Category: Leadership

Modest expectations – Chlorine

I am indebted to Stephen Zifcak and the Menadue blog for this quote:

“If I were a journalist, these and other related developments cumulatively would be causing me very considerable alarm. Recently, in response, the Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom has produced a report on the state of press freedom in Australia (Press Freedom in Australia, White Paper, May 2019). It describes the progressive erosion of that freedom. The report argues for the enactment of a Media Freedom Act. The purpose of the Act would be to enshrine the principle of press freedom in law.

 The Act would recognise the fundamental importance of national security and the protection of the Commonwealth’s intelligence and law enforcement activity while providing for the fundamental right of journalists to investigate and report on government corruption, surveillance and misconduct in public office. The report’s recommendations are not without legal difficulties. Nevertheless, it provides a sound starting point for a debate that goes to the heart of the Australian democracy.”

I would have thought that this is a call for the media in the jargon of today to weaponise itself. The head of this Alliance is Peter Greste, and as the face of the caring yet resolute person, there is none better.

The Alliance has a Chief Executive Officer who has been recently appointed. Olivia Pirie-Williams has a record as an activist and her poems reflect her deep affection for our planet. Her first target in January this year was the release of the two Burmese journalists employed by Reuters, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo. They were released from prison in May.

The Alliance seems to have powerful friends and as such should consider running candidates at the next federal elections, targeting electorates in South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales. They are the potential spine of a centrist party, where the various freedoms of speech and association are protected; and where the enemy is defined as the trump-sucking, authoritarian, rent-seeking mercantilist.

The problem with the Independent is that they have no future. They can stay around a long time like Andrew Wilkie, but unless the seat is turned into a dynastic satrap as the Katter family has made Kennedy, he will eventually become a footnote in history, a nameplate on a wall in the Royal Hobart hospital.

The way the seat of Indi has been “transferred” indicates that succession planning for Independents is possible and what has been done in Indi may be a blue print. Catherine McGowan may be the centrist required for setting up such a party.

In the end the problem is that Independents are generally rounded up. The least line of surrender coupled with seduction of the perks of office means joining the party most likely to retain the electorate, thus goes the independent back into the authoritarian fold. South Australia like Tasmania has a history of independent thought, but who remembers Steele Hall – and his legacy? Even NSW – but who remembers Ted Mack?

From my experience of journalists and politicians, their personalities are complementary – they like to tell people what to do. Press secretaries in politicians’ offices generally come from the fourth estate in a revolving door. Some go further, as Deakin, Curtin and maybe Abbott have done federally and Carr and Rann at State level.

Therefore the Alliance has the opportunity to form a centrist party, provide an umbrella for the current Independents and target vulnerable seats in the cities – and you never know. Greste has the personality honed by mental if not physical agony, where the right wing trolls would try and destroy, but I am sure he would have studied the Trumpian playbook on John McCain’s reputation.

A perfect time to review defence capital expenditure (Capex) 

Neil Baird comments …

With the elimination of Chris Pyne, Australia is presented with an excellent opportunity to make a comprehensive review of our defence priorities. Pyne’s apparently more realistic successor, Senator Linda Reynolds, should grasp that opportunity.

In real terms, all the major Navy and the Air Force Capex projects have barely started and, in many cases, are decades away from completion. They could sensibly and relatively economically be paused, if not cancelled, while Australia takes a breather and re-thinks our requirements, priorities and most importantly, what we can afford.

Many of the ship, submarine, aircraft and weapon system purchases are scheduled so far into the future to be almost certainly obsolete long before their delivery date. They will undoubtedly cost a not inconsiderable $200 billion or more and be delivered years later than the already ridiculous 30 years that have been signed off by then Minister Pyne, his generals, admirals, senior bureaucrats and their American advisers.

Too many of the projects were ill-conceived for reasons more related to South Australian than National warfare. Minister Pyne may well have been a great representative of South Australia but he was wasteful of national taxpayer funds during his parliamentary career. Now, since he abandoned Parliament, apparently thinking that the Coalition Government was “a sinking ship”, he is seeking a new career as a defence industry lobbyist. That will only add insult to severe fiscal and defence readiness injury. Thus, the current orders for submarines and F35 aircraft, among others, could well be stayed if not totally scrubbed.

The nature of modern warfare and its weapon systems is changing dramatically and rapidly. The Americans are spending vast sums of money on unmanned systems for land, sea and air warfare. What Australia could learn from the Americans is more about unmanned technology, as Israel is doing; Australia should be rapidly developing its own. For example, the Boeing Aircraft Corp is developing an unmanned submarine that could well be appropriate for the shallow seas to our north. The Americans are also very advanced with the development of unmanned aircraft, including helicopters.

China has openly declared that America and Japan are its biggest worry and is continuing to battle with them. China has examined American weaknesses and is developing comparatively economical weaponry to exploit them. Ironically, the platforms for some of their best fast assault boats capable of launching long-range hypersonic cruise missiles were designed in Sydney. The Chinese (PLA) Navy has more than 100 of these vessels each carrying eight missiles. Their role is to “take out” American nuclear aircraft carriers.

By contrast, the Royal Australian Navy has none.

The Australian “Defence establishment” suffers from a considerable cultural cringe. For instance, it seems to believe that Australian designs and innovation are generally worthless. Some unkindly suggest the acquisition of frequent flyer points influences Defence purchasing decisions – but surely not!

Nevertheless much of the Defence Capex is invariably purchased offshore. It is then, too often, married incompatibly to being constructed locally. It is no wonder that local shipbuilders, except for the inefficient government-owned ASC, shun dealing with the Australian government, despite the local connection with the abovementioned Chinese missile boats.

This point is worth reiteration, because it is usually forgotten by Government. Australia is a world leader in the design and construction of very effective and efficient fast craft, including large and small patrol assault boats and fast logistics support ships.

While they had little choice, China has taken a practical “clean sheet” approach to the choices of weaponry and doctrine. Australia should follow their example, as it has its own unique cultural and geographic advantages and disadvantages, rather than blindly be following the USA and other ostensible allies. In the end Australia may be very much on its own. After all, who would USA side with if Japan were to go mad again and attack us? Japan has done it before. As far as trade is concerned, it could be argued that Japan is far more important to America than Australia is. We should prepare for all contingencies.

We could learn a lot from a closer study of China’s defence plans and practices. Its Maritime Militia should inspire Australia to look at this inexpensive option for our fishing and offshore service fleets as well as state government owned patrol boats. Unlike China, Australia has virtually no Merchant Navy and the few domestic cargo vessels Australia does have could be much more effectively integrated. The CFMMEU, of which the Maritime Union of Australia is a small but important component, should be eliminated or drastically reformed. That is the only way that local shipowners might be encouraged to invest in coastal cargo shipping which is imperative for defence.

Australia should also be very carefully re-considering our aversion to nuclear power and weaponry, but nevertheless should be developing a substantial cadre of nuclear engineers and other experts.

Australia constructs no diesel engines. As most warships, submarines, tanks and other land vehicles are diesel powered, Australia should be developing the capacity to build a wide range of them here. There is an existing global system for building diesel engines under licence to leading manufacturers. Australia should involve itself in that system as soon as possible.

Similarly, Australia refines almost no diesel and jet fuel in Australia. Most of our diesel is imported from Singapore. Australia has tiny reserves and should be encouraging industry to develop at least one diesel and jet fuel refinery in each state plus a couple more in the north.

China is also constructing much longer-range fighter-bombers than their American equivalents. They are also being fitted with long-range hypersonic cruise missiles to further extend their effectiveness. The cost of all these is dramatically less than for their American counterparts.

The effectiveness of the Russian Buk missiles recently used to down the Malaysian Airlines aircraft over the Ukraine should be heeded, despite the tragic connotation to many. Such truck-mounted weapons could be spread all round our northern coastline. They would be much cheaper to position than using ships or aircraft.

There is so much that we could do better, more logically and more economically. We should remove the focus on welfare from defence planning. The favouritism for South Australia has to go. If something can be built better in that state than elsewhere, fine, but otherwise, it should be built where Australia can obtain the best deal, not to provide jobs for redundant car workers. A fundamental thus should be that the review be a truly national project and not one that favours any one geographic region.

With the re-election of the Scott Morrison government, now is the perfect time to re-think our defence priorities. However let us “leaven” the defence establishment “experts”, its generals, admirals, air marshals and bureaucrats seasoned by academics with some practical business people, among them ship builders, naval architects, aircraft manufacturers, electronics experts, petroleum refiners.

Otherwise, Australia is doomed to repeat past mistakes. The Defence Department decision-making will continue to be slow and an ineffective, expensive millstone around our national neck. Our current purchases will inevitably be delivered so late that much of the equipment will be obsolete before it sees service. Senator Reynolds, as a senior Army Reserve officer, should be aware of the many defects of the current Defence Capex arrangements. It is up to her to ring the changes.

Neil Baird PhD is non-executive Chairman of Baird Maritime, a leading global maritime trade publisher. Neil has expert knowledge on fatal ferry accidents, their causes and how to prevent them. He is a former chairman of the World Ocean Council and the Australian Marine Environment Protection Association; a director of the Australian Shipbuilders Association; a member of the Domestic Ferry Safety Committee of INTERFERRY, the international association of ferry owners; and co-convenor of that organisation’s FerrySafe programme, sponsored by the Lloyd’s Register Foundation.

The Christie syndrome

Some may think Winston Churchill was an undischarged maverick. However, he recognised one principle of politics, for whatever else he did, he could be forgiven.

He refused to appease the tyrant.

He refused to appease Hitler. He realised that you cannot appease tyrants – especially those so self-absorbed they believe in their own infallibility. The only outcome was unconditional surrender, which Hitler helped by committing suicide. Whatever Churchill had done before in his long public and chequered career could be forgiven, given his resoluteness to stand up to Hitler. I am sure that he had all the pressure to make peace with Hitler, especially when the other appeared to have the upper hand.

Chris Christie was the hapless Republican Governor of New Jersey, who urged his way into heading the Trump transitional team. As he admits “He felt he could stay on the sidelines or support Trump, gain a seat at the table, and improve Trump’s behaviour”. Wrong – under the chuck wagon!

This situation has been repeated: appeasement – effusive praise – abusive humiliation – under the chuck wagon.

Theresa May tried to appease – dismissed.

Sir Keith Darroch trying to smooth the Trump visit to meet the Queen – a very stupid guy.

The British government has quite a record of cuddling up to dictators. For instance, Mussolini was given the Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath in 1923 from King George V and, more recently, the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaucescu got a gong.

So much for appeasement. But the saving grace, which probably burns within the Trump brain was he was not accorded a peerage on his recent trip, or at least an Order of the Garter, given his self-confessed love of women.

Fast forward to Boris Johnson. He is already a Halifax rather than the Winston Churchill he blusters to be. He will be tossed aside unless he does exactly what Trump wants him to do – apparently destruction of the European Union with his peculiar enhancement of the Putin connection. My only parenthetic comment is that I hope to see this skein of history seared in our collective memory when all is revealed.

However, Boris first has to be crowned.

But irrespective of this outcome the British Isles are now held hostage to the Trump manipulations. Appease all you like, I fear that to get anywhere with the special relationship is to make him the Duke of Queens and betroth his son, Barron (the name says it all) to one of the junior royals in good ol’ mediaeval splendour in a new Trump Tower Cathedral opposite Buck House. Now that would be a deal.

However, seriously, just as with the Nobel Prize speculation which took off with help of Trumps’ publicity machine, wait for the quest for imperial decoration.

Meanwhile, Australia dangles on a thread of aluminum.

Mouse Whisper

Be careful if you approach a door in Portugal and someone says for you to push. That sound in Portuguese means that you actually should pull open the door. However, when you see the word, most of us would have difficulty recognising it as “push” – “puxe”.

On the other hand “quando empurra vem empurrar” – when “push comes to shove” – the Portuguese use the same word for each.

After all, the Portuguese very early gave us what should be our watchword: “Abre olhos!” Open your eyes!

The West Australians know it well as the Abrolhos.

 

Modest Expectations – Union

One can hardly believe that in a country with so many challenges there is so much concern over some footballer who made a list of people he wished to be assigned to Hell.

Echoing what I wrote in an earlier blog, Peter Singer, the bioethicist, is reported as having written:

“Folau is a born-again Christian, and his post was an expression of his religious beliefs. To prevent misunderstanding, I should say that I do not share those beliefs. As an unrepentant atheist, I am among those for whom, Folau believes, hell awaits. But that does not trouble me, because there is, in my view, no god, no afterlife, and no hell. Nor do I differentiate, ethically, between homosexual and heterosexual relationships.”

Singer picks up the “hell awaits”. It is not as though Folau is advocating violence or even earthly sanctions. Nevertheless, the sheer arrogance of such a list should not have goaded the Rugby Union establishment into a response, which in turn has started a chain reaction. It has enabled the fundamentalist Christian groups to start braying about religious freedom, using Folau as a martyr strung up on a goal post.

In the course of this saga the community is being suckered into a situation where a silly statement is now being adopted by those who want to use the cloak of the Christian Church to run extreme agendas; where dominance of women is one of, if not the main objective.

Symptomatic is the resurfacing of the anti-abortion crew, who have never gone away – the matter has become a surrogate for maintaining the subservient role of women. Christian churches out of the mainstream are very good at keeping women as handmaidens, where the violence is not necessarily physical. And it is not limited to Christianity.

I have a visceral dislike for abortion, but it is not my business – not my choice. It should be a woman’s choice.

There was one occasion when I was faced with a friend who wanted an abortion, and the potential father had disappeared. It was at a time before the Menhennitt ruling changed the secrecy and enabled abortions to occur openly, and the words “criminal abortions” rendered obsolete. (In Victoria, a landmark Supreme Court ruling in 1969 (‘Menhennitt ruling’) established that an abortion will be lawful if the accused held an honest belief on reasonable grounds that the abortion was both ‘necessary’ and ‘proportionate’.)

The whole episode made me so disgusted that we, in an ostensibly Christian society, were allowing women to be exposed to emotional and – on those occasions when the “backyard” procedure went wrong – physical trauma on women. Here a degrading scene was being played out, because men – predominantly men, and celibate men at that – thought it sinful.

Fortunately, my friend survived the ordeal. She recounted what had happened, I was appalled but we never talked about it again.

That is the worry if this whole Folau imbroglio, with the forthcoming legal action, is allowed to energise this group of anti-abortionist misogynists over what is, in the end, a belief lodged somewhere inside Folau’s head that should have nothing to do with anything but his contract with RU.

Nearly 20 years ago, Susan Ryan, the former senator, reminded us it had not been that long ago that the House of Representatives’ vote against abortion – four years after the Menhennitt ruling – was 98 to 23.

“The debate was conducted in an all male chamber, the women were outside rallying, organising, shouting through loud hailers, preparing for disappointment. I decided that next time we should be in there making the laws.”

It is not often that I agree with Susan Ryan, but I do on this matter – wholeheartedly. The whole of the Coalition voted against the decriminalisation of abortion although one young Liberal party member who stood up with a flourish as though he was going to break ranks and cross the floor to vote for decriminalisation, looked around and seeing he would be on his own, sat down.

As for Folau, it may have been easier to tell him to get lost. Of course he would not have, but I do hope that when some other sportsman near the end of his career and with enough notoriety to be noticed, says something as stupid as Folau has, that the situation is better handled, including not to renew the contract at some astronomical figure.

For instance, select him in an Australian team and he can then work out who is the adversary, given that he likes to compile lists.

Somewhat more important than Israel Folau

Opera is watched by an estimated a total audience of 300,000. It is a form of artistic licence that belongs to a different age. In that age women were treated dreadfully, composers had various forms of pathology. Who knows how many operas were written under the creative phase of syphilis so rife then. But now, to try and change the opera so as to satisfy a fad is as crass as the efforts of the Bowdler family in the 19th century to change Shakespeare to remove the “dirty bits”.

It is ironic that a report in the SMH of the opera “deisembowdlerising” itself, is perched alongside a report about the number of hate and violent items appearing on Twitter, Facebook/Instagram and YouTube. Here those indulging in such unspeakable behaviour are totalled in the millions.

So while token behaviour to cauterise opera plots may make those involved feel appropriately righteous, the problem is not solved by tokenism towards women’s rights.

However there is, as reported, a public health emergency in the way social media has become diseased.

Humans coming in contact with one another harbour the means of infecting one another with both the good and the bad. Globalisation is the jazzy word that we have for the removal of barriers to the spread of a vector, be it conventional trade, disease or whatever.

As the globalisation of Christianity occurred so did the spread of European disease against which the Pacific islanders and Australian aboriginals among others had no defence.

Similarly the globalisation of those who went to the New World of the Americas took a cornucopia of transmissible diseases as the contribution of Europe in this “free trade of infection”. In return Columbus is reputed to have brought back larges doses of syphilis. So it was a form of bilateral trade.

In those days when there was no idea what caused disease: perhaps the miasma, which was great for the perfume trade; or some dark unknown medium, which provided the excuse to torch women – and the ersatz cure – the miracle sustained by intercession via prayer or veneration of some osseous part of a saint.

Perhaps it is encryption that is the best analogy, especially as the means it has to deceive is akin to microbial mutation.

However, it is always the word “plague” which focuses the mind. And while we do not have the spectre of bodies loaded on carts being wheeled to mass graves, the world is entering into a time of cyberdisease, and “cyberplague” is convenient shorthand, although it has been used in generic terms before.

We now know the bacteria Yersinia pestis causes plague. Fleas and lice carry the bacteria. They can also lodge directly on humans if sanitation is bad – otherwise rats, dogs and cats inter alia are convenient intermediate hosts.

These abbreviated instructions from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta on how to prevent plague provide clues:

* Reduce rodent numbers. Make your home and outbuildings rodent-proof.

* Wear gloves if you are handling or skinning potentially infected animals to prevent contact between your skin and the plague bacteria.

* Use repellent if you think you could be exposed to fleas or lice.

* Keep fleas off your pets by applying flea control products. Do not allow dogs or cats that roam free in endemic areas to sleep on your bed.

So it should not be too difficult to assign the appropriate language to deal with Cyberplague. One thing is for sure: it is the role of Government to supervise. The private sector does not do this well.

This darkening cloud over social media is the scourge. It is a public health emergency. And Donald Trump seems able to call a National Emergency, at a drop of a red cap… if he understands.

Where did all the Money Go?

I received an email this week from John Kitzhaber, once the Governor of Oregon and the man who received international attention when he devised the Oregon Health Plan. In part he wrote:

The cost of health care in this country is utterly out of control.  Mind-boggling. Approaching $3.8 trillion a year. This amount of money has attracted a whole host of private equity funds (that are) simply milking the system to feed shareholder profits. We had big national for-profit insurance companies that are likewise using public funds to increase shareholder value instead of reinvesting in the community.

John Kitzhaber – painting by Henk Pander

That problem is now also occurring here. When the Medibank model was established here in Australia, the expectation was that the patient would receive a medical benefit when they consulted a medical practitioner to assisting in paying for that medical service.

Doctors were considered to be in solo or group practice, and in fact when the first benefits were struck for procedural items, it was assumed that the benefit reflected what the government was prepared to pay to the patient for the perceived skill of the doctor.

Therefore when the array of medical benefits was struck for a surgical procedure, it was assumed the patient benefit recognised the skill of the doctor. The cost of the attendant scrub nurses, the surgical materials, the operating theatre were all absorbed into hospital costs, covered either by the public or private hospitals. In other words, the Medibank the scheme was constructed on a guild model – a hangover from the time when doctors sent accounts in guineas to patients who could afford to pay.

However, the medical professional entrepreneurs recognised that with the advance in technology, particularly in pathology but followed by diagnostic imaging with the arrival of the CT scans, there was a “pot of gold” awaiting. Radiotherapy and general practice have followed, and now other specialties such as cardiology are the target.

Technology improvements emphasised two of the problems with an open-ended floor price scheme as Medibank and subsequently Medicare demonstrated. The first one was the entrepreneurial manipulation of throughput against capacity for a particular procedure. This was lucrative when the Medicare benefit was set at a low throughput and not scrupulously adjusted over time as throughput increased with technological improvements. The second was the tiresome ‘pass-the-parcel’ game between the state and federal governments, otherwise known as ‘cost-shifting’. Private sector entrepreneurs have been able to utilise this for their financial gain but state governments have equally become adept at the cost shift and at the same time burying the real costs of health care.

As can be seen, health financing was drifting away from the original intention of enabling the patient to get a fair and reasonable subsidy for their medical care

The problem with the business model, which may have been devised first by economic rationally doctors in the Edelstein mould, is that it has been transformed into a business model not unlike the one described by Kitzhaber.

Here the doctors may be listed as the providers but in reality it is a company which employs them in some form which is harvesting the profits and shovelling Medicare money who knows where into tax havens around the world. Medicare money has acted as seeding finance for the eventual acquisition of overseas health companies.

It is difficult to watch the Federal government being so compliant. The problem is compounded by these companies giving a fraction of their Medicare-seeded profits to political parties for them to enable to run election campaigns saying they are looking after “all Australians” and thus these private firms to have a firm foothold into the political process.

The central governmental agencies know this but at present their political masters are impervious to this flow of taxpayer’s money off shore – after all we have a taxpayer Medicare levy so some firm profiting from such taxpayer funding can buy a health service in the USA or a pathology company in Germany – in effect using Australian taxpayers’ money to fund their business and not only that, but funding where there is a guaranteed floor price for each of services. So risk is negligible once the investment model is settled.

Kitzhaber’s comments are more than timely.

And for us in Australia, it gives us gives another meaning among others for a sonic boom.

Mouse Whisper

Heard between Nobby and Cambooya driving through that magnificent black soil country of the Darling Downs.

“Mate, the soil is so good out here you can plant nails and they come up crowbars.”

Yes, appropriately it is Steele Rudd country out here. But as my young mouse cousin asked “Who is Steele Rudd?”

 

Modest Expectations Nein

Hey wait a minute. Sure, most people didn’t predict the result of the election. I thought we had 1972, although I had reservations about Shorten and his lack of charisma and the fact that 1972 did not yield the landslide that Whitlam had hoped for given how ghastly McMahon was.

Plainly Morrison was underestimated – the child actor with the perpetual grin prevailed … sort of.

But hey again, wait a minute. The language is going a bit over the top: “crushing victory”, “blood bath”, “horror night”. Hardly. What has happened is the media Kommentariat have got it wrong – to a degree.

Having said that, even before the election, Shorten, although losing a seat in South Australia in the redistribution was gifted another seat in the ACT and three in Victoria– one new and two previously held Liberal Party seats. In other words, Shorten started with a three-seat advantage.

Unlike Whitlam who won five seats in his home State, Shorten lost, if you don’t count the new seat of Fraser and the two notionally Labor seats as gains, one in Victoria. My pre-election line: “And tellingly Shorten comes from Victoria” begged a reply. I however did not expect “It won’t matter. He’s a loser.”

And the ironic final blow was that Shorten has lost Bass, the seat where the Beaconsfield mine is located and where he started constructing his national profile in 2006.

Morrison has eked out a victory, with Dr Faust very much clothed as a banana bender or cane toad – whichever description takes your fancy when describing our Northern State. He now has 24 members from Queensland (25 if one counts Bob Katter) in the House of Representatives with their de facto leader Barnaby Joyce just across the border.

Morrison is probably relieved that he has lost Abbott, because he does not have to find a place in the ministry and the Falangist right have lost their parliamentary leader.

Morrison should however be mindful that all three of the latest Coalition Prime Ministers have lost their seats, one by resignation and two at elections. Not a good precedent.

One significant gain is that Arthur Sinodinos has regained his health in his battle with cancer. How long he is in remission will be critical for Morrison. His exchanges with Penny Wong were exquisite on election night. Sometime one sees elegance in politics and how two people with differing views can accommodate the other.

Morrison may have heard his Brisbane colleague Dutton say, “This is the sweetest victory of them all”, repeating the quintessential Keating paean to hubris. As Keating found out three years later, Nemesis is the enemy of hubris. However, Queenslanders are a distinct breed. Having worked and travelled widely in Queensland, I recognise that it is useful to have a friend or two there, especially if these friends are close to the land. They give one a jolt of reality, and yet if I were Morrison I would prefer those jolts to be spaced and constructive.

The Victorians put away the cricket bats that I thought they would produce, and have given the Coalition the benefit of the doubt. However, there were big swings in some of the Victorian electorates and Mr Frydenberg will be acutely aware that he has a restless constituency, with cricket bats still at the ready.

And listening to Barnaby Joyce post-election where he seemed to be under some influence – perhaps alcohol – then the next years are not going to be pleasant. Likewise for Queenslanders, who have been engulfed in extreme weather changes and with a decaying asset in the Great Barrier Reef are hankering for more jobs. To them Adani spells Employment. Again we shall see.

Quilpie

I love going to the Queensland Outback. It reflects the Australia of my childhood.

One week a couple of years ago, we stayed in Quilpie in a small motel at the end of town, overlooking the railway track. Fresh water was limited in the town and so we bathed in the motel shower – hot bore water with a distinct sulphurous smell – in other words dilute sulphuric acid. Breakfast was as I remember in the classic fried eggs and bacon on white bread toast. Could have added sausages.

In the evening we sat around having a beer or two with the fettlers whose job was to maintain the railway out to Quilpie and who were staying at the same motel as we were. Mind you, they said, there was only one cattle train a year between Charleville and Quilpie, but the line had to be maintained. An empty freight train comes out from Toowoomba once year to pick up stock and then generally goes back empty, just so the Queensland Government auditor presumably can be informed that the line is still in use.

And yet here is a decaying railway line passing through one of the major black opal mining areas in the country. There is a shop with the most exquisite black opals. Beyond – at Eromanga – there is dinosaur country with a fully-fledged palaeontology setup. In this area, as in Winton to the north, there is a trove of dinosaur and megafauna skeletons. The accommodation here is first class, and the shower water is drinkable.

One only has to look at the media to see how popular tourist rail journeys have become worldwide, and that journey out to Quilpie from Toowoomba is far from boring. After all, how many places in Australia are a refuge for bilbies, as is the Charleville railway station. Tourism Queensland: good for jobs; good for the environment; and after you have renovated it, the Great Western Railway would be a great attraction, the basic infrastructure is there – Michael Portillo might even be induced to ride it.

Pity about the railway line from Charleville to Cunnamulla. Just south of Cunnamulla it was blown up in one of the biggest explosions ever in Australia in 2015 when a truck carrying ammonium nitrate exploded on the Mitchell Highway. No-one was killed , but the explosion has left an impressive hole – as if a meteorite had hit there.

However, the problem is that Queensland politicians only seem to think of mining and thus predictably not much happens to this rail line beyond Chinchilla, predictably a coal mining area.

But Queensland is not just coal. It is so much more!

As Miss Bingle may have called out: “Why the bloody hell don’t you realise it?” (With appropriate acknowledgement of the Prime Minister when he ran the Tourist Commission.)

Dental Health

The re-election of the Coalition will mean that the Dental Health of the nation will hardly rate. The Prime Minister said it was a State matter. It is not. It is a Constitutional responsibility: *51(xxiiiA) The provision of maternity allowances, widows’ pensions, child endowment, unemployment, pharmaceutical, sickness and hospital benefits, medical and dental services (but not so as to authorize any form of civil conscription), benefits to students and family allowances. (My underlining)

I always remember in the generation before me that in the working classes when a woman became engaged to be married there was a strong likelihood of her having all her teeth removed, if they had not all rotted away already.

The problem in pre-antibiotic days, the mouth was a pool in which the teeth harboured nasty germs and hence was the fountain for systemic disease. If it were not teeth it was tonsils. Removal of both followed. And even further back, in the generation before, diphtheria lurked.

This is no longer the case so long as dental hygiene is maintained and there is fluoride in the water.

My premise is that fluoride should be added to every town’s water except where there is already enough naturally occurring fluoride in the water supply, such as at Quilpie in western Queensland. Another problem of course is that most bottled water does not contain fluoride. It should be mandatory, but as with the dairy industry products to Asia reported elsewhere, science bends to the voodoo.

In fact there are 48 councils in Queensland where there is no fluoridation of the water supply i.e. 68 per cent of the Councils representing 800,000 people. Councils in the more populous regions are fluoridated. So with Queensland politicians in the ascendency, water fluoridation is not likely to happen unless there is a will to do so.

As I have foreshadowed before – and as I have done for years – I shall continue to pursue the need for a national dental scheme, drawing from the experience of Medicare, remembering that Medicare was once strongly opposed by the medical profession, the Coalition and others, even Queenslanders.

The Forgotten Warrior

Mention of Medicare reminds me of someone else. In all the posthumous idolatry of Bob Hawke, we have forgotten probably one of the real statesmen – that rare person in politics who was courteous, intelligent and who probably unleashed Paul Keating onto the wider stage. He was the policeman from the seat of Oxley. He is a Queenslander and his name is Bill Hayden.

When all the plaudits are being handed out to Bob Hawke about Medicare, the real architect was Bill Hayden with the introduction of Medibank, a decade earlier. He resurrected the Australian Labor Party as successfully as the right of the NSW wing of the Party buried him, and of course as they say, the rest is history.

Apart from a reference to another Queenslander, the drover’s dog being able to win the election, Hayden did not carry on like that later Queensland incumbent who was rejected by his Party. Hayden continued his career as Minister and later Governor-General.

He undoubtedly would have pursued the reforms that Hawke instituted, but he would have renegotiated a foreign policy, which would have made us less of a United States satrap. But then of course we shall never know the validity of that comment. Further, I doubt whether Hawke would have behaved as Hayden did if, instead of winning, he had been defeated in his 1983 quest to be leader of the ALP.

Bill Hayden lives on. He is a great Australian.

Twirling Tea Leaves – A Tempest in my Teacup

I am a bit worried about all this fuss involving a gentle giant rugby union player called Israel Folau.

He posts this notice: “drunks, homosexuals, adulterers, liars, fornicators, thieves, atheists, idolators – Hell awaits you”.

Now do we presume that Hell is currently empty of such diversity? If not, it could just as well be a description of the population of the Eastern suburbs of Sydney – or for that matter anywhere else in Australia where there is a heterogeneous population of people.

    • Drunks – we do not seem to have a problem societally there.
    • Adulterers – we have no-fault divorce
    • Liars – most politicians led by Trump
    • Fornicators – see Adulterers-in-training
    • Thieves – the banking Royal Commission disclosed how acceptable that is – presumably Hell is also in the Cayman Islands.
    • Atheists – doesn’t matter, they don’t believe in Hell.
    • Idolaters – my objection is stated below.

I do not subscribe to the Dante interpretation of Hell.

It does not interfere in my belief that there is a God that I do not see demons with tails and carrying pitchforks as potential eternal companions. I happen to believe very much in the Trinity and am comfortable with the Anglican High Church interpretation.

So am I an idolater “awaiting Hell” because I believe iconography a very important component of my belief system? The Christian Church over the centuries has been racked by the Iconclastic, with whom I disagree. You see iconoclasm in the effect that Cromwell and his ilk had on England. Quoting David Freeberg on a different period: “At the end of the sixth century, Gregory the Great threw the pagan idols – that is, the statues of classical antiquity – into the Tiber. They were idols not only because they were beautiful and therefore seductive, but because they were the replete symbols of a corrupt religion, only recently hostile to the true one.” Thus it is difficult to work out who is the Folau idolater.

However, I am not distressed about being sent to Hell because Israel has listed me. Should I exhort the non-iconoclastic cohort of the Christian Church to rise up against the iconoclast Folau? The answer – “No”.

So what is the fuss all about?

It could be argued that Folau is being made a martyr for his religious beliefs. I cannot detect any hatred, just an assertion about Hell. Hell may be on the Planet upon which we live, but show me the actual workplace please.

There is another worrying, less metaphysical aspect. Qantas sponsors Rugby Union and I wonder would this pursuit of Folau be so great if, for instance, another Alan, Alan Jones was the head of Qantas.

The Emblem of Rugby Union Australia should be changed to a Teacup.

Mouse Whisper

And to my Boss Blogger who is always asking me for smart quotes.

“You picked the wrong electorate – you said Corangamite would be the bellwether electorate, should have put the bell on the Chisholm sheep, you dill” … as whispered from Mousehole in Cornwall, where I am having a glorious time with all me mice mates.

Modest Expectations Ate

Bob Hawke has died. A cricketer, he would have been proud of making 89. Unlike Whitlam, he had a very good first XI. Some were brilliant. He did not make the same mistakes as Whitlam. He was not divisive; as with all good captains, he gauged the strengths and weaknesses of the opposition, and that of his own side. He had at least one dictum – he exerted attitude change in his own party such that the old time union collective thinking in which he had grown up, was changed.

However, when you go against your normal working person constituency, no matter how beneficial that might be for the Australian community, paradoxically you increase the power and influence of those elements which remain emphatically opposed to your reforms and who, over time, would seek to distort or destroy those reforms.

In time others may pore over the Hawke legacy and I for one wonder what he would have done for Australia if he were of the current generation and waiting for Saturday.

A Surfeit of Coke

Talking of mortality, one option that has not been widely canvassed about the current US Presidency is that Trump may die suddenly in office. If it is true that he drinks 12 cans of Diet Coke a day, has a diet of fast food and is so obviously overweight suggests that he is a walking health disaster waiting to happen.

In his latest medical history his height is recorded as 6ft 3in, but on his medical record when was being drafted into the US Army the record says 6ft 2in. Has he grown an inch as an adult? Really? Look at his shoe heels. Already obese at his recorded 243 pounds, how does anyone know what his real weight actually is? That missing inch plunges him further into the Obese.

Of course we do not know about his health status any more than we know about his tax returns. He obfuscates from his sandpit. It is his whole strategy to create sandstorms.

However, the one thing that Trump cannot make a deal about is his physical health.   He can only hope that the drugs will deal with his atheroma, not to mention what appears to be a cancer-prone diet.

Judging by the media reports there is a chorus of learned doctors or psychologists who obviously believe he is mentally impaired despite the protestations. His bizarre behaviour is just a quirk of his personality – a legacy of his early childhood his apologists say.

Trump prefers Diet Coke, and his daily consumption of it is extreme. According to the pundits, the excess drinking is linked to mood swings and dementia. As we all know, because he tells us, he is a cohort where n=1. He may be thus unaffected and the mood swings may be due to other factors, but the world ought to know. It is reasonable to know the mental state of a person who has control of the nuclear button, and what has caused it.

Is he mad? It is a question that publically the world would not answer through its current beige array of politicians. There are those politicians who prefer the Trump flamboyance – a man of many mental colours. There is that state of Munich delusion that one can cuddle up to Trump, know this man’s mind, and get him to sign a promise to be a “good, predictable boy”. Some have tried to put a political straitjacket on him – to be his great friend and mentor – to their cost. That is his art of the Deal. It costs you, not him!

Well, his handlers could deprive him of Diet Coke and see what happened, and see if the twitter finger stops twitching and rationality prevails.

However he is well past satisfying Koch’s postulates. The Diet Coke could have replaced his blood and no longer would he be like any of us mortals …

He is the Child Trump caught up in The Rapture. The Rapture is quoted as a doctrine that at the return of Christ, all believers will be caught up, “raptured”, to meet the Lord in the air. The bodies of dead believers will be resurrected, and all believers, living and dead, will be glorified. To the believers, it is a passport to immortality. That is the Child Trump constituency, who may call him not King but at least Duke.

The problem as with Mr L Ron Hubbard, whose disappearance galvanised a whole generation of charlatans, if he dies now as a demonstrably unhealthy Old Trump, his followers may believe the Child Trump is not dead. He may become a cult for the Enraptured, setting up shrines with figurines of the dear little child with golden hair and red baseball cap along the highways of America waiting for him to come again.

However, that is probably better than that of him never accepting the American people’s verdict saying at the end of 2020 “You’re fired!”

Shoulder replacement – The Anatomy of Medical Advance

I have a worn-out body. A major road accident over 30 years ago did not help.

So I was attracted to an advertisement in a major metropolitan daily for complete shoulder replacement. The advertisement is cast in a way that suggests it is just the thing for a worn out shoulder. Out with the old; in with the new. Like repairing a car, but with a car you at least can get a written guarantee.

However, when one is embarking on a major operation, such as a shoulder replacement, it may go well. You, the patient, if it is a new procedure, may become the poster person for the operation, the one the hospital and surgeon wheels out when boasting how great you, the Result is. You are the Positive Result and are allowed to say a few words, the surgeon performs the benediction, interviewer sums up from the media handout – and the camera is turned off.

The problem is that what the advertisement lacks is setting out the complications, which are rapidly becoming the small type to protect the surgeon and which frankly most patients do not want to hear. There it is in small type at the bottom of the advertisement: “any surgical or invasive procedure carries risk. Before proceeding, you should seek a second opinion from an appropriately qualified health practitioner.”

However, if you get a complication with such a complex operation as a shoulder joint replacement, you are looking down a long corridor of pain and disability.

I consulted a shoulder surgeon some time ago, because that is how specialised orthopaedics is. This bloke was very frank. Shoulder surgery was difficult; unpredictable results; the surgeon he would recommend is “very good”. However, in the end it is how much knowledge I, the patient, have in making an informed decision. I weighed the evidence up, and said I had decided against an operation on either shoulder.

Outcome is one matter for making an informed decision, especially as increasingly surgery is leaving foreign material in your body. Some is fine; some is not and when a technique is new, how do you know the likely outcome? The answer is you, the patient, do not. Trust in the integrity and skills of the operator are paramount.

But not quite! What was absent from the advertisement was the cost.

Let’s list them.

There is the cost of the hospital stay – everything down to the nametag. The cost of the surgeon – the enquiry about whether there was an assistant and why – and then the anaesthetist. That person is often forgotten in determining the cost, because he or she is the person the patient sees fleetingly.

Then there is the cost of rehabilitation. Because there is a belief that the surgery has a magical effect similar to laying on of hands, the need for rehabilitation may be underestimated. Try to take a middle course and ask, even if it means flattering your particular surgeon that “it could not possibly happen with him or her at the ready”, get a price which includes a contingency item for the costs of complications.

The solution – make it mandatory for prices to be displayed, including the guaranteed consumer floor price – that is, the Medicare benefit. This makes the shortfall starkly obvious.

Then given the notorious asymmetry of information, it is suggestive that there may be a case of brokerage – where those with knowledge negotiate for the customer, without the emotional stress of having the condition. Needless to say, there is a business model to be developed where, through brokerage, the asymmetry in health information can be corrected – as long as the process is uncontaminated, as the mortgage brokerage system recently was shown to be.

It’s Time – The Bubble rhymes with Trouble

One has the feeling that Victorians are going to go after Morrison and his crew with cricket bats. Morrison is not the right fit for Victorian voters. The hillbilly persona does not wash well in Victoria especially as he so clearly identifies himself as a New South Welshman, and the fact that Frydenburg is the only Victorian of note left standing says a great deal about the state of the Liberal party. The problem is the myth of a liberal Victorian has been blown away with the rise of the populist far right in Victorian Liberal politics, since the Kennett accession in 1990s.

The situation uncannily resembles 1972 – a NSW Prime Minister and a Victorian Treasurer. However, the Leader of the Opposition was Whitlam in 1972 – New South Welshman, secured six seats in NSW, the greatest number. His “It’s time” introduced the charismatic presidential-style campaign. Despite everything, Whitlam did not win in a landslide. In fact, Labor lost four seats in Victoria, one in South Australia and two in West Australia. However, it picked up seats in Victoria (net two), Queensland and Tasmania.

Snedden was never in any danger of losing his seat of Bruce in 1972 and Frydenburg should be in the same position. But is he? The bellwether seat is Corangamite, long a Liberal stronghold but for some time marginal with the spread of Geelong to the west counterbalanced by the shift of affluent retirees to places like Torquay and Barwon heads. If Corangamite is lost, so is Australia to the Government.

And tellingly Shorten is a Victorian.

If the Labor party wins big in Victoria, and takes seats in New South Wales and South Australia, what happens in Queensland, Northern Territory and Tasmania becomes irrelevant in the numbers game, except in perpetuating the cleavage in Australian society. This cleavage is not more starkly demonstrated than by the Green and Labor advance in the northern coastal regions of NSW. However, go across the border into the Gold Coast and one is in solid Liberal Party territory.

One has to realise that love of a member in Queensland is inversely proportional to the despisal in the “Mexican” States. Listening to a highly intelligent North Queensland academic referring to the member for Dawson as “good ol’ George” is confronting for those of equal intelligence without the privilege of being baked in the tropical sun.

However, there are several differences in the political scene now and in 1972 and that is the rise of the Independents. The Independents are fashioning themselves into a party of the Centre, freed from the constraints of the Creationists, Falangists and Rural Socialists, that coalition within the Coalition. One of the important features of this election is to see how well the Independents perform – one observation is that they seem to do well when the incumbent member is so appalling that anyone somewhere decent becomes electable.

The bellwether here is Kerryn Phelps. She profited from the clumsy dumping of Malcolm Turnbull and the fact that she had a high profile. However, the problem with her high profile is that she has a great deal of baggage and given her time as President of the AMA and the nature of her support base at that time, it would be a surprise if she has maintained that support base. Considering that her opponent has had more time to assess her, is a former DFAT charmer, is as likely to be as smooth as Dr Phelps is spiky, then she has a challenge. If she holds the seat, then again one can guarantee the swing is on against the Government.

However, the lessons for the government are undoubtedly how this country goes about climate change, how it participates in the Coalition of nations in the South Pacific, how New Zealand and ourselves become outspoken on the matter – just as I would remind the reader that 20 years ago we were outspoken about getting nuclear testing by the French out of our backyard swimming pool.

So I can predict, but I am notoriously bad at it. However, irrespective of whether Morrison or Shorten is Prime Minister after this weekend, any future government worth its reputation should realise that Australia is the joint Guardian of the South Pacific and Southern Ocean and Antarctica – and that is only the start. Trade and jobs become irrelevant if the Earth becomes uninhabitable.

And that, Mr Morrison, is not a Canberra bubble!

The Curse of Pre-polling – The Loss of the Democracy Sausage

I have voted. It was very convenient. It was easy to park the car near the hall. No waiting time. I met both the Greens and Liberal candidates – both nice guys. However as it is a safe Labor seat, you are more likely to meet Elvis Presley than the Member.

Pre-polling is so popular, since most Australians view voting on the Day as one step from having to go to the dentist. Having to run the gauntlet of those trying to shove a piece of paper into your hand and then having to queue, in the end, everybody will have exerted their preference and have voted by Election Day. In several elections’ time, if this trend continues, Election Day may become the Day that nobody came. So there you are, with the picture of politicians with a heavy countenance as they have when they are voting for an increase of their entitlements, in bilateral solemnity agreeing to now decrease the pre-polling time in the future. After all, one has to protect the “democracy sausage”.

Mouse Whisper

Heard in the Louis Vuitton emporium in Pooncarie as one stockman said to the Vuittoneur as he was looking through the range of outback portmanteaux:

“Why is it that politicians are always having Visions? Who do they expect to see? And why – if you can have a Vision of the Future – is it not acceptable to have a Hallucination of the future? Makes as much sense.”

 

Modest Expectations V

The Roman V for five reminded me of this anecdote which some may find trivial and others may see as something more profound.

It was the time when Vic Garland, the then Opposition whip, was giving the second reading speech in reply to the legislation on the Australia Council Bill. Bill Snedden, then the Leader of the Opposition, was to have given the speech but his wife’s unexpected illness precipitated his early departure from the House that day.

It was an impressive speech, and Vic Garland had an equally convincing delivery. However, there are always pitfalls when the speaker, no matter how impressive his diction, has a basic unfamiliarity with the topic. In referencing the costly purchases of Jackson Pollock’s “Blue Poles” and of de Kooning’s “Woman V”, he said “Vee” instead of five. In Hansard it stays correct, and a mispronunciation was a zephyr wisp drifting across a somnolent chamber. Like Vic Garland, a zephyr comes from the West.

Perhaps Vic would have been somewhat surprised that the speech had been written by Jack Hibberd, the playwright of “Dimboola”, and John Timlin, who was the administrator of the Melbourne based anarchic Australian Performing Group with their outlet the Pram Factory in Carlton. Snedden had read the speech and given it the “thumbs up”. He did not care how either of them had voted. He just agreed with the sentiments in the speech.

Vic might also have been somewhat surprised had he known who the authors were. The words that Vic uttered inter alia may have been seen to be somewhat radical:

I have pointed out that less than 5 per cent of ACA funds have been directed to community arts by the Whitlam Government – a so-called populist crew which rows its fiscal boat to the already well-endowed shores of those few cultural monoliths who have for years fed well on the subsidy cake.

And further on: “To spread available funds widely through the community seems now to be a shared aim of both the Government and the Opposition. A basic requisite then is close consultation with the State directors since these are the people closest in touch with regional local groups. We reject totally the notion that the Council should consist of itinerant and possibly ignorant friends of whatever government happens to be in power.

All parties want our culture preserved and developed. We wish to see diversity of the culture maintained. We wish to see Aboriginal cultural efforts expanded without destroying the intrinsic requirements and tenets of that culture.”

 Vic had delivered it well apart from the “Vee”. Hibberd and Timlin, watching on, may have shuddered but in the long term what did it matter? In any event, a month later, Snedden was gone.

Trying to establish policy where the aim is to seek views from all sides of the political spectrum is a tough task, and you lay yourself open to yon Cassius. After all, being the centre should be purple – the place where blue and red mix.

I remember well the judgment by the Coalition backbencher of the Snedden staffer who was seen talking to the young Charlie Perkins around a campfire outside Parliament. “Who is that bloody communist working for Snedden?” Talking to Charlie Perkins. Shock … horror.

Trolls always have difficulty with the concept that my adversary may only be as close as my policy neighbour. Their angst, alienation and ethnic hatred is a bar to anything.

Later Snedden would be a good friend of the Pram Factory in assisting its survival. He was very loyal.

The Triennial Comedy Festival

It is strange that when there is a national election, I always think what would it be like if Australia were a Republic. I am a republican, and have been since I was very young. Even though I had a privileged Anglican education, it was always my Irish roots that called me to the Republican cause. I was comforted by the fact that the early great Irish revolutionaries like Robert Emmet and Wolf Tone were Church of Ireland and not Roman Catholic.

I may say I am “committed” but I never joined the Turnbull caravan nor the current Red Bandana Brigade. One reason is that with Elizabeth on the British throne, it is an exercise in futility.

For no reason other than most of the population have known no other monarch and she is such a closed, controlled individual – a metaphor for a colonial lounge room, comfortable, cream coloured walls with flashes of colour in the curtains. The flashes of colour signal how good the British Royals are at pomp. However at the same time, monarchy is a symbol of nostalgic stagnation glossed over as “certainty” – and who expects her to die?

Yet there is a second reason for going easy on my republican stance and that is the Australian election cycle.

The current Australian election campaigns are run as if they are Presidential, but only in style. Presidential substance, however, comes against constitutional barriers, which are impossible to avoid.

We have to ride the carousel every three years to elect a new government. The community finds it hard to keep up the interest at the best of times when elections are so frequent, hence the media attention on the bizarre array of peripheral political buskers.

However, if we removed all the trappings of a foreign monarchy, most politicians would be comfortable with a system where the end point would be “me” as President. Australians would now have a flexible “Republican” constitution, the Presidential hand would be on patronage, the bizarre fringe would be in the government or in an asylum depending on Presidential whim, and I nearly forgot: “pesky” elections would be held once every ten years.

Currently the autocratic President is the fashionable model, a person who alters the constitution to remain in power with a series of coercive institutions to maintain that power. Trump yearns for this power; democracy is a hindrance. When one looks back on the Trump legacy, the end point will have led to the destruction of trust and paralysis in rational policy formation. Government decision-making becomes a game of dice for the rent seekers and mercantilists.

Now if we got rid of Elizabeth, then elections could become real American vaudeville. Roll up, roll up and see the Screaming Circus Strong Man. We sober people are shocked; we avert our eyes from this grease-painted figure.

However, this behaviour does not seem to affect his following any more than stage performers shed their audience. That is a republic!

Trump has an audience. It is only that Trump has an unusual spiel for a politician – he insults and his audience squeal with delight. It is a well known trick of the comic. However, remember, beware the mob that in the end invariably pulls down the figure that it has created.

Maybe our election campaigns freed from our Constitution would become festivals of the absurd – after all, the Italians have Beppe Grillo, a comic who is the eminence grise of the Five Star Movement in Italy; the Ukrainians have just elected a comic, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, as President for the next five years.

Of course nothing like this would happen in Australia, proclaimed the Best Country in the World. Our politicians are serious people. They are not comics; desist, you with your hand on the voting paper, desist from saying anything. Let us not have cheap irony; and anyway the “word” is comical.

So let the republican idea lie for the present.

In three years time when this campaign is all repeated and when the climate is teetering on the edge of the irreversible, when rent seekers and short-term carpet baggers seem to have retained their ascendency, it is only a hope that the electorate as a whole will have at last awakened – listening to the sounds of our descendants, pawns sizzling on the barbecue of climate change. Hopefully Australia would have stopped drawing the Joker from the pack of policy options!

Then in six years, there will be only two words on the election campaign trail – “Water” and “Climate “. Nevertheless, all may not have changed. Hannah Gadsby may be leading the new Social Democrats. Then we can think of a Republic – when it is a necessity.

A magnificent obsession

Tim Fischer is a great Australian. When he looks at you, you feel as though he is peeling away the layers of crap that you pick up in a lifetime of being in the System and seeing whether there is something underneath. He speaks in his own unique argot, but he does not need a translator. You know perfectly well what he is about.

Sir John Monash

One of his obsessions over at least the past decade is Sir John Monash posthumously being raised to the rank of Field Marshal. Many have attributed this not happening in his lifetime to the fact that he was Jewish at a time when being Jewish excluded you from such institutions as the Melbourne Club and when the Roman Catholic Good Friday liturgy made mention of “perfidious Jews”. In fact Monash had been sent to Scotch College over Melbourne Grammar School because Scotch taught Hebrew.

Another reason was that Monash was “militia” and not “regular army”. After all, “the traditional” Haig insisted on sending the cavalry in to the last stages of the War, notwithstanding that Monash the engineer, because of his technical superiority, had virtually won the War already.

Monash was loved by his troops; to him one Australian casualty was one too many – and in the final offensive which defeated the German army, some of the feats performed by Australian soldiers were extraordinary – frighteningly murderous to Germans in their own way but building upon the stuff of the Australian legend.

I know that Tim Fischer wanted to see the posthumous award of Field Marshal in 2018. He asked Turnbull and Turnbull, as was his wont, deferred the request to the armed forces hierarchy. They said no; Turnbull said “no”.

Fortunately, Bill Shorten was a proponent of recognising Monash. All the obfuscation about not doing so is at the feet of academics and of course Brendan Nelson. Chattering about precedent, one hears the voices: “You know, he never commanded enough men to be a field-marshal; he was only a lieutenant general at the outset of the final campaign” – and on it goes.

The Digger, emerging from the shadows of war, can be heard saying: Mate, he won the War. Don’t give me this stuff about a posthumous award being a dangerous precedent for others to be promoted after they have died. There was only one Monash.

And by the way, there is only one Tim Fischer.

Mouse Whisper

“No matter how rational, logical and ingenious Monash was, there was nowhere to escape the insanity of war. “

Roland Perry the author of these words is a remarkable wordsmith – first published in 1979; 7th book 1994; 17th book 2007; 28th book 2014.

Modest Expectations

I have always liked writing. I was encouraged to write by Alister Brass. He was very much my mentor.  He died of AIDs in 1986. He was a great guy. I have kept writing. He had taught me a lot about myself, and how someone who was a little older than myself could have lived a fuller life than mine.  I miss him every day.

I always wonder where Murdoch fits in all this. Alister’s father, Douglas, was one of Murdoch’s first editors. I think he had a big effect on Murdoch, in the days when his world may have been that of the idealist.

However, I worry about all this technology that has sprung up in an unregulated space and where the forces of good and evil are constantly doing battle. Can I for whom my first written words required an inkwell; and when even the biro did not exist, adapt.

I find myself living in a world in a space which is getting smaller because the demands for instant anything have become the norm – money and fame are generally high on the instant agenda. Words are airbrushed away.

So why bother to write? Because I want to, and I have little time left. So here goes.

A singular New Zealander

One of the growing problems with my generation who grew up in a world where men were conditioned to take the lead is that some of us never adapted. After all, when I first went to dancing classes, men went forward in the dance and women went backwards. My mother stayed at home; it was the expectation that women would be in a helpless situation where we men were expected to open the door, let women go first; we made sure we walked on the gutter side of the footpath. It was called chivalry. Thus we grew up in a world where women were considered to be inferior (they were paid less and still are). If the parents had money, the girls went to finishing school; if not, they were selected for lower paid jobs, which were considered “suitable”.

Since then I have lived through a period of progressive gender assertiveness, but I wonder whether anything much has changed over my lifetime in the relationships between the sexes. For instance we may have the first Anglican woman bishop, but the Vatican looks to be much the same, old passive aggressive men in fancy dress and curious red hats.

However there is always a tipping point. Perhaps that tipping point is Jacinda Ardern.  When I read her CV, all my prejudices are invoked – lapsed Mormon, professional student politician – yet when she spoke and when she moved around after the Canterbury massacre – her very presence evoked in me a sensation that I have not had since I was a young man – the same as I had about John Kennedy.

Not that I was an early convert to Kennedy; I think I much preferred Hubert Humphrey, a remnant from the New Deal days but with a passion for social action.

However, Kennedy was a reformer. He grew on a young man’s consciousness. He made mistakes but while he lived, he served to remind us that there was a better world and he was there to inspire us to take responsibility for our actions and to say it as it should be. In those days communication was grainy black and white and the sound tended to blur the voice, but the intent was there. He made life all seem worthwhile – somebody, however distant, to try to emulate. I cried when I heard that Saturday morning in November 1963 that he had been assassinated.

And what happened next? Kids a bit younger than me died in a pointless war, which succeeded in dividing the world in which I grew up and left me confused in a way I was not when Kennedy was alive. I think others have labelled it “political entropy” and one wades on through this disorder for a long time.

Over this period, politicians have lost the confidence of the public. Camelot never existed, and the raft of exposés have portrayed Kennedy as less than the Camelot myth.  But the important point is missed – in those years from his inauguration in 1961 to his death in 1963 – to me and many others he could be summed up in one word – a paragon.

Now I am an old man, and seeing this woman, the Prime Minister of New Zealand, she is the first politician since Kennedy to cause me to believe, perhaps that to me she an exemplar against the fear and loathing that has characterised so much of what passes for political debate. I, like many, am just frustrated by the low level of debate. There is no longer any consideration in this Me All The Time rent-seeking political crop for policy discussion.

Yet Jacinda Ardern gives me hope. Her words – her demeanour of grace, compassion, resolve, her ability to call out the bully – the courage of making herself a target for all the “unspeakables”. She is indeed a paragon.

Just as I learnt from Alister, watching him succumbing to AIDS; now at a distance and not knowing the woman I think I have now adapted. Taken a long time, I must say.

However, Prime Minister if I have the privilege of ever meeting you, please do not hug me. I am not a hugger.

“True” is the not only word that starts with “Tru”

President Harry Truman wrote to his wife from New York on 14 June 1946:

Went to Hard Rock Club party at the Statler last night and had a good time. Lost twenty-six dollars, a quarter at a time, between 9:00 P.M. and midnight, but enjoyed the evening.

The President loved playing poker. I have been to his “Little White House” at Key West and seen the innocuous worktable flipped over to become a green baize card table.  Thus, I recognised that “good time” meant such a poker game. The Hard Rock Club were associates who had campaigned and accompanied him to the Potsdam conference.

Meanwhile, over in the Jamaica Hospital in Queen’s County, for Mary and Fred a child was born – for them a son was given. And he would be called Donald who, as he found later “the government is indeed upon his shoulders” and he of course would totally agree with the prophet’s summation that he be called “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”

But some would dispute “of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end and from his throne and over his kingdom establishing righteousness from that time on forever”. But then one would not expect Isaiah to get everything right.

However, there are interesting parallels in the presidential careers of Truman and Trump.

Truman scarcely rated a mention when he became Vice-President and seems to have been selected as an afterthought by Roosevelt for the 1944 election. Trump was dismissed as a New York businessman with a checkered past when his candidacy was mooted.

Yet each man won elections against “establishment” candidates. None of the pundits gave Truman a hope in 1948; nor did they give Trump any hope in 2016.  Thomas Dewey, the Republican candidate, had been as successful a person in public life as Hilary Clinton, both with New York affiliations. They projected a starchy appeal to the people.

Both Truman and Trump have been accused of making impetuous decisions. One instance involved Percy Spender, the Australian ambassador to the United States. He chanced upon Harry Truman in a foul mood. Truman’s daughter was an aspiring singer whom the press loved to lampoon. He had been enraged by one of these reports when Spender turned up. Sensing an opportunity, since Truman was in one of those moods, Spender got him to agree to the substance of the ANZUS pact. At the time the State Department had been strongly opposed to this. Truman was obviously in a volcanic mood. Criticism of his daughter amounted to “fake news”, and the presence of another “outsider” requesting something which had been blocked by the establishment – “well, give ‘em hell” (meaning the State Department).

Both men inherited the aftermath of a world at war. However, Truman, despite being myopic, saw active duty as an artillery officer in World War One. In contrast, Trump avoided military service.

The war experience left a deep impression on Truman.  He was the only United States President to authorise the use of the atomic bomb. It was a calculated assessment about a nation unable to recognize that “it was all over” – and it took two bombs. Hiroshima was not enough; Nagasaki brought realisation, at least to the Emperor, that Tokyo might be next.

The nuclear option has been regularly canvassed by Trump as a piece of braggadocio, because the North Koreans continue to taunt him, even though resolution of the Korean Peninisula standoff would be his Ultimate Deal.

Truman went through a very tough period after the North Koreans invaded the South in 1950. This coincided with the rise of the fervent anti-communist Senator McCarthy, whose fear-mongering activities played out in the interrogation of people who had become the “foe” – a secret Communist fifth column determined to undermine the American Way – conspiracy theory run amok. He was abetted by Roy Cohn, then a young New York lawyer. Cohn survived the eventual downfall of McCarthy, went back to the law and in 1986 was disbarred as a lawyer for “unethical,” “unprofessional” and, in one case, “particularly reprehensible” conduct. He by that time had become a mentor for a young Donald Trump.

Truman, the populist, tried to restore order to a chaotic world – he knew the importance of wise counsel, sensible advice and being able to listen. Truman was self-centred; most politicians are. It comes with the territory. But his response to chaos was to agree to the Marshall plan, indispensible in the resurrection of Europe. Yet just as he could go against advice as he did with the ANZUS pact; he could take blame. His decision to fire Macarthur at the height of the Korean War was very unpopular, although later he was supported unanimously by a bipartisan Senate Committee in the decision.

Trump, the populist, has initiated chaos, although his apologists would say that he has shaken the system up and it was about time that somebody did that. The world remains at war, just as it did with Truman. The ultimate North Korean aim of reunification of the Korean peninsula remains as true today as it was then.

The Middle East still suffers from the disastrous drawing of borders by the so-called Great Powers after World War One. Truman against the opposition of his foreign affair advisers ensured that his was the first country to recognise the creation of Israel. Unlike the decision involving Spender, this was a very considered decision, which fractured many relationships in government.

Nevertheless, Truman became so unpopular that he did not bother standing again in 1952, and after an abortive try by Macarthur for Republican Party candidate, another general, Dwight Eisenhower was selected – outwardly a much calmer person than Truman.

Both were leaders; they consulted and they made decisions based on facts as they knew it. They did not confabulate, nor go out of their way to encourage the meaningless or antagonise capriciously. Leadership requires a sense of humour to counteract the destructive triad in politicians, which I have previously written about: insomnia, isolation and boredom. A sense of humour is one of the less explored areas in its contribution to good leadership.

Truman had a sense of leadership. In time his legacy has been recognised so that he is now considered one of the great US Presidents. Unfortunately, Trump seems not to provide the same level of mature leadership.  “Tweeting” threats and insults that may play to a selected audience is no substitute.

Truman was a constructive populist; Trump’s basic instinct seems to be to destroy, with no other aim than to bully others.  It is best remembered that those that you have created have the power to pull you down. Truman never built such a group, but Trump has such a group, which he has to continually oil lest it dry out and crack.

For me, for many years I have had a replica in my study of the sign that Truman had on his desk; it reads: “The Buck Stops Here”.  Trump, as far as I know, does not have this sign, but he may as well have. However, it would have a different meaning than it did for Truman.

MOUSE WHISPER:  Heard in the Versace corner shop in Dirranbandi: “Of course the Liberal Party is a broad church, it is full of knaves.”