Green views

I, Robot

A friend of mine recently returned from a holiday in France. She had a great time travelling around the Dordogne region in southern France, her only complaint being that she couldn't get to see the Lascaux Cave. The real cave has been closed to tourists for a long time, and next door to it has been built a replica for tourists to see. The cave was only discovered in 1940 (when a dog, Robot, crawled into a hole revealed by a fallen tree and was followed by his owner), and the first people to see it were amazed by the art on the walls, painted (it turned out) around 17,000 years ago. There were hundreds of vivid paintings of the animals hunted by the local people at the end of the last Ice Age, all as fresh as if they had been done the day before, and revealing much information about the fauna of the time, long extinct (including mammoths, horses, bison, giant cattle and so on), and about the behaviour and beliefs of the humans who lived there. The site was a treasure trove for archaeologists, but also quickly became a tourist attraction. A treasure trove, I'm guessing, for local businesses, who demanded it be opened as a tourist attraction. The entrance was opened up, water diverted, car parks built, the cave floored with concrete, bright lights installed - and up to 1700 visitors a day tramped through, bringing in, as it turned out, bacteria and fungi on shoes, clothes, and in the humid air they breathed out. After just 15 years the combination of all these factors was beginning to destroy paintings that had survived 17,000 years, and in 1963 visitor numbers were greatly limited, and a system to move air throughout the caves was installed and worked quite well. Then in 2001, in a misguided attempt to improve things, a new air conditioner replaced the old one and since then fungus and bacteria have again begun eating away at the paintings and walls, and a major conservation effort is needed to try to slow down the destruction.

I was reminded of this story last week when I watched a news item about the Bay of Fires in Tasmania. This beautiful spot was named, by Lonely Planet, as the world's top spot for tourists in 2009. It's attractions included its isolation, few visitors, unspoilt white beaches fringed with forests. The guide urges "travellers looking for a slice of paradise to visit Bay of Fires right now, before the crowds take hold". Now you might think, and you would be right, that listing a place like this whose value lies in its isolation, few visitors, and consequently unspoilt environment would be inviting its destruction and you would be right. Presumably next year other unspoilt destinations, in their turn, will be brought to the world's attention.

But in the meantime the Tasmanian government, in a rare example of conservation concern on the island, decided to declare the area a National Park in order to afford it some protection from the Lonely Planet crowds. Immediate outrage from both local businessmen, and an Aboriginal group led by Michael Mansell. The businessmen want development to take advantage of the Lonely Planet listing, which "gives the tourism and hospitality industries a unique opportunity to grow their business" according to a tourist industry leader, and I am picturing roads and paths and trail bikes and restaurants and marinas and adventure playgrounds and big air conditioned hotels. It's not clear what the Aboriginal group wants, but since it doesn't want a National Park, I guess it is also seeking development of some kind. In Cape York, Noel Pearson is similarly outraged by the Queensland government trying to protect some of the last wild rivers on Cape York, because Aboriginal people want to develop them. Strange that Aborigines and developers could both be enemies of conservation.

But whoever is pushing development of undeveloped areas, it really has to stop. Maybe okay 60 years ago (as Lascaux was opened to tourism), when there were still many untouched areas, but now they have dwindled down to a precious few, and the parade of Labor, Liberal and National politicians, marching robotically in step behind the developer drummers, chanting "money money money" and, hypocritically, "jobs jobs jobs", should be redirected to the redevelopment of already ruined places.

I don't know if the Lonely Planet writer had a dog who ran over the sand dunes and discovered a beautiful place ripe for exploitation, but if he did he should have called the dog back and gone on his way. If only that French boy had called his dog back instead of following him in. Perhaps whenever a place is lined up for development a talking statue of Robot the dog should be placed at the entrance as a reminder and a warning. "Woof woof" he would bark when he sensed a developer "woof woof". "Keep out".

Bay of Fires

Family jewels

Every week, it seems, comes a new story of some terribly dysfunctional and often violent family unit. And there are not too many happy endings, especially where children are involved, and where women are subjected to violent attacks. In both cases death can be the outcome, far too often, but even where it is not, the victims remain physically and mentally damaged, often for life.

Whenever a politician speaks about "values" you can be sure it will be related to families. Happy families, good families, large families, heterosexual couple families, white picket fence families, conservative families, salt of the earth families, god-given families, god-fearing families, tax-cut wanting families, apolitical families. And on the other hand will be all those people who aren't, it seems, part of "proper" families - same sex couples, single mothers, people on welfare, teenage mothers, homeless families, extended families.

There is indeed one party that refers to itself as "family first", which is a curious sort of title. I think I might start a party called "breathing first" and from which I will condemn all other parties as not caring about breathing. But more generally, there are some politicians who think there is mileage to be gained out of expressing support for the "happy families" while discouraging, preventing, forcing apart, forcing together, any family grouping of which they do not, for ideological or religious reasons, approve. The idea, they would have you believe, is to support children, and this kind of politician has every confidence that they know the only true formula for family life. A woman in an abusive relationship tries to keep children away from the father? Force them back together. Simultaneously denigrate extended families in Aboriginal or migrant communities and single parent families in outer suburbs. Refuse to allow same sex couples to have a legally recognised relationship and raise children, while trying to prevent sex education and contraception for poor families with too many children.

Much of this kind of meddling is reminiscent of Leo Tolstoy's saying that "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way". And of course there is a grain of truth in that if you understand that Leo had it completely back to front. In fact all unhappy families are much the same, all happy ones are happy in different ways. Unhappy families tend to have some or all of - poverty, addiction problems, lack of education, untreated mental illness, poor housing, abusive relationships, poor work-life balance, little access to services, and so on. The most politically correct family unit of man, woman and 2.4 children is not going to be happy in its political correctness if it is faced with those kinds of pressures. On the other hand all kinds of families - two women with an IVF child; children, parents, uncles, aunties, cousins all under one roof; teenage mother with three children; two men with adopted child; grandmother, mother and son; unrelated people sharing a house; single people living alone; "blended" families; and yes, father, mother, and 2.4 children - will have all kinds of different happiness, and loving supportive relationships.

So next time you hear a politician talk about "family values", ask yourself whether he, or she, really values families, all families. And whether that valuing is reflected in support for the unhappy ones, and delighted approval of all the happy ones. Or has the ideology resulted in him, or her, making the happy ones less happy, and the unhappy ones dangerous to all concerned.

Putting families, all families, first, should be as easy as breathing in and out. But it seems to be remarkably difficult for some people. Different values I guess.

family values

Who you gonna call?

You know how young children make bargains in their minds - "If I don't miss this bus I will do my homework for a month", that sort of thing? It's a bit like whistling as you pass the graveyard to keep the ghosts away. Or clapping hands to keep the elephants away ("Does it work?" "Well, you don't see any elephants do you?").

Penny Wong reminded me of all of that last week. There were nation-wide protests about the lack of meaningful action on climate change. Afterwards Ms Wong said people's expectations were unrealistic - "What many of these people are calling for simply can't be done. It can't be done while supporting jobs," she said. About the same time it was revealed that Australia was demanding that CO2 emissions from bushfires not be included in calculating Australia's total, because we had so many (and will be having more and more as the continent dries out). You can hear Penny clapping, whistling, and making bargains with invisible beings can't you? She seems to think that good intentions ("Like the people who are at these rallies, this Government does want to take action on climate change") will make that nasty global warming go away. That she can make bargains, that the CO2 already in the atmosphere will totally understand if the politics of coal companies, the CFMEU, and Barnaby Joyce make it impossible to reduce our emissions. There are no bargains Penny, and clapping hands won't make the elephant in the room go away. The world (yes, Penny, the world does include Australia) has to actually reduce emissions (including bushfires and everything else), quickly, and no amount of whistling and bargain making changes that grim reality. Ms Wong has failed.

Harsh? Yes, but we expected better of Kevin "we will let the science decide" Rudd and his team of the best and the brightest. Penny Wong has that aura of brightest girl in class [Steve Fielding on the other hand is the class clown and doesn't know anything but has learnt to stick his hand up and say stupid things ("Now class, what do astronomers tell us the moon is made of?" "Please miss, please miss, green cheese miss") just to get the class laughing - loves being the centre of attention] but she has been given the most important job in government and she has failed to do her homework, failed to hand it in, and Australia is going to miss the bus in Copenhagen.

And Greg Hunt - doing much better than Penny Wong (and won't she be cross when she reads that). But he reminds me of the star eighteen year old recruit to a football team doing really badly, full of has-beens and never-wases. You can enjoy his flashes of brilliance in a Reserve's game, but you know that the team as a whole is never going to achieve anything. And you are quite certain that he won't get a start in the first team, and if he did he will never be allowed to play his natural style.

As American scientists, detailing the disastrous changes (bigger graveyards among them) that are coming to America this century (many of which are coming to a southern continent near you too), said "These are not opinions to be debated, these are facts to be acted upon". Penny Wong clearly doesn't understand this - the whistling has to stop, and the action has to start, ghosts or no ghosts.

global warming

Get yourself a gun

Whenever the madness of massive gun ownership is challenged you can bet one of the first responses will be "How dare you libruls try to stop us enjoying the healthy and natural sport of hunting with our children", or words to that effect. But this is one of those many issues on which I find it hard to empathize with my conservative fellow human beings. I can't imagine ever training a gun on an animal peacefully going about its business, getting on with its life, and then squeezing the trigger and blowing its brains out or bursting its heart, blood spattered all over the great outdoors.

This is at its most obscene in the practice of "internet hunting" where you can do the same thing from the comfort of your home at the click of a mouse button. But it has no less horror for coming at the end of a long healthy hike through the woods with your oldest son clutching his first hunting rifle and chatting happily about the meaning of life.

How does it enter the soul, this comfortable, but triumphant, death-dealing? How do hunters get away with the euphemism that slaughter of other living beings is not only "sport", but an essential part of being human, and not to be restricted in any way?

At least some of the blame goes to the religious ideology that trumpets human dominion over all living things. If we have some kind of supreme authority over the world, then, rather like a prison guard and his inmates, we can do anything we like to that world. Animals, in this view, live only so long as we choose to allow them to do so. They have no right to life of their own, all of their rights are given by us and can be instantly revoked at a whim.

But there is even more to it I think. Even if you believe that your imaginary friend made you a lord of the universe, it still remains that pressing that trigger, shooting that crossbow, ending that life, requires a complete absence of empathy with another living being. Requires that you not even consider the pain and then oblivion of the animal itself, or the pain and grief of the family and other group members left behind.

And such lack of empathy can only come, surely, if you recognize no kinship between yourself and that wolf, that moose, that seal, that duck, that gorilla, that kangaroo. Recognize no shared emotions, feelings, ideas, sensations; no commonality of life. And for that to be true you must, surely, see yourself as having been created separately. For even the most cursory knowledge of evolution would make you unable to pull that trigger on creatures who, being your relatives, have so much in common with you.

Is the "intelligent design" movement just an alibi for killing?

intelligent design

Vice versa

Remember the story about the child and parent who became magically switched and had to learn how to operate, with difficulty, in each other's worlds? The conservative politicians, suddenly and magically changed from government to opposition, seem to also be in some difficulty. The conservative side of politics has been believing many incompatible things in recent times - we shouldn't do anything about climate change in either good times or bad times; we shouldn't do anything about low paid workers in either good times or bad times; we shouldn't try to improve the rights of workers in either good times or bad times. In addition, interest rates will always be lower under a conservative government than a Labor government, except when they are not, at which time it is the result of Labor being bad economic managers. Union officials should never be allowed on to work sites when there is an increased rate of industrial accidents because they might try to lower that rate, and they shouldn't be allowed on when there is a low rate because they are not needed.

What else? Ah yes. Labor's emission trading scheme is no good because it is too weak, so the conservatives would like to make it weaker (it is also no good because it gives away too many permits, whereas the conservatives would like to make all permits free). An Australian prime minister shouldn't travel overseas to places like America or G20 meetings, unless he is a Liberal prime minister in which case these trips are essential to Australia's place in the world and its economy. Say the economy is going to struggle and you are talking it down, express confidence in the economy and you are hiding your head in the sand.

When a Liberal government is in power any problems it encounters are the result of the previous Labor administration's failings and world events beyond their control, any successes it achieves are purely the result of its own endeavours. Conversely a Labor government in power owes any minor success to the efforts of the previous Liberal Treasurer, while all its failures are purely the result of its own inadequacy and nothing to do with external forces. Pay out money to the rich and medium rich and you are being responsible, give everybody a share in a financial stimulus and you are being spendthrift.

A Liberal government in power that approves takeovers of fundamentally important Australian enterprises by foreign companies is just doing good business, a Labor government that considers doing the same thing is contemplating selling Australia's national interest down the river. Comments about a future Democratic president by a Liberal prime minister are just free speech and perfectly appropriate, comments by a Labor leader, expressing views shared by three quarters of the American population, about the qualities of a Republican president, are certain to wreck the great alliance.

Send Australian warships out to escort desperate refugees to a desert island prison and you are being weak on border protection, unless you are a Liberal government doing the same thing.

Appoint right wing ministers and you are caving into the union movement, unless you are John Howard and then it is a sign that you are a strong leader determined to impose your ideology on the party. Sack one minister for a minor failing of strong ministerial standards in two years and your government is falling apart, reluctantly remove five ministers for breaches of weak ministerial standards and it is evidence of high ethical standards.

Spend money on infrastructure projects in Labor and Liberal electorates is a waste of money, spend money only in Liberal electorates just before an election is investing in Australia's future.

And on and on it goes. The conservatives don't seem to have quite got the idea of opposition yet. It should involve hanging on to the principles you had in government, and arguing for their merit. Or did Turnbull, Hockey and all not have principles or belief in the merit of their polices? Were they being hypocritical then and telling the truth now? Or vice versa?

Malcolm Turnbull

Once more unto the beach

The other day there was a news item about attempts to stop 4WD vehicles (SUVs) driving around on some Queensland beaches because of the environmental damage they cause. Everybody, even SUV drivers, knows that soil contains thousands of living organisms that keep the soil functioning and healthy allowing plants to grow in it and animals to live off those plants. Everybody, except SUV drivers, knows that beach sand is just as much a living organism as the most productive soil in the Yass River Valley. The white or golden sands, beloved of tourist operators, have a whole community of small animals living in them, animals important in both the ocean ecosystem and that of the shoreline. But an interviewed driver was outraged at any attempt to stop him driving on the beach (instead of walking from the parking area) asked the reporter "who are you going to look after - human beings or tiny critters in the sand?"

Same story on the Murray River where attempts to stop the red gum forests being destroyed by logging (and therefore driving to extinction thousands more invisible tiny critters as well as more photogenic ones like the superb parrot) were met by outrage from people like the local mayor who asked essentially "who are you going to look after - human beings or tiny critters in the trees?"

These are stories that are becoming increasingly common. Organisms that took millions of years to evolve, ecosystems that took tens of thousands of years to develop and which have been living in the same spot for 10,000 years, are happily destroyed, permanently, by people who want to hoon around on beaches and sand dunes, or to avoid walking a hundred metres or so from the road to the beach to fish. or destroyed in the name of jobs that will disappear anyway with the last red gum to be felled. And ecosystems that made the Earth suitable for human beings to live on, unlike the deserts of Mars, are willfully and unthinkingly destroyed because "tiny critters" and their activities are invisible to casual inspection.

Wouldn't it be refreshing if the SUV man had said "Oh, I hadn't realised what was happening, we must stop immediately, I love the beach and want to see it survive forever". And if the mayor had said "Look we have always known that we couldn't go on logging forever, and now the fate of the superb parrot, symbolic of all the other creatures, is a final wake up call. As Mayor it is my job to look after the interests of everything on my patch. We support the ending of logging, and call on Mr Garrett to fund and facilitate new enterprises in this shire."

Human interests and environmental interests are not alternatives but corollaries. There is always an alternative to destroying the world we live in, and we need to be vigorous in finding it. The game's afoot.

Murray River

Love to have a beer with ...

Phillip Jose Farmer died recently. His death reminded me again of that wonderful moment of first dipping my toe into the Riverworld river, and finding, from the first page, that "To their scattered bodies go" was one of those books that makes you want to hug yourself with delight. Makes you want to slow your reading pace as the number of remaining pages dwindles down to a precious few, reluctant to leave this imaginative world; makes you rush to the bookshop, looking for the second in the series . The idea of meeting up again with extraordinary, but dead, characters in another world is so good that I am surprised someone hasn't started a religion based on the idea of an imaginary afterlife (oh, they did?).

Farmer died not longer after that extraordinary politician Barack Obama took over the White House from George Bush. Mr Bush was, incredibly, more or less elected twice to the White House, at least partly, it seemed, on the basis that he was the kind of chap you would want to have a beer with. So Obama's election was accompanied by some discussion as to whether the beer test still applied. Now I could never understand Bush passing the beer test, he struck me as the kind of guy I would leave a party to avoid having a beer anywhere near. Obama? Well, maybe, but the conjunction of beer and Farmer got me thinking about parties in general. And since my next birthday marks yet another one of those milestones towards old age that seem to come increasingly fast like global warming tipping points on the way to Earth disaster, it occurred to me to make it a good'un, the ultimate birthday party, and I need to start planning early.

So like Phillip I am bringing back some scattered bodies from the past. With a few billion to choose from I need to reduce the field a little, so I have established some criteria (though there are, probably, exceptions to the rules, which the cleverest among you may spot). Two from each of the last 5 centuries and four pre-1500, men and women equally, English speaking, dead. Have tried to avoid fanatics, politicians, blowhards, one trick ponies, monarchs, nutters, warmongers, people who laugh at their own jokes, raconteurs, people who marvel at their own cleverness, religion. Very difficult to include women from before the 18th century because they are almost invisible in the histories and culture ("Anon was often a woman" as Virginia Woolf said). I have shown a preference for intelligence, extraordinary achievement, wit, curiosity, breadth of interest, and people who achieved change for their society, their sex, their country, or even their planet, and have included both of Snow's two cultures. But the list also reveals an inordinate fondness for writers, returning a compliment, since they have so often left their calling cards with me. The final result is confirmation of the old saying that lists make for odd dinner partners. And as one of my guests said:

“My idea of good company, Mr Elliot, is the company of clever, well-informed people, who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company.”“You are mistaken,” said he gently, “that is not good company, that is the best. Good company requires only birth, education and manners, and with regard to education it is not very nice….”

So, I have aimed not merely for good but for the best company, to float down the river with me on a braw bricht nicht. The room, on a riverboat queen, is prepared, inspired by CP Snow's description ..... "The wall lights in the hall were turned off for the feast, and the tables were lit by candles. The candles shone on silver salts, candlesticks, great ornamental tankards, and on gold cups and plates, all arranged down the middle of tables. Silver and gold shone in the flickering light; as one looked above the candlesticks, the linen fold was half in darkness and the roof was lost."

And here they are:

20th Century
Albert Einstein, Virginia Woolf,
19th Century
Jane Austen, Charles Darwin
18th Century
Thomas Jefferson, Mary Montagu
17th Century
Nell Gwynn, Samuel Pepys
16th Century
William Shakespeare, Elizabeth I
Pre 1500
Eleanor of Aquitaine, Simon de Montfort, Geoffrey Chaucer, Lady Godiva
And of course you would need reserves, in case Shakespeare was involved in a pub brawl, Eleanor playing dungeons and dragons, Darwin was up before the Beak, Nell selling oranges, or Einstein, scribbling equations, lost track of time. And a truly formidable list they are, a bit like Manchester United's reserves. I think, on reflection, that while the first 14 are there for dinner, the other 24 will come later for after dinner drinks. What a party!

20th Century
George Orwell, Nellie Melba, Richard Feynman, Eleanor Roosevelt, Audrey Hepburn, John Curtin
19th Century
Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Mark Twain, Elizabeth Garrett, John Keats, Ada Lovelace
18th Century
Mary Wollstonecraft, Thomas Paine, Arthur Phillip, Sarah Churchill, Arthur Young, Fanny Burney
17th Century
Aphra Behn, John Lilburne
So see the dinner guests come up the gangplank, arrive at the door of the dining room, and then enter. Some imperiously, some confidently, some shyly. All will be equal across the table. They are here not because of their titles or positions or wealth, but for their wits and intellect, and achievement, and character. Some will find being addressed familiarly a shock at first, but soon the exchange of ideas, and experiences, and the sheer thrill of making contact with minds from across the centuries will sweep them all up. Glasses will clink more often, voices become a little louder, and then, dinner over, the rest of the crowd enters and it's on for young and old. I can't see Jane Austen being the life and soul of the party, but as the guests moved around the room after dinner, swapping table partners, you could quickly slip in next to her and prompt some humorous observations on Montfort's table manners, Elizabeth's bossiness, Darwin's shyness, Virginia's clothes. There may be some on the list who harangue rather than converse, but never mind, I am a good listener. And there will probably be some, met in the flesh instead of the printed page, who are, like George Bush, people I would not want to spend an evening with. As with the living, perceptions are not necessarily the same as reality. And I will be just a tad nervous, wondering if I can keep my end up in conversation even after more than a few beers and some good red wine. But, my goodness, won't it be fun! Keep rolling, Proud Mary.

If your idea of a good dinner party involves Maggie Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, John Howard and Genghis Khan, I think I'd rather not know. But if you have suggestions from the billions of other people, once quick and now dead, that I have unaccountably overlooked for my first 14, or my second 24, let me hear from you.

And I'd bet you would all like to be a fly on the wall at my birthday party. Toot toot.

Cross-posted at ABC Unleashed

The guilty party

The other day a man was released from jail in WA after serving part of a long sentence for a crime he was found, thanks to the magic of DNA, not to have committed. This seems to be a pattern in WA although I think it is not that the state convicts more innocent people, just that activist people and politicians keep pushing for justice. Other states, take note.

But I don't want to comment on the particular case in detail, except for one fact that jumped out at me. He had done it particularly tough in prison, victimised by guards and other prisoners, because he had refused to admit his guilt. Had refused to show remorse. Think about that for a moment. Would have had an easier time if he had confessed to doing something he hadn't done.

Conversely, just this week, a man was given a sentence less than the maximum applicable, because he had "shown remorse".

This business of "remorse" has been developed by the television media in recent years. I can't remember anything being made of it even ten years ago. And then taken up by populist politicians and now judges.

The logic (to the extent that there is a logic separate from the constant thirst by the media for tears, tears, and more tears, with as close up focus as can physically be made) seems to involve a desire to confirm that justice has been done. These days the television cameras, and the reporters clutching microphones, thrust into the faces of people entering court, assume guilt as charged. In Australia in 2009 it is assumed that whenever someone is arrested, or even merely mentioned by police, the punishment begins. Unflattering photos are published, background information supplied, old girlfriends interviewed, shock jock theories reported as fact, fictionalised tv series go into production, victims demand death penalties, judges are condemned for light sentences, all just one big party. Once upon a time judges used to worry about the leak of small amounts of information preventing a fair trial. Nowadays a fair trial is effectively impossible for anyone caught up in the media circus. And the television people, though driven by ratings, know this, and therefore need the accused to admit guilt, show remorse, in order to justify the lynch mob behaviour that has accompanied arrest, trial, and conviction. And someone who refuses to play the game, show remorse, will be vilified even more in the media.

This kind of legal system was once known to us only through books and films, the middle ages accounts of witch duckings, and stocks, and dungeons, and crowds witnessing executions, and the wild west with its tarring and feathering and gunfights and hangings from the highest tree. We thought we had reached a point where an independent legal system ensured that everyone could get a fair trial and a thoughtful sentence if guilty. We thought that it was better that nine guilty people went free than for one innocent person to be wrongly convicted. And that remorse was something for the prisoner to consider in the privacy of his own conscience.

Old fashioned, eh? On with the entertainment. No time for remorse by television journalists.

law

Maggot

Some years ago there was a political figure who was devoutly religious. The leader of his particular religion had recently reaffirmed the church's stance on contraceptives. And so this man was heard endlessly defending the leader, and the wisdom, of his decision, even when faced with questions about the rising world population, increasing poverty, and the social effects of forcing poor families to have 10 or more children. In interviews he could be heard proclaiming the rightness of the ban, even though you knew, he not being a fool, that he knew he was talking nonsense. You also knew that if the next day a new leader had proclaimed that in the light of world problems the church now supported the use of condoms, our hero would have instantly changed his answers to questions to reflect the new reality, black would become white. So 1984.

Reminds me of that group of climate change deniers who are not in the pay of energy companies and who just deny for the love of the cause. Believe in ultra free market capitalism; or human dominion over the world; or the drowning of governments in bathtubs; or the importance of extracting every last mineral from the Earth's crust; or some religious text that has a god looking after the world; or the imperative of removing all other living organisms and modelling the surface of the planet purely for human use; or even just the National Party, and you can't accept the reality of climate change. Can't accept that greenhouse temperature rise is a massive refutation of the proposition that the world should be run by businessmen for businessmen, one of those stubborn facts that keep getting in the way of ideology. You have what in Victorian times they called a "maggot" (an obsession) in the brain. You will argue that black is white, red is blue. The smallest downward movement in a fluctuating graph has you howling at the sun. You grab the smallest facts, no matter how incongruous they are (one of the New Zealand glaciers is growing. Growing! Mars is getting warmer. Warmer!), unable, totally, to see the forest for the trees.

It is the classic mistake of starting with a belief, and fitting the facts around it. The kind of mistake that sees a toasted cheese sandwich that "looks like Jesus" sold on ebay. The kind of mistake that thinks a banana was "intelligently designed" to fit in the hand. And the facts are examined in a sheep race in which a drafting gate directs good facts to the right, bad facts to the left. A massive decrease in old Arctic ice one year is not global warming, a slight increase in new ice the next year is evidence of global cooling: Hurricane Katrina is not the result of global warming, a cold day in Melbourne is evidence the climate is cooling; a very hot year is the result of El Nino, a cooler year is nothing to do with La Nina. And so on. Put together enough of this selective view of the planet and you get a best selling book and endless promotion by that arch denier Mr Murdoch.

But while the deniers deny away and pat each other on the back and beat back the evil hordes of greenies who are determined to destroy civilisation as we know it and the whole planet as well, the inexorable rise of CO2 continues, spewed out by the power stations and factories that have just been given a free ride into the future by Martin Ferguson and Kevin Rudd. And the CO2 eats away at the ability of this planet to maintain its environment, working away like a worm in an apple, unseen and unheard, but when you pick up the still healthy looking apple you discover it is hollow.

An obsession can have the same effect in a brain. Now, if only one or two of the shock jocks, the bishops of the climate change denial church, would tell their followers that global warming is real and serious and needs urgent government action to solve it, those followers would turn around and start instantly demanding action on climate change. White would become black.

global warming

Pip Pip Hooray

Some time today, quite oblivious to the honour, someone will arrive at the Watermelon Blog and become the 25,000th visitor since I began measuring a couple of years ago. And the number of loyal subscribers also keeps growing, although slowly.

This is terrific, and I am grateful that with all the other temptations out there in Blog Land, so many astute and intelligent people choose to call in for slightly unusual opinions on the meaning of life. And the lack of meaning of the universe. And the position of conservative politicians relative to vermin.

But I am greedy, and as I sit here, on the windy hill, chained to a keyboard that reveals its potential words so grudgingly, I can't help wishing for just a few more loyal subscribers, just a few more first time visitors, just a slightly less occasional comment being posted. Just a little more encouragement for an old man struggling to retain his jeu d'esprit.

So a favour, s'il vous plait. Instead of a tupperware party, how about all you Watermelonites hold blogaware parties? You see if each of you just managed to bring in 5 friends (or even enemies, depending) to register for RSS or email feeds, then there would be, why, six times as many subscribers. Think of it as an excellent, and cheap, very cheap, unbirthday present for those whose intellectual development you care about. The grandson about to vote for the first time, the rich uncle who has coal mine investments, the dotty cousin who in spite of everything you have done is still religious, the grandmother who rather wishes John Howard would come back to lead Australia.

Oh and casual visitors can be brought in by sprinkling crumbs along the forest path to lead them to the Watermelon House with its wicked wizard. If you see a post that gives you particular pleasure then recommend it to a wider audience using StumbleUpon or Digg or some other aggregator, or mention it on sites such as Crikey, or include a link when you are berating one of the Right Wing bloggers for their foolishness.

And finally. Thank you all for your support. May the next 25,000 vistors come while I am still young enough to enjoy them.

Cheers.

Julia Gillards Schooldays

Sometimes you see a politician sell out their principles in order to meet some political purpose, and occasionally you see a politician stick to their principles even though they make for political disadvantage. But it is almost unknown for a politician to jettison principles for political disadvantage, and Julia Gillard has achieved an almost unique combination with her recent decision to keep pouring massive amounts of money into rich private schools, this time as part of the infastructure stimulus package.

I have previously offered to be Kevin Rudd's secular adviser when it turned out he had a spiritual adviser, but I clearly need to expand the offer and become the Deputy Prime Minister's adviser on progressive politics as well. So here is the first lesson, Julia, free of charge because I am a nice fellow, and, um, I care about this stuff.

Progressive, social democrat parties (and, for the sake of argument I am including the Australian Labor Party under this heading, although, these days ...) believe in equality of opportunity. They believe that the daughter of the richest person in Australia, and the son of the poorest, should each have an equal chance of a happy, productive, and moderately comfortable life. For that to happen they must both get an equivalent education in quality and quantity. And therefore, progressive parties believe, the state must provide a good quality public education system available to all no matter where they live, country or town, rich suburb poor suburb. And schools in which, no matter the economic and cultural and religious background of the parents, or the sex or ethnicity of the children, those children would mix freely and learn from each other

The Howard government believed nothing of the sort, they would have liked to dismantle the public school system and have any children whose parents could afford it educated in either a private and/or a religious school, and the devil take the hindmost. Poor children, just as in the nineteenth century, should get a trade, get a job, as soon as possible. Religious differences should be accentuated by faith-based schools, social and economic differences maintained by private schools. For eleven long years therefore, they underfunded the public system and poured money into rich private schools and promoted the establishment of many sectarian, indeed fundamentalist, religion-based schools.

Your job, Julia, should you choose to accept the role of Education Minister in a nominally social democrat government, will be to reverse, and gradually undo these regressive policies and return to an egalitarian, secular, high quality, public school system for all. Do you think you have made a good start? And how do you think the $2 million plus dollars you dished out to each of a number of wealthy private schools in Sydney for new gymnasiums and swimming pools would be received by the public schools of Yass, and Gundaroo, and Gunning, and ...?

Julia Gillard

Surprise

There was, I think, a movie where the hero, a man revered for his goodness and wisdom and social conscience suddenly ripped off a very life-like face revealing underneath the face of the villain, who was about to achieve world domination as a result of fooling all of the people all of the time. I confidently predict that any day now Mr Rudd will peel off the artificial face of the Queensland socialist and reveal, underneath, the familiar bushy eyebrows and grimacing mouth of - John Howard.

Think about it - you haven't seen Mr Howard much since the election have you? Just like Jekyll and Hyde, or Clark Kent and Superman, you only ever get to see Rudd or Howard singly, never both at the same time. There were early clues of course - Rudd signing Kyoto with fingers crossed behind back; saying sorry, ditto. The knowing salute to George Bush (obviously in on the scheme), Peter Garrett appointed environment minister, AWAs retained for the rest of the century, big funding for private schools, the speeches to business groups and right wing think tanks, retaining Intervention, the ostentatious religiosity, the retention of Public Service heads.

But it has really become obvious just in recent days. Mr Howard has become much more comfortable in his new skin, and completely confident that you can, as he always believed, fool all of the people all of the time. And so there he was, blasting away, just like old times. People smugglers should rot in hell, he would decide who came here and under what circumstances they came. And then hundreds of billions of dollars in big boy's toys, in a futile attempt to win an "arms race" with China. And then the determination to force teenagers to "learn or earn" or, even better, to go into the army. But all this was just warming up for the big one, greenhouse gases. He had previously dipped his toe into the water, to see how warm it was, and then issued a plan for a scheme so blatantly inadequate and ineffectual that he couldn't believe it wouldn't be buried in an avalanche of criticism. But all he got was some muttering (muffled, as always, by the media) from the Greens, and outrage, as withering as a blast from the open door of a furnace, from mining and business groups. The bigger the polluter the bigger the blast, and their statements that 5% decrease would see us all rooned, all the mines would be taken overseas, and that there should be no more consideration of global warming until the end of the millenium, warmed the cockles of Mr Rudd's secret heart.

And so he pressed the restart button, erased the old file and created a new one. No action to be taken until the boat comes in, and even when it does come in, no action to be taken. In a marvelous piece of Lewis Carroll, the bigger the polluter, the more free pollution permits and the less action they need to take. The biggest polluters of all need take the least action. But wait, there's more - smaller polluters can just buy as much pollution as they need at the bargain basement price of $10, yes, only $10 per tonne for the first thousand callers.

Of course, later on, he said, to give his friends in the Conservation Foundation (was it really 13 years he thought, since he had walked through some trees with these people and had them announce that, yes indeed, he was a conservationist, just like them? Oh happy days) something to work with, later on we might, if every one else goes first, think about a bigger target. But he had his fingers crossed behind his back.

And that evening, sitting at the Cabinet table, he ripped off his mask, saying "Don't need this silly thing any more". There was a sharp intake of breath, and then, all around the table the sound of all the other masks coming off, as Costello and Downer and Ruddock, and Reith and all the rest of the old gang resumed their rightful places.

Kevin Rudd

Pigs do fly

I wasn't sure at first whether the swine flu epidemic was one of those tabloid television scares that come along every week when ratings drop. Last week I think was exploding stoves (a "time bomb" in every Australian kitchen, apparently), and I can't remember the previous one. They are hard to remember because every element of the modern household, and modern city, has been claimed as a weapon of mass destruction at some time in the last few years. And curiously most of our population seems to have survived unscathed.

But this does look like the real thing, and may well turn in to a pandemic (the first few cases didn't make for a pandemic, but the media appear to think that a really serious exploding stove, sorry, disease, is a pandemic right from the start). It could be as bad as one of those earlier pandemics such as Spanish Flu (1918), Bubonic Plague (1666), or the Black Death (1350), all of which caused millions of deaths and massively disrupted societies. Or it might be a fizzer like the SARS scare.

But, just as the number and extent of catastrophic weather events is going to increase with increasing CO2 and more and more environmental damage like tree clearing, so is the number and seriousness of epidemics going to rise. This Swine Flu is a good example of the perfect storm which has developed over the last few years in the combination of factory farming, globalisation, increasing travel, decreasing regulation, antibiotic use in livestock, free trade agreements. It has arisen this time in Mexico where agribusiness runs millions of pigs in horrible factory conditions. In Mexico because regulations are less stringent. Free Trade Agreements enable such operations to seek out the lowest common denominator in terms of control over what business can do. Globalisation has the same effect and also means that products move freely. Cheap air travel (in very large jets) and few restrictions on tourists moving between countries results in an almost instant spread of an infection far and wide.

Similarly it was no coincidence that bird flu came out of the factory farming of chickens in poor conditions in South East and East Asia.

And all such developments are promoted, by those who stand to make fortunes, as modern and inevitable. Free range chickens and pigs? So nineteenth century, agriculture must become a business, indeed must become a factory to increase profit. And Free Trade gets agricultural products moving around the world from places with cheap production (as a result of no regulation) to places with expensive purchases, and no quarantine or environmental nonsense will be allowed to get in the way.

And so this toxic mix bubbles away, unknown to the everyday housewife, or the man in the street, or the hospital emergency ward, until, like the toxic bubbles emerging from the sewerage lakes of pig faeces, another nasty disease emerges.

Or like chickens coming home to roost.

swine flu

The moving keyboard writes

Hardly a day goes by, it seems, without, somewhere in the world, some wild-eyed, or cold-eyed, religious fanatic imposing his (yes, his) will on someone slightly less wild-eyed in the cause of the one true religion worshipping the one true god. And if imposing his will, when it comes to dress codes, or hair styles, or which sexual relationships people choose to have, means killing people, then, without thought or compunction, or the slightest hint of empathy, people are killed as casually as an AK-47 is filled with bullets.

And the reason for this determination to kill or maim or torture or jail or exile? Words on a page. These people have been driven mad by words on a page. The moving finger writes, and whether the finger belongs to a psychopath, a misogynist, a madman, a well-meaning fool, a drug addict, a control freak, the words stay written. Stay written and read and used in exactly the same form over hundreds even thousands of years. In non-literate times contributions to the fund of knowledge might well come from some of the same motley crew, but their words, seen to do damage to society or individual, could be quietly modified, perhaps totally lost over time as wiser heads prevailed, circumstances changed, knowledge was acquired.

Like science really. Words on a page, whether written by genius or fool, by friend or foe, man or woman, old or young, are not engraved in stone, but are there only until some newcomer can disprove, modify, add to them, as knowledge is acquired, circumstances change. Not so in the Bad Books, where power and glory come not from challenging authority, changing words, but from unswerving attention to every last unchanging syllable.

So, all in all, a pity writing was invented. Oh there are pluses. No blogging without words on a screen, although, come to think of it, such words are as ephemeral as the flickering shadows on a cave wall and tales of the mammoth who got away. And certainly the depth of scientific records enables us to be warned about the coming catastrophe of global warming.

But most science, and certainly most aspects of everyday life could be conducted (indeed are conducted on radio and television and film) in a society as non-literate as those of the ice age caves of southern France, or previously in the deserts of central Australia.

The religious have always been in favor of burning books that didn't agree with the one book they held in their hands. So they shouldn't object if we take that further (rather in the way that an atheist believes in one less god than the evangelist) and actually just burn all books, clean sweep, no more unchangeable words on the holy pages.

Oh I would miss my first edition of Pickwick Papers, but a small price to pay for undermining religious fanatacism in the world. And in a generation or two the exact words once revered will become less exact, as in a game of chinese whispers. And people will have to get on with their lives using their own minds and hearts. But without the risk of someone killing them for a word written in blood.

The moving finger keeps writing at The Watermelon Blog, but the number of watermelon fanatics remains disappointingly small (well, none really).

Immutable natural laws

When the Pacific Adventurer lost 30 containers of Ammonium nitrate overboard, in a storm, one or more of which punctured the hull, releasing tens of thousands of litres of black oil, enough to cover 60km of golden Queensland beaches, it should have marked the death knell of nuclear power in Australia.

As global warming has become a matter of sad fact to all except the most foolish of denialists and the most cynical of energy companies, the calls for nuclear power and more uranium mining have become increasingly strident and confident. But even with the winds of climate change at their backs the nuclear power supporters were faced with an uphill battle in the court of public opinion. Following Chernobyl and Three Mile Island and Sellafield; the problems of dangerous leaks, polluted water, radioactive dust, explosions, and the sheer impossibility of storing nuclear waste safely for 50,000 years, the Australian nuclear industry has been dead in the water.

But every cost for one person is an opportunity for another and global warming has proved no exception. While most of us saw the dangers ahead for the only planet we can live on, representatives of the nuclear power industry, and their tame scientists, saw only a marketing opportunity. Global warming? No worries, let us take care of that for you (and sell you a used car and a packet of cigarettes while we are at it) for a small price. Suddenly it seemed, if explained in the right way, the dangers of nuclear power could be made to seem a little tiny itsy bitsy problem with a planet in danger. The marketing campaign has been so blatant and dishonest that you would think people would take no more notice of it than of a cowboy on a horse happily and healthily smoking a cigarette. But conservative politicians and think tanks, have rushed to leap on to the bandwagon. Macho men (renewables are for wimps).

The nuclear power people are among those who talk technology solutions for global warming. Magic bullets are popping up everywhere - nuclear power, "clean coal", silver iodide in the air, iron filings in the sea. Whenever a complex problem with social, environmental, health, education, political, psychological, economic components, emerges, there are people who believe a simple technological fix will come to the rescue.

The big one of course is nuclear power. And here technology is also seen as coming to the rescue of the technology that is coming to the rescue. In opinion piece after opinion piece, people who stand to make a lot of money if the Frankenstein of nuclear power re-emerges from the crypt, will dismiss any mention of the names "Chernobyl" and "Three Mile Island" with some variant of the phrase "don't you worry about that, technology will fix it". "Technology has come a long way". Or, "no chance of that happening with the new technology". Or "accidents impossible with the new technology, nothing like the old technology". Come on, admit it, they have got you weakening a little. You might ask "but what about the waste" only to get the expected answer "technology will take care of that".

But this is the kind of sleight of hand that the industry has engaged in since we had the prospect of "power too cheap to meter" sent to us from shiny stainless steel laboratories manned by shiny stainless white-coated scientists, clipboard or test tube in hand, confidently staring at shiny dials and making minor adjustments to shiny controls. And now we are promised whiter coats, shinier dials, more stainless stainless steel, and technology that is absolutely perfect and free from any risk of any kind.

Fall for this spiel, as politicians seem wont to do, eagerly seeking to be sold the Sydney Harbour Bridge before someone else gets to it first, and you are attached like Brer' Rabbit to the tar baby. Invading armies of colonising powers have a new technique: quickly bring in settlers, create settlements, facts on the ground, and they can't get rid of you, unless at a very high price. Build your nuclear power station and it becomes a fact on the ground, providing jobs, providing profits, providing power. Who's gonna regulate this paragon of the community, this benevolent small town employer, who you gonna call? Besides there are demands, growing more strident in recent years, to get rid of regulation, all regulation, reduces profits, hampers business. In all areas of the economy, regulation has been replaced with self-regulation, remaining regulatory bodies stacked with industry supporters, fines, if any, tiny.

But even that doesn't quite get to the nub of it. You see it's not the boys in the white coats you have to worry about. Well, not much. It's the boys in the khaki overalls, and the grey dustcoats, and the blue jackets, and the black singlets, and the green uniforms, and the Armani suits. Forget about the whizz-bang you-beaut technology with atomic reactions sizzling away quietly and contentedly in stainless steel pots, watched over by technicians so that they never boil. May all be true, may not be, but beside the point either way. The reactors are not out in space somewhere, like the sun, safely away from the world; or isolated like an alchemist in a sealed up basement. They have to interact with the world around them. And that interaction is where the danger comes. The water pipes in and out; the concrete poured into floors; the trucks and trains and planes and ships bringing raw materials in, taking waste away; the computer programmer with a hangover; the unseasonal hot spell; the mouse in the junction box; the earthquake; the buckled train track; the storm at sea; the computer virus; the crane that drops a load. And it's head office insisting that maintenance staff be reduced; that ordinary shipping containers are sufficient; that training be cut back; that computers not be upgraded; that concrete walls be thinner; that monitoring devices be unserviced; that health checks not be conducted, all to cut costs, increase profits. And it's head office insisting on covering up the leak, the breakdown, the malfunction, the dust cloud, burying the cancer cluster report, in case the share price falls, or public protests force safety checks; and insisting that impossible deadlines be met, risks taken, storms ignored, drivers kept awake with stimulants, experienced staff cut, all to drive up production. As Bierce said an accident is "An inevitable occurrence due to the action of immutable natural laws".

Yellowcake washing ashore on golden beaches anyone?

Cross-posted at ABC Unleashed.

nuclear industry

Return of the Native

I quite like bees, as it happens. They have a single-mindedness about them that is not unappealing. Look at a lavender bush in flower and it will be covered in bees. Buzz buzz buzz, we are the nectar boys. We don't do anything but collect nectar. Me father and his father before him, nectar collectors all. We don't kill other animals, we don't damage things, we are not nasty. No, we collect honey and fill up our nest with it to feed future generations, keep the hive going. Share and share alike, one for all and all for one. There is no such thing as individualism, everything is society. So it's pleasant to hear them buzz, on a warm autumn day, going about their singular business, minding their own business. I have, on occasion, rescued one from a water trough (how do you rescue a bee from a water trough? Carefully). Taken pleasure as it dried off in the sun, warmed up, groomed its wings, and then taken off to rejoin his co-workers. No sickies for bees. And yet, and yet. There is also something not quite satisfying about honey bees. I also have, buzzing around Grevillea flowers, Australian native bees. Different kettle of fish, different jar of honey. The honey bee has those harsh colours of black and yellow, classic warning sign. And a gang of working honey bees seems not unlike a bikie gang, dressed in their threatening leathers and helmets, covered in warning symbols. Don't mess with bees or bikies, or you might pay for it. Native bees not like that at all. The pale blue colour couldn't be much less threatening. One of those wimpy colours that a school nerd like me might have worn. Nothing threatening. And no gang. These guys work alone, each minding its business, each doing its own thing. Honey bees just head straight for the nearest flower and then work through them one after another, native bees hover, change direction, think about the meaning of life, finish up at different flower. Unconcerned when the honey bees point and laugh - call yourself a bee, you wouldn't know what a bee was. Working alone with no brothers to support you, dressed in those vaguely artistic clothes. Can't help feeling that the Howard government came to power in 1996 and saw the Australian population as 20 million Native Bees. Individuals doing our own thing, no singleminded determination to have the biggest hive, the most honey, and heaven help those who got in our way. No, we were individuals flitting from flower to flower, untidily and inefficiently. Messy individuals, thinking for ourselves. And so the King Bee set about changing that. Set about turning us into Honey Bees with a different culture. Dressed us uniformly. Got us working efficiently, singlemindedly, no distractions, accumulating honey for the leader of each hive. Nothing else to think about from dawn to dusk than returning over and over to the flowers and back to the factory. But ultimately it was un-Australian.

John Howard

Her privates we

April Fool's jokes are a thing of the past. Impossible to imagine any far-fetched totally outrageous and unbelievable thing that the NSW Labor government hasn't already actually done or is about to do.

Take prison privatisation. I mean, when you saw the headline - NSW government to press ahead with privatisation of the prisons you would certainly have said, yeah, right, pull the other one, next thing there'll be a story about how Kevin Rudd is a secret socialist, Peter Garrett an environmentalist. We get it already, April 1, April Fool's Day, now, where is the real news?

Privatisation is so 1990s, isn't it? Once upon a time conservatives of the Left and Right believed "Private good, Public bad" and proceeded to sell off all the family silver and the kitchen sink in order to improve the efficiency of the economy, serve the public better, and generally usher in a utopian world beyond the dreams of socialists. It was never really about that of course, it was only ever about letting a few very rich people exploit an ever increasing slice of the human pie for profit. But whenever people suggested that some organisation previously working for the public good should not be swallowed up by some faceless private equity group, or some con man with shiny shoes and a Lamborghini, they were howled down as Marxists, who didn't seem to realise that the Berlin Wall had come down, and the Russian Mafia was now in charge of Russia.

But since then, the social and economic damage caused by newly private companies has become as blatantly obvious as the environmental damage caused by coal-powered power stations. Think Telstra, airports, tunnels and freeways, bus companies, train companies, electricity supplies, universities (in a slightly different way), child care, aged care, schools, Wheat Board, unemployment services, horse quarantine, health insurance and, further back, Qantas and the Commonwealth Bank. Not too many success stories out of that little lot, in fact you could say a series of train wrecks.

The reasons? Should have been obvious to all of us not blinded by the ideology of "Private good, Public bad". Big business isn't in the business of serving the public, but in the business, purely and simply and single-mindedly, of making profits, for shareholders and executives. Anything that gets in the way of making money - the costs of maintenance work, the cost of serving groups with high needs and low incomes, safety concerns, improving technology, avoiding risk - will be ditched, quick smart. And money is to be made by pushing consumption, producing disposable goods with short use by dates, closing down competition, serving only the most profitable cities and suburbs. And really big money comes from playing around the market, takeovers here, asset sales there, shonky bribes up that way, risky investments over the other side. All sort of ok when the stockmarket climbs ever higher like a force of nature; not so good, when, inevitably, the financial reckoning comes.

So I don't believe that the NSW government really wants to privatise prisons or energy supplies. They would have to be fools, wouldn't they? And not just for April.

prison privatisation

And Scrooge McDuck

There are people, business people and Liberal politicians and right wing shock jocks on radio and in print, outraged by the idea that, oh heavens, I can hardly bear to write the words. I will whisper - executive salaries/bonuses should be regulated/capped/controlled by the government. There, I have done it. And I can hear the shouting now, see the red faces, "How dare you suggest that the government control how much money the chief executives get, market forces ... capitalism ... pay peanuts get monkeys ... global forces ... communism coming ... shareholder value". And all the rest of the alibis for greed that we have heard ever since the election of the conservative governments of Keating and Howard (and Bush in America) gave chief executives, eye on the main chance, the opportunity to start racking up their salary and bonuses and stock options until they were no longer earning just a few times the salary of their workers but hundreds of times more.

But it's strange. Even as we read accounts of their golden handshakes (coming and going) in which not one but several zeroes seemed to have been mistakenly added, the general public could still be heard to mutter, "ah well, but of course we mustn't have the government telling people what they can earn", believing, it seemed, that if the head of corporation X wasn't allowed a salary of $20 million a year, hundreds of millions of dollars worth of shares, and a golden parachute of several years salary to ease the pain of parting and moving to an even better paid job, then civilisation, as we know and love it, would come to an end. A slippery slope that would lead, in a few short months from the happy go lucky beach culture of Australia to the robot automaton workers of North Korea.

I was reminded, and enraged, about all this again the other day, when an already filthy rich executive went off into the sunset with a package making him even filthier. And this story coincided with a pitiful plea from the nurse's union for the pitifully paid nurses who care for the aged and dying in nursing homes to be paid just a few dollars more to bring them up to the starvation wages being paid to the nurses who care for the sick and dying younger people in hospitals. Not much enthusiasm for that proposition from anyone responsible for deciding on pay levels - minister or nursing home owners - it seemed, and the story rapidly vanished, as such stories do, leaving the aged care nurses forgotten and uncared for yet again.

And I thought to myself. Well, almost everyone in our society has their pay level set by government directly or indirectly. The guy who runs the country has his pay set by a tribunal as do other politicians. And all public servants accordingly, so all of those salaries are proportional to each other. Not just nurses but police and fire brigade and soldiers and council workers and train drivers and teachers and scientists and a whole lot more of the people who form the backbone of the country have pay set by law. And the lowest paid private sector workers have the set minimum wage (always higher than the bosses want) which in turn defines the pay of the skilled workers and so on up through the relative pay scales. Pensioners have to put up with what they are offered, as do the disabled, and single mothers. And all of that framework essentially determines what independent contractors feel able to charge for their work. In many of these cases (remember the aged care nurses) the pay is too low, but the argument always is that the community can't afford to pay more, and in any case, raising one lot of salaries would mean raising all.

So essentially everybody in Australia has a limit set on what they can earn, and demands for adjustments (remember the aged care nurses) take place within that framework, so that the economy can function in a rational way.

Everybody, except drug dealers and company CEOs. Both can set their own price.

corporate salaries

Once were Argonauts

The other day I was looking for a book for my grandson to read, and came across the ABC's Children's Hour Annual No 1 from 1956. It was one of those Proustian or Waughian moments that transports you back to revisit another place and time.

All of us listened to the Children's Hour in those days of course, and most of us were Argonauts, sailing for the Golden Fleece, though I am ashamed to say I have forgotten my ship's name and oar number, an identity once engraved on my soul.

Charles Moses, in his Foreword hoped I would "keep this book for many years, not only for itself, but because it will remind you of your friends in the Children's Hour". I have (for 53 years), and it does, with its pictures of Jimmy and Gina, Mac and the Melody Man, and all the rest.

Among articles of interest were the preparations for the Melbourne Olympics ("We wish [the Australian team] ... GOOD LUCK"], and early progress on the Snowy Mountains scheme ("This pretty little town [Jindabyne] will be inundated."). The Music Man spoke of "the original [music] work of fellow Argonauts" and he knew "how difficult it was to write even a few bars of music".

Another intriguing article by "Argus" records how "Professor Milgate ... told us about the proposed Chair of Australian Literature ... at the University of Sydney ... we learned what an important thing this was and how it was hoped to make it possible by means of money being raised by public subscription. Professor Milgate ended his talk with these words: 'I hope many people will see why those of us who are interested in Australian Literature are so excited about this plan to have a Chair established. It is a great step in the recognition and development of our culture ... I know all Argonauts will tell people what we are trying to do and will be interested in how we get on. I think we'll succeed and I'm pretty sure that there are some Argonauthors listening to us now whose work will one day be studied by the University. Why not?'"

You couldn't say the Children's Hour underestimated its audience!

The idea of having my work studied would have struck a chord, as it must have done for many writing Argonauts.

Of personal interest is some of the names I discovered in the book. Names that meant absolutely nothing to me then, but were to have some significance later.

Allen Keast, then at the Australian Museum had a description of a museum field trip to the north west. Much later I would study Allen's other work and write academic papers referring to it and extending it. Allen became a professor in Canada and was one of the examiners for my PhD thesis.

An article on frogs has extensive discussion of the work of John Calaby. Returning to Australia in 1974 John was one of the first people I met. He helped me enormously in my archaeological work over many years, and I was to dedicate one of my books to him.

Ken Saunders wrote a story ("Mariners on the Mountains") in the book. Forty years later when I was head of Aboriginal Studies Press he came to me with a book manuscript with an Aboriginal theme, the first book for teenagers published by the Press. That is, people who I had mixed with on the pages of the Annual, in a perfectly natural way, became people I mixed with in my academic work, in a perfectly natural way.

The Children's Hour was teaching us to take our place in the cultural life of Australia.

There is an intelligence, in writers and readers, shining through the volume. A remarkable (for 1956) amount of Aboriginal material, starting with the cover. Stories by Ruth Park. A detailed account of how a rocket works. Detailed studies of Australian frogs. UNESCO, school of the air, history of the mail service, early cars, music camps ("enthusiastic music making"), a challenging crossword and on and on.

And scattered throughout all this information are contributions from children - stories, poems, puzzles, jokes, descriptions etc - presented as an integral part of the whole. Children were not being looked down upon, pandered to, suffered gladly, or patronised, they were part of the great endeavour that was the intellectual and cultural life of Australia as represented by the ABC.

"Your ABC" was a tautology to all of us pulling our oars as the good ship "Australia" (sorry, "Argo") sailed onwards. We all had our eyes on that glittering prize, the golden fleece.

What else happened in 1956? It was the first year of what my friend Philip Adams might describe as not 53 years of television but one year 53 times. But he would be wrong. Each of those years has seen a change, a drop in standards, a reduction in quality like the falling volume of Arctic ice under global warming.

It has often been remarked that a significant difference between modern society and previous ones is that childhood was invented in recent times, whereas in the past children were regarded as small adults and treated as such.

Let us come back to Argus and his friend Professor Milgate, and indeed all the other contributors to this Annual. What they are clearly doing is considering children to be small adults and treating them accordingly. It's all in line with the original proposition that television's major role would be in education, and that the ABC was of fundamental importance in Australian culture.

And then they actually turned on the television cameras and all of that became non-core promises.

And we went from considering children as adults to considering them as idiots and then as idiots with money. Instead of seeing continuity between the Argonaut who wrote a short story for the Annual, and, say, Ruth Park; or between the Argonaut who collected tadpoles and Allen Keast, we lost all continuity of culture between past, present and future.

A diet of junk television has gradually produced, year after year, increasingly ignorant cohorts of young people who can barely read and never write. Their chances of taking part in Australian culture are less than their chances of winning Australian Idol. They know no literature and less science. Their sense of history extends no further than the week before last. Their minds remain unchallenged, undeveloped, their aims in life extend no further than getting the newest mobile phone next week.

What would Argus and Ruth Park and John Calaby and the Melody Man think, I wonder?

Can we ever go back to the future that once existed, for one brief shining hour, in 1956? Can the media begin treating children like adults again? Can we reverse 53 years of dumbing down? Us baby-boomer once-were-Argonauts are aging, and we need some youngsters to take up the Olympic torch.

Cross-posted at ABC Unleashed.

Tree change

Among the reasons, some honourable, some less so, for the failure of the whole population to be out on the streets, pitchforks in hands, demanding action to halt global warming as quickly as possible, is a feeling , perhaps, that things are not changing. Remember the phony war? Well, no, most of you probably don't. It was the period in 1939 and early 1940 when Germany had invaded Poland and then not much else seemed to happen. Air raid sirens sounded in London on the day war was declared, but it was just a false alarm. No bombs came out of the sky, no German paratroopers landed in sleepy villages, no German spies came ashore from submarines. Life went on pretty much as normal for a while, and the ordinary person in the street might have thought it was a big fuss about nothing. And then of course, all hell broke loose.

Something of the same feeling here. Oh we might have declared war on global warming in a very low key way, but for the ordinary citizen of Yass, or Gundaroo, life goes on much as normal. And, more importantly, everything looks normal. And it looks normal mainly because of the trees. When we drive to work, or the shops, or school, or on holiday, our impression of the landscape contains basically two parts - trees and grass. We know the grass changes from season to season, year to year, will exchange experiences with our neighbours on how the lawn is going, or how green is your valley. So brown grass, yellow grass, even no grass, doesn't send danger signals, just an indication that we are in for a tough summer, or a tough year, or a tough decade. Just another drought. Because the trees are still there - the old Candlebark in the front paddock, the line of pines on the west fence of the home paddock, the poplars along the road, the she oaks down by the river. All still there, just as they were when you were a child, or even when your grandfather was young.

And the trees - their kinds, and size, and abundance - give the landscape its identity (and used to much more strongly before so many were cleared). We know we are in a forest, or a woodland, or the far outback, or the desert, by the trees we see flashing past our car windows.

Unchanging trees in an unchanging land. And while we see them, our impression will be that global warming is just something the city people go on about, or those greenies. The trees are still there, and trees, with their roots deep down into the soil, can ride out bad seasons, can average out wet years and dry years, cold years and hot years, always have done. Where the grass responds almost instantly to a hot day, or wind, or a downpour, or frost, the trees don't. And we know this instinctively. As long as the trees remain there is nothing much to worry about.

Except there is, because the trees are starting to change. Stringybarks seem to have been the first in trouble around here. Big old trees left behind when all around were cleared, perhaps dating back further to the first white settlers or even longer. Dying back in their crowns. Well, that had happened before, and then back came the trees with new growth. Only this time many of them didn't. Whole big trees completely dead, a few dry leaves left briefly in what was once the canopy.

And we thought, well, it's only stringybarks, perhaps they have shallow roots. And then suddenly, it seemed, very old pine trees in windbreaks were dying. Trees planted by the first settlers to protect homesteads from the westerly winds were turning brown. Then almost overnight it seemed, windbreaks were punctuated with dead trees which began to break and splinter and blow right over. And more and more going. Next will come the leaves of Candlebarks, blowing in the wind.

So the landscape is beginning to change. Will gradually more resemble western New South Wales, with few, and small, trees, than the southern tablelands of a 100 years ago.

And gradually we will start to notice. The phony war will be over. The landscape is changing. Sound the sirens.