but somebody had clearly explained to the traders that the survival of their football team is really important in their culture and it would be an act of kindness to help them out. It is unquestionably true that for a while during the Eighties, the European Ascendancy in Footscray was very wary of the Vietnamese. Partly because they were, at first sight, so very alien in face and custom; but mostly because there were so many of them all at once. Now there are Buddhist temples in the heart of Footscray, not to mention the gigantic statue of the goddess Kwan Yin on the banks of the Maribyrnong.
This did not happen by accident. One of the most mischievous delusions of right-thinking fantasists is that so long as everybody thinks the correct thoughts, then multicultural heaven will inevitably ensue. Nino O’Grady knew better, and so did we. Innumerable acts of kindness on both sides are necessary. It also helps that the inner west contains very few large suburban blocks with high fences behind which you can hide from your neighbours. It is also beneficial not to have merely two or three ethnic groups dominating your area. The more the merrier has always worked well for us. Above all, some form of visceral mutual respect is essential. When groups of Vietnamese were called Slant-Eyes, they would turn to the white boys and jeer Skippy! Skippy! If you can call your wouldbe tormentor Skip when he calls you Wog, or worse, then honour is satisfied, more or less. Skip has now passed into abeyance because it is no longer necessary. But at the time it was very useful, and counter-intuitively kept tempers under control.
One word more about Aussie politics Culotta-style. The other essential understanding is that everyone must give up something. When I first moved to Footscray, all the ethnic angst was Balkan-related. We hosted Serbs and Croats, to name but two. They had been mortal enemies in the Old Country. Much ink was wasted at the time about the Second World War and the respective roles of the two groups therein; but their feud was far older than that. The Serbs still remembered Kosovo Pralje, the scene of their defeat by the Ottomans in 1389. They also remembered being constantly cheated by Austrians and patronized by Croats, despite the fact that they had been the faithful border-guards of Catholic Europe. The two tribes were divided by religion as well as history. And just to keep the pot boiling, the local Croatian cultural centre was named after Ante Pavelic, Hitler’s bloodthirsty local deputy. Now it is called Hrvatski Dom (Croatian House), because Pavelic’s continuing public memorial would annoy the other mob so we won’t do it any more. The dominant Balkan ethnicity in my village is Macedonian, and they too had their moment in the spotlight during the mid-90s. If you ask now why the Star of Vergina is not flown in red and gold locally, you will be told that it would annoy the Greeks, so we won’t do it. Nor do the Greeks fly it in blue and white, because it is a disputed symbol. Everyone has agreed to play nice, and so amity is preserved.
I would argue that Footscray is Australia writ small. The same happy harmony of races does not always prevail elsewhere. Yet the alarmists who wanted to keep Australia white because our fragile peace would be shattered have been proved, thus far, absurdly mistaken. Everyone was appalled when the Cronulla riots were splashed over our TV screens in all their hideous technicolour. Yet there have been no repeat performances. And in what other country would leaders of the two rival gangs have met later and agreed that we can’t live like this and we have to stop doing it? It may well be that O’Grady’s rose-coloured vision is not so fanciful after all.
Beyond the Fatal Shore
How on earth did the improbable penal colony grow into such an enviable paradise on earth? Our European beginnings were unpromising enough. Many have laughed at Governor Phillip’s early attempts at local sustainability. Laughter is easy from an air-conditioned study. In an alien landscape, buffeted by undreamed-of heat and dust, it is not so easy to adapt. Yet adapt they did, and eventually flourished. Some historians like to portray America as the child of the Enlightenment. Yet Australia has far better claims to the laurel crown than the USA. The most flagrant example of this was the institution of slavery. They had it; we did not. Some have claimed that we enslaved the Aboriginals, yet this is rampant hyperbole. Indentured labour was not feasible for tribesfolk who could at any moment melt away into the outback, and frequently did so. To the sins of blackbirding, missionary abuse, unthinking, hideously misguided philanthropy, forcible conquest and dispossession, however, we must perforce plead guilty. Every other advanced nation on the planet did it and so did we. It is idle to pretend otherwise.
To claim, as some have done, that this amounted to a war of genocide is an overstatement. Torrents of indignation have been poured upon the notion of terra nullius. To assert that we did not recognize Aboriginal land ownership is to miss the point completely. Traditional land ownership in the European sense was non-existent on this continent. What the government found was an unbelievably complex web of interwoven easements, held by constantly shifting alliances and clans who could not, in law, be separately identified. Australia was settled by Evangelical Christians who wanted to treat the indigenous inhabitants justly, fairly and with as much equality before the law as could be achieved. When it came to land ownership they came, reluctantly, to the conclusion that it was impossible.
With the benefit of hindsight, a legal point was overlooked at the time. When Aborigines were tried for murder of whites, it would then have been possible to make a complete defence on the grounds that natives in law cannot be separately identified. The case would be that the government cannot have it both ways. If natives are separately identifiable, then they may be charged with crimes; but they may also own land. If they are not, then they may not own land; but neither may they be charged with anything at all, even unto murder. The point is easy to miss, for it was not made then and has been overlooked by almost all writers to this date. To the charge that white murders of natives went unpunished the record is unclear. On many occasions natives were beyond question slain with impunity. Yet Myall Creek may serve as a counter-example. Governor Richard Bourke insisted that the perpetrators of the unquestioned Myall Creek massacre be tried and hanged. It was a vastly unpopular act, achieved in the face of massive resistance on the part of what we may term White Australia; but Bourke got his wish. In this he was following in the footsteps of Phillip, who famously caused paintings to be made of what would happen to whites and Aboriginals alike if they killed each other. Both would be hanged. To claim, as many have done, that genocide was the government’s settled policy toward natives is an act of wilful myopia.
The Land With No Lairds
When the British planted their flag at Botany Bay, they brought a curious set of objectives with them. 18th century Britain’s need for a remote prison colony had become urgent since the loss of the American colonies. I would argue that the Whig aristocracy had allowed the American colonists to win their independence, since they would have been impressed by the demand of No Taxation Without Representation. Edmund Burke certainly was. As a result, General Burgoyne had been forced to uphold the Empire with an inadequate levy of British troops (many of them Indians) and King’s German Legionaries. Washington prevailed, but it is clear that this is because he was permitted to do so. When it really mattered to the British they were able to defeat Napoleon’s innumerable legions. Recognition at the highest levels of the justice of the American colonists’ grievances sealed Burgoyne’s fate.
As a result, the first settlers brought with them the clear knowledge that this time they would have to get it right. We will achieve a plantation, but not on the American model. And certainly not on the Irish model. Centuries of chronic mismanagement and savage brutality from Dublin Castle had reduced the Emerald Isle to a sullen rump of constantly mutinous natives. Insurrection produced repression which bred yet more insurrection. Locked in constant struggles with European tyrannies, England knew it could not allow Ireland an independent foreign policy. Yet the cruel measures taken to achieve stability in Ireland had guaranteed the very thing they feared most: Irish Anglophobia in its most virulent form. The policy of endless and arbitrary repression had triumphed, but at a terrible cost. Cast adrift on these fatal shores with a large population of Irish convicts, the first settlers knew that continuing to put the boot into the Irish was not a viable option. They would have to be given a stake in the new colony, and they were. In time the police force and the legal profession would take on a pronounced Irish flavour. Above all, there would be no lairds to lord it over them. A squattocracy we had, unquestionably. Yet all attempts to recreate a semi-feudal society here met with the brick wall of governmental obstinacy. They knew exactly what they were doing, which was to recreate a newer, brighter British society wherein the barnacles of failed policies in the Old Country would be dispensed with.
Many who have written about our convict past have been deeply shocked by the casual cruelty with which our unwilling settlers were treated. I would not seek to downplay this at all. The simple fact is that cruelty then was the industry standard everywhere. Painful death was universal, whether by child mortality, epidemics or starvation. So judicial punishments, to make the dubious point, had to be extreme. We want you to die in great pain because we wish to show what we think of your actions. However, the great wave of liberal humanitarianism in the 19th century did originate in Britain and it was mirrored faithfully here. I would argue that Australia’s first ruling class, when they weren’t being carpet-bagging Rum Rebellion freebooters, were Tories of the stamp of William Wilberforce. They appear to have decided the following. We will not have slavery in our dominions. We will, in time, embrace the wave of Factory Acts which protect workers from de facto slavery. We will gradually extend the franchise. Unencumbered by the restrictions of an ingrown and rapacious ruling class, we will allow more freedom to our freed convicts. And we will light the flame of liberty here. To a large extent, all of these objectives were attained.
One small example may suffice. Should you visit the town of Richmond in Tasmania, you may see the first Catholic church built in these colonies. Most of the considerable cost of this church was contributed by the (presumably Anglican) governor of van Diemen’s Land. But Tasmania has always been different. Many never get beyond the intolerable cruelty of Port Arthur. There is more to tell than that. For one thing, the museum in Battery Point contains an illuminating picture of the representatives of the Rum Rebellion being harangued by the local commander. Battery Point had been settled by Wellington’s invincible Peninsula veterans, and one can only conjecture what these men would have thought of the Rum Corps. The mutineers were packed off back home with, we should be disposed to imagine, scorn and contumely.
Eureka: Birth of a Nation Part 1
The myth of Eureka is an enduring mystery. Why a rebellion by xenophobic tax evaders (in Professor Geoffrey Blainey’s felicitous phrasing) could be regarded as a nation-defining moment is at first glance a vexing puzzle. The revolt was put down in ten minutes by Captain Thomas’ massively outnumbered battalion. What was considerably more interesting was the subsequent treason trials for thirteen of the defeated miners. All were acquitted in short order; but what is less well-remembered is that Justice Redmond Barry told the jury that a guilty verdict for any of the defendants would result in their execution by hanging, drawing and quartering. Why did he do this? I can only conclude that in his view, interest rei publicae ut sit finis litium. Or, in plain English, go away and sin no more. The rebellion had been put down, the foolish license fee was later abolished and replaced by a gold tax at the point of export. And let us all get on with our lives.
What would be better remembered from that time is that anti-Chinese sentiment was rampant, especially among the miners. At Lambing Flat, NSW, in 1861, the Chinese were set upon by an army of local miners, and the police were attacked in their turn and had to be repelled by a sabre charge. Thereafter Lambing Flat was deemed to have forfeited the respect of the government and its name was changed to Young. The same outrages would undoubtedly have occurred at Golden Point, Castlemaine, had not the miners been foiled by the awesome majesty of the law in the form of Constable Thomas Cooke, who defied them single-handed and faced them down. His memorial plaque at Castlemaine police station is one of the best-merited in Australia. What do we learn from this? That xenophobia is the curse of the aspirational classes? Maybe, but it did not come from the government or its representatives. And the time would come when Australia would learn to cherish its Chinese citizens. But it was not the case then.
Gallipoli: Birth of a Nation Part 2
Gallipoli is equally puzzling. Anglophobes love it because it is a golden opportunity to sink the slipper into the Mother Country. Our brave lads are led astray by incompetent British generals, but knuckle down to their impossible task and win imperishable glory. Yet it is a curious campaign upon which to hang a slouch hat. John Howard felt that Simpson and his donkey was a story which all migrants should know. Did he really know what he was saying? That John Kirkpatrick Simpson was a red-ragging British pacifist deserter? It would be pleasing to think so. Simpson’s story does however reflect something bloody-minded and contrary about the putative national character. One of his rescuees was later asked, in breathless tones, what the great hero had said to him. Apparently Simpson’s message was, in full: ‘Hop up on the donkey, mate.’
Should we be looking for a more fitting national monument from that war, we could do worse than embrace Allenby’s desert campaign of 1918. Allenby had been sent thither in disgrace by the autocratic and inflexible General Haig. The story goes that Allenby had called Haig a blithering idiot to his face. Sent to fail, he succeeded brilliantly, with minimal casualties. And the Australian Light Horse played a starring role, under our very own Brigadier Harry Chauvel. Our greatest cultural treasure of the day, Banjo Paterson, served the army in charge of our remounts. Legend has it that Paterson gave the best mounts to the troopers, while the broken-down nags went to the staff officers. One of Australia’s earliest feature films (Forty Thousand Horsemen) was made to commemorate the campaign. It is not a subtle film, but we could do a lot worse than revive it in preference to yet more agonizing over our failed attempt to take the Dardanelles.
The Federation of Compromises
Those of a nationalistic bent often complain that our Constitution is nothing but an Act of Parliament of a foreign land. You sometimes hear this in relation to cutting the apron strings of the Mother Country, and various other tiresome metaphors of adolescence. Yet the truth is that, unlike almost any other nation on earth, Australia had no rallying-cry to unite it. Federation had to be achieved by endless compromise, and it very nearly did not happen. Western Australia kept threatening to secede, and almost did in the 1930s. Should Australia ever seriously threaten to become a republic, we will probably lose them for good this time. The clash of special interests ensured that everything would be cobbled together. NSW was free-trade, Victoria was protectionist. We would be neither Washington nor Westminster, but a strange amalgam of both. We have Ministerial Responsibility (in theory at least) rather than true separation of powers; yet we have a Senate, which is allegedly the States’ House. Because despite a small but surprisingly noisy clamour from some would-be peers of the realm, we were not going to tolerate a House of Lords.
To borrow a modern phrase, where’s the bad? One thing everybody agreed on. We would retain common law jurisdiction, judicial independence, and universal suffrage. Yes, even to women. What was for the Old Country a long and tortuous road to suffrage was agreed to here with barely a whimper. After all, South Australia has had it for years and they haven’t sunk into the sea. Above all, we would be flexible, adaptable, and everybody would get a fair go. (Another Howardism, but it is an undeniable fact for the most part.) We would have a White Australia for as long as most people wanted it, but eventually we wouldn’t. And we would keep an eye out for storms abroad, and make the best deals we can under the circumstances.
In no area of public endeavor is the spirit of compromise more flagrantly expressed than in what are euphemistically known as industrial relations. We were one of the first countries to have thriving and active trade unions. They were fought tooth and nail by employers, here as everywhere else. ‘You scabbed, old son, in Ninety-One, and then once more in Ninety-Four’ is a slogan from the dark days of the 1890s Great Depression. Space does not permit a fully detailed comparison of trade unionism in Australia and Britain, but a broad outline may be discerned at once. While our unions in their glory days were every bit as militant as their British counterparts, a hard core of common sense may be discerned here which was conspicuously lacking in the northern hemisphere. It is possible to detect an underlying trend of One In, All In, unless you’re a criminal extortionist, in which case you’re going to jail and we won’t help you.
During the massive structural dislocations of the 1980s, it is instructive to compare the dominant figures in trade union history in the two countries. In Britain, Mrs Thatcher was blessed with Arthur Scargill, who, deaf and blind to the faintest semblance of economic reality, led his union over the cliff to shattering defeat. Here, Bob Hawke had Bill Kelty, who, incredibly, managed to persuade the ACTU that, in the short term, more work for less pay was the only way forward. If it means that we do ourselves out of a job because the government-union Accord will get us all the future benefits we need, then so be it. His job, as he saw it, was to get the best deal possible for his members. All Australians now should thank him for it.
MUA, Here To Stay
The Australian way of industrial relations was brought to a head during the 1990s with the Patrick lockout and picket line. Chris Corrigan had inherited a moribund stevedoring company with antiquated cranes, rusty docks and a demoralized workforce. Without massive investment in new plant it would be impossible for Patrick to remain in business, but Corrigan would not make such an investment without extracting considerable concessions from the Maritime Union of Australia. Corrigan decided to go in boots and all and hired a non-union workforce, daring the union to strike and be fined out of existence. For reasons best known to himself, he gambled on winning the media war against the relatively unknown John Coombes. Coombes confounded Corrigan by winning the media war easily, while Greg Combet and his legal team persuaded the Federal Court to rule in favour of the MUA.
The Patrick battle has been written up as variously a victory and a defeat for both sides. Yet the underlying reality is that both sides were obliged to give up something substantial. The MUA had to compromise on wages and conditions, while Patrick had to concede that dogs, balaclavas and employer-sanctioned thuggery were not something which would be tolerated in this country. As a result, the MUA remained a viable entity instead of taking the Scargill option. Union membership is undergoing a long-term decline which shows no signs of abating as yet. Employers hope that unions will just wither away; yet this may not happen. It simply depends on whether workers can see any value in belonging to one. Should employers seek to oppress their workforce excessively, the answer to that question may once more become yes.
Postmodern Capitalism
Once upon a time, to be a capitalist you required money to invest. We might call this traditional capitalism. The next (modernist) stage in the process was borrowing somebody else’s money and investing that. This phase was exemplified best in this country by Alan Bond. His rise and fall made an ugly tale, on any objective analysis, yet his analogues proliferated around the globe. When economies are deregulated without a proper understanding of what safeguards must by no means be abandoned, then modernist capitalism temporarily flourishes. For a brief but delirious time, Bond bestrode the Australian stage like a short, bad-tempered colossus until he was foolish enough to take on Tiny Rowland. As the British could have told him (had he been at all capable of listening to unwelcome advice) you do not take on the man who brought down Rhodesia. Rowland simply had his accountants perform an exhaustive, unofficial audit of Bond’s corporate finances and then calmly announced to the world that Bond was not only trading while bankrupt but had been doing it for years. Collapse of stout party indeed.
The new, postmodern form of capitalism was inaugurated during the dotcom boom in the 1990s. In this not entirely unpredictable take on capitalism, not only did you invest with other people’s money, the things you were investing in did not have to have any objective existence. The central issue was, as you would expect, that the people making the crucial decisions didn’t actually know anything about IT. They thought that they were making a frenzied land-grab in cyberland. The very idea that cyberland might be infinite, and that the net present value of anything in it be for all intents and purposes zero, had not occurred to them. In the 21st century there are now vast cyber-empires (Google, Amazon and Facebook, to name the obvious), but it does seem to be understood that a cyber-empire must actually provide some concrete services, whether in sales or advertising. Postmodern capitalism however continued to flourish in banking and financial services until the inevitable crash. The fundamental issue was that in the absence of either tight prudential oversight, or auditors being jailed for deliberately misleading signing off of accounts, then the fetid jungle of derivatives, CDOs and all the other postmodern euphemisms for bad and doubtful debts was allowed to flourish in all its grisly splendor.
Australia has been by no means immune from these manifold diseases. Yet while the USA and Europe slide into their inevitable Depression we have so far remained largely unscathed. The brick wall which awaits our trading partners will hurt us, yet we didn’t fall into the trap to anything like the same extent. Our federal Treasurer tells anybody who will listen about the success of our prudential regulation, although if he were honest he would give most of the credit to Glenn Stevens, the Reserve Bank governor, for whose steady hand at the helm we all have reason to give thanks. What is the reason for our relative immunity? Simply that we do not trust our banks with the keys to the Porsche. And why would we? Australian regulators have remained true to Adam Smith’s central vision, which includes a healthy distrust of the behavior and benevolence of joint stock companies. It is a pity that the USA did not follow our example.
Athens and Plataea
Speaking of the USA, it is a singular fact that despite decades of anti-American rhetoric, neither major party has ever done more than toy briefly with the idea of reassessing it. Casting off the alleged American yoke has never been on the table at all. It is worth asking why this is. An historical analogy might be in order here. Herodotus tells the tale of how the small town of Plataea in Boeotia asked the Spartans to be their allies, since as a small city in hostile territory they needed a powerful friend in the turbulence of 5th century BC politics. The Spartans replied that they lived too far away, and the Plataeans might often be carried away into slavery before Sparta could come to their aid. Advised instead to seek the help of Athens, Plataea did so.
To the famed battle of Marathon, Plataea was the only city which sent soldiers to aid the Athenians. Herodotus says they sent but one thousand. It was all the fighting men they had. After the glorious victory, celebrations were held and repeated, and the representatives of Plataea were given equal honour with those of Athens. In 1940, Sparta may be represented by Britain, and America by Athens. We were Plataea. It has entailed getting ourselves entangled in dubious wars from time to time, but the bedrock truth behind it is that neither major party thinks we can survive without a potent friend to help us out. Our powerful neighbours have made no attempt to conquer us, so the policy has at least the virtue of actual success in practice.
There are those who doubt America’s commitment to us. It is true that many Americans wonder if we speak English. Others ask us how we celebrate Thanksgiving, but this says far more about the isolationism of American sentiment. To these we might offer the following observation. There are allies and allies. The CIA once connived at the assassination of the president of South Vietnam. At the same time, what did they do here? They made a small donation to Quadrant magazine. Friendship indeed. Or, to take another issue dear to the hearts of many, how on earth did we manage to liberate Timor Leste? Could it have been managed without Uncle Sam waving the Stars and Stripes over the enterprise? To ask that question is to answer it. We may now be stuck with yet another small, nearly failed state on our doorstep, yet most would still think it had been worth it. It certainly appears to have hastened the democratization of Indonesia.
Making Things That Actually Work
Australians who despair of our corporate masters’ myopia have often complained that we invented all sorts of clever things, like the photocopier; and then allowed other countries to steal the idea and make a fortune from it. This is a little harsh, given that our small scale manufacturing has always struggled against the waves of international competition. There is some truth in this complaint, however. Smaller nations than we have managed hi-tech exports on the world stage, the obvious example being Finland. Australians also invented Wi-fi, using a little-known property of discrete Fourier transforms; but this time, if media reports are to be credited, we did manage our share of the royalties.
But there is more to our national talent for practical invention than this. Australia can justly claim that we invent institutions that work. Our banking regulations are the envy of the world. And while everyone complains about our health system, one fact remains unassailable. Every federal Health Minister receives his or her portfolio with the mission statement: Don’t be like the British NHS, and don’t be like the USA. We do not want either of these, and thus far have escaped both. What we have it is a cobbled-together patchwork, but it more or less works without bankrupting us. And its chief glory is the HACC program. HACC stands for Home And Community Care, and such is its unassailable position that no Health minister would dare to touch it. As far as is possible, we need to treat people at home. So let’s do it. It’s far cheaper, people are kept happier, it’s more responsive to what people actually want and you avoid the horrors of NHS medicine.
Cultural Adulthood: From Dame Edna to Roy and HG
It is a regrettable fact that Australian intellectuals have traditionally felt isolated under our harsh, southern sunlight. Australia thinks far more of its sporting heroes than any of its cultural icons. The practical upshot of this has been that most of those who have achieved in cultural terms promptly depart overseas for good and snipe at us at intervals for being boorish philistines. In traditional terms this is known as Coming The Raw Prawn, and it is an unattractive trait in anybody. As a result, mainstream Australia’s disdain for The Yartz was reinforced. One cultural icon who stayed put is Barry Humphries. Humphries and his several alter egos (the most famed of whom being Dame Edna Everage) certainly achieved everything he could possibly have asked for, yet he opted to spend the bulk of his life at home. He is in consequence an Untouchable: a curious sub-tribe of Australian society who are the licensed wits of our big brown land. I doubt I am alone in finding his caustic wit somewhat demeaning, despite his unquestioned skill. At bottom, Dame Edna belongs in the same class as Kath and Kim. Let’s make fun of the stupid bogans. Edna is only a superior creation because Humphries’ gigantic stage presence has raised his famous creation into something truly and literally monstrous.
Have we done better than this in other fields of artistic endeavour? A century ago we oscillated between Henry Lawson and Banjo Paterson. May one suggest that the replacement of Lawson by Paterson on our banknotes was a sign of maturity? Lawson’s reputation is now in (I would argue) well-merited eclipse. It is as if our nation has said Down with the morose drunkard: bring on the bloke who made a success of his life. What Paterson’s work demonstrates more than anything else is a big-hearted, kind, sympathetic man who not only did well himself but wished passionately for others to do so. In the field of literary novels, Australia has done passably well. I do not particularly admire our literary novels; but there: I don’t like anybody else’s either, and so am in justice disqualified from speaking about them. When Australians embraced the inner larrikin, however, occasional gems of comic writing came forth. Lindsay’s The Magic Pudding and Lower’s Here’s Luck deserve a far bigger audience than they currently have. More recently, Australia has produced a generous profusion of popular fiction the equal of anything overseas.
To return to Humphries for a moment. I would suggest that another sign that The Cultural Cringe (concerning which far too much has already been said and written) came to its final end quite recently. During the Sydney Olympics I happened to be in Seattle. The local TV was every bit as numbingly parochial as one would expect, but there was great excitement about Fatso The Fat-Arsed Wombat, the joyous creation of HG Nielson and Rampaging Roy Slaven, who were covering the Olympics for Australian TV. Parochial Americans may be, but nobody said they were stupid. They grasped at once the enormity of what was being presented, and they were delighted beyond words. For the Olympics are, or were, one of the world’s great Untouchables. The IOC might well be a farcically corrupt gang of petty princelings, but nobody would dare take aim at the Games themselves, surely? To see Greig Pickhaver and John Doyle blow a sustained raspberry at the absurdities of Graeco-Roman wrestling, gymnastics and the like, resembling nothing so much as a pair of erudite kookaburras in sole possession of a lunch buffet, was to see my beloved homeland take its rightful place on the world stage at last. Puncturing pretension and hyperbole at every stroke in a joyful funfair, these two for me fulfilled the promise that Humphries had earlier foreshadowed.
Among The Historians
Australia has not been well-served by its historians. Too often history has been rewritten as politics, and while it is folly to suggest that the two can ever be entirely divorced, what has occurred is that the two main contending tribes (roughly corresponding to the two major political parties) have retreated into armed encampments and spend their time sniping at each other across a wilderness of barbed wire and semantic entrenchment. Blainey has arguably been the best of them, but his appeal is perhaps not sufficiently broad to be embraced by all. Manning Clark was once the darling of the fashionable set; but for modern eyes his tedious self-dramatizing and nationalistic hyperbole have not worn well.
But (and it is a big but) our historians do have some excuse for their failure to capture the public imagination and bring our story to life. It is the simple fact that there is very little to compare it with. It is far easier to be a historian of the late Roman Empire, or Austria-Hungary, or even the Middle East, than it is to chart our curious history. From Stone Age hunter-gatherers through British penal colony to larrikin Commonwealth is a wildly improbable tale of success against the odds. Our nearest neighbours in social terms are Canada and New Zealand, and while their analogous development may take us some way, they will not provide much more than a thumbnail sketch. The former lives in the arctic shadow of its giant southern neighbour, while New Zealand is a bicultural paradox dwelling permanently in our penumbra. Their love-hate relationship with us is one little understood by Australians, and until we can disentangle its complexities we won’t even manage to understand them. We certainly haven’t to date.
Nino Redux
And so, cast adrift on our own less than fatal shores, we return to Nino. Are we a weird mob? For the rest of the world, emphatically yes. They don’t understand us. They do not get why we are so rude to our friends and uncharacteristically polite to our enemies. We are talkative, unpretentious (except perhaps for our artistic folks), friendly, flexible, hard-working and straightforward. Our children may devour American pop-culture, but they have not turned into Valley girls or gangstas. Perhaps it is the harsh southern skies, where fraud and self-deceit do not flourish. We have no Oprah, and behold, this is a very good thing. To travel the world as an Australian is indeed a joyful experience. They don’t understand us but they think we’re pretty cool, actually. So perhaps Nino was right all along.
