Strange TimesKen Baker

Towards a holistic, eart -centred, eco-feministparadigm.

DebateShouldovernmentgsubsidize the arts?

Around the States , —Mike Nahan

The best and worst State budgets.

Books in ReviewJan Smith on New Men and Real Men.Frank Gardiner on the need for cultural recovery.

Letters

EditorialAustralia first.

Moore EconomicsDes Moore

The 'Fightback' package deserves support, but notbecause of the GST.

IPA IndicatorsAttitudes to big government across six nations.

Down to EarthRon Brunton

Can anthropologists be believed?

IPA NewsA new publication on the future of the US alliance.

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Editor: Ken BakerDesign: Bob Cahvell & Associates. Production Assistant• Tracey Seto.Advertising: Rod Tremain Media (02) 988 3339 or (02) 449 4437.Printing: Wilke Color, 37 Browns Road, Clayton, 3168.

Published by the Institute of Public Affairs Ltd (Incorporated in theACT). ACN 008 627 727. ISSN: 1030 4177.Editorial and Production Office: 6th Floor, 83 William Street,Melbourne, 3000. Phone (03) 614 2029; Fax (03) 629 4444.Subscriptions: $40 per annum (includes quarterly Facts).Unsolicited manuscripts are welcomed. However, potential con-tributors are advised to discuss proposals for articles with the Editor.Views expressed in the publications of the IPA are those of theauthors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Institute.

IPA REVIEWESTABLISHED IN 1947 BY CHARLES KEMP, FOUNDING DIRECTOR OF THE INSTITUTE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS

How to Save Our Native BirdsMike Nahan

Thousands of Australian birds are dying needlessly.

Thinking Strategically about ReformKenneth Minogue

The right policies are not enough.

Vol. 45 No.1,1992

10 Sir Leslie McConnan & thebattle for the banks

C.D. KempAn unsung hero in Australia's

13 development as a free nation.

57

The Ice Age Cometh 16Today the `experts' predict

Itf

global warming; 15 years agowas global cooling.

The need for an independent welfare sector 19Margaret Roberts

Non-government services are more innovative andresponsive to community needs.

Internationalism or Nationalism? 21Graeme Campbell

This battle will shape Australia's future.

Whither America? 3 28David Anderson a,. a

Is the US mission to exportdemocracy obsolete?

Greens Get the Last Word 31Ron Brunton

A new environmental education kit lacks balance.

Economic Rationalism: Myth and Reality 35Des Moore

The critics of deregulation and reduced protectionignore the facts.

The Unholy Trinity 40Stuart Wood

The ILO has a highly selective interpretation offreedom of association.

When is the Personal Political? 43Michele Fonseca

Where does the public's right to know end?

The Australian Inquisition 47Austin Gough

Scholars under siege.

The New McCarthyism 48Chris James

Ideological neurosis in the USA.

Something There is That Doesn't Love a Wall 53Michael McLean

The Berlin Wall is down, but mental barriers remain.

LETTERSProtectionismDear Editor,

John Stone argues strongly for theabolition of protection (IPA Review,Vol.44/4).

It is hard to understand, as alayman, why `economic rationalism' andthe abolition of protectionism have be-come the unchallengeable status quo ofour day. (For a Labor Government tochampion the cause of a freemarketplace is remarkable indeed.)Economic rationalism, 'Rogernomics'— as implemented by the former LangeGovernment in New Zealand — had adevastating effect on that nation'seconomy. Our myopic politicians inCanberra — on both sides of the fence— are determined to implement thesefailed policies here. Deregulation of thebanks has cost this country dearly asillustrated by the State Banks of Vic-toria and South Australia debacles.

High interest rates are necessary, itis argued, to slow consumer spending aspeople are buying too many importedgoods which has greatly increased ouroverseas debt. Yet while interest ratesremain high the government has begunto dismantle protection thus making im-ports cheaper and more attractive toconsumers!

The lowering of tariff protectionhas had a catastrophic effect on localindustry. Since April, over 5,000 jobs inmanufacturing were lost in Geelongalone. Is it any wonder unemploymentlevels are so high when the governmentmakes Australian industry very vul-nerable to overseas trade in order tomeet the demands of the level playingfield theory? In my view it is better tohave a job which is protected and so beable to afford slightly higher prices forcommodities, than to be unemployedbut not able to afford cheaper goods(because of the abolition of tariffs).

The government is also talking ofmaking superannuation funds investlarge portions of their vast funds to as-sist Australian industry (which it refusesto protect), thus exposing countlessthousands of Australians to the pos-sibility of poor returns on their retire-ment funds.

No, economic recovery will not

come through economic rationalism.The recovery should be funded fromsavings deposited in Australian banksand, to a lesser extent, superannuationfunds, rather than borrowing heavilyfrom overseas. The economic miraclesof Japan and Germany are good ex-amples of economic recovery based oncapital raised within their own borders.

Surely this is the way to go?

A. Barron,Grovedale, Vic.

Dear Editor,

I read with interest Mr Stone's ac-count (IPA Review, Vol.44/4) of thebackground to the introduction oftariffs and fixed wages in 1907. How sadto think that we have been clipping ourown wings for 80 years. Clearly we needto reverse this process. However, whatI would like to ask Mr Stone is whetherit is appropriate to remove tariffs,without addressing other issues first.

To clarify my point, perhaps onecould consider what would have hap-pened if all tariffs had been removed in1908. Either the manufacturers wouldhave had the power to reduce workers'salaries back to a level commensuratewith their output, in which case themanufacturers could compete againstimports and manufacturing wouldprosper, or, they would be forced tocontinue to pay inappropriately highwages and would fade into obscurity.

Unfortunately, I feel the second lotof circumstances apply today. There aremany costs that Australian manufac-turers face that are inappropriatelyhigh, but which they simply do not havethe , power to reduce themselves. Toname a few: wages, which are set quiteindependently of productivity; real in-terest rates, which are among thehighest in the industrial world; the ex-change rate, which is being held un-realistically high by the high interest;and transportation costs, which remainhigh in the face of painfully slow at-tempts at microcconomic reform.

Unless these barriers to competi-tion are tackled first, or at least con-comitantly with reductions in tariffs,then many industries which deserve tosurvive will not do so. I strongly believe

that tariffs should be reduced and thatthe rest of us should not have to pay forthe manufacturers to have protection.But unless these other issues are ad-dressed first, I fear that not only will wenot fly, but also be unable to walk.

Nicholas Ingrain,Amiadale, Vic.

GerrymandersDear Editor,

The electoral discrepancies thatconcern Allan Pidgeon in `ElectoralUnfairness' (IPA Review, Vol. 44/4) area common occurrence in the votes forseats preferential and first-past-the-post electoral systems. Though theCoalition acquired a majority of votesafter preferences in the 1990 federalelection, it failed to win enough scats toform a government. Without in-depthresearch it appears that the Coalitionbuilt up comfortable majorities in theseats it won, unlike Labor whichretained and won seats by slimmajorities. Thus, although more peoplevoted for the Coalition than for Labor,Labor's vote was spread thin enough towin more seats.

The election results in SouthAfrica, which uses a first-past-the-postvoting system, clearly illustrate thisanomaly. The National Party came topower in 1948 by winning only 36.37 percent of the vote. The ruling United Partypolled 50.38 per cent of the vote. TheNationals, however, won seats by thenarrowest of margins while the UnitedParty stacked up large majorities in theseats that they won. It wasn't until 1961,three elections later, that the Nationalsfinally polled over 50 per cent of thevote.

The pre-Fitzgerald Queenslandelectoral system produced some of thestrangest results in electoral history.The 38.5 per cent of the vote gained byLabor in 1974 gave them a pathetic 11seats. In contrast, the Nationals polled39.6 per cent in the 1986 election givingthem 49 seats (government with amajority of nine).

Other strange figures emerge from

IPA Review, Vol. 45 No. 1, 1992

the 1.986 poll. In the Western and FarNorthern Zone, the Liberal Partypolled a humble five per cent of firstpreferences enabling it to win one seat(Mt Isa). In the same zone, Laborpolled 40.9 per cent of the vote enablingit also to win one seat (Cook). The lastexample clearly illustrates the oddity ofthe vote-for-seats system Queensland-style.

Man has yet to devise the perfectelectoral system that translates votesinto political reality. Until he does, voteto seat discrepancies will continue toappear. If there is a golden rule it is this:make sure you win the marginals anddon't waste votes in building up largemajorities. If the Coalition had realizedthat political fact it would be now resid-ing on the Treasury bench.

Ken Cotterill,Mareeba, Qld.

Rock MusicDear Editor,

Chris James has contributed astimulating item on rock music (IPAReview, Vol. 44/4). He concludes thatfor all its pervasive presence one shouldnot exaggerate its influence, since it islargely a `disposable' form of entertain-ment. There is a good deal of truth inthat.

On the other hand, there is a streamof rock music which has exerted a con-siderable influence. Many of the'ideologically correct' people in politics,the ABC and so on acquired theirmindset in the late 1960s and early1970s, and the rock music of the day wasa major factor in that mindset. Onereason for its impact was that the tech-nical quality of rock improved dramati-cally in this period — instrumentalprowess, lyrical sophistication anddiversity of styles all made theirpresence felt. Innovators like the Byrds -from 1965 to 1968 blended rock withfolk, jazz, classical, eastern andelectronic elements. It was heady, ad-venturous, innovative stuff even for lis-teners like myself who did not share thevalues it espoused. Much of it stands thetest of time.

Most of the values of this renais-sance marked a sharp break with tradi-tional views on society, morality andreligion. Spiritual aspirations were

channelled into eastern mysticism andenvironmental idealism. There was theoccasional nod in the direction of theold-time religion, Eric Clapton's stun-ning `Presence of the Lord' (from BlindEarth, 1969) and Jan Hammer's beauti-ful The First Seven Days (1975) beingmemorable examples. But such con-tacts were rare and usually fleeting inany case. It was the values of the ad-versary culture that rode on the crestof this wave into the hearts of mygeneration.

Even today we still see groups likeMidnight Oil and (in some respects) U2that plough a similar furrow, and doubt-less make an impact on the thinkingyoung listener. I think it is importantthat people like Chris James shoulddevelop a solid critique of this strand ofrock music, giving credit where it is duewhile spelling out the relevantshortcomings. It would also be a goodthing if thoughts like his could somehowbe brought more to the attention ofthose thinking young listeners. I suspectthat most of them unfortunately do notread the IPA Review!

David ElderGrange, SA.

FundamentalismDear Editor,

It is a pity that IPA Review saw fit totake such a negative attitude with JohnSpong's book Rescuing the Bible fromFundamentalism ('Strange Times,' Vol.44/4). Having read the book, I was mostimpressed by the Reverend Spong'sgreat love for God and the Bible.

It is simply impossible to believe inthe literal truth of the Bible withouteither total ignorance of what the Bibleactually says or an incredible ability todouble-think. Matthew and Luke con-tradict each other about the birth narra-tive. Luke says that Mary and Josephlived in Nazareth before journeying toBethlehem, after which they peacefullyreturn to Nazareth; Matthew says theylived in Bethlehem before fleeing fortheir lives to Egypt. All four Gospelwriters disagree about the resurrectionand Ascension to Heaven.

I share Reverend Spong's concernthat the Fundamentalists' claim of theliteral and unerring truth of each andevery word in the Bible is not only

wrong, but will simply convince theworld that Christianity is outdated andirrelevant to the modern world.

Steven D'Aprano,Plenty, Vc.

Coronation HillDear Editor,

It is a shame that the Green Lobbysometimes makes over-blown claimsand uses extravagant language. Theproponents of resource exploitation dothe same. In the last IPA Review (Vol.44/4), there are two pieces on theproposed Coronation Hill mine. Bothare by advocates of mining.

The article by Hugh Morgan, whois Managing Director of Western Mini-ng Corporation, says the decision by theGovernment not to allow mining will"undermine the moral basis of ourlegitimacy as a nation, and lead to suchdivisiveness as to bring about politicalparalysis." Later in this article Mr Mor-gan says about the proposed mine that"we will never know unless the decision(to prohibit mining) is reversed, justhow big or small a mine Coronation Hillmight turn out to be." Yet the minershad commissioned an environmentalimpact analysis which is described in thenext article in the Review as being "ar-guably the best example of such a studyyet produced in Australia." The articleabout the impact study was written byProfessor Burton who was a consultanton its preparation. It is disturbing thateven in the light of the highly praisedimpact assessment the extent of themining was apparently not able to beforecast.

Taken together, the articles createthe impression that the Government'sdecision to prohibit mining was probab-ly correct.

H.C. Griffin,Sherwood, Qld.

The Editor welcomes letters for publication.They should be addressed to The Editor,IPA Review, 6th Floor, 83 William Street,Melbourne, 3000 and normally kept to nomore than 300 words.

IPA Review, Vol. 45 No. 1, 1992

ED I TOR I AL

The Spread of Victimitis'

EN two years ago MayoMarion Barry of Washington was

recorded by the FBI in the act of takingcrack, he was reported to have ex-plained "That was the disease talking...Iwas a victim." Mayor Barry had in minddrug addiction when he referred to "thedisease"; but he also displayed thesymptoms of an equally serious condi-tion: `victimitis', the attribution of blamefor one's own actions to others.

Victimitis has spread to Australia.Its symptoms are evident in some sectionsof the churches. Prison: the Last Resort,jointly authored by the Social Justice andSocial Responsibility Commissions of theAnglican, Catholic and Uniting Chur-ches, and the Australian Council of Chur-ches, makes the claim: "Our communityfrequently makes scapegoats of those ingaol, placing the guilt of society on themrather than confronting the fact that weare all caught up in the predicament ofsociety." Translation: criminals are thevictims of society.

A community project worker withthe Uniting Church took the message toheart. Expressing concern about the in-creasing number of women jailed forproperty offences, she declared: "Thesewomen are being forced into commitingcrimes. They are victims, not criminals."

Claiming victim status (on behalfof oneself or others) is becoming anindustry. Alcoholics who blame thebreweries for causing their condition;businessmen who borrow until they areup to their ears in debt and then blamethe banks for lending them the money;ex-Catholics who attribute their per-sonal inadequacies to the nuns who'indoctrinated'them as children (not very

effectively indoctrinated,or they wouldstill be Catholics); feminists who claimthat a low representation of women inany field of employment is the result ofdiscrimination; activists who claim thatall the problems currently experiencedby Aborigines are the fault of the 'in-stitutionalized racism' of white society:all display the symptoms of victimitis.

Victimitis has spawned a plethoraof tribunals, commissions, agencies, andlobby groups, whose raison d'etredepends on defining their client groupsas victims. A barrage of affirmative ac-tion demands, social justice strategies,industry subsidies and consumer protec-tion regulations has been the result.

Proposed reforms to productliability, which the Federal Governmentbacked away from under pressure onlyin November last year, would haveplaced the onus of proof on manufac-turers to demonstrate that the malfunc-tion of a product was not their fault. Inthe proposed legislation the users of theproduct were assumed to be blameless;manufacturers the culprits.

Of course there are genuine vic-tims in Australia, in need of protectionor support. The vast majority of the un-employed are not to blame for theirpredicament. Nor are the disabled. Thevictims of crime are real, and there aremany others deserving of our concern.But the victim wagon is becoming socrowded with psychosomatic sufferersthat the genuine victims are at risk ofbeing pushed aside. We cannot treat thethief or the vandal as a victim withoutdetracting attention from the personwhose property was stolen or vandalized.Moreover an outbreak of victimitis is

typically accompanied by costlydemands for government compensationwhich the community cannot afford.

Individual Responsibility

Our society is built on a moralfoundation of personal responsibility.Victimitis is the antithesis of this. Itstendency is to collectivize rights andcorporatize guilt. Individuals matterless than classes, groups, genders, andraces. The Victorian Education Minis-try's Social Justice Framework states:"Social justice in education is con-cerned with groups." It lists sevengroups who qualify as victims of socialinjustice: female, Aboriginal, poor, lowstatus background, rural, immigrant,disabled. Ignored is the great diversity-- the individual differences — withinall of the groups listed (in fact, recentresearch indicates that, by mostmeasures, girls and immigrants displayno evidence of educational disad-vantage — see Education Monitor,Winter 1991). Although our legal sys-tem is based on the concept of in-dividual responsibility, anti-discrimination legislation in Australia isframed in such a way that proceedingscan be undertaken only on the basis ofa complainant's membership of a group(women, homosexuals, etc.) — and it isonly'selected groups which qualify.

An editorial in ACTOSS News,the journal of the ACT Council of So-cial Services, states: "The most sig-nifieant factors determining yourchances of imprisonment are the colourof your skin, the state or territory in

IPA Review, Vol. 45 No. 1, 1992

EDITORIAL

which you live, and the circumstancesinto which you were born." In fact themost significant factor determiningyour chances of imprisonment iswhether or not you have committed acrime. It is the individual moral choicewhich distinguishes the criminal fromthe many others born into similar cir-cumstances who do not resort to crime.The fact that our system of justice isbased on this and not on a person's raceor circumstances of birth distinguishesus from illiberal societies. ACTOSS ig-nores the distinction.

Dehumanizing

Victimitis is often perpetrated inthe guise of compassion; but in fact itdehumanizes its subjects. The in-dividual is viewed as a passive objectacted upon by impersonal forces beforewhich he is powerless: an automaton.His status as a moral agent capable ofchoice is denied. Some historians writeAustralian history in this way:Aborigines or women or workers aretreated as mere passive objects towhom (bad) things happen. A view ofthe media common among those whomKeith Windschuttle in his book, TheMedia, describes as "Left idealists," holdsthat "there is one dominant ideology ofcapitalism and that the main role of themedia is to impose this upon a passive,uncomprehending working class."

Victimitis harms its subjects inother ways as well. It fosters welfaredependence with consequentdemoralizing effects. It excuses self-destructive behaviour. An example ofthis is related in the Report of the RoyalCommission into Aboriginal Deaths inCustody. Mery Gibson, an Aboriginalman from Hope Vale in Queensland,"forcefully argued that some Aboriginaldrinkers now use the socio-cultural lineof thinking — developed byanthropologists — to absolve themsel-ves of responsibility for their destructive(and self-destructive) drinking be-haviour. Some drinkers now argue, forexample, that giving all of one's moneyto a kinsperson to spend on alcoholicbeverages, rather than spending it on thefamily's food or housing needs, is part of

the Aboriginal way of doing things. Hedeplores such an interpretation asbeing a travesty of the true Aboriginalconcept of social responsibility."

Sociology, radicalized during the1970s, has provided an intellectualrationale for the growth of victimitis.Warning against the injustice of "blam-ing the victim" (the title of a popularsociological text) sociologists oftenmerely substituted "blaming the sys-tem." Sometimes, of course, the systemis to blame, but the shift appealed to ageneration uncomfortable with the

Victimitis is oftenperpetrated in the guise

of compassion; but in factit dehumanizes its

subjects.

traditional notion of individual respon-sibility. Psychology also contributed tothe rise of victimitis. Explanations ofhuman behaviour couched in terms ofconditioned reflexes or unconsciousdrives minimized the role of consciouschoice, and therefore of personalresponsibility. The dilemma was raisedby Dostoevsky 100 years ago: if allhuman action is reducible topsychological compulsions or chemicalreactions, then no one can be held ac-countable for his behaviour; all actionsare ultimately excusable.

Overcoming Hardship

Part of the lure of victimitis is that,if we think about it hard enough, we areall victims, one sense or another. Noneof us chooses the circumstances intowhich we are born, or our genetic in-heritance, or the good or bad fortunewhich befalls us. Nevertheless, what isoften crucial is the way we play the handwhich fate has dealt us.

Australia, transformed in thespace of a hundred years from a poorconvict settlement into a freeprosperous society, was developedby people who triumphed over

hardship and disadvantage. Theseverity of deprivation described in BertFacey's autobiography, an Australianclassic set early this century, would beexperienced by virtually no Australianstoday. According to the views of somesocial analysts, it should have led to alife of crime. But, as the title of hisinspiring autobiography indicates,Facey was not embittered by hishardships; indeed, he counted his for-mative years as `A Fortunate Life'. TheChairman of Australia's largest com-pany, Sir Arvi Parbo, is only one of thebest-known of the many immigrants whohave arrived in Australia with few assets,only to rise in the space of a generation torelative affluence. Where others seeobstacles, and excuses for failure, ourpioneers and our most successful im-migrants have seen opportunities.

Victimitis is the obverse of thecargo cult mentality, the belief thatmaterial bounty magically arrives fromafar; that wealth is not created, it justappears. Both attitudes discourage . ef-fort, initiative and self-reliance; bothfoster passive dependence. Victimitis,like the cargo cult, has inhibited thedevelopment of those Third Worldcountries which blame the affluentWest, and a colonial past, for their cur-rent poverty. Blaming others avoids theneed for them to tackle their own inter-nal problems. We in Australia shouldtake this as a warning not to let victimitissap the national psyche any further. •

IPA Review, Vol. 45 No. 1, 1992

I.1IL/

DES MOORE

A GST Miracle?

THE remarkably widespread wel-come given to the Coalition'sproposal to introduce a 15 per

cent Goods and Services Tax (GST)leads one almost to think that peoplebelieve in miracles. How is it that aproposal that includes the introductionof a new tax on a wide range of goodsand services, at a high rate of 15 percent, could actually result in thepopularity of the proposer soaring?This is surely a first for Australian, if notworld, politics!

There are several answers to thisapparent puzzle, some obvious, somenot so obvious. Some commentatorshave been unkind enough to suggest, forexample, that the loss of credibility ofthe Government is such that peoplehave been prepared to grasp almost anyreasonable-looking alternative withboth hands. Be that as it may, let me firstmake it clear that my own support forthe Coalition's proposals taken as awhole does not derive from any beliefthat a GST will work miracles: far fromit. The basic rationale for puttinggreater reliance on the taxation of con-sumption and reducing the reliance ontaxation of saving (by using part of theproceeds of the GST to reduce incometax) is sound: Australians need to in-crease their saving efforts if we are tostaunch our balance-of-paymentsbleeding and increase our business in-vestment — in other words, if we are toincrease living standards over the

Des Moore is a Senior Fellow of the IPA.

medium to longer run. However, asJohn Hewson has frankly acknow-ledged, the GST package is unlikely tomake any significant net contribution toincreasing private saving. This is be-cause the politics of introducing a GSTrequires that lower income groups becompensated for the net increase inprices (estimated by the Coalition at 4.4per cent) resulting from the fact that a15 per cent GST more than offsets theelimination of wholesale sales tax,payroll tax and petroleum excise. Apurely economic strategy directed atreducing consumption and increas-ing saving would include no suchcompensation.1

This is not to say that the GSTpackage of tax changes will not produceany economic benefits.

The elimination of the three taxesmentioned will remove the cascadingeffect on prices from the taxation ofmaterials and services which businessespurchase for use in the productionprocess. The GST only taxes the valueadded by each business, which thusreceives a credit for taxes paid onmaterials and services used in previousstages of production. However, theeconomic benefit from this eliminationof taxation of business `inputs' is rela-tively small. As the three taxes whichpresently hit business inputs are in-evitably reflected in the prices chargedby businesses (i.e. in the end, consumerspay), the main benefit will be to thoseexporters who cannot pass on the taxeson their inputs. This is certainly worth

having. There will also be some benefitfrom reducing the distortions toproduction that occur because of theexisting widespread exemptions underthe wholesale sales and payroll taxes.But these things are not going to solveAustralia's current account deficitproblem.2

Business Delusions

Not for the first time the businesscommunity is bidding fair to delude it-self. Having now (belatedly) acceptedthat it was conned by the Governmentinto believing that the Accord was ofgreat benefit to it, business is now inserious danger of deluding itself thatthere will be enormous economicbenefits from the elimination of thethree taxes and their replacement witha GST. Regrettably, the Coalition hasgiven credence to this misconception bypurveying the notion that there will be a$20 billion cut in `taxes on businesses'.It could just as well be argued, on thatbasis; that the $27 billion estimated tobe raised from the GST will increase`taxes on businesses'! It is business thatpays the GST in the first instance andthen has to recoup it by passing it on inprices, just as it is business that will notpay the other three taxes in the firstinstance and can then pass on thesaving to consumers through lowerprices. So, the real picture so far asbusiness is concerned is that the i a willbe a net increase of $7 billion in the

IPA Review, Vol. 45 No. 1, 1992

MOORE ECONOMICS

initial incidence of `taxes on businesses',which will then have to recoup that in-crease by raising consumer prices by 4.4per cent.

Given that the GST and as-sociated tax and compensationmeasures will likely produce only mar-ginal economic benefits overall, myconcern has always been that, once thisbecame apparent, the task of having thecommunity accept a GST that would beopposed at the political level woulddivert a Coalition Government's atten-tion away from implementing more im-portant economic reforms. I have alsobeen concerned that the introduction ofa new tax with a very broad base, and onethat is in a sense disguised in prices,would provide a powerful weapon in thehands of politicians, thereby making itmore difficult to reduce the size ofgovernment, which has been — andremains — a key objective of the IPA.

GST Package Deserves Support

These concerns remain. How-ever, three aspects of the Coalition'spackage persuaded me that it shouldbe supported.

First, the Coalition has under-taken that it will write into the GSTlegislation a guarantee that a CoalitionGovernment will not increase the rate ofGST beyond 15 per cent. This helps toalleviate, although it does not remove,concerns that such a new broad-basedtax would soon fall victim to politicians'proclivity to increase rather than reduce`efficient' taxes (as has happened in anumber of overseas countries with suchtaxes).

Second, it is important that theGST will not become operative until atleast 18 months after the Coalition iselected, even assuming that the legisla-tion is given an easy passage. This willgive time to introduce other more im-portant reforms first (see below).Moreover, the fact that the Coalitionhas announced the policy some 18months before the election means thatmuch of the debate about the pros andcons of the GST, how it would work, etc.will be over by the time of the election.If it is, it will vindicate the courageous

decision by the Coalition to release itsmajor policies well ahead of the nextelection, a step which constitutes amajor advance in the Australian politi-cal process and in the formulation ofcoherent economic and social policies.

Priorities

Third, and most important of all,the Coalition's policy package goes farbeyond the GST and the associated taxand compensation measures. The com-prehensive range of policies embracedin the package, and the priority ap-parently being given to a number of suchpolicies, provides re-assurance that theCoalition will not spend the major partof its first couple of years in implement-ing tax changes of only marginaleconomic benefit. Indeed, it will be ab-solutely vital that, when the GST is in-troduced, the lower inflationaryenvironment — which we have now paidfor through the recession we should nothave had — still exists. Accordingly, theCoalition's listing of price stability asNo.1 on its 20-point plan, and its confir-mation that changes will be made tomonetary policy to target an inflationrate of no more than 0-2 per cent, helpsto alleviate concerns that the GST'sprice increases could require `high' in-terest rates to prevent such increasesflowing through into the traditionalAustralian wage-price merry-go-round.If this change in monetary policy is in-troduced early in the life of the newGovernment, it should ensure that bycontrast with the New Zealand situa-tion where monetary reform cameafter the introduction of the GST, in-flationary expectations are at an ap-propriately low level when the GST isimplemented.

Early implementation ofmonetary reforms will also be importantto the successful implementation of theNo.2 item in the Coalition's 20-pointplan: labour market reforms to moveaway from the centralized wage deter-mination system to enterprise bargain-ing. The fear has always been that such amove could spark an attempted wages`break-out' by the union movement, alongsimilar lines to the ACTU-inspired

`break-out' in 1982. While the LaborParty and the union movement willprobably conduct a scare campaignalong these lines in the run up to the nextelection, the experience of 1982 and theadvance announcement of theCoalition's monetary and industrialreforms will make it very difficult toimplement another across-the-boardwages break-out in practice. 3 It is sig-nificant that, at the IPA MonetaryConference on 2 December 1991, theGovernor of the Reserve Bank of NewZealand indicated that Ken Douglas— Bill Kelty's NZ counterpart — haspublicly conceded that NZ's 0-2 percent inflation target has put the kiboshon large wage claims there becausethey will only result in higher un-employment.

Space does not permit analysis ofall the other points in the 20-point plan,including the important expenditurereduction proposals. But there can be nodoubt that it is the comprehensive natureof the policy package, combined with theobvious determination of John Hewsonand his Shadow Ministers to get crackingwith implementing reforms, which hasattracted the widespread acclaim. TheGovernment's continued claims that ithas implemented a vast range ofreforms, from which the country willeventually benefit, lack credibility in themiddle of Australia's worst recessionsince the 1930s. Assuming that the elec-tion is not held until early 1993, theGovernment is going to come under in-creasing pressure to `compete' by steal-ing some of the Opposition's clothes.That would be a real plus for Australiaand Australian politics. ■

1. Interestingly, the Coalition is (rightly) notproposing to compensate for any increase inprices as a result of its health policy (or itsraising of the excise on tobacco) becausesuch an increase would produce the desiredresult of reducing consumption of healthservices.

2. Also, the Government has already moved toreduce significantly the effect of thewholesale sales tax on inputs of exporters.

3. Such an attempt would constitute an effec-tivechallenge to the right of ademocralicallyelected Government to implement its pre-announced policies and would provide astrong basis for wide ranging action tocounter such an attempt. By contrast, theFraser Government had no such policies inplace in 1992.

IPA Review, Vol. 45 No. 1, 1992

One parent families in Australiaas a proportion of all familieswith dependent children.

Birthplace of mothers in one-parent families (as a percent-age of mothers with dependentchildren):

19.3

Australia's One Parent Families, ABS Cat. No.2511.0.

•

Chances that an Australianchild will live In a household Inwhich neither parent is in paidemployment: one in six.TheAge, 5 February 1992.

8 IPA Review, Vol. 45 No. 1, 1992

INDICATORSProjected employment growth

1991-2001 (%)Farmers andfarm managers: -10.9Aircraft pilots 7.4Police 14.2Printing trades 15.0Toolmakers 18.3School teachers 25.6Mechanical engineers 25.9Economists 78.6Social workers 83.1DIET, Australia's Workforce in the Year 2001,AGPS, June 1991.

Increased spending needed bygovernments to match currentper capita levels if all studentsattending non-governmentschools attended governmentschools: approximately $1.613million.APC Review, 4-1991.

•

Average amount spent pertourist visiting Australia in1990: $1,859. Number oftourists visiting Australia in1990: 2,214,900.

Proportion of all repossessedhomes In 1990-91 in Britainwhich belonged to doctors,architects,surveyors oraccountants:br•^oN^s '36 per cent.The Spectator, 12 October 1941.

a

• •

Defence expenditure 1991as a percentage as a percentage

of GDP of govt. spendingUSA 5.0 23.7Indonesia 1,7 7.8 1) estimate

f) forecast

Singapore 5.7 23.4 Figures for USA and

Thailand 2.6 1 :5ie) • 1 China GNPre

a percentage

India 2.8 140China 1.6 9.Japan 1.0Australia 2.4 9.5 "hkDepartment of Defence.

IPA Review, Vol. 45 No. 1, 1992 9

Reduction in alcohol consump-tion per head in Australia since1985-86: 12.1 per cent.

The Age, 19 November 1991.

O

Attitudes to Government

Proportion of the generalpublic In six countries who

think that the organization of anationwide strike against thegovernment ought to be allowed (%)

Years it took Britain to doubleoutput per person from 1780:58. Years it took South Koreato double output per personfrom 1966: 11.

Per capita GNP in South Koreain 1990: US$5569. In Com-munist North Korea: US$1064.Export earnings . in SouthKorea: US$65 billion. In NorthKorea: US$2 billion. Defencespending as a percentage ofGNP In South Korea: 4.1. InNorth Korea: 21.5.World Development Report 1991: The Challengeof Development, The World Bank, OUP.

•

Percent 0 10 20 30

Australia

•

40 50 60 70 80 90

I'] Proportion who believe thatone thing the government

might do for the economy Is to cut Italygovernment spending:

Clive Bean, `Arc Australian attitudes to govern- USAment different?: a comparison with five othernations' in Francis G. Castle's (ed.)AusrraliaCompared., People, Policies and Politics, Allenand Unwin, 1991.

Proportion who believe it Westshould be the responsibility Germany

of government to provide a job foreveryone who wants one:

qProportion who believe it is Britainthe responsibility of govern.

ment to reduce the difference inincome between people with highIncomes and those with low in-comes: Austria

How to Save OurNative BirdsWildlife policy in Australia is failing the animals, society and the economy. Conserving Australia's uniqueand valuable native birdlife will require rethinking the relationship between the environment and themarket place.

MIKE NAHAN

NATivE bird populations and habitats have been andcontinue to be excessively diminished and abused.Many native bird populations have been severely

depleted and up to 50 bird and other animal speciesthreatened to the point of extinction. At the same time,thousands of native birds of many varieties, including sulphur-crested cockatoos, galahs, corellas, various varieties ofrosellas and emus are regularly culled as pests. Andhundreds of rare and abundant birds are either killed orotherwise abused by the efforts of smugglers to escapedetection.

The economic and social costs of the existing wildlifepolicy are both perverse and high. Government spending onwildlife protection continues to escalate with little real effecton either the number of illegally-traded birds or smugglers.The damage from, and the cost of controlling, pest popula-tions is increasing — particularly in areas with high-valuecrops, such as lychees and apples. Little research is under-taken by either the private or public sector on native birds,except on areas germane to their eradication as pests. As aresult, not enough is known about native birds, except perhapsby smugglers, or about the factors vital for their cohabitationwith humans. The irony is that native birds which are con-sidered pests in Australia fetch huge prices in illegal marketsin Europe and the United States. In 1990, sulphur-crestedcockatoos fetched $5,000 a breeding pair, whilst the commongalah sold for $8,000 a pair. Naturally, the more scarce thespecies, the higher the price. For example, less common butnot endangered varieties such as the Major Mitchell cockatoosold for $20,000 per pair and the White-Tailed Black cockatoofor $30,000.

Wildlife policy has failed because it is based on faultyprinciples. There is a prevailing orthodoxy in conservationcircles that wildlife protection depends on maintaining the

troika of common property ownership, prohibition of markets,and government planning and control. Although some conser-vationists admit to the unfortunate consequences of this or-thodoxy, few question its validity. Few ask, "Is there a betterway?" Luckily for the birds, the ranks of this inquisitive feware growing.

Dr Mike Nahan is Director of the States' Policy Unit of the IPA, based in Perth.

10 IPA Review, Vol. 45 No. 1, 1992

HOW TO SAVE OUR NATIVE BIRDS

I The Tragedy of the Commons

Wildlife in Australia is by law vested in the Crown, andas such is owned by all, and hence by none, as commonproperty. Although individuals are allowed under certain con-ditions to keep some wildlife species in captivity, ownershipremains vested in the Crown.

The perverse consequence of common property owner-ship was recognized centuries back. Aristotle observed over2,000 years ago that "what is common to many is taken leastcare of, for all men have greater regard for what is their ownthan for what they possess in common with others." SinceAristotle's time, the annals of history are replete with evidenceof the tragedy of the commons, that destruction occursprimarily because no-one owns the wildlife. The mostdramatic case of this was the complete extinction of what isbelieved to have been the most plentiful bird species in history— the passenger pigeon of North America. In the early 19thcentury passenger pigeons were so numerous that they wouldblacken the skies of mid-western America for days at a timeand migrated in individual flocks of 40 miles by seven miles insize (containing well over a billion birds).'By the late 1870s thepassenger pigeon was extinct, not because of the infinite greedof modern man or the power of technology, but becauseno-one owned the birds. Without ownership, it was to theadvantage of Indians and white men to kill whatever birds theycould. Without ownership, no individual could benefit bysaving more pigeons — someone else could easily pursue anybird spared. The depletion of wildlife arising from commonownership is not unknown in the antipodes and not unique tomodern man. Most of the mega-fauna of Australia and NewZealand were exploited to extinction by their native peoplesprior to European colonization.

Private property assures accountability and therebyprovides an incentive to individuals to husband and otherwiseprotect wildlife, preserve habitat, understand the ecology andbiology of species, thwart poachers and other cheaters, and ingeneral act in the long-term interest of wildlife as well asoneself. A person who owns property will reap the rewards ofgood stewardship and bear the consequences of poorstewardship. The owner who kills his birds or bees pays theprice.

Private property rights do not provide a cure-all forwildlife problems. There are cases where private propertyrights are either impossible or too costly to define, allocateand/or enforce. A classic case is that of oceanic dolphins,which are highly migratory on an international scale, have arelatively low market value, and are difficult to identify andtreat separately from other animals. On the other hand, thereare numerous situations in which private property rights arefeasible. Native birds — the animals themselves as well as vitalaspects of their habitat, such as nesting areas — generally fallinto this category. Moreover, there is every reason to believethat institutional and technical innovations as well as theincreased value placed on wildlife preservation will continueto expand the scope for private property rights.

Prohibition of Markets

In Australia trade in native wildlife and birds isprohibited. All exports of native wildlife are prohibited by theCommonwealth Government's Wildlife Protection Act of 1982,with the only exemption, albeit limited and heavily regulated,being registered zoos. States and Territories allow a verylimited degree of domestic trade, but only under tight restric-tions governing all aspects of the transaction and subsequentpossession. Furthermore, there is general agreement amongstthe State conservation bureaucracies, which are responsiblefor the relevant regulations, that domestic trade should befurther restricted to `scientific purposes'.

The prohibition of trade in wildlife is based on a numberof flawed beliefs, including the notion that trade results inabuse of animals, and that legal supply will stimulate uncon-trolled exploitation of wild stocks.

The prevailing notion, enshrined in the wildlife regula-tions, is that native birds are better off in the wild state thanconfined to a domestic setting. While this maybe true in somecases, it is faulty reasoning when applied across the board.Birds properly cared for in a domestic setting are arguablyhealthier and live longer than birds in the wild. Furthermore,there is little reason or evidence to suggest that domesticatednative birds are improperly treated. The simple fact is thatpeople are very unlikely to abuse an animal worth manythousands of dollars. Indeed they are more likely to developan understanding of the animal's needs and behaviour pat-terns and provide a domestic environment that involves min-imal stress.

In reality, however, native birds are not just confined toa wild setting. They are being smuggled, hunted, and killed asvermin: fates which are unambiguously worse for birds, as wellas mankind, than domestication.

A common argument used to support the prohibition oftrade in wildlife is that legal trade would stimulate demandresulting in even greater pressure on wild populations andconcomitantly higher policing costs. Clearly, legalization oftrade will stimulate the demand for and supply of birdlife.People will become aware of its availability and the cost andrisks associated with possession will fall. However, the addi-tional demand does not necessarily have to be met fromexisting wild stock levels (although in the case of populationssubject to culling as vermin this is likely to be a desirableoutcome). Native birds, like fish, deer, goats, bees and in-numerable other animals can be farmed in a sustainable man-ner, whether by augmenting wild habitats, decreasingpredators or breeding in captivity.

The most effective way known to society of achieving thissustainable production is through the market process: that is,by allowing private property rights over wildlife and the tradein these rights. As the internationally prominent Swiss wildlifeexpert, Dr Peter Dollinger, commented: "There must beeconomic incentives for species survival ... so harvesting acertain amount of animals is necessary to that species preser-vation." Without trading, property rights will be of limitedvalue, thereby diminishing the capacity and willingness ofindividuals to husband the animals. ' For example, farmers

IPA Review, Vol. 45 No. 1, 1992 11

HOW TO SAVE OUR NATIVE BIRDS

currently put little effort into maintaining breeding groundsfor birds even though they own the habitat, simply because itdoes not pay them to do so — indeed it may cost them ifhabitats become inhabited by vermin. If, however, farmers areallowed ownership and selling rights over the birdlife, they willundoubtedly begin to husband the birds. Under such condi-tions one can envisage many farmers working at weekends andevenings collecting and erecting hollow logs in the hope thata pair of Major Mitchell cockatoos will grace their properties.Some farmers will undoubtedly go further and apply theirskills in animal husbandry to the breeding and domesticationof native birds. Someone may then discover how to breed theMajor Mitchell in captivity, thereby reducing even further thepressure on wild stocks. The failure to allow the use ofAustralia's undeniable strengths and expertise in animal hus-bandry for the betterment of wildlife and society is not justillogical but a disgraceful waste.

Markets and property rights also have the ability to helpprotect species less valued commercially. The preservationand enhancement of habitat for economically valuablespecies, such as the Major Mitchell cockatoo will, as a resultof intentional and unintentional actions, improve the ecosys-tem for the myriads of commercially insignificant species.Moreover, for those people who may not want to physicallypossess wild birds, such as the palm cockatoo, but are deeplyconcerned about their preservation, the market process willstimulate the supply of private wildlife sanctuaries, as it hasdone in many parts of the world, as witness the private gameparks in South Africa, and the private nature reserves ownedby conservation groups in North America.

Allowing privately owned wildlife parks will not just helpanimals, but will separate the genuine conservationists fromthe socialist ideologues in the conservation movement.Reducing government intervention and allowing markets toflourish would provide true conservationists with a means ofescaping from the clutches of the political activist, as well asensuring that their objectives are achieved in a practical,voluntary and direct manner.

Governments Fail Too

The prevailing orthodoxy assumes that, though govern-ments may not be perfect, they are invariably superior to themarket place in respect of stewardship of the environment andwildlife. What this overlooks is the unequivocal evidence ofpervasive and severe government failure. That governmentsmake mistakes, are biased in favour of the politically powerfulrather than the productive, have short time horizons andexhibit a fickleness of purpose, particularly in respect of theenvironment, is a fact. 1 Indeed, many of the world's andAustralia's most pressing environmental problems have beencaused by government failure. The pollution of oceans andrivers by the dumping of raw sewage, the pollution of wetlandsby dumping of municipal waste, excessive air pollution result-ing from the use of low quality but high cost coal in govern-ment-owned power stations, the introduction of exotic pestsand the destruction of wild life habitats through the subsidiza-tion of agriculture, logging or urban development, must all in

large part be sheeted home to government failure.

What is the Alternative?

The solution lies with rejecting the orthodoxy and allow-ing the commercialization and farming of native birds, as wellas many other types of wildlife. Individuals should be allowed,under specific conditions, to obtain rights to harvest wildspecies and to raise native birds in captivity, and importantlythey should be allowed to sell legal birds. Governments wouldretain their essential role of defining and enforcing privateproperty rights.

Commercialization of wildlife is already happeningoverseas. Frogs, crayfish and alligators, and over 10 otherspecies of wildlife, are harvested from the swamps or bayousof Louisiana. This has led to an expansion in the size andproductivity of the habitat. In Zimbabwe, all wildlife is treatedcommercially. As a result its population of elephants hasdoubled in 10 years with similar increases in its stock of Nilecrocodiles. In contrast Kenya, which is a strong adherent tothe orthodox approach, has seen its elephant populationsdecline by 50 per cent in the same period. Papua New Guineahas promoted the commercialization of both fresh and saltwater crocodiles, as well as wild butterflies. Butterfly farmsare also developing in other places, including Malaysia, andSouth and Central America. Malaysia has allowed the com-mercialization of sea turtle eggs, with a commensuratedecrease in the total mortality of *hatchlings. The mountainforests of western North America are being restocked withcommercially-raised golden eagles.

Even in Australia, long a stalwart defender of the or-thodox view, commercialization of wildlife has been gaining atentative foothold. In an attempt to provide employment op-portunities for rural Aboriginal communities, governmentsallowed the commercial harvesting and farming for export ofsalt water crocodiles and 'emus. These activities have sub-sequently been taken on by non-Aborigines with significantsuccess. Lord McAlpine, partly in exchange for investing in amulti-million resort complex, received a licence to operate aprivate zoo — the only such licence in Australia. This zoo, thePearl Coast Zoological Gardens at Broome, has an active andsuccessful program of breeding and exporting a wide range ofscarce animals from Australia and other continents to otherzoos. Wisely, Lord McApline employed two of Queensland'sbest-known bird `traders' to operate his successful native bird-breeding and bird-trading program.

The transition to connmercialization will not be easy.Many in the conservation movement will resist the change.There will be a large number of technical issues to settle, suchas which birds to commercialize and how to differentiateefficiently and effectively between legal and illegal birds.Nonetheless, it is abundantly clear that commercializationoffers a viable and often superior means of conserving nativebirds and other wildlife. •

1. Fred Smith , `Environmental, Protection: is there a better way?', AIPPEconomic Witness, No. 46, 1990.

12 IPA Review, Vol. 45 No. 1, 1992

Thinking Strategically aboutReform

KENNETH MINOGUE

THE overriding problem governments have in the 1990sis how to escape from socialism. The dramatic versionof the problem faces the inheritors of power in the

Soviet Empire, but Sweden also has it in an interesting form,and a milder version is to be found in the United States,Britain, New Zealand — and Australia.

That the problem is complex becomes obvious once werealize that forms of people-management, such as cor-poratism, are just as much in vogue as they ever were, and thatthe removal of one form of socialist restrictiveness is currentlyparallelled by the rise of new forms of regulation. The conductof the European Community shows that the bureaucraticinterest is as vital — and as dangerous — as it ever was.

There is little theory to guide governments in diminish-ing the inflated range of their own activity, but the experienceof the 1980s is suggestive. The fundamental ground for such apolicy is nothing less than reality itself — more specifically inthe first instance the reality of economic cost. The Santa Clausstate wastes resources and in the long term cripples theeconomy: the increasing demands of government press upona diminishing quantity of production.

Two things stand in the way of reform: first, the interestof those who profit from the corporatist giveaway. Protectedindustries, welfare beneficiaries, agricultural interests,universities, public service employees, etc. often take a short-term view of where their interest lies. There was panic amongliberals in Britain in the late-1970s that a shadow line wouldsoon be crossed in which an actual majority of the electoratemight have its vote determined, as it were, by one specialinterest involvement or another: public employees made up avery large slice of the voting public.

Secondly, the wide diffusion of socialist principles andsentiments in the population, and their focus in the mainsocialist party, is a firmly established feature of modern life.For the most part, it can only be contested ad hoc, by appealto particular abuses and circumstances. After a decade ofenergetic Thatcherism, 75 per cent of Britons still supportincreased government spending on health, education andwelfare, even if it means increased taxes. 1 To abandon the

POLICIES ARENOT ENOUGH

Twenty years ago in Australia, Labor wasthe party of new ideas; the Liberals theparty of pragmatism. Now the situation isthe reverse. Judged by the intellectual andtechnical sophistication of the Fightbackpackage, the Liberals have come a longway in policy development. But policiesare one thing; implementing them againstresistance from the public service,outcries from interest groups, mediaantagonism, and intransigent institutionsis quite another. The resistance to theeducational reforms implemented byTerry Metherell in New South Walesshows that more is needed than the rightpolicies. Few Federal Liberal front-benchers have any experience ingovernment. Will their policy goals befoiled by strategic ineptitude?

In Britain, the Conservatives led byMrs Thatcher entered government with asimilar challenge: how to implementsuccessfully a radical agenda ofliberal-conservative reforms. KennethMinogue, Professor of Political Science atthe London School of Economics,examines the strategic lessons of theThatcher years.

IPA Review, Vol. 45 No. 1, 1992 13

THINKING STRATEGICALLY ABOUT REFORM

principles of a lifetime is a painful business, and seldomhappens quickly. In Britain, the Labour Party has spent the1980s being dragged kicking and screaming into the 1990s.

The Reality Principle

But . here, an important caveat may be entered. Thereturn to fiscal responsibility is unmistakeably based on prettyinexorable realities, and reality is the most powerful card inthe hands of any rational agent. Liberal reforming parties maythus count on a considerable degree of covert co-operation,or at least absence of dedicated obstruction, in the task ofreturning a country to the rational recognition of what collec-tive projects cost. This has certainly happened in Britain, evenif only in the recognition that Conservatives are, at a veryminimum, merely getting the economy back into the statewhere it might be able to sustain new versions of the unsink-able socialist projects of our time. It is even more true of NewZealand, where much of the spadework was actually done bya Labour Government inspired by Roger Douglas.

The basic appeal in reforming the ravages of socialismmust thus be the reality itself. Politicians, like other humanbeings according to the poet T.S. Eliot, "cannot bear verymuch reality." In any case, there is very little agreement as towhere reality lies, but the bottom line of a column of figuresand the recognition of a falling standard of living will do wellenough in this area. As a political move, however, it must beused with discretion. The fate of Mrs Thatcher showed thatparties cannot make a career out of appealing to the sense of

reality in the electorate, but against a background of hollowpolitical promising, it can be devastatingly effective.

In politics, any appeal requires the man, or — remem-bering Margaret Thatcher, Ruth Richardson and others -the person.

Reality must be incarnated in some single-minded figurewho can communicate an absolute determination to do theright thing whatever the consequences. This need not be theleader of the party, and in some cases it may turn out to be aself-sacrificial role, but it is hard to see a party succeeding inthe enterprise without such a figure emerging to block thetemptation of the U-turn. Mistakes will undoubtedly be madein economic management and it is easy for a government tolose its nerve. In fact, however, the very ferocity of a party's

Part of Mrs Thatcher's success can beexplained by the fact that she thoroughly

moralized economic issues.

dedication to unmistakably sound principles of reform be-comes, in spite of defects in the detail, a necessary expressionof political will. Nothing so much contributed to MrsThatcher's success ui this area as the fact that from soon afterher accession to power, no-one doubted that they were in thepath of a steamroller.

A reforming party coming to power must also have whatI suppose must be modishly called a `strategy'. This metaphoris unfortunate because it suggests that the government facesenemies. It doesn't. It must govern partly by using its constitu -tional authority, but partly by argument directed at rationalcreatures. But exerting its will in this way requires thoroughpreparation of policies in advance.

What is more commonly called a `strategy', however, issome kind of covert plan to-manage the political responses ofthe population as it goes about the business of reform. Allgovernments, and especially those with at best only a three-year lease on power, recognize that necessary pain should beinflicted early in the hope that the consequent happiness willturn up before the next election. This is even true of reformingparties returned to power for a second term, since most willhave gone in for a bit of fiscal debauchery in an attempt to winthe elections, and this damage at least must be repaired as partof the price of democracy. A good example of this problemwas Mrs Thatcher's 1979 decision to commit her governmentto the recommendations of the Clegg Commission on publicsector salaries. Clegg was a professor of industrial rela-tions from the University of Warwick who had been ap-pointed by the Callaghan Government to get it off anincomes policy hook, and to have rejected its findings inadvance was judged to be a major roadblock on the roadto victory. As Hugo Young puts it: "The dreaded `Clegg'award, so rashly endorsed as an electoral necessity,meant that public sector wages alone, in the current year,would rise by £1,500 million... "2

14 IPA Review, Vol. 45 No. 1, 1992

THINKING STRATEGICALLY ABOUT REFORM

Another strategic point to be derived from the Thatcherexperience is that it is unwise to take on all special interests inone grand swoop — a principle which sometimes contradictsthe "pain first, pleasure later" principle just mentioned. TheThatcher Government's treatment of the unions is a model ofsuch policy: union privileges were dealt with in stages, and thegrand fixed battle with the coal miners — the PraetorianGuard of trade union privilege — was avoided for nearly fiveyears. The battle with Arthur Scargill which followed was thena set-piece affair and took a fearful toll on both sides, but itwas almost certainly necessary. In this as in many other of herbattles, Mrs Thatcher had immense luck with her foes. Shecould easily have had a seriously bad time.

Ambiguous Legacy

The problem with reforming strategies, however, is that(as Michael Oakeshott once remarked of Hayek) a plan to endplanning may be better than its opposite, but it is still a plan.The basic approach to this entire problem was summed up inApril 1979 by Lionel Robbins at a meeting of the Institute ofEconomic Affairs:

"`Taming' government implies confining it to thefunctions only it can perform, notably devising therequisite framework of Iaw...Government has, inpractice, far exceeded those functions and mustnow be restricted to functions which permit ratherthan impede the creative activities of the citizen. "3

A government with a strategy of this kind may wellincrease the power and range of government, even contraryto what it actually intends, and the Thatcher Government didnot avoid this paradox. Its record in some areas reminds us ofthe Communist thesis that a dictatorship of the proletariatmust precede the withering away of the state. Its legislativeprogram was extremely heavy. The problem may be illustratedfrom the field of education, where the attempt to remedy thedamage done by educational theorists and local authoritiesled to an immense increase in central direction. Britain hasended up with what socialists always dreamed of, but whichthe British had largely managed to avoid: a system of educa-tion, with all the future possibilities of bureaucratization andstandardization which that implies. In this, as in some otherareas, some Thatcherite reforms have been of immensebenefit to future socialist projects.

The Thatcher Government thus had 10 years in which toreform the country, and left an ambiguous legacy. There is nodoubt that the pain of destroying thousands of Mickey Mousejobs led directly on to a much more robust economy thanbefore. On the other hand, for all the reductions of taxation,the government `take' from the economy has only beenreduced by a couple of percentage points. Mrs Thatcher'sappeal to some parts of the electorate (most notablyskilled workers) provoked loyalties as fierce as the hatredshe engendered in the conventionally minded elite. It wasthis appeal which led to her being interpreted as a kind ofradical rather than conservative, and thus to be. claimed as an

inspiration by the most powerful current replacement forsocialist managerialism in Britain.

This replacement takes the view that Britain remains anancien regime in need of the revolutions which have takenplace in other countries. A menu of d Ia carte reforms hasattracted support from a miscellaneous collection of peoplelooking for some new big idea to guide the activism endemicin modern societies: abolish the House of Lords, remove themonarch from the constitution, disestablish the church, bringthe fee-paying schools into the public sector, diminish the roleof Shakespeare in the British identity, and so on. Thesereforms, leading to a new constitution and a Bill of Rights, aretypical of much modern political thought in that they advancea kind of servile managerialism under the pretence of expand-ing freedom and individuality.

And that point leads us to a crucial conclusion. Reform-ing socialism in the 1980s was generally presented as aneconomic project. It was all to be done in the name ofprosperity. Part of Mrs Thatcher's success can be explainedby the fact that she thoroughly moralized economic issues. Shewas despised both by professional economists (no fewer than364 of them signed a letter to The Times pronouncing hereconomic incompetence) and by other political leaders -former French Prime Minister Michel Rocard sneered thatshe espoused the economics of a housewife. But the reductionof Britain's absurdly over-sized contribution to the absurdCommon Agricultural Policy was the result of moral passion,not of any expert advice. The real . problem with socialism isthe way in which it debilitates populations. That temptationtoday comes in a great variety of shapes and forms. It cannotbe removed in one or several parliamentary sessions, and itdemands of us a continuous moral dialogue with the publicopinion of the country. ■

1. The Tunes, 22 November 1991.

2. Hugo Young, One of Us: A Biography of Margaret Thatcher, London:Macmillan, 1990, p. 192.

3. Quoted in Christopher Johnson, The Economy under Mrs Thatcher1979-1990, Penguin, 1991, p. 79.

WEAREMOVING!

As of 16 March 1992, the IPA's Melbourneoffice will be located at:

Ground FIoor128-136 Jolimont RoadJOLIMONT VIC 3002 A

IPA Review, Vol. 45 No. 1, 1992 15

"An increasing number of scientists believe that the earth isheading rapidly into another ice age — and that this is helpingto upset weather patterns. They note that the earth's meantemperature has dropped by 0.3 degrees Celsius since 1940.While a drop of one-third of a degree seems little enough byday-to-day standards, it is quite a momentous change in thelong-term time scale. Europe's foremost climate authority,Professor Hubert Lamb, of the University of East Anglia inEngland, declared recently the world is in an inter-glacialperiod — and on the downhill slope to a new ice age."

Weather upsets point to another age of ice', Task Force Report byJohn Henningham, Eric Cummins, Lyn Laidlaw, Virginia Westbury

and Graham WIIIIams,The Australian, 19 June 1974.

"A cooling of the world's average temperature will lead to agreater reliance on Australia, Canada and the US as theworld's grain suppliers. Mr Ronald Anderson, Victorianpresident of the Australian Agricultural Economics Societysays this in a recent National Bank Monthly Summary. Grainexporting countries today could feed the world for only 29days, compared with 95 days in 1961, he says. This is duelargely to the world's changing climate, he says. Mr Andersonsays that Professor Kenneth Hare [Director of the Institute ofEnvironmental Studies at the University of Toronto], who wasa visiting professor at Adelaide University, believes that mostpeople do not yet appreciate the degree to which 1972 was alandmark in economic climatology. Changes in the climate in1972 caused crop failures in 38 of the world's 53 food produc-ing areas."

'World will seek Australian grain', Maureen Murrill,The Herald (Melbourne), 21 November 1974.

Catastrophic Implications

"The cooling has already killed hundreds of thousands ofpeople in poor nations. It has already made food and fuel moreprecious, thus increasing the price of everything we buy. If itcontinues, and no strong measures are taken to deal with it,the cooling will cause world famine, world chaos, and probablyworld war, and this could all come by the year 2000."

^p,RMC&I Change

PredictedTODAY 'expert' predictions that the earth is facing

catastrophic global warming abound. Fifteen yearsago the `experts' were predicting the opposite.Fortunately, not all scientists today have joined thecurrent bandwagon. Many argue that there is no con-vincing evidence for the enhanced greenhouse effect,and that it will require at least another decade of obser-vation and research before the situation can beclarified. The publication of research by two Danishclimatologists in Science, 1 November 1991, providingstrong evidence that variations in the earth's tempera-ture may be caused by variations in solar activity, raisesfurther questions about the greenhouse theory of globalwarming. And the case for delaying economicallydamaging steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissionswas strengthened by an article published in Nature, 21March 1991 by two American climatologists, MichaelSchlesinger and Xingjian Jiang. This showed that a 10-year delay would only have a small effect on theprojected warming in the year 2100, no matter whichextreme of the current estimates of temperature changeadopted by the Intergovernmental Panel on ClimateChange was chosen.

Given all this, it is wise to recall that `scientific'prophecies and media anxieties about catastrophes arenot new. The last of the predictions of a returning iceage listed below was published in 1977, less than adecade before the greenhouse panic got under way inthe mid-1980s. The list is based on work by Anna J. Braypublished in the Fall 1991 issue of Policy Review, withsome additional Australian examples compiled byJeremy Wilcox.

The Ice Age ComethRemembering the Scare of Global Coolir

-- Lowell Ponte, The Cooling, 1976.

Reprinted with permission from the Fall 1991 issue of Policy Review, the flagship publication of The Heritage Foundation,214 Massachussets Avenue NE, Washington DC, 20002 USA.

16 IPA Review, Vol. 45 No. 1, 1992

7'H E ICE AGE COMET!-!

"Mr Ponte's warning is not as far-fetched as it may seem...IfMr Ponte's worst fears come to pass, The Cooling could proveto be the most important and prophetic popular science bookof the 1970s."

— United States Senator Claiborne Pell,foreword to The Cooling, 1976.

"The facts have emerged, in recent years and months, fromresearch into past ice ages. They imply that the threat of a newice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely sourceof wholesale death and misery for mankind."

— Nigel Calder. former editor of New Scientist and producer ofscientific television documentaries, 'In the Grip of a New

Ice Age, International Wildlife, July 1975.

"At this point, the world's climatologists are agreed on onlytwo things: that we do not have the comfortable distance oftens of thousands of years to prepare for the next ice age, andthat how carefully we monitor our atmospheric pollution willhave direct bearing on the arrival and nature of this weathercrisis. The sooner man confronts these facts, these scientistssay, the safer he'll be. Once the freeze starts, it will be too late."

-- Dougals Colligan, 'Brace Yourself for AnotherIce Age,' Science Digest, February 1973.

"There are ominous signs that the earth's weather patternshave begun to change dramatically and that these changes mayportend a drastic decline in food production — with seriouspolitical implications for just about every nation on earth. Thedrop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only 10years from now...The evidence in support of these predictionshas now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologistsare hard-pressed to keep up with it...The central fact is thatafter three-quarters of a- century of extraordinarily mild con-ditions, the earth's climate seems to be cooling down.Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of thecooling trend, as well as over its specific impact on localweather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the viewthat the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the restof the century."

— Peter Gwynne, Newsweek,28 April 1975.

"According to the academy [National Academy of Studies]report on climate, we may be approaching the end of a majorinterglacial cycle, with the approach of a full-blown 10,000-year ice age a real possibility. Again, this transition wouldinvolve only a small change of global temperature — two orthree degrees — but the impact on civilization would becatastrophic. Scientists once thought the onset of an ice agewould be very gradual, with glaciers slowly pushing down fromthe North, but recent studies... indicate the transition can berather sudden -- a matter of centuries — with ice packsbuilding up relatively quickly from local snowfall that ceasesto melt from winter to winter."

— Science, 1 March 1975

"And if the climatologists are correct, who now think that coldconditions in the North are likely to be linked with a drierclimate in the tropics, there is also a long list of countries indanger of worsening drought.. .The onset could still begradual, giving plenty of time for human populations to adaptto, or combat, the changes, or it could be disastrously rapid.The evidence, though, for the episode of the sudden coolingand for the mechanism of the snowblitz favours a catastrophicview of the threat of ice."

— Nigel Calder, The Weather Machine, 1976.

"With many signs today pointing to the possibility that theearth may be headed for another ice age, minor or major ...there is suddenly renewed interest within the scientific com-munity for some sort of monitoring of the sun's input.

"I seriously doubt if we are headed toward another Wisconsinglaciation," Eddy [Dr John A. Eddy, then of the National Centerfor Atmospheric Research] said, speaking of the last great IceAge that smothered much of the Northern Hemisphere underhuge sheets of ice more than 11,000 years ago. 'But a coolingtrend like this could bring on a little ice age."

—New York Times, 14 August 1975

"The cooling since 1940 has been large enough and consistentenough that it will not soon be reversed, and we are unlikelyto quickly regain the `very extraordinary period of warmth'that preceded it. Even this mild diagnosis can have `fantasticimplications' for present-day humanity, Wallen [C.C. Wallen,then of the World Meteorological Organization] says."

—Science, 1 March 1975.

"The armadillo, which once ranged as far north as Nebraska,has been retreating steadily southward. A species of heat-living snail reportedly has vanished from the forests of CentralEurope. Glaciers which had been retreating until 1940 havebegun to advance. The North Atlantic is cooling down aboutas fast as an ocean can cool. The growing seasons in Englandand Scandinavia are getting shorter."

— David Salisbury, The ChristianScience Monitor, 27 August 1974.

"Those who worry that we are living in an interglacial periodand that the temperature could start diving at any time, maybe reassured by the contingency planning of Dr J. Flohn, ofthe University of Bonn Meteorological Institute. A majorglaciation, according to Dr Flohn, must start with the failureof the winter snows to melt in summer, in a region where snowcover is ordinarily seasonal. The area concerned would be ofthe order 100,000 to 1,000,000 square kilometres. This, DrFlohn reasons, is not too large to cover with soot, raising itsabsorption of solar radiation and melting the snow; so an ice-age should be preventable, at least in some circumstances. DrFlohn was addressing the Australasian Conference onClimate and Climate Change, held at Monash in December."

—'How to stop an Ice-age',Search, March 1976.

IPA Review, Vol. 45 No. 1, 1992 17

THE ICE AGE COMEt1-I

Pollutants Cause Cooling

"For aerosols...the net effect of increase in density is to reducethe surface temperature of earth. Because of the exponentialdependence of the backscattering, the rate of temperaturedecrease is augmented with increasing aerosol content. An in-crease by only a factor of four in global aerosol backgroundconcentration may be sufficient to reduce the surface tempera-ture by as much as 3S degrees Kelvin. If sustained over a periodof several years, such a temperature decrease over the wholeglobe is believed to be sufficient to trigger an ice age."

— Dr S.I. Rasool and Dr S.H. Schneider, 'AtmosphericCarbon Dioxide and Aerosols: Effects of Large

Increases on Global Climate,' Science, 9 July 1971.

"The continued rapid cooling of the earth since World War IIis also in accord with the increased global air pollution as-sociated with industrialization, mechanization, urbanization,and an exploding population, added to a renewal of volcanicactivity...l believe that increasing global air pollution, throughits effect on the reflectivity of the earth, is currently dominantand is responsible for the temperature decline of the pastdecade or two."

— Reid Bryson, 'Environmental Roulette, Global Ecology:Readings Toward a Rational Strategy for Man,

John P. Holdren and Paul R. Ehrlich {eds.), 1971.

"A model of future climate based on the observed orbital-climate relationships...predicts that the long-term trend overthe next several thousand years is toward extensive NorthernHemisphere glaciation."

— J.D. Hays, John Imbrie and N.J. Shackleton,'Variations in the Earth's Orbit: Pacemaker of

the Ice Ages,' Science, 10 December 1976.

"We know that we are in the middle of an ice age, and we knowthat we are living in an interglacial interlude... Only 13,000

years ago the vast ice sheets of Scandinavia and NorthAmerica were still with us, and now that they have gone weknow it is only a matter of time before they come again."

— Brian S. John, The Ice Age:Past and Present, 1977.

"...Studies of both short-term climate patterns (the past 300years or so) and of long-term cycles (thousands of years) pointto the same tentative but harsh conclusion: We've been livingin warmer than normal times — and we may have to face anincreasingly cold future."

-- George Alexander, 'Will This Winter Be LikeLast Year's?', Popular Science, October 1977.

"The sensitivity of climate was pointed up independently by aSoviet and an American scientist, who concluded that a per-manent drop of only 1.6-2 per cent in energy reaching the earth`would lead to an unstable condition in which continental snowcover would advance to the Equator ...[and] the oceans wouldeventually freeze,' according to a recent US scientific advisoryreport."

— Samuel W. Matthews, What's Happening to OurClimate?' National Geographic, November 1976.

But some things have not changed

"You shouldn't take all those predictions of an imminentice age too seriously. By playing to mankind's currentobsession with doom and disaster, climate scientists haveaverted what, to them, would have been an equally seriousfreeze: on the flow of money for meteorological research."

'Before you worry about the coming ice age,consider the doomsayers' mot ives', Tony Maiden,

The National Times, 31 March-5 April 1975.

0o V ^ c

I4

18 IPA Review, Vol. 45 No. 1, 1992

The need for a strong,independent welfare sectorStrengthening the non-government welfare sector will raise, and not lower, standards in the services fromwhich Australians benefit. Without such a sector, we would, as a nation, be less free than we are.

MARGARET ROBERTS

B[G GOVERNMENT with correspondingly big inefficientservices, or small government with minimal govern-ment-run services? We have a choice as a society as to

what our `style' should be. As a taxpayer I will opt for the latter,with the qualification that our State and Federal bureaucracieshave to be of sufficient size to carry out their regulatory,administrative, and policing roles effectively, in a mannerwhich broadly protects those who are vulnerable, and at thesame time ensures that our captains of industry do not run riot.

Why should the broad non-government sector be the major ser-vice deliverer for the community?Opting for less government need notmean reducing the quality of servicesavailable to people. Indeed, it shouldmean improving them. Generallyspeaking, the non-government sectoris more efficient and cost-effective;more flexible and innovative; andmore accessible and in tune with localcommunities and consumers' needs.But above all, it is different! The non-government sector provides thenecessary alternative to governmentitself; it is the community. This is whyit must also be independent: not beholden to government;working in partnership with government, but not so close thatits inherent 'differentness' is diminished in any way.

There are, however, certain functions of society that arethe responsibility of government. These include: defence, lawenforcement, social security, customs and quarantine, andsome aspects of communication and transport. These areimportant areas that either would not be performed by theprivate sector if government opted out or where the publicinterest could be compromised by the interests of private

corporations. It is also crucial, through impartial laws andenforcement mechanisms, to protect the rights of individualsagainst potential violation by both government and non-government bodies. Not all societal tasks can be appropriatelycarried out by the non-government sector: most can, but notall. This is a major qualification and one that I cannot stressstrongly enough. As a citizen, I am happy to have the privatenon-government sector (both for-profit and not-for-profit) goabout its business providing goods and services, being innova-

tive and competitive, and providingchoices and options for consumers— but always with the proviso thatappropriate government regulatoryand administrative controls are inplace; effectively carried out; andknown to all.

Adequate revenue collection,sufficient to carry out the supportand funding allocation functions ofgovernment is the important firststep which precedes the foregoing.Without effective and adequaterevenue collection by government wesimply would grind to a halt as anation.

Government-run services have the potential to be mo-nopolistic, inefficient, targeted at only a narrow range ofclients, and stodgy. It is also, I think, arguable that whengovernment itself runs services which are quite ap-propriately run in the non-government sector, what fol-lows are potential conflicts of interest. Such conflictsoccur where government sets and polices the rulesgoverning services which government itself is responsiblefor delivering.

In my parlous home State of Victoria, economic

Government-run serviceshave the potential to be

monopolistic, inefficient,targeted at only a narrow

range of clients, andstodgy.

Margaret Roberts is Executive Director of the Children's Welfare Association of Victoria Incorporated, the peak co-ordinating bodyfor the network of non-government child, youth and family welfare services throughout Victoria.

IPA Review, Vol. 45 No. 1, 1992 19

THE NEED FOR A STRONG, INDEPENDENT WELFARE SECTOR

circumstances are forcing a reduction of public sectoradministrators' numbers. We simply haven't got the money!However, a corresponding reduction of the bureaucratic con-trol of welfare services is not happening. This is despite thefact that we have a newly operative Children and Young Per-sons Act, which should result in a transfer of services forchildren and families currently run by government to the non-government not-for-profit sector. The Act will mean that fewerstatutory services for the care of children and young people willbe required. There will be a corresponding need for servicesof a voluntary or preventative nature. Government, it seems,speaks with a forked tongue. It says it is happy to have theprivate sector carry out appropriate service delivery functions— but at the same time it demonstrates a lack of willingness totransfer resources. Thus governments continue to deny thecommunity what it desperately needs: a cohesive, wellresourced child youth and family network of non-governmentwelfare services, especially of the preventative kind.

So what does the community get from the non-govern-ment sector? My experience is with the not-for-profit, some-times called 'voluntary', welfare sector. Some of the positivefeatures that distinguish this sector from government-runservices are:

• Diversity, resulting in a wide choice of services to suit theparticular needs of a wide variety of consumers.

• Location within the community (often with managementby and accountability to the community). This means thatservices are readily accessible to consumers; they aremore sensitive, more stable, more approachable andmore responsive to local needs.

• Models of service delivery that are readily adaptable,open to change; and more likely to have innovative/'cut-ting edge' service options for customers. For example,preventative services for families that aim to avoid place-ment of children outside the home, and treatment ofperpetrators through anger management, etc.

• More efficient dealings with consumers, with fewerbureaucratic hurdles for them to jump.

• Smaller management infrastructures and therefore lesscostly to run. (This also can have a negative aspect.)

• The use of referral networks within the non-governmentsector to ensure that consumers have access to as wide arange of services as necessary to their needs. One of thefunctions of the Children's Welfare Association of Vic-toria is to ensure that member agencies are kept up todate with the services and activities offered by otheragencies and with innovations in the field.

• Consumers are treated as individuals — not merely "oneof the mob."

• Less drain on the taxpayer. The non-government welfaresector relies on help from the philanthropic sector and toa lesser degree the commercial sector.

• Acts as an independent consultant/commentator forgovernment on the impact of government policies andfunded programs.

• Has a capacity to use volunteer labour where appropriatetasks are identified.

There are negatives:

• Small infrastructures can mean under-management inagencies and insufficient support structures for workers.

• "Smell of an oily rag" funding for agencies can meaninsufficient on-the-job or follow-up training — amongother things.

• Research and evaluation are, generally speaking,swamped by the urgency of direct service delivery and soare rarely carried out at an appropriate level.

• Lack of sufficient co-ordination and contact betweenagencies means that opportunities to exchange informa-tion (about innovations, for example) can be lost. Peakbodies are relatively under-developed.

• There is a potential for service users to be 'selected' —not -necessarily in an overt way — to suit the perspectiveof the auspice body or service delivery agency.

• Unfettered competition between agencies can result notonly in confusion for consumers, but also lack of goodplanning and cohesion because there will be agencies that`win' and agencies that 'lose' in the funding battle with thebureaucracy. Government services tend not to be of thepreventative kind, and trying to please the bureaucracy toachieve funding may lead to services that are of a residual'last resort' kind.

The negatives relate very much to the level of fundsavailable for not-for-profit agencies, and also to the degree ofco-ordination between agencies that occurs through, for ex-ample, peak body activities ; carried out in the sector itself.

Other qualifications also need to be made about whoshould do what. In the field of child and family welfare thereare some tasks that should not be the domain of the non-government sector. Interventive work in child protection (in-vestigation and application through the court system);guardianship (major life) decisions when the state takes overthe role of parent; state-to-state matters in inter-countryadoption, among others.

Also important to mention is the need for adequategovernment financial support for not-for-profit non-government agencies. They need special resource con-sideration because their private fund-raising capacities arevery limited and because they carry out an important rolein supporting consumers who are unable to participate inuser-pays or commercial service delivery. These agenciesdo the hard work, if you like; the work that often no-oneelse will do; and they have long histories and highlydeveloped skills to carry out this vital work.

Notwithstanding the vital role that these agencies carryout, the not-for-profit non-government sector has not beenassertive enough in ensuring that the full cost of services runon behalf of government are paid for by government. For some

(Continued on page 59)

20 IPA Review, Vol. 45 No. 1, 1992

Internationalism orNationalism?Two broad views exist as to how Australia should meet its current challenge of avoiding Third Worlddecline. But only one view is being heard among, or propagated by, most of our political and journalisticpower elites.

GRAEME CAMPBELL

USTRALIA is faced with its fourth great challenge sinceFederation. The first was World War I when Australiahad to cope with severe military losses, bitter divisions

on the home front over the issue of conscription and socialdislocation. The second was the Depression when up to one-third of the work-force was unemployed. The third was WorldWar II and, in particular, the threat of invasion from Japan,when a limited form of conscription was introduced, but notwithout rancour.

These three great periods of stress and the responses tothem have had an enormous influence on today's Australia.All three were clear-cut and part of an international ex-perience. Australia on the world stage was one of the smallerplayers, but it was not helpless in the face of internationalforces and pressure. It could and did make decisions to in-fluence its own destiny, and it can do so in the challenge it facestoday.

The fourth challenge is also part of an internationalexperience, which is far more difficult to recognize, let alonedefine. But its outcome has the potential to shape the countryfar more completely than any of the preceding three. Australiais faced with an inexorable economic and social decline to thestatus of a Third World colony unless it rises to this challenge.

In spite of the fact that this entails coming to terms withpowerful international forces, the country's biggest battle willbe won and lost at home. It will be fought between groups withtwo broadly conflicting views of how Australia should respondto these forces to secure its future and the skirmishes havealready begun. One view can be described as basicallynationalist and the other as broadly internationalist.

Naturally both sides will attract extremists, but it is themoderates with coherent visions and a commitment todemocracy who will determine the outcome. There will be no

Graenie Campbell is the Federal Labor Member for Kalgoorlie.

shortage of attempts, however, given the examples of therecent past, to link the moderates, particularly the moderatenationalists, with the extremists.

Of course, there are differences in emphasis — some ofthem considerable — between groups and individuals on oneside or the other. Some on the nationalist side would beembarrassed by the label and have only gradually alignedthemselves to others who are more overtly nationalist. Someon the internationalist side consider themselves as stronglyAustralian, but also as pragmatists facing up to internationalrealities.

Those sympathetic to the nationalist approach have thenumbers, because they include the great bulk of the generalpublic, but lack organization. The internationalists, though,have gained the ascendancy in the power elites which controland influence both Government and Opposition. So they areboth organized and well-funded — to a large degree by publicmoney. Crucially, the internationalist viewpoint is promotedand espoused by the bulk of the media, but there have beensigns of a more sceptical approach on the part of some jour-nalists, particularly recently.

Nationalists Gradually Gaining Ground

During the last decade the internationalists have been inthe ascendancy to such an extent that the nationalists have hadextreme difficulty in having their view accepted as a legitimatealternative. The nationalists have found themselves attackedand shouted down, no doubt by many who were driven by goodintentions and feared the resurgence of an insular, counter-productive brand of nationalism. Yet with the post-mortemsover the financial excesses of the 1980s, with the failure of a

IPA Review, Vol. 45 No. 1, 1992 21

INTERNATIONALISM OR NATIONALISM?

number of internationalist schemes such as the Darwin FreeTrade Zone and with the growing maturity of the immigrationdebate, the nationalist viewpoint is gradually gaininglegitimacy.

The nationalist viewpoint can be broadly described asputting the interests of Australia's own residents first anddeveloping a more united independent outlook. Itsproponents emphasize the capabilities and achievements ofAustralians and the necessity to invest in our own residentsand resources. They say one of Australia's basic problems isthat it allows its ideas to be developed overseas, rather thanensuring that we develop them. They oppose high immigrationon economic, environmental and social grounds and criticizeAustralia's colonial-cringe and cargo-cult approaches. Theysay that our immigration program does nothing for the under-lying problems of emigrant countries, and that our skilledimmigrant program is not only a form of intellectual piracy,but one which denies our own residents training opportunities.Australia could far more effectively assist foreign countries byusing much of the money squandered on immigration to in-crease foreign aid programs.

The internationalists tend not to rate local abilities oradaptability to changing international circumstances highly.They stress the need for high levels of immigration to in-vigorate the country, both economically and socially. Theybelieve generally in multiculturalism, but specifically in in-tegration with Asia. They look at the economic groupings ofnations such as the European Community and the NorthAmerican Free Trade agreement, and fear that Australia willbe left behind if it does not make a similar arrangement.Australia being a basically European nation in an Asianregion which promises (particularly in the North-East) tobe the world's economicpowerhouse, the inter-nationalists see it as beingin Australia's interest to in-tegrate with the region.There are differences inemphasis of course abouthow this should be done,but a blueprint which hasbeen very enthusiasticallygreeted by academics,bureaucrats and in themedia is Professor RossGarnaut's Australia and

the North-East Asian As- Ross Garnaut: internationalistcendancy.

This approach stresses, among other things, the need totake more immigrants from North-East Asian countries, so asto link with the region; it also stresses the need for an educa-tional emphasis on the region, particularly the study of itslanguages. Others on the internationalist side stress the sig-nificance of other countries, particularly in immigration, whilenot publicly opposing the Garnaut view. Garnaut alsoproposes abolishing all tariffs by the year 2000, as part of acommitment to a 'level playing field', and already the govern-ment has significantly reduced tariffs.

On the other hand, most of the nationalists call forgovernment intervention to assist local industry and deny thatthere is any such thing as . a level playing field. They say theeconomies which have prospered — particularly Japan andGermany — are interventionist, and for Australia to advocatea level playing field when no other successful economy reallybelieves in it is folly. Intelligent nationalism stresses the im-portance of maintaining good relations with Asian countries(particularly with Japan, our major trading partner) and doesnot oppose the desirability of becoming better informed aboutour neighbours. It stresses, though, that all these things can bedone without sacrificing our own traditions or — in currentglibly fashionable language — becoming an `Asian nation'.Indeed, the Asian nations will respect us for approachingthem as equal, but different, and they will secretly — and notso secretly — hold us in contempt if we attempt to submergeour traditions in an attempt to 'fit in'. The nationalists say thatif Australia 'integrates' with Asia, we will lose everything wevalue as well as, ultimately, the respect of the Asian nationsthemselves. Australia must have the courage to accept itsuniqueness rather than attempt to extinguish it. It must alsolook to trade with the world and not become locked intoputting all of its trading effort into Asia. Given the rapidlychanging political and economic circumstances in the world,Australia not only has to have the ability to adapt quickly, butcannot afford to put all its eggs in the one basket — in tradeor any other area.

Building on the Past, Looking to the Future

However, if those in the nationalist camp who advocatewidespread protection and the use of tariff walls gain theascendancy, then the nationalists will fail. Government assis-tance to industry will have to be very selective and thenationalists will have to stress the development of our ownabundant natural resources. On a social level they will have tostress the things which unite, not those which divide the nation.

The tendency among some who align themselves withthis movement to hanker for past solutions and the re-creationof an Australia which no longer exists except in theirmemories, will have to be resisted. An intelligent outward-looking nationalism, which values and builds on the strengthsof the past, while looking to the future and developing theflexibility to respond to rapidly changing international cir-cumstances, is the only type which has a prospect of success.Isolationist nationalism will fail completely.

It is my contention that this intelligent outward-look-ing nationalism, which builds upon our traditions andstrengths, is the correct choice for Australia. It is also avision which the general Australian population will readilyembrace and work towards. On the other hand there islikely to be widespread grassroots resistance to the inter-nationalist approach, an approach which denigratesAustralian traditions and which is basically being imposedby the power elites from above.

A country can only continue to prosper if it builds uponthe best of what already exists and has the support of the bulk

22 IPA Review, Vol. 45 No.1, 1992

INTERNATIONALISM OR NATIONALISM?

of its population. The people without leadership is helpless,but leadership without the active support of the people willultimately fail.

The present leadership in Australia on the one handworks against the grain of its country's most valued traditions,and on the other promotes its worst — namely the cargo cultand the colonial cringe (with a strong dose of middle-classguilt to boot). All it has done is to direct these two old vicestowards Asia.

The Cost of Scorning Moderate Nationalism

In maintaining the illusion that there is no alternative andin denigrating the moderate voice of nationalism, the inter-nationalist approach not only asks for ultimate failure, itundermines the faith of the public in the political process. Ifmoderates are to be denied political legitimacy because ofinternationalist repression, then nationalist extremism willgain ground and basically good people will embrace it out of

sheer desperation. As stated earlier, extremism is not likely tosucceed in Australia, but it could deeply divide and damagethe nation. Those who denigrated the moderates, such as thepresent leadership, will bear a large part of the responsibility.

It must be remembered that unlike some expres-sions of European nationalism, Australian nationalism isnot expansionist or imperial. Australian nationalists don'twant to invade or bully other countries, just to secure thefuture of their own, so they can pass it on to their descendants.Australian nationalism is strongly democratic.

Having said that, Australia has yet to reach its potentialas a fully fledged nation. It is still an adolescent and to realizeits potentials that adolescent must be given the opportunity tothrow off its colonial cringe and develop to adulthood. Thealternative is to remain a stunted country and — out of fear ofbeing left alone in the big wide world — attempt to engineeran artificial conformity with one part of it. That is the cowardlyway to eternal colonization. Our future must be based on thecourage to build on our strengths, and not to be dominated byour fears. ■

Education MonitorA quarterly journal analyzing the fast-changing issues affecting education at all levels. Education Monitor isfor teachers, parents, policy-makers and others concerned with improving Australia's educationalperformance. J^

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In recent issues: VCE Australian Studies: The Illusion of Relevance• How the Educational Left Has Betrayed the Working Class, byLauchlan Chipman • The Consequences of State Aid, by GeoffreyPartington • How to Re-invigorate Catholic Schools • A GreatLanguage Impoverished, by Prince Charles • EducationalDisadvantage: the Surprising Facts • School Autonomy and ParentalChoice • How A ustralia Performs in International Science Tests •Making Sense of the Foreign Language Debate • Cutting CostsWithout Cutting Quality

Regular features: Statistical trends • Textbook Reviews •Developments overseas • States' Survey.

Published by the IPA Education Policy Unit-

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IPA Review, Vol. 45 No. 1, 1992 23

Exhibitionism Maria Kozic's exhibition inMelbourne, 'This is the Show', displayed I27 breasts -nothing but breasts -- in 63 paintings (one paintingcontained three breasts, accounting for the odd-numberedtotal). She sold the paintings by weight. This "is to do withthe absurdity of how tits are po rtrayed in the media, butalso the female nude in art," she told the Herald-Sun. "Towalk into a room and to be confronted with wall-to-floorbreasts, almost as if they are skinned and collected onstretchers, and have them looking at you like eyes ... I showthe absurdity of it." Indeed she does.

In Woodstock, New York, artist Kathy Grove takes adifferent approach. She uses air brush techniques to altercopies of famous works of art, such as Manet's 'Breakfaston the Grass'. Specifically, she removes the female figures,in order to make images "portraying women as they havebeen throughout history: invisible." Grove says that herversions give women "the chance to symbolically takecontrol of the decision to participate. " It seems more likelythat Grove herself is taking control of their decision toparticipate.

The real masters of the technique of "now you see them,now you don't", of course, were those artists who appliedthemselves, under instruction, to official Soviet portraitsafter a purge. Trotsky was the best-known of the formerparty men to become 'invisible'.

The Yuletide was out Asked by AnsettAustralia's inflight magazine, Panorama, to recall his bestChristmas, Tim Finn of Split Enz-Crowded House fame,nominated a Christmas in Rio de Janeiro. "...a lot of thevoodoo rituals were happening on the beach. They wereputting charms down into the sand and sending them outinto the water in little rafts. There were witch doctorseverywhere in black top hats and flowing robes, smokingbig cigars. People would start to get possessed, they'd beshrieking and flailing around. It was very strange andmoody, evocative stuff." One thing it doesn't evoke, Tim, isthe spirit of Christmas.

Flipping Paradigms! The title of the ANU'sCentre for Resource and Environmental Studies soundssensible enough. Not so some of its seminars. "Holism,Harmonism and Chaos Theory: Is the Eco-politicalParadigm about to Flip?" was the bewildering title of onetowards the end of last year. The speaker was NormSanders who, as a former Democrat Senator, ought tounderstand something of Chaos Theory. Dr Sanders isnow a Senior Lecturer in the ANU's Human SciencesProgram. Here is a sample from the circular advertising theseminar:

"Patriarchal deification of the blade displaced a holistic,earth-centred female/male partnership society some three

thousand years ago. Now, the male dominated, expertworshipping, reductionist economic growth paradigm iscoming under increasing scrutiny and criticism. The oncedevalued feminine trait of recognizing the interrelationshipbetween earth and humanity Is re-emerging...

"We need to take stock of our position in the light ofcurrent events and utilize Chaos Theory to ceate newstrategies to attain our goal of flipping the eco-politicalparadigm. That the time is right for a flip can be seen in anumber of widely diverse areas. The exploding interest inspirituality and self-transformation in the materialistic,resource squandering West can be taken as (an) indicationof the impending change.

"Unity of purpose is essential to the task of flipping theEco-political paradigm. We should consider uniting thebasic tenets of Deep Ecology, Social Ecology,Eco feminism, Environmentalism and ClassicalConservation under the holistic banner of Harmonism."

Future Buddies Corinella's children's page in theMelbourne HeraId-Sun recently awarded its 'Beamer ofthe Week' to the writer of this brief letter, published with anaccompanying photograph:

"Dear Corinella,

At school we are doing work on the future.Here I am dressed as an alien. "

Deregulated Imaginations "Muchnonsense has been written about the crisis in the leadershipof the Australian Democrats and the overthrow of SenatorJanet Powell," wrote Alex Mitchell last October in hisregular column in the Sydney Sun-Herald. He may beright, but that's no excuse for adding to it. Indeed, it is hardto think of any nonsense in the media on the Powelloverthrow which comes close to Mitchell's:

"The source of the party's problems are [sic] blindinglyobvious. Unlike the ALP, the Liberals and the Nationals,Powell made the courageous decision not to run up theStars and Stripes and support the war in the Gulf. Thiscaused huge concern in the Intelligence services andamong spooks at 'friendly' embassies in Canberra. Powellhas paid the price for her political principles by losing herjob and having her private life made public."

If this sounds far-fetched, Mitchell's comments oneconomic rationalism are even more so. In January hewrote:

"The Australian economy is only about one-third of itsway into the great deregulated, unregulated, privatized andunprotected experiment and look what we have: recordbankruptcies, the highest unemployment for 60 years andthousands of kids and elderly people forced to live roughor in poverty.

'But just a minute, say the deregulators, inflation has

24 IPA Review, Vol. 45 No. 1, 1992

been squeezed. to 4 per cent. Yes, we reply, and inflationwas zero in Hitler's labour camps. In Cambodia, the KhmerRouge demonstrated what happens when Europeanpolitical and economic concepts are borrowed fromdeveloped industrialized nations and inflicted on a ThirdWorld country. Welcome to Year Zero and the KillingFields."

Economic freedom today, genocide tomorrow:remember those champions of small government, Pot Potand Adolf-'Laissez Faire'-Hitler?

Alex Mitchell is not the only commentator to hear themarch of jackboots behind calls for economic reform. On11 December 1991, Senator Siegfried (Sid) Spindler askedthat the Senate note "the lemming-like rush to the GSTmirage.. .that, in times of economic and social stress, peoplewill gravitate to authoritarian leaders offering glitteringpromises, regardless of the merits of such promises; that,prior to 1933, more than a third of Germany's youngpeople were unemployed; and that this is a percentagewhich now applies to many regions in Australia."

The GST may not solve our economic problems, butwill it actually Inaugurate our own Third Reich?

No Credit for this Scheme In December theVictorian Government launched Foxiotto in an attempt tocurb the State's fox plague. "Shooters handing in a foxscalp to wildlife officers and selected skinbuying companieswill receive lottery tickets for monthly prizes such asholidays to Victorian resorts, dinners and sports goods,"reported Greenweek. Perhaps the Victorian Governmentcould try persuading its creditors to accept payment inlottery tickets --- but I don't like its chances.

Not Their Concern Queensland's CriminalJustice Commission on prostitution received numeroussubmissions, most supporting decriminalization. Oneorganization that did not make a submission, according toThe Weekend Australian, was the Catholic Church,because prostitution "is a quality of life and publicconscience issue". Presumably, if the issue had concerned,say, the distribution of wealth in Australia (on which theCatholic Bishops have produced a substantial report),Church comment would have flowed like the Franklin. Buta 'matter of public conscience'; well, that's not really themodern church's concern, is it?

Smell a Rat? A new element has entered thedispute over the proposed Yakabindi nickel mine inWestern Australia: a rare rodent called the stick-nest rat.According to a report in the West Australian, the NgaliaHeritage Research Council claims that mining woulddestroy the habitat of the rodent. Officers from theDepartment of Conservation and Land Management claim

that the rat is extinct on mainland Australia. But a Ngaliaspokesman says that the rats are still there in the hills "anda living part of the Aboriginal culture in the area. "

If this sounds like the 'mouse that roared', then considerthe US army's retreat in North Carolina, in the face of acolony of tiny woodpeckers. Fort Bragg in North Carolinais one of America's most important military bases, but it isthreatened with closure because the US Fish and WildlifeService has decreed that the red-cockaded woodpeckersshall be preserved at all costs.

New Scientist reports: "Tanks still roar around FortBragg's 60,000 hectares of woodlands, and troops stillparachute into the forest. But when they run into lines ofred tape or distinctive signs on trees, they must stop. Thesesigns mark areas where traffic is forbidden, because they liewithin 60 metres of the hollowed-out trees wherewoodpeckers live.

"There are more than 400 such areas on the base,creating a checkerboard training area that mocks thearmy's attempts to practise realistic combat. `The base issupposed to be a battlefield, and you don't have abattlefield anymore,' grumbled one military specialist. `It'sagainst all kinds of military doctrine.'"

Already, Fort Bragg has been forced to close its mainfiring range, which cost $20 million, because hollowed-outtrees had been accidentally destroyed.

Sounds of Silence Mary Cassini is a weaverfrom Oakbank in South Australia. But she is not just that.According to the ABC, she also initiated "the concept of3 Minutes' World Silence, a period in which people all overthe world would come together in thought to remember.the future [sic] and to wish for peace." Since the conceptbegan, it has "received considerable press attention,particularly in the Middle East... " — three minutes of peacebeing a familiar concept in that region.

Since initiating the concept, Ms Cassini has received agrant from the Performing Arts Board of the AustraliaCouncil, enabling her to commission Melbourne composerRas Bandt "to create a soundscape for radio that wouldcomplement and highlight the concept." On 1 January1992, at 10:45am, ABC-FM radio broadcast thesoundscape, followed by Three Minutes of World Silenceaccompanied by "sounds to act as a catalyst for thisactivity..."

And then, as if by way of comment, there followed aprogram of Messiaen, featuring a performance by EdgarKropp.

(fJ-

IPA Review, Vol.45 No. 1, 1992 25

Lack of Private PatronageThe time when patrons like theMedicis or Fuggers or Ester-hazys could afford to keep artistsis long finished. Besides,nowadays the artist would him-self probably oppose constraintsput on him by the whim of 'aprivate individual.

Difficulty of Artists' Lives Ex-cept for a Tom Wolfe, Ken Done ora Pro Hart, artistic endeavour ishighly precarious financially. Mostartists earn (however long theyhave trained in their field) paltrysums. Often they don't earn eventhese, unless they take jobs in unre-lated areas. The unemploymentrate among actors is notc'rious:sometimes 95 per cent. Govern-ment arts subsidies — whetherdirect to the individual, or through

GovernmentSubsidize

h1u

he Arts?N

DEBATE

When the British Prime Minister Lord Bute offered Dr Johnson agovernment pension, the latter (despite his great poverty) felt mostreluctant at first to accept it. Bute had to assure Johnson that hispension was "not given you for what you are to do, but for whatyou have done." Very different was the view of Schubert, who inVienna over 50 years later said "The slate should maintain me."Since the Welfare State came into its own, it is Schubert's ratherthan Johnson's attitude which has prevailed for artists around theglobe. Today every country in the Western world has taxpayer-funded libraries, art galleries, orchestras, opera and ballet com-panies, and film production units. In 1986 there were 117,000arts-related jobs just in Greater New York. As well as funding artsorganizations, most countries find individual artists. They do soprimarily on the 'arm 's-length'principle; that is, the principle thatartists should be paid in advance, and that governments shouldnot be actively involved in the artists' output.

Increasingly, however, the value of government funding forthe arts is being questioned. Before the 1990 federal election,Australia's Coalition parties announced that they intended toabolish tlteAustralia Council and decentralize arts subsidies. Yet,no Australian (or major American) political party advocatesabolishing governmental arts funding outright.

NOUndue State InterferenceWith arts subsidies there is a con-stant tendency for artists to be preoc-cupied with not whether their workis any good, but whether it (and they)can please Big Brother. This con-cern, even when no overt censorshipexists, ensures a self-censorshiplethal to serious creative activity.

No Guarantee of Final ProductThe arm's-length doctrine, guaran-teeing the favoured artist subsidies inadvance, eliminates all incentive todo fine work: or, in many cases, to doany work whatever. Too many artistsview funding as a chance to "take themoney and run": without even finish-ing the task for which they havereceived taxpayers' funds.

Kills Off Private PatronageThe "no private patrons" argument

26 IPA Review, Vol. 45 No. 1, 1992

an organization — can at leastprotect such people from the worstconsequences of poverty.

Public Good The arts have anedifying value for the whole com-munity. Most Australians recognizethe contribution of the arts to generaleducation and national pride andconsequently support government as-sistance for the arts. Relying on themarket alone will not ensure theproduction or maintainence of highcultural quality. As ABC TV's in-creasingly desperate pursuit of ratingsreminds us, art cannot always bejudged on its bread-and-circuses ap-peal. Many of history's greatest artistswere poor, lacked all gifts for self-ad-vertisement and stayed un-fashionable. Had today's governmentfunding existed then, their lot wouldhave been far easier.

Commercial ConsiderationsNot Always Possible Theproduction of big new works takes

time. There is often a long periodbetween the creation of a work ofart and the public reception of it.Many artistic activities will alwaysbe expensive and risky: film stuntscan go wrong, opera singers losetheir voices without warning, or-chestral instruments break. Asthese activities involve many dif-ferent types of practitioner, theywill remain labour-intensive. Theyare therefore not an attractivefinancial option for any but therichest private sponsors. Govern-ments, which need not be con-stantly worrying about next year'sdividends, are a more fitting andmore stable source of funds.

Right to Access No-one hasthe right to deprive people of ex-periencing the arts. Governmentsthroughout the Western worldadmit this, just as they admit thedesirability of schooling, of streetlights, and of preventing childrenfrom working in coal mines.

Need to Retain Native TalentThinly populated countries likeAustralia have suffered — and stillsuffer — from an artistic `braindrain'. If artists are unappreciatedat home, they will simply go over-seas where arts funding is takenseriously.

Need to Meet MinorityDemands If we are to be the"clever country", we mustforswear the anti-elitist, lowest-common-denominator attitudewhich poisons Australia.Minority artistic interests (how-ever cost-effective) will never beproperly catered for by privateenterprise.

After 36 years of Australian TV,commercial networks have still notacknowledged that the life of themind consists of more than gameshows and soap operas. Nor is thepop music scene an encouragingprecedent for free-marketideologies in the arts.

confuses cause with effect. Privatepatronage for the arts has died outonly where punitive taxation and theWelfare State have combined to kill itoff. In America it still flourishes: lookat the Getty, Guggenheim and Rock-efeller philanthropic institutions.

Against the Political TideWestern societies' great politicalachievement over the last decadehas been the acceptance of smaller-government philosophies, even byparties which call themselvesSocialist. When private enterprise'ssuperiority in areas ranging fromeducation to health care is now ad-mitted across the political spectrum,why must the arts remain coddled bybureaucrats?

Encourages the TalentlessGovernment funding's recentlavishness has been equalled only byits failure to lift artistic standards. Itoverpopulates the already-crowdedarts world. It encourages the talent-less charlatan — who could never

fool private sponsors — to call him-self an artist. It also results in tax-payer-funded absurdities, often inthe name of `art for the people', suchas "mural artists-in-residence" forthe BLFs Victorian branch.

Struggle and CreativityGovernment arts subsidy robs eventhe talented of the sense of struggle(financial and otherwise) necessaryfor excellence. Abolishing such sub-sidy will be a reminder that art wasno more meant to be easy than anyother aspect of life. Gifted and con-scientious arts practitioners neednot fear this reminder; only fraudsand shirkers should.

Tyranny by Committee Withgovernment funding, the decisionsas to who gets what are taken by animpersonal committee, acting on theconcept of anonymous "peer-groupassessment." How can committees,especially committees of (possiblyenvious) fellow-artists, adequatelyjudge an artist's merit?

Imposes on Reluctant Tax-payers Many people have nodesire to experience opera com-panies, art galleries, theatres, `art'films, or non-commercial literature.Why must they disgorge their taxeson activities about which they couldnot care less? Even those not in-herently hostile towards arts fund-ing are often (rightly) disgusted atthe forms it takes: e.g. subsidies forpornographic films.

Further ReadingJacques Barzun, 'A Surfeit of Art',Harper's, July 1986.Hal Colebatch, 'The Public Funding ofLiterature', Quadrant, January-February 1987.Philip Parsons (ed.), Shooting thePianist: The Role of Government in theArts, Currency Press, 1987.

Tim Rowse,ArguingtheArts: the Fundingof the Arts in Australia, Penguin,1985.C.D. Throsby and G.A. Withers,Measur-ing the Demand for the Arts as a PublicGood Macquarie University, 1992.

IPA Review, Vol. 45 No. 1, 1992 27

Whither America?What should the United States' role in the world be in the wake of the Soviet Union's disintegration? Thepath America chooses — whether isolationist or crusading — will crucially affect Australia.

DAVID ANDERSON

NEARLY 10 years ago, I accompanied our then ForeignMinister, Mr Tony Street, to a working breakfast withHenry Kissinger at his New York flat. Over the ham,

eggs and hash browns, the great man observed that we were"witnessing a contest between two imperial systems in processof disintegration." As regards the Soviet Union, he was ofcourse right — and for that time remarkably prescient. He wasless prescient_ about the United States, which has since wonthe contest hands down, surviving mid-1980s predictions of"imperial overstretch" and decline to emerge as the world'ssingle superpower. The US has of course formidableeconomic and socialproblems, and has al-ready embarked ondramatic cuts in its for-ces and armamentsworldwide. Its relativeeconomic weight in theworld has declined. Butdisintegration is not onthe horizon.

The end of the Cold War has opened j-}the floodgates to a tidal wave of American pub-'lications — essays, ar-ticles, books, symposia

Waltenburg: US should assume— aiming to foresee or world leadership roleprescribe the futurecourse of American foreign policy. Many of these risk beingovertaken by the bewildering rush of events and the BushAdministration's dexterity in responding and adapting. Butsome of them are worth examining, because they representsignificant strands in American foreign policy thinking oridentify options with which the policy-makers have to deal.And for these reasons they can have important implicationsfor Australian interests.

The sweep of opinion — ranging from traditionalisolationism to calls for a Pax Americana or a democraticcrusade — is well represented in America's Purpose: New

Visions of US Foreign Policy, a collection of essays edited byOwen Harries of The National Interest. Other recent publica-tions include Joshua Muravchik's Exporting Democracy: Ful-filling America's Destiny and Donald E. Nuechterlein'sAmerica Recommitted: US National Interests in a RestructuredWorld.

Perhaps the most prominent group (`schooI' would betoo restrictive a term) is the 'neo-realists' who, despite dis-claimers, represent the isolationist tradition. With the col-lapse of the rival superpower, the argument usually runs,the US can declare victory, go home, cash its peace

fllv;t1Pnd and '-n-

centrate on its pressingdomestic needs andproblems. The tradi-tional distrust of entan-gling alliances isreinforced by the convic-tion that affluent allies -the West Europeans,Japan and South Korea--- could and should takeup a larger share, if notthe whole, of the defenceburden.

For PatrickKirkpatrick: Most of America's Buchanan, currently

military commitments are outdated George Bush's rival forRepublican Presiden-

tial nomination, the time has come to begin "uprooting theglobal network of 'tripwires' planted in foreign soil to ensnarethe US in the wars of other nations." A new foreign policy isrequired to put "America first, and not only First, but secondand third as well." Ted Carpenter of the Cato Institute arguesmore coolly for a harder look at what constitute America'svital security interests and urges America to give up the roleof Atlas, drop its "obsolete security commitments" and phaseout its system of alliances, including ANZUS.

Jeane Kirkpatrick takes .a similar, if less sweeping line.In her view, the Cold War gave exaggerated importance to

David Anderson, a former Australian Ambassador to France, the UN and the European Communities, is Director of the PacificSecurity Research Institute of the IPA, based in Sydney.

28 IPA Review, Vol. 45 No. 1, 1992

WHITHER AMERICA?

foreign affairs: America's chief concern now should be "tomake a good society better." The US should not try to managethe balance of power in either Europe or Asia: most of itsmilitary commitments are now outdated and should bereplaced by "alliances of equals, with equal risks, burdens andresponsibilities."

At the opposite end of the spectrum are the advocatesof Par Americana, or variants of it. For syndicated columnist,Charles Krauthammer, the continued deployment ofAmerican power is indispensable to global stability, just asthe American commitment to Japan is essential to regionalstability in Asia. The ultimate objective, however, should bea unipolar world based on a confederated, `super-sovereign'West embracing the new Europe, North America anddemocratic Asia, which would be "economically, culturallyand politically hegemonic in the world."

Some of the more exuberant hegemonists display arather distasteful triumphalism. In the words of Joseph Joffe:"There is also pleasure in being Number One. To exert poweris better than suffering it ... It is the great powers that buildand maintain international order, and those who shape it mostalso gain most." Ben J. Wattenburg, a senior fellow at theAmerican Enterprise Institute, advocates "neo-manifest des-tinarianism" and concludes that "a unipolar world is a goodidea, if America is the uni."

Others stop short of advocating hegemony but stressAmerica's vital interest in international order and stability.They argue that the future leaders of whatever replaces theSoviet Union will still dispose of formidable military powerand will in the longer term resume the contest for internationalinfluence. Nor can the US opt out of other threats to interna-tional security — regional conflicts, the proliferation ofnuclear, biological and chemical weapons, Islamic fundamen-talism and so on. For this school, American interests aresimply too intimately involved in Europe, the Middle East andAsia for the United States to be able to withdraw to FortressAmerica. "Simple geography," in the words of Malcolm Wal-lop, "compels us to remain engaged and active outside ourown borders."

Some of the advocates of stability take a unilateralistapproach, seeing this role as a function of America's status asthe sole superpower. Others place it in the context of collectivesecurity and the kind of new world order, based on the UnitedNations, foreshadowed by President Bush during the Gulfcrisis.

A strong strain of idealism is sometimes found in allthese camps, including the neo-realists. For JeaneKirkpatrick, US foreign policy should now concentrate onsupporting the American economy but also on strengtheningdemocracy. The US should not attempt to democratize theworld, but it should encourage democratic institutions when-ever possible. Ted Carpenter would like "a strategy that leavesroom for the promotion of values without embarking on aninterventionist binge." Irving Kristol goes further: "It is in ournational interest that those nations which largely share ourpolitical principles and social values should be protected fromthose that do not."

The issues are explored at length in JoshuaMuravchik's book. He argues eloquently and persuasively

that the promotion ofdemocracy around theworld should be thecentrepiece of Americanforeign policy, not just for

-.^_ r idealistic reasons or be-J cause democracy is the

best system of governmentso far devised, but because

- it is in America's self-inter-

democraticst as well.

world A

meansmoree

Joshua Muravchik: author of more stable, peaceful andExporting Democracy friendly environment, for

democracies rarely go to warwith one another. In the past, Muravchik observes, some ofAmerica's greatest successes in exporting democracy havebeen brought about through military occupation — in post-war Germany and Japan — and at times by covert action: inthe post-Cold War World, however, the emphasis should beon diplomatic pressure, economic aid, assistance in the`technology' of democracy, and more funding for the USInformation Agency, the Voice of America and the NationalEndowment for Democracy. The priority targets for actionshould be the Soviet Union and China.

American Commitment

For the immediate future, there is no prospect thatthe highly pragmatic Bush Administration will entertainthe neo-isolationist option or take the unilateralist road.The recent force reductions and arms control initiativesare a sensible response to the opportunities presented bythe end of the Cold War and Soviet collapse: they do notforeshadow a retreat to Fortress America. On the contrary,as Donald E. Nuechterlein puts it: "George Bush seemsintent in the 1990's on setting a national agenda for the UnitedStates that emphasizes a continuingworld role rather than onepre-occupied with domestic issues." Nuechterlein, in a bookwith that title, found "America Overcommitted" in 1985: in1991, after analyzing US interests in the decade of the nineties,his theme is "America Recommitted."

In his address to the UN General Assembly on 23 Sep-tember, President Bush came close to defining the presentdirection of US foreign policy. After speaking of "our questfor a new world order" based on the United Nations, hedeclared that the US "has no intention of striving for a ParAmericana. However, we will remain engaged. We will notretreat and pull back into isolationism. We will offerfriendship and leadership... we seek a Pax Universalis builtupon shared responsibilities and aspirations."

The explicit rejection of isolationism and hegemony canbe taken at face value. Less significance may attach, however,to the references to a new world order. After the headyrhetoric of the Gulf crisis, and at the General Assemblypodium, Mr Bush could hardly have ignored the theme. Butthese days it is invoked less often and more tentatively. Whilethe Administration continues to attach importance to

IPA Review, Vol. 45 No. 1, 1992 29

WHITHER AMERICA?

collective security and the potential role of the UN, it is clearthat the particular circumstances which favoured decisiveSecurity Council action against Iraq are unlikely to be repli-cated in other regional crises. In almost any imaginable futurethreat to regional security, it will be much harder for the USto muster the same broad international support and secureSecurity Council endorsement for armed intervention by theUS or a US-led coalition.

As to the export of democracy, this is clearly not a highpriority for the Bush Administration. The President told theGeneral Assembly that the UN should "encourage the valuesupon which this organization was founded." But he also saidspecifically that "the United Nations should not dictate theparticular forms of government that nations should adopt."

There will be no crusade for the promotion ofdemocracy in the former USSR or China. The importance ofmaintaining a comfortable relationship with Beijing has clear-ly prevailed over congressional attempts to use diplomatic andeconomic pressure in support of democracy and human rightsin China. The Administration also seems to have set a highpriority on the preservation of whatever can be salvaged fromthe former Soviet Union: it was slow to recognize the inde-pendence of the Baltic States, and Mr Bush himself went outof his way to discourage a Ukrainian nationalist movementwith respectable democratic credentials. A similar cir-cumspection has been evident in the Administration's policy,

over recent months, towards Yugoslavia.Of all the schools and trends that have emerged in the

current debate among foreign policy analysts, the Bush Ad-ministration thus seems closest to the advocates of global andregional stability. Stability is the Administration's basic objec-tive in its present determined drive for a settlement in theMiddle East, where vital American interests are engaged. Inthe Asia-Pacific region, where the US likewise has extensivesecurity and economic interests, Administration spokesmencontinue to reaffirm commitment and to speak of theAmerican role as that of a 'balancing wheel.' The US-JapanSecurity Treaty and the ANZUS alliance — at least as itapplies to Australia — are not at present in question.

But after Bush? Even assuming a continuingly benigninternational environment, mounting social and economicproblems at home and further substantial cuts in its defencebudget and arsenal, the US will continue to have vital interestsoverseas. These may not require American intervention inevery regional dispute around the world. But given the closeinterdependence of the American economy with those ofWestern Europe and East Asia, and the indispensability ofMiddle East oil to the international economy, the US simplycannot disengage from the rest of the world. Whether asuccessor Administration would regard the ANZUS con-nexion as worth retaining into the 21st century may beanother matter. ■

"After having doublydefeated totalitarianism,

AMERICAS America's purposeshould be to steer theworld away from its com-ing multipolar futuretoward a qualitatively

ter' new outcome — aunipolar world whose

PURPOSE centre is a confederated

1' J L. West.In a sense, I am

NEW VISIONS OF thepolitics

U.S. FOREIGN POLICY proposing pof the fibre optic cable.

OWEN HARRIES As the industrializeddemocracies become in-creasingly economically,culturally, and tech-

nologically linked, they should begin to think about layingthe foundations for increasingly binding political connec-tions. This would require the conscious depreciation notonly of American sovereignty, but of the notion ofsovereignty in general. Yet this is not as outrageous an ideaas it sounds. In Europe today some of the greatest worldpowers of the last half millennium — Britain, France,Germany, Italy, Holland, Spain, and Portugal — are in-volved in what Robert Hormats correctly calls the singlegreatest voluntary transfer of sovereignty in world history."

Charles Krauthammer

"For 50 years, the United States has been drained of wealthand power by wars, cold and hot. Much of that expenditureof blood and treasure was a necessary investment. Muchwas not.

We cannot forever defend wealthy nations that refuseto defend themselves; we cannot permit endless trans-fusions of the life blood of American capitalism into themendicant countries and economic corpses of socialism,without bleeding to death. Foreign aid is an idea whosetime has passed...

Americans are the most generous people in history. Butour altruism has been exploited by the guilt-and-pity crowd.At home, a monstrous welfare state of tens of thousands ofdrones and millions of dependants consumes huge slices ofthe national income. Abroad, regiments of global bureaucratssiphon off billions for themselves, their institutions, theirclient regimes. With the Cold War ending, we should look,too, with a cold eye on the internationalist set, never at a lossfor new ideas to divert US wealth and power into crusadesand causes having little or nothing to do with the true nationalinterest of the United States...

As cultural traditions leave many countries unsuitedto US-style democracy, any globalist crusade to bring itsblessings to the natives everywhere must end in frustration,and will surely be marked by hypocrisy. While the NationalEndowment for Democracy meddles in the affairs of SouthAfrica, the State Department props up General Mobutu.Where is the consistency?"

Patrick J. Buchanan

30 IPA Review, Vol. 45 No. 1, 1992

Greens Get the Last WordAn important new education resource kit looks attractive, but lacks balance.

RON BRUNTON

THE promotional literature states that Environment In

Crisis? is guided by the philosophy that environmentalissues "are best addressed when people and organiza-

tions find common ground and work together." It is produced bythe Open College Network of TAFE NSW and is sponsored byan impressive list of major companies, statutory authorities andindustry organizations. The package has been designed as aflexible training resource for schools, tertiary institutions, com-munity groups and industry, and its three videos and 300-pagetrainers' manual cover a very broad range of environmentalissues. It will probably play an importantrole in environmental education. It allseems very promising.

At least it does until you begin towatch the videos and read the manual.Environment In Crisis? looks as though ithas been produced under the influence ofwhat might be called "the AustralianBroadcasting Corporation philosophy ofbalanced presentation." (The ABC is oneof the major sponsors.) Essentially, thisphilosophy seems to involve the followingprocedure:

• Control the presentation to make the'correct' attitudes the most probable outcome, while in-cludingjust enough contrary points of view to counter anypossible charges of bias.

• Reduce the impact of these opposing views by identifyingthem with commercial or other vested interests whereverpossible, while ensuring that at least some of the correctattitudes are presented by people who seem to be disin-terested.

• Use powerful visual images and other manipulative tech-niques to strengthen the correct position and weakenthose who dispute it.

• Do not confuse things by presenting all the opposingarguments.

The most obvious examples of this approach are themisleadingly labelled video 'debates', which play a major role

in the suggested classroom/workshop programs of 22 of the 29topics covered in the -trainers' manual. These are not actualdebates, but edited and juxtaposed sound-bites filmedseparately in many different locations and which vary in lengthfrom a few seconds to half a minute or so. The same sound-bites may reappear in different contexts in more than onedebate. The manual admits that these debates "do not seek togive a balanced, well-rounded point of view," and that theirfunction is "to stimulate thought and discussion", althoughelsewhere it claims that "a broad spectrum of views is

presented."Almost every one of the 15 debates

ends with a point of view that is basicallyconservationist, with some variant of thewarning that we must radically change ourways. In many of the debates the last two,three, or even more statements are likethis. A wide range of people articulate aposition that can be placed within thisperspective. Some of them, such as PhillipToyne, Peter Garrett, Bill Hare, KateShort and Paul Gilding, are named asmembers of conservation organizations,but most are not. Paul Ehrlich is describedas a futurist; John Cameron, who has been

a major consultant for the Australian Conservation Founda-tion, is identified as a resource economist; other identifica-tions are farmer, CSIRO scientist, academic, student, smallbusiness, etc. But those who present opposing arguments arenearly always open to the "they would say that, wouldn't they?"treatment — officials from industry, 'environmentallyirresponsible' statutory authorities, the Minister for PrimaryIndustries and Energy. Of course, no-one in the debates oranywhere else in the package raises the question of the vestedinterest conservationists and scientists may have in fabricatingor exaggerating environmental crises.

Alternative Views Missing

Some of the 'debates' scarcely include an alternativepoint of view. For instance, all those who speak in the debate

Almost every one ofthe 15 debates endswith a point of view

that is basicallyconservationist.

Dr Ron Brunton heads the Environmental Policy Unit of the IPA, based in Canberra.

IPA Review, Vol. 45 No. 1, 1992 31

Comedian Vince Sorrenti stars in the video, No Laughing Matter, on sustainability

GREENS GET THE LAST WORD

Taking Responsibility promote the idea of political andcommunity action to achieve conservationist goals, with theexception of Dr Michael Deeley from ICI, who merely saysthat industrialists are not wicked and that they have childrenand grandchildren. In the Population debate — which beginswith images of a rodent plague and goes on to offer increas-ingly hysterical pronouncements from Paul Ehrlich — the onlyperson who questions the catastrophic scenario is John Kerin,who points out that the rate of population growth in develop-ing countries will decline as the standard of living improves.Nevertheless, he also says that he is really worried about thepressure of people. The one-sidedness continues in themanual, which cites the Ehrlichs as its major authority onpopulation in the `information' section, and states that "nearly

every country on Earth is over-populated. The USA is over-populated because it is deplet-ing its soil and water resourcesand contributing in a big way tothe destruction of global en-vironmental systems...the birthof an average American baby ishundreds of times more of a dis-aster for Earth's life support sys-tems than the birth of a baby ina very poor nation." The lonesceptical piece from the Centre

John Kerin: the only sceptic for Economic Education isin the population debate hardly a match for all of this.

`Appropriate Attitudes' Take Precedence

The trainers' manual states that"learning activities should encourage thedevelopment of appropriate knowledge,skills and attitudes," adding that"knowledge alone is not enough."Knowledge may not be enough, but it iscertainly a prerequisite for sensible and ef-fective policy related debate. In the sug-gested classroom programs, students are oftenasked to discuss issues which require a level ofunderstanding of scientific, social andeconomic issues that goes well beyond any-thing offered in the course materials. Per-haps some of this requisite informationmight be obtained from the resource list ofbooks and magazines included in the hand-book. But the list is patchy: for some topicsit is reasonably balanced, for others it is not.

In reality, the development of 'ap-propriate attitudes' seems to be the firstpriority, and this has led to a rather cavalierattitude towards facts. For example, thevideo on soil salinity in the science module

series commences with the narrator, the ABC's Robyn Wil-liams, saying that "660 million square kilometres of irrigatedland is too salty to support plant life, and the amount isgrowing." A remarkable and terrifying figure, but one whichis over five times' the total land area of the planet. In anotherexample, the manual claims that "to develop the Carajas mine,which has the richest known iron ore deposits in the world,one-sixth of the forests of Brazil's Amazon basin had to becleared." Yet even the most pessimistic estimate of thedeforestation from all sources, including ranching, in Brazil'sAmazon region is 12 per, cent. And the World ResourcesInstitute handbook World Resources: 1990-91 notes that al-though the Carajas project may threaten a large area of rain-forest, "it has not yet made a significant impact" (page 105).

The silences of the package are most revealing. Forinstance, there is nothing in either the science module onGlobal Warming or the manual to indicate that the globalwarming theory is under attack from a wide range of scientists.As the Encyclopaedia Brit'annica Yearbook of Science and theFuture, 1991, notes, "more than 3,000 scientists have publishedbooks or articles that raise questions about the design orinterpretation of the warming models or about the facts con-cerning or the interpretation of the climate record" (page347). One of the video debates does contain sceptical com-ments from industry spokesmen, but this particular debate isnot part of the suggested classroom program on global warm-ing. And nowhere is there' consideration of the serious weak-nesses of the general circulation models on which climateprojections are made, or of the inconsistencies betweentemperature trends measured by different methods.

Although the manual introduces the concept of the`Tragedy of the Commons' (that is, something owned by no-one is cared for by no-one), no attempt is made to relate it tothe importance of private property rights in promoting sound

32 IPA Review, Vol. 45 No. 1, 1992

From the brochure advertising the education kit. Is thequestion mark merely a token?

DEBATE 1: CRISIS?The names, affiliations and order of presentation are as they appear on the video.

Paul Gilding, GreenpeaceThere is absolutely no doubtwhatsoever that the environ-ment world wide is in crisis.The only people who ques-tion that are those who haveeither a lot of money orpolitical influence to lose.

Murray McMillan,Australian Mining IndustryCouncilCrisis is a very strong word.I think it is probably toostrong a word.

Robin Mosman, LocalActivistI think that the environmentis in crisis, yes.

John Cameron, ResourceEconomistIf you look at the greenhouseeffect, if you look at the lossof biodiversity, clearance oftropical rainforests, theozone layer, and then youlook at the rate of deser-tification around the world Ithink that you can only reachthe conclusion that the wholeglobal ecosystem is in crisis.

Dr Alistair Christie,Electricity Commission ofNSWI get a bit worried about assertions that it is in crisisbecause I am not too sure that it is in that bad a shape really.

Susan Ryan, Plastics Industry AssociationIn terms of greenhouse and the ozone layer obviously thereis a global problem of severe dimensions.

Dr Michael Deeley, Managing Director, ICII think that the perception around that we have suddenlycome to a point here in 1990 where something terrible isgoing to happen immediately is quite wrong.

Susannah StudentIt is my future that they are wrecking for the sake of theireconomic gain.

Leo Farrell, Ex-loggerThe whole planet is running downhill, like a truck witha broken tailshaft it is going downhill. And unless we dosomething to stop it we are going to destroy the wholeplanet.

Victoria Phillips, The Wattleseed DeliEarth itself is a living organism and we are killing itslowly. Once it is dead so are we.

Bill Hare, AustralianConservation FoundationI think the signs are alreadythere that the global climatesystem is being changed insuch a way that we could befaced with some devastatingconsequences in the nextcentury.

Professor Stephen Kaneff,Australian NationalUniversityWhat may happen, theremay be a sudden collapse,and in fact life on earth maycollapse as a result and wemay end up in the situationthat Mars is now, with no lifewhatsoever.

Dr Hans Drielsma,Forestry Commission ofNSWWell I think that is putting abit too much drama into thewhole thing.

Phillip Adams, ColumnistOf course it is in crisis, but Idon't think it is the end ofthe world. I cannot acceptthe apocalyptic line that it isall over bar the shouting in afortnight.

Susannah BeggWe can either push the environment over the edge or wecan save it. So it is a crisis and it requires urgent actionand no-one is moving fast enough. We need to keeppushing faster and faster.

Ros Kelly, Minister for the EnvironmentThe way we live our lives has got to be changed.

Roland Brecktwold, FarmerWhat are our children and their children going to sayabout our particular society? We seemed to have it all atour feet but squandered it.

Bill HareWe really have to face up to that. And it becomes not aquestion of if, but how.

Paul GildingWe can't have any long term goals any more, becausethere isn't a long term left. We can only have short andmedium term goals now. Because if we haven't changedthe way we do things by the end of this decade we are inserious, serious trouble.

IPA Review, Vol. 45 No. 1, 1992 33

GREENS GET THE LAST WORT)

environmental management. Indeed, in Vince Sorrenti's NoLaughing Matter — the worst component of the video materialin the package — events in a village in the Indian State ofRajasthan are used to imply that common property regimesmay even be preferable on environmental grounds. Anddespite a number of references to environmental degradationin Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union and China, there is noconsideration of the role that socialist policies played in thissituation. Case-studies of environmental disaster in China andEthiopia make no mention of the political and economicsystems of these countries. The chapter in the manual titled

One `information' section cites the claimby a scientist that the hunter -gatherer

lifestyle is "the only truly sustainable onefor this continent."

`Rich and Poor' outlines the arguments of those who blamethe poverty of the `South' on the developed nations of the'North'. The relevant section concludes, "other schools ofthought do not agree that the North is largely responsible forthe economic problems of the South" — but the reasons fortheir disagreement are not explained. When students areasked to discuss "what causes the poverty of the South?" inthe suggested classroom program, there can be little doubtabout the kinds of answers they will give if they take seriouslythe material the package has presented.

The myth that Aborigines and other hunting and gather-ing people lived in "harmony with nature" or "in a specialrelationship with the earth" is frequently expressed. Their(idealized) practices and attitudes are contrasted with oursupposed despoliation and mechanistic world view. One'information' section cites, without any adverse comment, theclaim by a scientist from the Australian Museum that thehunter-gatherer lifestyle is "the only truly sustainable one forthis continent." Of course there is no hint of the likely role ofthe Aborigines in the extinction of the Australian megafauna.

Organic farming seems to be another favourite of thepackage's producers. One of the suggested projects for thetopic on agricultural chemicals is to "negotiate with the ap-propriate authorities to introduce organic methods for gardenmaintenance in your local municipality or workplace/col-lege/school." Others are to "start your own organic vegetablepatch" and "visit an organic farm." No corresponding visits toordinary farms are suggested. With all the harping on thedangers of agricultural chemicals, it goes without saying thatthere is no mention of the fact that carcinogenic chemicalsoccur in natural foods. Or that many vegetable varietiesfavoured by organic farmers because of their natural resis-tance to pests rely on chemical defences, and so contain muchhigher concentrations of carcinogens than varieties used byother farmers.

The number of examples of crucial omissions and othermajor flaws in both the underlying approach and the treatment

of specific issues could be multiplied many times over. But itmight be unfair to give the impression that the package is allbad. The 'attitudinal triggers' video component presents fourdramatized situations illustrating the conflicts and hypocrisiesinvolved in trying to be environmentally correct. They couldbe valuable in helping students explore some of the necessaryinterconnections between economic, political and environ-mental concerns, although I personally think that even withthese there is a tendency to assume that the green position isthe correct one. Some issues — plastics, for instance — havebeen treated in a relatively even-handed manner, at least bycomparison with other issues, or with the way they are treatedby other environmental authors. Where relevant companiesor industry associations were sponsors (or had representativeson the advisory committee) they may have been able to con-vince the authors of the package of the need to modify, orremove, some of the most egregious claims made against theirindustry.

Environment in Crisis? costs $960 ($240 for schools andTAFE colleges, $480 for tertiary institutions, libraries andenvironmental organizations). It has been designed to qualifyunder the Training Guarantee Act, and a Training GuaranteeLevy brochure accompanying the package tells employersthat, amongst other things, the expected results include "im-proved staff morale." If it is a simple choice between purchas-ing this package or paying the Training Levy, the decisionshould be easy: send the Taxation Office a cheque for one percent of your payroll. ■

1

1

1 1 1

Lecturegiven on the18th October 1991.

THE SPEECH 1S AVAILABLE ON

VHS $45 inc p&h

Audio $15 inc p&hBankcard, Mal ercard. & Visa accepted.

Fax to (03) 866 1245

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34 IPA Review, Vol. 45 No. 1, 1992

Economic RationalismMyth and RealityA Melbourne journalist recently likened economic rationalists to Shi'ite sectarians. But the criticsmisunderstand the nature of both economic rationalism and the economic changes of the last decade.

DES MOORE

THE recession has produced a spate of critics of policiesthat are being described as `economic rationalism'.These critics are attacking both the main political

parties for supporting policies that are sometimes describedas levelling the playing field -- but leaving nobody capable ofplaying the game. There is a notion that exposure to marketforces has resulted not in strengthened industries but indestruction and unemployment. The manufacturing industryin Australia is being seen as particularly susceptible as a resultof reductions in protection.

Economic rationalists are.thus being portrayed as ruth-less pursuers of economic efficiency, prepared to sacrificeanything that stands in the way regardless of its effects onparticular industries or individuals. According to The Age'sGeoffrey Barker, "Economic rationalists are the Shi'ite sectof economic and social theory: shrill, intolerant and utterlyuntroubled by doubt" (The Age, 11 October 1991). Anothercriticism of economic rationalists is that they have no culturalor social values, always putting economic efficiency andmaterial outcomes before such values.

Government Intervention

As a supporter of more economically rational policies,it behoves me to say something about the phenomenon. Onecan start, perhaps, by pointing out that, with a few exceptions,economic rationalists do not envisage leaving everything to bedetermined in the market place. Government intervention hasa role to play and such intervention may be justified on socialgrounds (for example, to provide assistance to genuinely dis-advantaged and needy groups), on economic grounds (forexample, import parity pricing for oil) and on both economicand social grounds (for example, the subsidization of educa-tion). In such instances the intervention is justified on the basis

Des Moore is a Senior Fellow of the IPA.

that, in its absence, the market would not deliver an outcomejudged to be in the longer run interests of society. Of course,there is a range of views about how far government interven-tion should go. Most economic rationalists argue that it hasgone too far and that it would produce a better economy anda better society if we had less of such intervention. The IPA,for example, has argued that the size of government should bereduced to around 30 per cent of GDP from its present 40 percent. But the argument is about the extent of the reduction ingovernment intervention, not about moving to a situationwhere government disappears.

Does Australia Have Economic Rationalism?

The second point to note is that Australia is a long wayfrom having policies that could be described as economicallyrational, even in the relatively modest form I have suggested.We have one of the most regulated industrial relations systemsin the world and the Accord between the Government and theACTU is a classic example of how not to leave it to the market.We also have a high degree of government intervention in theoperation and financing of electricity, transport, water supply,airlines, telecommunications, shipping, and wool marketing,to name just a few areas. Some of these areas are now in theprocess of being given greater exposure to the operation ofmarket forces, although in most cases government is retaininga significant role.

Now, it is true that there has been a substantial amountof deregulation in two important areas — the protection ofthe manufacturing industry against import competition andthe protection of the banking industry against competitiongenerally, i.e. whether from overseas or domestic sources.These two areas are considered in a bit more detail below. ButI first want to make the case that the increased operation of

IPA Review, Vol. 45 No. 1, 1992 35

ECONOMIC RATIONALISM: MYTH AND REALITY

market forces in each of these areas should not be blamed forthe present recession.

Economic Rationalism And The Recession

In the case of financial deregulation, there can be nodoubt that the introduction of a more competitive environ-ment provided the opportunity for both increased borrowingand increased lending. Equally, it is clear that the 1980switnessed `excessive' borrowing and lending in the privatesector — `excessive' in the sense of being unsustainable. How-ever, that does not mean that financial deregulation was thecause of that excessive borrowing and lending.

We should note, for one thing, that there were threeperiods of excessive borrowing and lending in the 30 yearsprior to deregulation when there were controls on both thevolume and price of credit. We might also note that financialderegulation still exists — yet there is hardly excessive lendingand borrowing, rather the opposite. I make this point, whichmight seem to be rather `pedantic', simply to emphasize thatthe extent of lending and borrowing is a function of theeconomic environment and, as a key part of that, the settingsof economic policy.

The basic cause of the over-borrowing and over-lend-ng of the 1980s was the failure of the Government to pursue

monetary policy directed at reducing inflation. I cannot

Any reduction in protection since the early1970s has been more than offset by thedepreciation in the real exchange rate.

explore this point further here except to note that theGovernment's monetary policy, in combination with otherpolicies such as the Accord, created an environment that wasconducive to borrowing to speculate on asset prices, and tospend.' I argue, therefore, that the recession has not beencaused by financial deregulation but was due to theGovernment's failure to pursue an adequate monetary policy.Now, it is true that financial deregulation made the operationof monetary policy more difficult and enhanced the oppor-tunities for borrowing and lending. Continuance of controlson the volume and price of lending might thus have preventedsome of the excesses. But,judgingby past experience, controlswould not have prevented over-borrowing and over-lending,particularly in a situation where financial markets had becomeinternationalized.

In the case of the reduction in protection, there is an evenmore clear-cut case to say that no connection exists betweenthe present recessed state of the manufacturing industry andthe lowering of tariffs and elimination of quotas. For one thing,there is still a relatively high average level of protection ofaround 16 per cent in effective terms. More importantly,however, some work we have done at the IPA shows that any

MANUFACTURING: PERCENT TO GDP, INDEX OF CAPACITY TOCOMPETE AND REAL EFFECTIVE EXCHANGE RATE

oIAna.,

23170

21 150

13019

110

1790

15 70

19' 85/86

1

Manufacturing as a percentage of GDP—+— Index of manufacturers' capacity to compete against imports, after

tariff reductions and exchange rate fluctuations have been taken intoaccount. 1973/74 = 100Real Effective Exchange Rate. 1980182 = 100.

Source: ABS, ABARE & IC.

reduction in protection since the early 1970s has been morethan offset by the depreciation in the real exchange rate. Iemphasize the word `real' in order to make the point that thiscalculation of the depreciation is after allowing for the fastergrowth in Australian labour costs. I also emphasize that thedepreciation has more than offset the effect of the lowering ofprotection, so that the capacity of Australian manufacturingindustry to compete has actually increased since the early1970s. The graph sums up what has happened.

Critics of economic rationalism also argue that it isunfair to expose manufacturers to further competition whenindustrial relations, taxation and micro-economic reformshave not been implemented. However, other industries facethe same problems. Further, the history of the last 40-50 yearssuggests that maintenance of tariffs has hindered or preventedother reforms and that it is reductions in tariffs, and exposureof Australian industry to competition, which have driven thereform process. It seems inevitable that arresting or reversingthe reduction of tariffs would substantially remove pressurefor further reform.

What Has Happened to Manufacturing?

Let us consider what has happened to manufacturingover this period, and why. A few facts may help.

Firstly, we need to note that, far from declining,manufacturing output has actually increased. In 1990-91 thevolume of manufacturing output was about one-third higherthan it was in the mid-1970s and about one-fifth higher than itwas in the previous recession year of 1982-83. Of course,output in manufacturing is now running below the peak levelsreached in 1989-90. But so it is in a number of other industries,due to the recession that has resulted from the Government'spoor macro-economic management.

Second, the increase in manufacturing output has been

36 IPA Review, Vol.45 No. 1, 1992

ECONOMIC RATIONALISM: MYTH AND REALITY

achieved with a smaller labour force. Between the mid 1970sand 1990-91 employment in manufacturing fell by about120,000. Most of this fall occurred in 1982-83 following thelarge wages surge which the trade union movement sponsoredand in which the present Secretary of the ACTU played aleading role. In other words, to the extent that manufacturingemployment has been reduced, that reduction has a lot moreto do with the trade union movement and the centralized wagedetermination system than with any reduction in protection.

Note, however, that the combination of loweremployment and higher output implies that there hasbeen a significant increase in productivity.

Third, while the volume of manufacturing output hasincreased until recently, there has been a decline in the rela-tive importance of manufacturing industry. Since the mid

Australia should aim to utilize itsresources in the most efficient way possible

— and that means avoiding the provisionof government assistance...

1970s, for example, the contribution of manufacturing in-dustry to Australia's GDP has dropped from 20 per cent to16.5 per cent (in 1990-91), that is, a number of other industrieshave grown at a faster rate than manufacturing. There isnothing surprising about this, nor anything particularly toworry about. As incomes and standards of living increase,people tend to spend smaller proportions of their (higher)incomes on manufactured products. This is true of all'advanced' countries. Thus, every OECD country exceptTurkey has experienced a relative decline in manufacturingsince the early 1970s and the decline in Australia's manufac-turing has been only slightly more than the average for OECDcountries. True, Australia's manufacturing industry makes arelatively smaller contribution to GDP than the average forthe OECD (about 22.5 per cent in 1988). However, that is tobe expected, given the generally greater importance of ouragriculture and mining, and the comparative advantage thatwe have in those industries.

Fourth, as would be expected from the foregoing, a muchsmaller proportion of the labour force is now employed inmanufacturing today than 20 years ago. In 1990-91 manufac-turing employment constituted just under 14 per cent of thelabour force, compared with 24 per cent in 1970-71. At firstglance, this may seem to confirm the worst fears of those whoask "where will the jobs come from?" However, the answer isstraightforward, namely, as incomes rise people spend anincreasing proportion on services. Accordingly, we see anenormous expansion of employment in service industries.In community services 2 alone employment has increased bynearly 800,000 since the early 1970s and the communityservices'industries' now employ some 250,000 more peoplethan manufacturing. Note also that while the decline in

employment in manufacturing has been occurring, not onlyhas there been a very large increase in total numbers employed— about two million since 1970-71 — but the proportion ofthe population in the labour force has also increased: from 61per cent to just under 64 per cent. This confirms that it is quitepossible to have one particular industry in decline, or at leastin relative decline, while the economy as a whole is growing.

Conclusion

What we see, therefore, is that there is little, if any,substance in the two main strands of criticism of economi-cally rational policies: of financial deregulation and lowerprotection. Moreover, the critics have little to suggest asalternative policies. Some say, it is true, that if other countriesare tilting the playing field by various forms of governmentintervention, then it is appropriate for Australia to do thesame thing. However, imagine the distortions to our economy,not to mention the cost, if we tried to copy the vast range oftariffs, quotas, incentives and subsidies which other countriesuse. Most importantly, the case for having a level playingfield inside Australia is not affected by the existence of suchmeasures in overseas countries, except in circumstanceswhere the overseas measures are judged to be temporary.Australia should aim to utilize its resources in the mostefficient way possible — and that means avoiding theprovision of government assistance so that resources areemployed in those areas where we have the greatest com-parative advantage.

A final word about social and 'cultural' values. Thosecriticizing economic rationalism have failed to identify their`cultural' values but have implied that 'full employment' is oneof them. If that is the case, they are at one with economicrationalists. Any difference thus boils down to how that isgoing to be achieved. Here we run into the problem that veryfew, if any, of the critics seem to have an understanding of howthe economy adjusts to change. In particular, there is a failureto understand the key role of the exchange rate in adjustingto, for example, increased competition from overseas. If thereis such an increase, and if Australian management andworkers fail to respond, that does not mean that unemploy-ment will increase. It simply means that the exchange rate willdepreciate and Australia's relative living standards will con-tinue to slip.

The bottom line for the critics of economic rationalismis that they have to face the reality that the experiment withincreased government intervention in the post-World War IIperiod has established the case of the economic rationalists— that is, to keep such intervention to a minimum on botheconomic and social grounds. ■

1. See IPA Economic Study Paper No. 18, Can Monetary Policy Be MadeTo Work? Some Lessons of the 1980c by Des Moore, 4 December 1991.

2. Covers education, health, police, prisons, fire brigades, library,museum, scientific research, welfare and employment services.

IPA Review, Vol. 45 No. 1, 1992 37

rA-RQ-LJ-N-D-E-S-T-A-T-€ S--MIKE NAHAN

Public Sector Blow-out1

CONIRARY to their claims of par-simony and despite the economic

needs of the nation, Australian Govern-ments have, in their 1991-92 Budgets,failed to contain the growth in borrow-ing, spending or State taxes.

The Commonwealth and State2Governments have budgeted for a mas-sive increase in borrowing in 1991-92.Moreover, public sector borrowingsare, on current information, likely toexceed the budget estimates because oflower-than-expected economic growth.The total public sector net financingrequirement (NFR) 3 was budgeted toreach $12.64 billion which represents a96 per cent increase on 1990-91. Thus,contrary to the impression given by theCommonwealth Government and someState Governments, the budgetarypurse strings have already loosened.

The Commonwealth is primarilyresponsible for the blow-out in publicsector borrowing as its NFR is budgetedto increase to $8.4 billions in 1991-92 -three times the level achieved in 1990-91and $11 billion greater than in 1989-90.

The States in aggregate have alsobudgeted for a modest increase indeficit spending in 1991-92. The Statesector is expected to produce a NFR of$3.8 billion6 in 1991-92, which repre-sents a 13 per cent increase over theprevious year.

The higher level of deficit spendingby the States in 1991-92 will arise primari-ly from a large increase in recurrentspending. The recurrent outlays of theStates are expected to increase by 7.3 per

cent, which represents in real terms7 thesecond highest level of growth since themid 1980s. The States are also expectingto increase their spending on new fixedassets in 1991-92, although this growth islargely confined to Queensland, NewSouth Wales and Tasmania.

The States are finally beginning tocut back on the number of public ser-vants, but in a less-than-cost-effectivemanner. All States, except Queensland,expect to reduce their general govern-ment sector work-force in 1991-92,resulting in a total reduction of around11,000 full-time equivalent positions or3.3 per cent of the work-force. $639 mil-lion has been allocated by the States forgolden handshakes or, in public servicespeak, 'enhanced resignationpackages'. Not surprisingly, the Stateshave been overwhelmed by applicationsfor golden handshakes .8

The Commonwealth Governmentis again exhibiting less restraint over itsown-purpose expenditures than itshows to State grants, or than the Stateshave shown on their own expenditures.Commonwealth own-purpose outlaysare expected to increase by 8.4 per centin 1991-92. Moreover, ` cyclical factorsare obviously not the sole reason for theblow-out in Commonwealth outlays,given the 6.9 per cent increase in Com-monwealth final consumption expendi-ture, and the 4,300 additionalCommonwealth public servants to behired in 1991-92.

Total public sector revenue isexpected to increase only slightly(two per cent) in 1991-92, largelythanks to lower Commonwealth tax

receipts flowing from last year'swage/tax trade-off. The States, how-ever, have planned on a return tobuoyant revenue growth, with 6.6 percent growth in own-source revenuepredicted. Clearly the States cannotblame their enlarged deficits on lowrevenue growth. Even Commonwealthassistance grants to the States will growby 3.8 per cent in 1991-92.

State tax receipts are expected toswell by $128 per person or by 10.4 percent during 1991-92. This additional taxtake is expected to almost neutralize thetax cuts provided by the Common-wealth, indicating a further surrep-titious shift in the overall tax burdentoward indirect taxes, and suppressionof any stimulative benefits arising fromthe cut in personal income tax.

State taxes receipts are expectedto grow during 1991-92 primarily be-cause of large tax hikes announced theprevious year and the forecast re-emer-gence of economic growth, rather thannew tax rates. Nonetheless, the fact thattax receipts are expected to grow at arate of about three times the economyas a whole signifies that the tax effort ofthe States is exceedingly high and is im-posing a very significant restraint onprivate sector growth.

Field's Accolade,Bannon's Lemon

Tasmania has won the IPA's MostResponsible Budget Award for 1991-92with Western Australia and the NorthernTerritory as runners-up.

Dr Mike Nahan is Director of the IPA States' Policy Unit, based in Perth.

38 IPA Review, Vol. 45 No. 1, 1992

AROUND THE STATES

For the second consecutive year,the Lemon Award goes to SouthAustralia. Victoria and Queenslandwere joint runners-up for the LemonAward - Victoria for continuing not tolive within its means and Queenslandfor dissipating its inheritance.

Mr Field's 1991-92 TasmanianBudget clearly deserves the accolade ofthe best budget of the year. The budgethad the correct settings, including: areal reduction of 1.9 per cent in recur-rent outlays, a responsible 4.2 per centincrease in net fixed capital investment,no new taxing initiatives, and a sharplylower budget deficit. The budget is allthe more notable given the political in-stability surrounding the TasmanianGovernment whilst the budget wasbeing framed.

By budgeting for restrained realgrowth in recurrent outlays (1.7 percent) and in tax receipts (4.6 per cent),Western Australia (which won theaward last year) is deserving of anhonourable mention. WesternAustralia's public sector indebtednessis also budgeted to decrease slightlyduring 1991-92.

The Northern Territory took asmall step closer to living within its meansin 1991-92 by budgeting for a small realincrease (of 0.4 per cent) in recurrentoutlays. However, taxes are expected toincrease by 8.2 per cent as a result ofmeasures announced in 1990-91.

The 1991-92 New South WalesBudget was a mixed bag. Recurrentspending is expected to grow in realterms by 2.3 per cent and taxes are ex-pected to increase by a massive 11.4 percent. However, the improved perfor-mance of its trading enterprises willallow New South Wales to reduce itslevel of indebtedness.

The 1991-92 financial year is awatershed for the ACT, as it marks thebeginning of the adjustment from a mol-lycoddled, temporary residence forfederal politicians and bureaucrats to afiscally accountable government - to thisend the budget makes an auspicious start.The ACT plans to slash borrowings byrestraining capital and recurrent outlays,which are expected to grow by -6.4 percent and 1.1 per cent respectively, andincreasing taxes, which are expected togrow by a massive 12.3 per cent.

South Australia's 1991-92Budget was unambiguously deservingof the IPA's Lemon Award. The NFRof the South Australian public sector isset to expand to $2.2 billion dollars or by137 per cent in 1991-92. The centralreason for the budget blow-out is theadditional $1.7 billion needed to meetthe State Bank of South Australia's los-ses. The other reason is the failure torein in the growth of recurrent outlays,which are expected to grow by 9.5 percent in 1991-92.

ET14ji,Premier Bannon: Lemon Award

The massive public sector deficitforecast for South Australia will arisedespite an enormous injection of taxmoney. Tax revenue is expected to growby 13.9 per cent in 1991-92. This hugetax increase is a particularly painful signof Mr Bannon's high-taxing propen-sities and will suppress the growth of theprivate sector - an outcome that SouthAustralia (and indeed Australia) can-not afford.

Rhetoric aside, Victoria's 1991-92budget failed to begin to tackle theState's very serious fiscal position.Victoria's public sector NFR isbudgeted to increase by nearly 34 percent to $1.6 billion in 1991-92, despite a10.3 'per cent increase in tax receipts.Victoria's budgetary malaise comesfrom its recurrent spending beingaround $1 billion9 above the levelneeded to provide services at the levelof other States, and from the ratio ofdebt servicing cost to total revenuebeing about 50 per cent higher than theall-State average. The 1991-92 budget

did not even begin to tackle theseproblems, as shown by the planned in-crease in recurrent outlays of 10.0 percent and interest cost set to expand by9.0 per cent. Indeed, Victoria is the onlyState aside from South Australia to havebudgeted for interest payments to con-sume a larger share of total revenue.

Although the Goss Governmenthas not squandered the sound fiscalposition it inherited from its predeces-sor, it plans to take a step towards doingso in 1991-92. Queensland's 1991-92Budget includes a 10.3 per cent increasein recurrent expenditure. Most of theadditional recurrent expenditure is tobe consumed on higher wages and morestaff, with 2,000 more full-time positionsto be added to general government sec-tor agencies during 1991-92. Capitaloutlays are expected to grow by a colos-sal 35 per cent.

Despite the massive increase inspending, the Goss government expectsto achieve Queensland's fifth consecu-tive public sector surplus in 1991-92. Noother State has achieved a surplus duringthe last decade - except New SouthWales in 1989-90 and then only throughasset sales.

However, Mr Goss will have tostop his big-spending ways if he is toavoid dissipating one of Queensland'sgreatest assets -- a fiscally sound publicsector. ■

1. Unless otherwise stated, data referred toherein is from 1991-92 Government Finan-cial Estimates, Australia, ABS Cat. No.5501.0, December 1991.

2. The Northern Territory and the ACT are,for the sake of brevity, treated as States.

3. The net financing requirement is the nation-al accounts equivalent to the public sectorborrowing requirement.

4. The total public sector includes Common-wealth, State and Local Governments.

5. The NFR estimates for the Commonwealthand the States referred to herein exclude thedebt which has been transferred from theCommonwealth books to those of theStates.

6. Ibid.

7. Assumes non-farm GDP deflator of threepercent for 1991-92.

8. See 'IPA Budget Summary and Awards:1991-92', IPA Backgrounder, Vol. 3, No.7,November 1991.

9. Victoria: An Agenda for Change, Institute ofPublic Affairs and Tasman Institute, 1991.

IPA Review, Vol. 45 No. 1, 1992 39

The Unholy TrinityThe Committee of Experts, Compulsory Unionism, and Forced Amalgamations

STUART WOOD

N recent months there has been much talk aboutAustralia's supposed breach of its international obliga-tions in not allowing a `right to strike' under domestic law.

The International Labour Organization (ILO) has stated thatAustralia may be breaching the Freedom of Association andRight to Organize Convention (No. 87, 1948). Yet, in its preoc-cupation with the 'right to strike', the ILO has ignored morefundamental breaches of freedom of association in Australia,namely compulsory unionism and the preference-for-unionists provision. John Howard's description of the ILO as"the industrial relations club in full plenary international ses-sion" is not without justification.

But first, a brief examination of the ILO and the'report'that caused all the fuss.

ILO

The International Labour Organization was establishedpursuant to the Treaty of Versailles (1919) and has become aspecialized agency of the United Nations. Its original role wasand still is the development of international labour standards.The most important standard it has promulgated is theFreedom of Association and Right to Organize Convention.This year the ILO will cost almost US$400 million to run.Freedom of Association does not come cheaply, if at all.

The ILO has a tripartite committee (of course) to over-see the implementation of its Conventions. The modestly-titled Committee of Experts on the Application ofConventions and Recommendations is responsible for ensur-ing that national practice conforms with the ILO standards.The Committee of Experts first asks the country involvedcertain questions, elicits a response*nd then makes a report.Last year, the Committee of Experts asked the AustralianGovernment certain questions about the 'right to strike' inAustralia. ] The media confused this request for informationwith a'report' by the ILO; this is like mistaking a prosecutor'squestions for the judge's decision. Even the Minister forIndustrial Relations, Senator Cook, labelled the Committeeof Experts' request as a 'report'. 2 Yet he must have known,

Stuart Wood is an associate to a Federal Court Judge.

even if the media didn't, that the questions did not constitutea report, since his Department was responsible for a reply. Itsuited Senator Cook to interpret the Committee of Experts asproviding international backing for his plan to legislate for the'right to strike'.

Freedom of Association

The starting point of any examination of freedom ofassociation is the United Nations' Universal Declaration ofHuman Rights (1948). This guarantees many rights, includingfreedom of speech, freedom of assembly and freedom ofassociation. Specifically it states: "No-one may be compelledto belong to an association." The Universal Declaration ofHuman Rights inspired the ILO to draft the Freedom ofAssociation and Right to Organize Convention.

In short, the Freedom ofAssociation Convention guaran-tees two basic rights. First, the right of workers to join or-ganizations of their own choosing. Secondly, the right ofnon-interference in internal organizational matters. Theseguarantees are worthy but incomplete, because the UniversalDeclaration of Human Rights was not copied exactly. Theguarantee that "No-one may be compelled to belong to anassociation" was left out. In fact, before the Freedom ofAssociation Convention's enactment, an amendment incor-porating the 'right not to associate' was considered andrejected.3 Clearly the ILO's view of 'freedom' is very differentfrom popular conception.

However, just as freedom of speech protects those whowish to be silent as well as those who wish to voice theiropinion, just as freedom of assembly protects those who wishto walk away as well as those who wish to gather, so freedomof association protects those who do not wish to join as wellas those who do. It is hard to argue that being forced into unionmembership upon threat of loss of employment (especiallywhen the ILO's Constitution advocates "the prevention ofunemployment") infringes freedom of association any lessthan being denied employment because of union membership.Yet the Committee of Experts has argued that preference for

40 IPA Review, Vol. 45 No. 1, 1992

THE UNHOLY TRINITY

unionists' clauses and the closed shop are justifiable and donot breach the freedom of association principle!

Preference

The Industrial Relations Act 1988 gives the IndustrialRelations Commission the power to give preference tounionists in a whole range of employment matters, includinghiring, promotion, transfer, retention, the taking of annualleave and overtime. This power is anathema to the doctrine offreedom of association; yet preference clauses have beenwidely inserted into awards by the Federal Commission, onthe dubious ground that it 'encourages unionism' and "thatwithout preference the union could not effectively dischargeits representative functions. "4

(1) Encourages Unionism Let us, for argument's sake, as-sume that unionism is a worthy goal. Does the end(unionism) justify the means ('encouragement' by threatof job loss)? Defence of the country and the family unitare also worthy social objects. But civilians are no longerpressed into the service of the Royal Navy in order to`encourage' national defence. Similarly, in this country,marriages are not arranged in order to 'encourage' thefamily unit. Not only do the ends not justify the means,they are inimical to them. Conscripts do not make for astrong navy; men and women forced together will notdevelop a healthy family; and workers coerced intounion membership will hardly make for effectiveunionism.

(ii) Representative Function Another rationale for grant-ing preference is that without it "the union could noteffectively discharge its representative functions." Thisis classic IR-speak. Translated, it means union member-ship is low, the union itself cannot convince workers tobecome members, so the Industrial Relations Commis-sion will force union membership, under the guise ofimproving the union's 'representative function' in spiteof the workers. Imagine the uproar if an agent wasappointed to represent an artist without his consent, ora politician to represent constituents without their con-sent, or a director to represent shareholders withouttheir consent.

Closed Shop

The 'closed shop' breaches the doctrine of freedom ofassociation, in that it makes a man's very livelihood dependentupon his continuous membership of a union. Sir Edward Coke(1552-1634), the father of common law, stressed the obnoxiousnature of a monopoly whereby persons "are sought to berestrained of any freedome or liberty that they had before, orhindred in their lawfull trade." 5 He also stated that when "itappeareth that a man's trade is accounted his life, because itmaintaineth his life; and therefore the monopolist that takethaway a man's trade, taketh away his life..."6

The Committee of Experts, unlike Coke, do not look tothe rights of the individual at all; they do not even refer to

preference and the 'closed shop' as such. They prefer theeuphemism of 'union security' clauses. These "clauses aim tostrengthen the position of trade unions by ensuring they be-come better established among workers." This is patent non-sense. The only way for unions to "become better established"is to offer attractive benefits to their potential members. Toforce membership upon unwilling workers may result in ashort-term boost to a union's coffers, but over the longer termit will engender only cynicism, and certainly not loyalty from

its conscripted membership.This has been graphically il-lustrated by the NSW RoyalCommission into Productivityin the Building Industry. Thebuilding industry is a typi-cal closed shop. The sign'No Ticket—No Start' iscom-monplace. A survey conductedby the Royal Commissionrevealed that building workersthemselves wanted their tradeunions to be weaker and inter-fere less. They viewed thebuilding unions as a major im-pediment to labour reform andthe smooth running of buildingsites?

Conveniently Belong

A new union may not be registered, under the presentindustrial relations system, if there is another union to whichits members may 'conveniently belong'. This effectivelyprevents new enterprise unions from forming, as the area inwhich they seek to be registered may well be covered by anolder union. The logic is quite perverse. Surely workers shouldbe free to associate with whomever they see fit, rather than theCommission deciding to which union they 'convenientlybelong'.

To its credit, the ILO Committee of Experts hascriticized this rule, commenting that "provisions of this kindare not compatible with the provisions of the Freedom ofAssociation Convention" because they may be used to bringabout "trade union unification and to establish or maintain asituation of trade union monopoly ... Employees may bedenied the right to join the organization of their choice, con-trary to the principle of freedom of association."8

The ILO first brought attention to Australia's denial in thisregard in 1959. Over 30 years have passed and still the 'con-veniently belong' rule remains on the statute books. Both Laborand Liberal Governments have done little to alter it. Consider,for example, the comment of the Liberal Minister for Labour andNational Service (Hon. L.H.E. Bury, MP) in 1969:

"There is a strong case, particularly in countriessuch as Australia where trade unions have longbeen recognized, where trade union membershipcovers a substantial proportion of the work force

IPA Review, Vol. 45 No. 1, 1992 41

THE UNHOLY TRINITY

and where an orderly industrial relations system isin operation [emphasis added], for measures to betaken to prevent a multiplicity of organizations forbargaining purposes."9

In other words, the right of workers to form smallresponsive enterprise unions is to be sacrificed on the altar of"an orderly industrial relations system." It seems Laborgovernments were not the only apologists for this denial offreedom of association!

Minimum-sized Unions

To `encourage' the amalgamation process, the Govern-ment has decided that from 1993, only unions with more than10,000 members will be allowed to take their place in theindustrial relations system. The remaining unions will havetheir registration `reviewed'. One wonders how a transition toenterprise bargaining can possibly take place if smaller unionsare not allowed to flourish. What is the rationale for denyingworkers the choice of a small, democratically controlled andresponsive union as their representative vehicle?

The Confederation of Australian Industry has appealedto the ILO against this blatant breach of the Freedom ofAssociation Convention. Yet the Government is unlikely totake any notice. Its program of promoting amalgamationsrequires that small unions are `encouraged' to see the benefitsof joining with larger organizations. Without the threat of lossof registration, the smaller unions may be unable to clearlyunderstand the `benefits' of amalgamation.

During the 1991 ACTUCongress, the topic of freedomof association arose. TheSecretary of the ACTU, MrBill Kelty, was reported to

• have delivered a rousingr, speech "denouncing freedom

of choice — and the right toassociate with a union ofchoice — if it was not in thebest interests of the tradeunion movement as a whole."His rationale was that "thebasis of the union movement

Bill Kelly was to prevent individualsgoing against collective

good." 10 This is an unusual description of the "basis of theunion movement": that the individual worker's interest wassomehow opposed to the collective's! In fact, the opposite istrue. The birth of the trade union movement was in responseto the real hardships faced by individual workers, who joinedtogether to gain rewards they could not hope to receive inde-pendently.

Something has happened since the formation of theunion movement, if the Secretary of the ACTU can talk of thebasis of the union movement in this fashion. One hundredyears ago freedom of association was a precious commodity,

not granted without a tight. The ACTU and the ILO haveperverted this doctrine, in order to foster their own agendas.Nowadays, union members are simply pawns to be divided upand parcelled out by the ACTU to one of twenty mega-unions.The criticism of Jim Macken is apt:

"I ask: do all our unions and their leadership reallysee the men and women who make up the member-ship in other than corporate terms? Do they see themen and women who are unionists in terms of fleshand blood, in terms of family, of children, in termsof their social aspirations and their dignity aspeople? I suspect some see them as a group uponwhose numbers and strength capitation fees to theALP and the Labor Council mean political orindustrial strength."11

Conclusion

The International Labour Organization, the self-ap-pointed protector of the principle of freedom of associationoperates, as we have seen, with a highly selective notion offreedom of association.

A system based on genuine freedom of associationwould see unions become more democratic, responsive andrepresentative and the emergence of enterprise-based unions.

There are some hopeful developments. Recent NSWreforms have outlawed `preference' and the `closed shop', andthe Federal Liberal Party has promised to implement a systembased on freedom of association if it wins the next election. 12

It would need to give more weight to freedom of associationthan the ILO, the Federal Labor Government and even pre-vious governments sharing the Liberal name. ■

1. Committee of Experts, Direct Request 1991 Australia.

2. In Parliament, Senator Cook referred to the Committee of Experts'request for information in these terms: "There has been much debateof late about the finding (sic) by a key United Nations body — theInternational Labour Organisation."Hansard (Senate), 17 October1991, p. 2283.

3. Record of Proceedings ILC, ILO, 30th Session, 1947, p. 571.4. Mitchell, RJ.,'The Rise and Fall of the Preference Power The Practice

of the Federal Commission, 1970 . 1987', 1988, p.1,AJLL, pp. 224, 227.5. Cited in Walker, G. de Q., The Rule of Law. Foundation of Constitu-

tional Democracy, 1988, p. 111.

6. Jbid, p. 112.

7. `Weaker building unions wanted', Australian Financial Review, 19August 1991.

8. Committee of Experts, General Survey, para 139, pp. 45-6.9. Department of Labour and National Service, Review ofAustralian Law

and Practice Relatingto Con ventionsAdopted by the In remational labourOrganization (1969), p. 80.

10. The Australian, 13 August 1991.11. Macken, J., `New South Wales — Ready for Change?' in Easson, M.,

and Shaw QC, J., Transforming Industrial Relations, 1990, p. 105.Mr Macken is no friend of the Right. He was a member of the NSWIndustrial Relations Commission for many years, and is scathing of theGreiner Government's recent industrial relations reforms.

12. Liberal Party Industrial Relations Policy, 29 June 1988, para 7, 9.

42 IPA Review, Vol. 45 No. 1, 1992

When is the PersonalPolitical?Where does the public's right to know about the conduct and character of their elected representativesend and violation of politicians' privacy begin? Drawing the line is not always easy.

MICHELE FONSECA

AUSTRALLA has not experienced the media tradition ofreporting on politicians' private lives to the same ex-tent as the United States and Britain. In the past

decade only a handful of `private' issues have been publishedand at least three of these cases were first raised outside themedia: Dallas Hayden's conduct prior to the appointment ofher husband as Governor-General, and the Paul Keating and`Christine affair', both raised first by parliamentarians; andformer Prime Minister Bob Hawke's past womanizing, firstrevealed in Blanche D'Alpuget's biography. Compare this toBritain, where politicians' private escapades feature regularlyin the tabloids — or to the United States, where by virtue ofthe First Amendment, the Fourth Estate has carte blanche toreport on what takes its fancy. However, the much publicizedAustralian Women's Weekly and 60 Minutes interviews withMargaret Hewson, the ex-wife of Federal Opposition LeaderJohn Hewson, may indicate that the line of demarcation be-tween public and private in Australia is shifting.

The temptation for journalists to transgress the bound-ary between public and private is always strong. The generalpublic may pretend to disapprove of revelations regardingpoliticians' private affairs, but secretly it relishes them. Scan-dals sell newspapers and boost television ratings. Politicians,too, are not blameless. When it suits them, many are only toohappy to invite the media into their homes for a sympatheticfamily profile. If politicians are prepared to use their privatelives to enhance their image, can they really complain aboutinvasion of privacy when the media uncover a less wholesomeside to their private lives?

American journalists have not always been as intrusiveas they are today. They did not report President Kennedy'sextra-marital affairs, despite these being common knowledgeamong the Washington media. The incident that more thanany other broke the privacy barrier in America was that

Michele Fonseca is a graduate in journalism living in Melbourne.

involving Democrat nominee for the 1988 Presidential elec-tions, Gary Hart. After The Miami Herald published an articlealleging that Hart had spent a weekend in his home alone witha 29 year-old model, Donna Rice, Hart's `character' wasdebated throughout the country and, eventually, he droppedout of the race. The issue superseded all other election issues.A question being asked all over the nation was: "Is this man,a womanizer and presumably a liar, capable of holding thehighest job in the land?"

When the story first broke, Hart was defiant. The NewYork Times (3 May 1988) quoted him as challenging "Ifanyone wants to put a tail on me, go ahead. They'd be verybored." His `trial by media' brought the `character issue' tolight, and caused debate over whether his actions wererelevant to his political career. Though many argued from amoral point of view that he was not fit for office, others morerelevantly criticized him for poor judgment. The reports hadan immediate effect on Hart's political career. An NBCNews/Wall Street Journal poll of 6 May found the number ofvoters who saw Hart as `unfavourable' had risen since theprevious month from 22 per cent to 40 per cent.

Hart eventually delivered a statement in Denver,withdrawing his candidacy for the Democratic Presidentialnomination. In part, he said:

"I've made some mistakes; I've said so. I said Iwould, because I'm human. And I did. Maybe bigmistakes, but not bad mistakes... We're all going tohave to seriously question the system for selectingour national leaders, for it reduces the press of thisnation to hunters and presidential candidates tobeing hunted."

He went onto criticize the media, saying in the precedingweek he had been subject to "reporters in bushes; false and

IPA Review, Vol. 45 No. 1, 1992 43

WHEN IS -ME PERSONAL POLITICAL?

Gary Hart before relations with the media soured

inaccurate stories printed; photographers peeking in our win-dows; swarms of helicopters hovering over our roof, and myvery strong wife close to tears because she can't even get intoher own house at night without being harassed."

The Hart incident raises the issue of divisions betweenthe private and the political persona. Did Hart's conductthroughout the affair also provide an indication of his politicalcharacter? In the Spring 1988 edition of Policy Review, GaryL. Bauer wrote:

"...I cannot agree with those who maintain thatprivate morals are largely irrelevant to public life.Gary Hart's infidelity certainly told me somethingabout how I could treat his political promises: if hecouldn't keep faith after a solemn pledge to a lovedpartner, what confidence can I as a total strangerhave that he would honour his commitments — tome or to his country? Often private actions are thebest evidence that citizens and voters have of whata public figure is really like...They tell people whattheir leaders are, not just what they pledge to be."

Sally White, journalism lecturer at the Royal MelbourneInstitute of Technology (RMIT), however, disagrees with thiscontention:

"It's totally unrealistic to expect politicians neverto tell a lie...I don't think that lying to your wifenecessarily means that you're going to lie and cheatin politics. It might be marginally more likely but Idon't think it necessarily follows."

When are journalists justified in reporting on the privatelives of politicians? In the contentious area of journalism andethics, issues are seldom black and white. There are no ruleschiselled in stone, no reference books for consultation. Eachsituation, it seems, must be decided according to the par-ticular circumstances surrounding it, but even then, the taskis not straightforward.

According to Sally White, the freedom enjoyed by the

American media may blur the distinction journalists shouldmake between the political and the personal.

"The American press can argue that `all's fair inlove and war' if you're a public figure, not just apolitician. And immediately you allow journaliststo report on private lives, they then stop thinkingabout the fine line. They just do it, whereas we'vealways been forced to think about the fine line,partly because of legal constraints. The storiesabout Billy Snedden, for instance, were only runafter he was dead, and you can't libel the dead."

There seems to be a consensus among journalists thatthe media do have a right to report on the private lives ofpoliticians. Where the dissent becomes apparent is on thequestion of when they are allowed to.

According to a senior writer for TmeAustralia, MathewRicketson, "the criterion is where what is happening in theirprivate fives is going to have some impact on what they'redoing in their public life."

White shares a similar viewpoint.

"In the normal course of events I do not think it isrelevant what a politician's friendships or love af-fairs or marital status or sexual preference is. How-ever, if there is an indication that that particularfriendship, love affair or sexual preference lays thatperson open to undue influence in the perfor-mance of [his or'her] public duty, then it islegitimate to report it."

She cites the Jim Cairns-Juni Morosi affair as one that jour-nalists were justified in reporting, because Morosi was not anAustralian citizen and her husband's business dealings couldhave influenced Cairns (although there is no evidence thatthey did). But she says the more recent Australian Democratsincident - in which former Democrats leader Janet Powellallegedly asked fellow Democrat Sid Spindler to resign be-cause a personal relationship between them had ended — wasa different case.

"The relationship between them was irrelevant,except if indeed it was the situation that Powellasked Spindler to resign because their relationshiphad broken down. No politician has the right to

interfere with the democraticprocess of somebody beingelected. If one of them hadbeen a Labor cabinet ministerand the other one had been theOpposition spokesperson,then perhaps the relationshipwould not have been ir-relevant, because there wouldhave been such a conflict be-tween the political personaand the political philosophyand the private lives. Whereasif they're both Democrats, it

Janet Powell doesn't matter."

44 IPA Review, Vol. 45 No. 1, 1992

WHEN IS THE PERSONAL POLITICAL?

Journalist Tim Duncan was Principal Press Secretary toformer Victorian Opposition Leader Alan Brown for nearlytwo years. Having worked in the journalistic and politicalarenas, he admits the issue is a difficult one because there areno hard and fast rules.

"The trouble is that it depends very much on con-text and also on the behaviour and personality ofthe politician. First and foremost politicians shouldbe judged on their public actions; to the extent towhich their private actions may or may not in-fluence their public actions, their actions arerelevant. The extent of that relevance is also ul-timately up to journalistic judgment. An examplewould be if a politician is acting privately in a waythat wholly contradicts that politician's publicstance, and the politician has put a fair amount ofpolitical capital into that public stance, then itstrikes me that that politician has put himself orherself at risk."

Testing the Public Image

Because the nature of Australian politics and, in par-ticular, political advertising has changed so much in the pastdecade alone, today's media have more reason than everbefore to scrutinize a politician's private life. In this age ofconsumerism, Australians have witnessed a marked increasein the trend of `political packaging', especially around electiontime. Because politicians indulge in image-making, they invitescrutiny from reporters keen to discover just how well theimage accords with the reality.

As Sally White notes, "Fifteen years ago, you said `did itaffect their ability to do their public duty properly' and if itdid, you could intrude. If it was irrelevant to their ability to dotheir public duty properly, then you should not intrude. Butnow, you have the third factor, that is, the political package.Some of those things in their private life may not have anythingto do with them being good politicians, but what they are, isevidence that the public image is false. Fifteen years ago, whatyou saw was what you got, now what you see is not necessarilywhat you get, and I think it is a journalist's role to keep saying,`hold on, that person isn't what they say they are'."

Take the scenario of a male politician having an extra-marital affair. If his campaign projects him as the wholesomefamily man, there is reason enough for journalists to exposethe discrepancy between the image and reality. As Sally Whitesays:

"If a politician is pushing the image that he is asweet country man who only has the interests of thelittle Aussie battler at heart, and you discover thatactually he's never been out of the city and wasborn with a silver spoon in his mouth, then I thinkthat journalists have a duty to say `hold on, you'rebeing sold a pup'."

Tim Duncan agrees that politicians who constantly pon-tificate are deserving of media scrutiny.

"If they're constantly preaching to the popula-tion about how it should behave privately, andthat tends to be happening a lot more thesedays because governments and politiciansfinance very strong advertising campaigns thatessentially exhort people to behave in certainways...to the extent that government andpoliticians condone these campaigns or authorizethem, they put themselves at risk, in a collectivefashion, as role models.

"If you've got a politician who sees it as [his orher] job to either change peoples' personal be-haviour or attitudes or opinions, then you as apolitician have got a greater problem with beingconsistent with your behaviour. These dayspoliticians tend not to think about their own ac-tions in relation to how far governments shoulddictate what people do, then often they only havethemselves to blame when they feel as though theyare being subjected to relatively greater scrutiny.Once again, that has to be placed in the context ofthe relationship between the alleged acts and thepoliticians' public behaviour."

Understandably, voters want to see the person behindthe image. Australians vote not just on policies, but accordingto their perceptions of the personal qualities — the character— of a leader. This being the case, isn't it the media's respon-sibility to disclose all aspects of a leader's character to thepeople? Don't voters have a right to know whether the candidatebefore them imploring them to "trust me" is trustworthy in his orher personal dealings?

Up to a point, but aline has to be drawnsomewhere. The in-trusion into DrHewson's private affairsinvolved in the media in-terviews with his formerwife, Margaret, seems tohave little justification interms of Dr Hewson'scapacity to occupy highpublic office. Does abad marriage make abad politician? If consis-tent success in marriagewere a criterion for

John Hewson: privacy intruded upon public office, how manyother politicians, or

journalists for that matter, would qualify? The 6 OctoberSunday Age editorial said in part:

"In these days of presidential politics and all theslick packaging that goes with it, there is an ever-present danger that the politician we are asked tovote for, is not really the man inside...this has beena tough week for John Hewson. Because of theseevents some voters will have already decided that

IPA Review, Vol. 45 No. 1, 1992 45

WHEN IS THE PERSONAL POLr11CAL?

he is no longer deserving of their support...that isa decision best reached on policies, not narrow-minded morality..John Hewson has a failed mar-riage behind him... But that doesn't make DrHewson an unacceptable leader. It just makes himhuman."

There is consensus among journalists that in certain cir-cumstances, where private behaviour could clearly affect theexecution of public duty, a politician's private conduct shouldbe reported. If a hypothetical State Police Minister is caughtdrink-driving, clearly, it would be justified for a journalist toreport it. The Minister committed an illegal act, andmoreover, broke a law to which he or she had been exhortingthe community to adhere. In Duncan's words:

"If a politician makes a mistake and gets intotrouble breaching the very things that he's preach-ing about, then that's legitimate news."

But the issue is easily complicated. What if a journalistdiscovered a politician was convicted on a drink-drivingcharge 20 years ago, long before he or she entered politics?Should the journalist report it? How relevant is the incidentto the politician's life 20 years down the track?

On the one hand, it could convincingly be argued thatwhat occurs in politicians' lives before they enter politics isirrelevant. Politicians are human and prone to error, as theywould no doubt be the first to admit. If they committed'pre-politics' indiscretions, the argument goes, it has no bear-ing on their political life. Everyone makes mistakes. As SallyWhite says:

"You should never report that, because that wasbefore they made a decision to go into public life.You can't say that you're stuck forever with yourpast because people change. They might find Godand decide that they've led a wicked life and thatnow they should return something to society andbecome a politician. And if they genuinely do thatand modify their behaviour then that's fine. Theyshouldn't be hanged for sins they committed a longtime before their conversion."

But does this argument still hold in the case of, forinstance, former Ku Klux Klan Wizard-turned-politician,David Duke? Throughout his recent campaign for election,his past was widely publicized. But was the reportingjustified?Is it still the case that "what's past is past," or were his priorassociations more significant? Duke himself publicly stated hehad seen the error of his ways. But in this situation, a strongcase could be made for reporting. Though Duke claimed tohave renounced public office with the Klan, a legitimate per-sonal question remained: had he shed his racist beliefs, withtheir disturbing implications for public policy in multi-racialAmerica? Voters were entitled to know the answer and torefuse to accept Duke's disclaimers at face value.

According to Mathew Ricketson, the Duke case was "aperfect example of where it's justified [to report on past life].He was a member of the Ku Klux Klan which is a blot on theAmerican landscape."

Focusing on the personal goings-on of politicians can, iftaken too far, simply reduce news to gossip. In the drive to sellmore newspapers by publishing scandals and secrets, ethicsare often neglected. Though more common in Britain, che-quebook journalism may be the result.

In 1963 the British. Secretary of State for War, JohnProfumo, resigned after admitting to the House of Commonsthat he had been involved with call girl Christine Keeler (whohad been associated with an assistant naval attache at theRussian Embassy). After the Profumo affair, Lord Denningconducted a far-reaching inquiry. In his conclusion hecriticized the chequebook journalism methods employed bythe British tabloids. (Christine Keeler, it was discovered, hadsold her story to News of the World for £23,000.)

"Scandalous information about well-knownpeople has become a marketable commodity. Trueor false, actual or invented, it can be sold. Thegreater the scandal, the higher the price it com-mands. If supported by photographs or letters, realor imaginary, all the better."

Reporting on a politician's private life involves other hazards.Gary Hart put it succinctly in his Denver statement:

"...ponderous pundits wonder in mock seriousnesswhy some of the best people in the country choosenot to run for high office...I want those talentedpeople who supported me to insist that this systembe changed. Too much of it is just a mockery, andif it continues to destroy people's integrity andhonour, then that system will eventually destroyitself."

It is possible perhaps that if the Australian media dofollow American trends and become more intrusive ofpoliticians' private lives, talented prospective politicians maybe deterred because of the perceived need to perform both inthe public and private spheres.

One other possible wider implication is the effect on thepolitical culture. If journalists fail to respect privacy, govern-ments may follow suit. Once something is dragged out byjournalists as legitimately open to public scrutiny, govern-ments may feel entitled to legislate on it.

Even the experts on the privacy issue have difficulty indetermining guidelines. As privacy commissioner Kevin 0'-Connor said in June 1989:

"While freedom of speech and its corollary,freedom of the press, is a fundamental civil liber-ties principle, there exists no satisfactory legalmechanism for balancing the principle against anindividual's right to privacy."

Clearly the issue is a complex one, dependent largely onthe collective integrity of the media, and the acceptance thatthose who lead public lives are still entitled to some degree ofprivacy. However, freedom of the press is just as significant aprinciple, and in reporting on personal indiscretions that mayunduly affect a politician's public duty, the media are simplydoing their job. ■

46 IPA Review, Vol.45 No. 1, 1992

The Australian InquisitionPeriodically, the Arts faculties in universities come under siege from Inquisitors in search of heretics.Today's heretics are scholars who believe in objectivity and the transmission of Western culture.

AUSTIN GOUGH

UMANITIES and social science departments

Hshouldn't allow themselves to be distracted bymaterial difficulties or government policies, because

the real threats to their integrity and even to their survivalalways come on the intellectual side. We might imagine theArts faculties as Benedictine monasteries of the Middle Ages,run by genial and tolerant abbots and dedicated to scholar-ship, to transmitting the culture of the past, and to sustainingand enriching the life of the societies which support them.About every 25 or 30 years, however, these centres of learningare invaded by freelance Inquisitors, who are suspicious of thetransmission of culture and believe that the past should bestudied only so as to convict past generations of heresy andsin; they are accompanied by troops of Ignorantine Friars, whoknow nothing about culture but have great enthusiasm forburning books and shouting in unison.

Inquisitors and Ignorantine Friars

Just before World War I the European universities wereswept by a wave of reaction against the empiricism and scien-tific positivism which had been the prevailing flavours ofuniversity life in the late nineteenth century. Radical staff andstudents called for the universities to abandon the outmodedideals of rational argument and reliance on scientific experi-ment and documentary evidence, in favour of a doctrine ofinstinct, action, violence, "thinking with the blood", "the unionof the brain and the fist." The War in 1914 put an end to muchof this ferment; but its influence came to the surface again inthe violent movements of the 1930s, when the universities hadto deal with demands from radicals to dismiss the oldergeneration of liberal professors, to abandon the idea of impar-tial scholarship as decadent Jewish rubbish, to burn textbooksand to dedicate the universities to the creation of "new menfor a new age."

The Inquisitors appeared again in 1968-72, this timedenouncing all aspects of bourgeois culture and calling for theuniversities to play a heroic part in the vanguard of world

revolution; their shock troops of Ignorantine Friars preachedrejection of the difficult world of adult thought, and a retreatinto an anti-intellectual youth culture which had very strikingaffinities with the other youth movements of 30 and 60 yearsearlier. Its leading activists urged one another to "do your ownthing," and then they all did the same thing. At MonashUniversity in 1969 it was possible to get a spontaneous roundof applause by reading from a document that poured scorn onthe wimpish bourgeois concepts of rationality and fairness,and that called for the burning of libraries, the disbanding oforchestras and the total destruction of the clapped-out man-darin culture of the Western world; the document was in factone of the Futurist manifestos of 1909 which had exercisedsuch a great fascination on the intellectuals of that period,including the young Mussolini.

Since the mid-1980s the Inquisitors who have beenplaguing the literature departments have begun to turn theirattention to history. It appears that like the literary people wehave fallen into the seductive mediaeval heresy of nominalism:we behave as if historical evidence and historical documentshave some objective meaning, and as if by studying them wecan go some way towards understanding the past — whereas,as any deconstructionist knows, all the documents and litera-ture of the past are simply a word-game without any inherentmeaning, into which almost anything can be read. And ofcourse all of us have compounded our error by spending toomuch time studying the activities and the writings of deadwhite males.

The scholarly monks in our monastery are not reallyequipped to deal with Inquisitors. Their whole trainingpredisposes them to be reasonable and conciliatory, to see allsides of a question, to detect subtle nuances and redeemingfeatures. They are trained never to take up a clear and definiteposition in case someone at some time in the future mightthink of a possible objection to it. And the most fundamentalprinciple of their religion is expressed in the device carvedabove the main gateway of the monastery, the letters"NWTA": they stand for a phrase, or mantra, "Not WishingTo Appear" — that is, not wishing to appear obstructive,

Austin Gough was, until his recent retirement, Professor of History at the University of Adelaide. This is an edited extract from hisvaledictory lecture.

IPA Review, Vol. 45 No. 1, 1992 47

TIIE AUSTRALIAN INQUISITION

reactionary, ill-informed, old-fashioned, or just old. As in-dividuals the monks have high principles; collectively they areinclined to fatalism. They sit in their stalls in the chapel, andwhen messengers come in to announce that the Inquisitors arein the library tearing up the volumes of Gibbon and Braudel,the senior monks look thoughtful and say: "Well, you have tosee their point of view. If we protest, might we not appear tobe just a tiny bit reactionary?"

Writing Australian History

There are two particular areas where I think that thescholar-monks ought to stir themselves to some determinedopposition. One of these is Australian history, which in someuniversities — not, happily, at Adelaide — is showing signs ofdeclining into a search for evidences of sin; we are told in a lotof recent books that the historical development of Australiansociety should be seen as a dismal record of oppression,ignorance and genocide. Although I don't work in Australianhistory myself I feel both irritation and sadness about thistendency.

My children are eighth-generation descendants of fourconvicts who arrived in New South Wales in 1791. Otherbranches of my family came as settlers in the 1840s and 'SOs.They have been peaceful and useful. My grand-uncle JamesAlston, indeed, altered the landscape: where would RussellDrysdale and Pro Hart be without the Alston windmill?Others were farmers, bridge-building contractors, engineers,school teachers, clergy and especially musicians — some

notable pianists, singers and conductors. They oppressednobody, and I think they contributed something to the fabricof a parallel or alternative Australian history which needs tobe written.

Women in Universities

The other sphere where Inquisitors are especially activeis the intellectual life of women students. After a century ofliberal feminism women in universities have established theright to do and to be anything they wish. Women are outstand-ingly successful in every university discipline from classics tochemical engineering. My own subject on the Second WorldWar is an example, with women students consistently takingthe top distinctions. But women in universities are now con-fronted by a positive torrent of books written from theseparatist perspective, and carrying a strong flavour ofParisian Left-Bank absolutism, urging women to turn theirbacks on all aspects of male thought. Philosophy, history andscience are said to be constructed from male paradigms andconfined in the straitjacket of male language. They have noth-ing to say to women; the female mind is fundamentally dif-ferent and will express itself in new disciplines taught bywomen, and a new language which will "write the femaleexperience." Women students will decide for themselves whatto do about this self-defeating mysticism which could easilydeprive us all, men and women, of some of our liveliest intel-lectual experiences, and put university women back wherethey were in 1880.1

The New McCarthyism

CHRIS JAMES

N a clear case of life imitating art,America is growing to resemble moreand more The Bonfire of the Vanities.

Over and above the natural American ten-dency toward voyeurism, sensationalismand public neurosis, the confusion over cul-tural heritage and social mores which hasaffected America since the 1960s seems tobe reaching a new peak. A number of recentevents bear this out:

^® The divisive and hysterical debate

I N R E V I ^] J

over what should have been thestraightforward nomination ofJudge Clarence Thomas;

The brewing controversy over theDinesh D'Souza, Illiberal

500th anniversary celebrations of

Education: The Politics of Race Columbus' voyage to America -

and Sex on Campus plans are already being made to dis-

The Free Press rupt the celebration of an event which

Chris James is a Master of Arts student in Politics at Monash University and President of the Monash Forum.

48 IPA Review, Vol. 45 No. 1, 1992

"As one who saw his professorfired during the McCarthy era,

and who had to fight, as apro-Communist Marxist, for hisown right to teach, I fear that ourconservative colleagues are today

facing a new McCarthyism insome ways more effective and

vicious than the old."

THE NEW McCARTHYISM

minority activists see as representing the actions of thegenocidal, Eurocentric, sexist, racist, imperialist whitemale;1

• In what seemed a straightforward case of public indecen-cy (gay men soliciting each other in a public park), anumber of the convicted and their families appeared onthe television talk show, Donahue, indignantly and un-ashamedly claiming discrimination and infringement oftheir (gay) 'rights'. Those who criticized their actions (orhomosexual activity in general) were shouted down as'bigoted' or 'homophobic'.

If one adds the chaotic state of the American economyto such moral and cultural confusion,one can only conclude that America isa deeply troubled nation. DineshD'Souza's Illiberal Education, amasterly study of the modernAmerican university, does nothing todisabuse one of this impression. Ifanything, things are much worse at theAmerican university, the place where,after all much of this ideologicalneurosisy began. And neurosis it is -at the University of Connecticut,'harassment' includes "the use ofderogatory names", "inconsideratejokes", "misdirected laughter" and"conspicuous exclusion from conversa-tion." (The idea of "Political Correct-ness" as some sort of disease isconfirmed by Paul Johnson, whoprefers to use the term "AcademicAids" "because it more accuratelydescribes the nature of the toxin and itsorigins in the university. ,3)

society in general. According to the "Politically Correct",Western'liberal' education, Western society and the Westerncultural tradition which spawned them are institutionallysexist, racist, militarist, homophobic, elitist, etc. Judged by thepublic controversies over Clarence Thomas and Columbus,this revolution is spreading outwards into the wider Americansociety.

D'Souza is especially brilliant in outlining how theradical egalitarian agenda of the Left is defeating its ownstated aims, both theoretically and in practice. Pointing outthat the insistence by the Left on quotas based on race is infact racist, he outlines the resulting resentment againstminorities. He reveals that the more 'liberal' Northern cam-puses, where the ideology of 'diversity' and 'multiculturalism'

are strongest, tend to experience thelargest number of racially motivatedincidents.

Illiberal Education has beendesigned.to appeal beyond D'Souza'sconservative and intellectual con-stituency. Its language is not the stri-dent kind employed by Bloom or theDartmouth Review (of which D'Souzawas once editor). Although the phrase'liberal education' is constantlyevoked, and we all know roughly whatit means, there are very few attemptsto construct and promulgate a detailedversion of it. When there are appealsto particular values, it is to those suchas `tolerance' and 'freedom' which ap-peal to both liberals and conservatives.More markedly conservative themes,such as the importance of the Westerncultural tradition, are viewed throughthe prism of such values.

`Intellectual' Trends

The product of a phenomenalamount of research, including count-less interviews with students,academics and administrators, II-liberal Education details major hap-penings and 'intellectual' trends on anumber of major American campusesover the past few years. Rather thanboring us with garbled politicalphilosophizing d la Allan Bloom,D'Souza takes a more methodicaland practical approach. He divides his analysis into threesections: admissions policy; curriculum; and life on campus(most significantly, the relationships between various eth-nic groups).

He identifies change in the modern university as nothingshort of a 'revolution' against liberal education and Western

Wide US Readership

Strategically, this approachseems to have worked. It has won hima wide readership, as well as audienceson speaking tours and on television.Even before the arrival of IlliberalEducation, concern about "PoliticalCorrectness" (PC) had begun to.manifest itself among non-conserva-

Eugene Genovese tives. Since 1990, liberals have comeincreasingly on side, with publicationssuch as The New Republic, New i veelc,The Atlantic Monthly and The New

York Times giving the issue increasing critical attention. Wide-ly covered in most of these publications (most notably TheAtlantic Monthly, which published a long excerpt), IlliberalEducation has added fuel to this fire. However, while someconservatives see works such as Illiberal Education and theattention they receive as evidence of a turning tide, D'Souza

IPA Review, Vol. 45 NTo.1, 1992 49

THE NEW McCART1iYISM

envisages an inexorable and complete academic revolution,made inevitable by the retirement of older liberal facultymembers and their replacement with young radicals. ThePC uproar has, of course, been written off by many on theLeft as either an over-reaction or a conservative conspiracyto take over the American university .4

Australian Parallels

When reading a work such as Illiberal Education it isalways tempting to wonder whether any parallels can be drawnor lessons applied locally. A cursory glance at events onAustralian campuses reveals a catalogue of appalling inci-dents similar to those chronicled by D'Souza. For example,the academic at La Trobe University who was victimized bythe extremist students for writing a letter to a Melbournenewspaper critical of Aboriginal claims to Land Rights; the'peace' demonstrators at Monash who attempted to evict the'militarist' Army Reserve from campus during the 1991 Orien-tation Week; the heckling of Sydney University lecturers whorefuse to comply with that institution's guidelines on 'non-sexist' language.

One can also identify other familiar ingredients: thecowardice of `liberal' academics in the face of Left bullying;the preoccupation of radicals with -isms (sexism, racism, im-perialism, classism, speciesism, etc.); language guidelines; of-ficial and unofficial affirmative-action hiring policies inacademia; the prevalence (as Allan Bloom observed with theAmerican campus) of indignation as an emotion, and theproblems posed by this in an institution which relies onreasoned, dispassionate discussion; and so on.

However, in Australia, the abusers of freedom areconsiderably less potent and the abuses less frequent andless systematic. For example, as Michael Barnard haspointed out in The Age, while there are language guidelinesfrom the advisory (e.g. the Melbourne University bookletWatch Your Language) to the compulsory (e.g. studentnewspapers like Monash University's Lot's Wife, whichrefuses to print "sexist, racist or militarist" material), thereare no speech codes like those in existence at the Universityof Missouri, where the words `matronly', `buxom' and'burly' ("too often associated with large black men, imply-ing ignorance") are forbidden.

There are a number of reasons for this. First of all,Australia does not have racial tensions of the magnitude of theUnited States. Despite our official policy of `multiculturalism',Australia is a far more racially integrated society. Secondly,fewer people live on Australian campuses than on Americanones, offering fewer opportunities for racial and sexual ten-sions to arise. Thirdly, Australian students are, if anything,becoming less radicalized and less political generally. CampusIife today is very much unlike the violent 1970s when theMaoists and the Trotskyites competed for power withmoderates and each other. Finally, it would be fair to say thatAustralians have a generally more relaxed way of doing thingsthan the competitive and contentious Americans, the obverse

side of this being, of couise, apathy and mediocrity.Paul Johnson in fact insists that the PC epidemic is the

continuation of a strain in American public life he describesas "the fanatic." Originating with the Puritan New Englanders,whose 17th century witch-hunts were the earliest form ofPolitical Correctness, this strain has reappeared down theyears in the form of witch-hunts surrounding Senator Mc-Carthy, Watergate, Iran (Contra, Judge Bork and, now, JudgeClarence Thomas. According to Johnson American historyhas been marked by a struggle between this strain aid the"educated, enlightened, practical man-of-the-world strain" asrepresented by "men steeped in the English Common Lawand parliamentary tradition, with its notions of balance, com-promise, empiricism and common sense" — includingFranklin, Jefferson, Adams and Hamilton?

Despite the relative outward benignity of the Australianbrand of authoritarianism, there are lessons to be learnt fromIlliberal Education. Weakness in the face of "Academic Aids"is to be avoided at all costs. The most pathetic characters inIlliberal Education are riot the purveyors of PC but the ad-ministrators who either cannot or will not use their power andauthority to protect academic freedom and promote justice.Eugene Genovese, a distinguished Marxist historian and op-ponent of 'Political Correctness', actually goes so far as tosuggest the tactics of 'counter-terror'. Every administratorwho gives in to terrorist demands "should face demonstratorsof another kind: those who, closer to the truth, trash them asfront-men for a new McCarthyism, as hypocrites who preacha new diversity and practice totalitarianism, as cowards,whores and rogues... administrators who deftly avoid calls fortheir ouster from one side will face such calls from the otherside..."6

Illiberal Education - also highlights the dilemma of themoderate academic or administrator who believes in liberaleducation but, to protect it, may have to use methods contraryto it — for example, thinking and acting strategically andpolitically — when the business of disseminating ideas is notproving effective on its own.

Above all, however, Illiberal Education portrays theAmerican university as a kind of worst-case scenario for af-firmative action, anti-elitism and a particularly anti-Westernbrand of multiculturalism — a scenario Australian universitiesmust do their best to avoid. •

1. Bremner, C., 'Columbus: the tainting of an American icon', 77teWeekend Australian Review, 12-13 October 1991, p. 3.

2. 1 am indebted to Shaun Patrick Kenaelly for the use of this term.3. Johnson, P., 'The liberal fascists ride high', The Spectator, 19 October

1991, p. 27.4. See, for example, Robbins, B., `Tenured Radicals, the New

McCarthyism and `PC", New Left Review, July-August 1991, p. 151.5. Johnson also posits another reason for the origins and rapid spread of

"Academic Aids" in the United States — the fact that the United Stateshas "more universities than anywhere else on earth."

6. Genovese, 13., 'Heresy, Yes — Sensitivity, No', The New Republic,15 April 1991.

50 IPA Review, Vol. 45 No, 1, 1992

RON BRUNTON

t ^^I

Credibility at Stake

DURING the Resource AssessmentCommission's Kakadu Inquiry last

year, Dr Michael Wood, a senioranthropologist with the Northern LandCouncil (NLC), told the commissionersthat the fundamental obligation ofanthropologists "is to represent thepeople that they work with." The RAC'sChairman, Mr Justice Stewart, immedi-ately asked whether this meant thatanthropologists were advocates for thepeople and causes that they repre-sented? Would they use their profes-sional position to put forward views thatthey knew to be false?

After an equivocal exchangeduring which Dr Wood said that hewould probably be sacked if he publiclystated that the NLC's views on a givenissue were wrong, the commissionersappeared satisfied that anthropologistswould not knowingly make false state-ments on behalf of 'their people'. Evenif we accept the assurance thatanthropologists as advocates wouldn'ttell lies, this does not necessarily meanthat they would tell the whole truth.Embarrassing information may simplybe suppressed or otherwise dismissedso that it does not threaten `theirpeople's' case.

Dr Wood's statement was in keep-ing with the Principles of ProfessionalResponsibility of the AmericanAnthropological Association, which werecirculated to Australian anthropologistsin mid-1990. (The Australian profes-sional body has yet to formally adopt its

own code of ethics.) This documentstates that "Anthropologists' firstresponsibility is to those whose lives andcultures they study. Should conflicts ofinterest arise, the interests of thesepeople take precedence over other con-siderations." It also warns that "in ex-pressing professional opinions publicly,anthropologists are not only responsiblefor the factual content of their state-ments but also must consider carefullythe social and political implications ofthe information they disseminate."

What this really means is thatanthropologists' interpretations of theirpeople's social and political interestsmust override their commitment to ob-jective research. In a book which hasjust been published titled Ethics and theProfession of Anthropology, anAmerican professor comments that thepolitical attitudes of sectors of theprofession are such that "it has beenrelatively easy for some of them to jus-tify misleading and even lying to govern-ment agencies and corporate clients."

Indeed, many anthropologists, incommon with other social scientists,would scoff at any commitment to truthin the first place. For these people truthand objectivity have become sniggerwords, to be used only if placed betweenquotation marks. Amongst themselves,in their technical publications, theyquestion the whole status of their re-search enterprise, and deride the pos-sibility of producing objective accountsof other cultures. In the words of oneeminent anthropologist, the discipline'stexts are "persuasive fictions."

Control of ResearchThere are a number of

anthropologists who strongly resistthese notions, and who argue that tradi-tional standards of scholarship mustremain inviolate. But in Australia, addi-tional hurdles are being placed in thepath of disinterested and candid in-quiry. A growing number of calls arebeing made for research and informa-tion about Aborigines to be controlledin some way. For instance, the journalpublished by the Australian Institute ofAboriginal and Torres Strait IslanderStudies recently included an article bythree geographers from Sydney Univer-sity stating that "the right of Aboriginalgroups to decide for themselves whatconstitutes appropriate research, andto control information about themsel-ves and their communities are fun-damental to self-determination." LastAugust the head of the AboriginalStudies and Teacher Education Centreat the University of South Australia toldsocial scientists that they "oweAborigines a positive image." TheUniversity of Western Sydney andFlinders University are now including"acceptability to the Aboriginal com-munity" (whatever this may mean) as anessential criterion for certain academicappointments involving work withAborigines. And one of the mischievousrecommendations of the Royal Com-mission into Aboriginal Deaths in Cus-tody was that the principal , criteria forresearch funding on Aboriginal issuesshould include "the extent to which

Dr Ron Brunton heads the Environmental Policy Unit of the IPA, based in Canberra.

IPA Review, Vol. 45 No. 1, 1992 51

Aboriginal site of cultural significance near Marandoo

Aboriginal people from the relevantcommunity or group have substantialcontrol over the conduct of the re-search."

Such calls are pernicious. In so faras they are followed, research that jeop-ardizes the interests of particularAboriginal activists or influentialgroups will not be carried out. Alterna-tively, the results will be distorted orsanitized to make them more politicallyacceptable. During a recent conversa-tion Les Hiatt, one of Australia's mostdistinguished anthropologists, said that"it is becoming increasingly difficult towrite or speak honestly aboutAboriginal issues in public in thiscountry." He went on to add "I feelsorry for my younger colleagues."

The Aboriginal Deaths in Custodyreport includes an observation from anAboriginal anthropologist, MarciaLangton, which complements Hiatt'sview. Ms Langton is angered by awidespread refusal of non-Aboriginesto criticize or contradict Aborigines indiscussion. She see this, quite justifiab-ly, as a prime example of racism, "treat-ing Aboriginal people like children onthe assumption that they cannot takecriticism." Sadly, her complaint seemsapplicable to the report itself. For ex-ample, in the section on Aboriginalsociety prior to the British arrival,Aboriginal life is portrayed as an Ar-cadian fantasy, with no mention of theviolence and warfare that took place.And any unavoidable criticisms of con-temporary Aboriginal ways elsewherein the report are presented apologeti-cally, carefully hedged, and to beblamed on white society wherever pos-sible. Even while acknowledging objec-tions from Aborigines that explanations

of alcoholism and violence by socialscientists serve to undermine a sense ofindividual responsibility, the reportbusily extends alibis for Aboriginalfailures, thus helping to perpetuate thevery situation it decries.

The recently completed site surveyof Marandoo sponsored by the WesternAustralian Government illustratesanother aspect of the problem of thecredibility and political agenda of cur-rent research. A number of inde-pendent anthropological surveyscarried out in the 1970s did not identifyany significant sites that would be af-fected by the proposed iron ore mine.But last year the Karijini AboriginalCorporation, representing people whoclaim traditional ownership of the area,said that these surveys were invalid. TheKarijini Corporation says there were anumber of supposed deficiencies of theprevious research, including the "lackof Aboriginal control over surveys andanthropologists" and the "expropria-tion of cultural information." The latterphrase seems to mean making informa-tion available for scientific and publicexamination and debate.

Certainly, the new report has notdone this. The two anthropologists whoprepared it merely state that four areaswithin the mining tenement "are notclear of cultural heritage concerns."Under the research model used in thesurvey — the "work area clearancemodel" — no further information is re-quired. This model is supposed to bemore "acceptable to Aboriginalpeople." Its appropriateness in disputesover resource development and otherpolicy issues is another matter entirely.The supporting evidence detailinggenealogical connections, historical as-

sociations, cultural knowledge, etc. isnot disclosed, and therefore cannot bescrutinized by independent re-searchers. Although the Marandoo sur-vey was publicly funded, all the relevantdata collected by the anthropologistsremains the property of the KarijiniCorporation. Moreover, the peoplewho have provided the information nowlive on the coast 300 kilometres away,and i have not lived in the Marandooregion for over 40 years.

Two of the areas deemed "notclear of cultural heritage concerns" arecrucial to the viability of the Marandoomine. These areas do not seem to haveany connection with religious or ritualactivities. Rather, they contain evidenceof previous occupation or movementthrough the country by Aborigines. Onthis basis virtually any large develop-ment, anywhere in Australia, could beblocked. What is happening at Maran-doo and at other proposed miningoperations is that heritage concerns arebeing used in an attempt to obtainpolitical and economic benefits thatotherwise might not be available. AsPeter Veth, a Western Australian ar-chaeologist, writes in the latest issue ofAustralian Aboriginal Studies, sites "areincreasingly being perceived and usedfor political leverage. They may be usedfor leverage to maintain access to landand to potentially receive compensa-tion." And Aboriginal activists andanthropologists are collaborating inpromoting research methods and practiceswhich help to ensure that such misuse ofheritage legislation can continue.

There has probably never been agreater urgency for honest and openinquiry on Aboriginal issues than atpresent. A growing sense that currentAboriginal policies are misguided, andwidespread scepticism about thegenuine significance of Aboriginal ob-jections to resource developments,make it imperative for the public to havefull confidence that the researchers in-volved have an unshakeable commit-ment to truth and objectivity.Unfortunately, all too often such con-fidence is not justified. In the long runthe biggest losers will be anthro-pologists and the Aborigines they thinkthey are helping, because nothing thatthey say will be believed. ■

52 IPA Revicw, Vol. 45 No. 1,1992

Something There Is ThatDoesy t Love a Wall...

MICHAEL McLEAN

Before I built a wall I'd ask to knowWhat I was walling in or walling out,And to whom I was like to give offence.Something there is that doesn't love a wall,That wants it down...

Robert Frost (1874-1963)

N West Berlin Zoo only the big cats, it seems, are eagerto break out. Most of their fellow prisoners have resignedthemselves to their captivity and make the most of it. I

stood there one day contemplating the uneasy padding of atiger as he rambled back and forth within his prison; his eyeslocked upon the world he could just glimpse beyond. How heyearned to be free, to escape and experience the trials of lifebeyond the regulated safety of his enclosure, despite all theuncertainty and misfortune that might unfold. At times hepaused; but soon he resumed his relentless pattern in slow,rhythmic action, ever hopeful that one day his jailers wouldbreak down the walls.

Two years have now passed since that other more in-famous Wall came crashing down, and brought an entirenation down with it. But for many easterners, the mentalbarriers — nurtured for so long under a system that did nottolerate change or initiative — are proving harder to copewith. Adapting to the new reality has become the greatestchallenge for a society that was brought up with the certaintyof a static, permanent, grey existence, but was suddenly thrustinto an alien world where the rules no longer applied.

On a cold winter's day in January 1991! passed throughModlareuth, the sleepy little German village that once formedpart of this century's most infamous frontier. I was drawn to itfrom 15,000 kilometres away, by the opportunity to see thepassing of an era and a way of life that had once held so firma grip upon an entire generation of people and the imaginationof the world.

Thirty-one years ago, soon after the world's attentionhad been focused on events in Berlin, the engineers and the

bulldozers came to Modlareuth. They appeared one day fromacross the fields: an irresistible juggernaut following an imagi-nary line. What had once been the boundary between the oldkingdom of Bavaria and the principality of Reuss, in turnbecame the border between the American and Soviet occupa-tion zones. And here, under the bemused gaze of the villagers,the engineers began to carve a barren strip across the placidfields and between the houses. It lay across the main intersec-tion, skirted a pond, twisted around a farmhouse and led outthe far side. From the highest field it could then be seendisappearing off into the distance.

Then came the guard towers, grim and foreboding, pos-sessing a personality all of their own, thrown up like hugeshafts that loomed above the ancient and unchanging build-ings. They were joined by the grey soldiers and theirsearchlights. The engineers laid out their land mines andstrung out their steel-mesh fencing. They built their concretewall and then they went away. And suddenly a remote littlevillage that had survived unyielding as centuries of turmoil andconflict raged about it, was torn asunder. It had become asdivided as the homeland that had nurtured it. And for thirtyyears the gentle folk of Modlareuth gazed across those fewmetres to a different world on either side, to their family andfriends, and wondered why.

Like a scar that refused to heal, the frontier stamped itsauthority upon the landscape. Over the years it came to sym-bolize the gulf between East and West. Steadfast, permanent,irresistible. But as we were reminded in 1989, nothing enduresagainst the relentless pressure of an idea whose time has come.Today the steel-mesh makes good stock fencing in Mod-lareuth. The concrete and the watch towers stand decayingand neglected. Over time, the scars that were carved upon thelandscape will vanish beneath the ploughshares as the farmingcommunity methodically reclaim what was theirs. But as Ger-mans everywhere are now realizing, treating the human scarswill prove a more demanding task: and one which harboursspecial dangers for the future of the nation.

Michael McLean is a Senior School Economics teacher at Mordialloc-Chelsea Secondary College, Melbourne, and afreelance writer.

IPA Review, Vol. 45 No. 1. 1992 53

SOMETHING THERE IS THAT DOESNT LOVE A WALL..

From Euphoria to Resentment

After the revolution in 1989, the optimists expectedthat the decaying East — with its obsolete and uncompeti-tive industrial base — would soon go the way of the Westwhich had recovered so rapidly after World War II. Theextraordinary scenes of euphoria with which Germansgreeted the collapse of East Germany appeared to many of usin the West to be proof of a new renaissance. The emergenceof a brave new world in the East would just be a matter of time.After all, weren't they Germans too?

For a visitor from the West, bow easy it isto underestimate the fundamental valuethat people place in personal freedom.

But the West German experience of the 1950s could notbe grafted so readily onto a nation which bore very littleresemblance to the phoenix that arose from the ashes of theThird Reich. In 1945 there still existed in the East anentrepreneurial class of merchants and capitalists, a class thathad managed to survive relatively intact despite 12 years of theNazi regime. But after 40 years of socialism the entire culturemust be reinvented. By 1945 Germany had grown accustomedto chaos and instability after the devastation of war. Upheavalscaused by reconstruction were nothing out of the ordinary forthem. By 1989, however, East Germans had grown accus-tomed to their cocooned, stale existence. As one Americancommentator put it, someone had suddenly pushed the fast-forward button on history, and it has left the bulk of thepopulation shell-shocked and confused. In 1945 all Europewas devastated. There was no feeling of being absorbed by apowerful neighbour. There was time to evolve and maturetogether as a community of nations. The East today has nosuch time. Whilst others might speak of reunification, peoplein the East talk resentfully of the takeover of their country bythe West: and not everyone is happy to see it go.

The Wall did offer genuine protection from the bitterpills of capitalism. It offered the promise of stability, grimthough that might be. A thorough social security net from thecradle to the grave, job security and a subsidized economymade the GDR an attractive prospect for a passive society.The Wall became, for many, a precondition to protect andfoster the development of genuine socialism as a shiningalternative to the Nazi past. That it failed so comprehensivelyis one fact to which many of the true believers may never beable to reconcile themselves.

For a while, after World War II, time slowed to a crawlin East Germany, it accelerated in the West. Austerity therewas swept aside by the new icons of a gilded age: Sanyo, PierreCardin, Coca-Cola and Mercedes-Benz, to name just a few. Itbecame an age when a generation devoted its faith to the glossyimages concocted by the ascendant corporate empire. Andthen with the new technology of television, the images seeped

right through the curtain of iron, seducing the hearts andminds of a population betrayed by the socialist dream. Leninwas discarded for Levis, and in 1989, East Germany's becamethe first revolution to be won by a clothing label.

Ironic, then, to remember that it was Germany whichfirst gave the world the theoretical principles of socialism. TheGerman Communist Party that attempted the unsuccessfultransformation to a Soviet Republic in 1919 was absolutelydedicated: following a tradition of German anti-capitalismthat extended back to the 19th century. Devotees to the causelater suffered for their beliefs under Hitler, and became deter-mined to use that same power just as ruthlessly, should theirdream ever become a reality. The abuse of that power once itwas acquired became justified by past experience; but inabusing it, the leaders sowed the seeds of disenchantmentwhich led to the uprising that toppled them in 1989. Now ascapitalism embraces both East and West, the old dogmas andtheories are being rapidly discarded, and a few dozen feebleold men and women bereft of power are left to dwell upon thefailures of their experiment and the lives that weresquandered. And the nation is left to bear the burden as itslowly adjusts to life in the West.

This year unemployment is expected to reach 30 per centin the East, as uncompetitive factories close down or arerationalized in the absence of heavy government subsidies. Ispoke to one young man from Jena. We met one evening inWeimar in a spartan railway cafeteria. He was clutching abattered suitcase and was returning home for the weekend tohis wife and young family. He worked as a cook five days aweek, three hundred kilometres away across the old frontiernear Frankfurt. Typical of so many other cities in the formerGDR, Jena can no longer provide enough work for its people.A thriving optics industry had supported the town since 1846.But after a generation of nationalized planning, the factory -like so much else of the old system — has been swept awaybefore the surging tide of Western competition. Along withmost of his fellow-countrymen, he was ecstatic when the Wallfell, but no longer. He could see no future for his family in theEast, and with a mocking smile he then told me that there wereno flats in Frankfurt.

Closer to the border in Neustadt, shopkeepers are con-fronting another symptom of the malaise facing workers in theEast. With the floodgates open to Western goods, people havelost faith in their own producers, especially when it is possibleto buy the more attractively packaged (though often moreexpensive) Western substitute. Meat in the town is nowprocessed in Neustadt but sent across the old border forpackaging before returning to Neustadt for sale, This in a townof 40 per cent unemployment.

Economists in 1989 confidently predicted a surge ofWestern investment into the East. Yet despite some well-publicized examples, the anticipated transfer of Westernindustry, management and capital to the deprived Eastsimply has not happened. Even the promise of lower taxesfor corporations who transfer plant and equipment East hasnot provided the necessary pull. On the whole, companieswere not prepared to undertake the investment requiredto update an infrastructure that is the responsibility of

54 IPA Review, Vol. 45 No. 1, 1992

SOMETHING THERE IS THAT DOESN'T LOVE A WALL'..

government, but which the government cannot afford.Dr Gernot Schneider, an economist and analyst of the

East German state, sees few prospects for improvement in thefuture. "The East is a country of people waiting to be told whatto do. They want to be part of the economic miracle but arelike children looking for guidance. They have to learn that itis up to them. But how can they, when they were never taughtto show any initiative? Even if an economic infrastructureexisted, and it doesn't, the people themselves would still haveto change." As one West German law student I spoke tocommented: "People in the East once wanted all our Westerngoods but they never had a chance to buy them. Now that theWall is gone they have that chance, but now they can't affordthem."

In the wake of the euphoria created by reunification, thesudden descent into despair has left a sense of frustration:especially for those who are most impressionable, the young.When the disciplined authoritarian system was blown away bythe winds of change, many youngsters took advantage of theirnew-found freedoms. Pent-up emotions — repressed for yearsby a system intolerant of dissent, and now betrayed by the glibpromises of Western politicians — were unleashed. Now EastGerman youths, looking for something to replace the oldcertainties of life, are finding the answer in direct actionmovements. They have embraced the very elements ofWestern decadence that the old system, with all its corruptionand brutality, had sought to protect them from.

This is most evident in the industrial heartland of theEast. Cities like Leipzig and Halle have experienced an up-surge of radical violence, if you believe the impressions ofthose who deal with it daily. Olaf, a young man in his twenties,cannot remember life before the Wall. In Halle, a city ofobsolete factories that belch their acrid fumes into a greyatmosphere, he told me of his fears in the new Germany andwhy he misses the Wall. He identifies strongly with the en-vironmental, anti-development movement Alternative Lisle,and is fearful of the unemployed gangs that roam the streetsat night and who regard people like him as the new enemy. Hereferred to them simply as "the Nazis." If they catch him it isall quite simple, he told me. They would kill him. "After all,who is there to stop them? There is no-one. The Stasi are gone.There is no-one left for them to fear."

Five Million Files Kept on Citizens

The now defunct Staatssicherheitsdienst, better knownas the Stasi or secret police, once employed over 100,000people. It kept over five million files on its fellow citizens.Professional recruitment for operatives often came by virtueof parents who were themselves a part of the agency. Thus theintegrity of the agents was maintained. Children were literallyborn to the cause, knowing no other life. Now, as men andwomen still in the prime of their working lives, they too mustconfront their own past as they step into an uncertain future.The Office for the Protection of the Constitution (0 PC) is thedepartment that was established by West Germany to monitorsubversive behaviour, in particular that emanating from the

East. According to Dr Nuske, a spokesman for the Office, allprofessional agents of the former GDR are now known to thefederal government in Bonn. "There is of course the possibilityof amnesty for them. But even then, what can they truly hopefor, now that their system is destroyed?"

For those whose job it was to defend the old system fromthe very thing that is now destroying it, coping with the newworld has proven traumatic. Throughout the universities,academics are finding that there is no longer a demand for thecourses they once offered. Already implicated as part of theold system, some have opted for drastic alternatives, not theleast of which is suicide.

And yet, resourceful people will always find alternatives.This is especially the case for those whose access to informa-tion makes them highly prized by the Western corporate andintelligence communities. Perhaps the most infamous can-didate is Alexander Schalk-Golodkowsky. A former DeputyMinister for Foreign Trade, a colonel within the Stasi andrecognized as one of the most conservative of the partyhierarchy, Schalk-Golodkowsky held the unofficial func-tion of foreign currency provider to the leadership of theGDR. He travelled the world on a diplomatic passport,immune from the clutches of Western governments, whilethe money he raised funded such diverse pleasures asWestern luxuries for the party olite and the financing ofinternational terrorism. The Red Army Faction in particularwas indebted to his carefully orchestrated network of contacts.

When the system collapsed, unlike several of his supe-riors, Schalk-Golodkowsky presented himself for arrest at aWest German police station. He was subsequently accessedby several Western intelligence agencies and in 1991 was livingpeacefully and in complete freedom in Bavaria. Althoughimmediate access was requested by Dr Nuske and his col-leagues at the OPC, this was categorically refused by thefederal government.

In the meantime the re-privatization of the former EastGermany and its 8,000 industrial units has begun. TheTreuhandanstalt is the government agency charged with thisfunction. On the eight-member board of control sit two formermembers of the GDR government. Both men were partyfunctionaries. Both had dedicated their lives to the socializa-tion of industry. They did not then, and certainly do not now,have any love for Western-style market capitalism. But theydo know the ins and outs of the GDR: and from the point ofview of managing its transition, this knowledge makes them avaluable commodity for the Treuhandanstalt.

In this context, any sense of unease felt by Westerncompanies choosing to employ communists with specialistinformation is lessened, just as it was in 1945 when the samespecial consideration was shown to many Nazis. Still, to thegrowing and resentful army of Easterners condemned to long-term unemployment, favours such as these for their formerrulers serve as another bitter source of the dismay with whichthey are now greeting the reconstruction of their homeland.

One is left with a deep sense of melancholy in the east.People who cling to a dream, only to see that dream shattered,have little cause to be grateful to their liberators. And yet, fora visitor from the West, how easy it is to underestimate the

IPA Review, Vol. 45 No. 1, 1992 55

SOMETHING THERE IS THAT DOESNT LOVE A WALL..

fundamental value that people place in personal freedom. Iwas reminded of this, during my last week of touring the East,when I met Annemarie Schick.

Annemarie is a schoolteacher. She lives with her hus-band and family in the little village of Haar, a short drive eastof the River Elbe and the grim remnants of the frontier. Until1989 she had never visited the river. It was forbidden underthe old system. And because of the village's location, itreceived special attention by the security forces.

All villages in the East within five kilometres of theborder lay inside a special "no man's land." This meant thatevery day when she drove to work in the nearby town, An-nemarie had to show her passport and the special stamp insideit to the policeman who worked at the checkpoint along theroad. And every evening when she returned home, she had todo the same thing, or else the policeman would not let her intothe village. Those were his orders. Her friends from town werenot allowed to visit her. In fact, no-one from outside the villagecould enter the `zone' except the police and the soldiers whoworked along the frontier.

Apart from the inconveniences, the 300 villagers triedto lead as normal a life as possible. But always at the backof their minds was the knowledge that amongst them dwelta neighbour, as genial and friendly as any other, whose onlypurpose in life was to observe and then report any breachesof security to the feared Stasi. And no-one ever knew exactly

who it was.In the early days of the Wall, families had to be extra

careful, because they could tune in to Western televisionprograms that were forbidden from public viewing in theEast. Here was a country where Disneyland was consideredsubversive.

"It was so difficult for the children," Annemarie said."We would let them see something from the West, but thenwe had to tell them that they couldn't mention this to anyone.They might be so excited by something they saw, but theyweren't allowed to tell their friends about it. It made thingsvery hard. You know what children are like." As times growharder in the new Germany, Annemarie has no regrets aboutthe 1989 revolution. She remains optimistic for her children'sfuture and scornful of the past.

By mid-afternoon the sun was already low on the Berlinhorizon as people began: to drift slowly out through the zoogates into the bustling Budapesterstrasse. When I turned tolook for him, I saw my tiger slumped lazily on his side, as if hehad at last conceded the inevitability of his situation. He wouldforever remain a prisoner. While next morning he mightresume his restless pattern, for the present he would remainentrapped but content. A few kilometres away across a decay-ing frontier in the cauldron that was East Germany, Iwondered how many recently freed citizens would envy hisposition. •

Modlareuth

56 IPA Review, Vol. 45 No. 1, 1992

UNSUNG HEROES

Sir Leslie McConnan andthe battle for the banksSir Leslie McConnan is not mentioned in most Australian history books. Yet his role in defending freedomin Australia against the threat of nationalization was pivotal. As the IPA approaches its 50th anniversaryit is also appropriate to celebrate one of its founders.

C. D. KEMP

SIR LESLIE McCONNAN has a special place in the annalsof the Institute of Public Affairs. He has a special placealso in the much greater annals of our political history.

But for McConnan there might have been no Institute ofPublic Affairs — at least in Victoria. Although it may not betrue to say that without McConnan's intervention BenChifley's bold bid to nationalize the private banks would havesucceeded, it was McConnan who made absolutely certain itwould fail. And it was McConnan, more than any other singleperson, more even perhaps than Menzies himself, who madesure that the Labor Government would be unseated in theclimactic election of December 1949.

McConnan was one of a small number of businessleaders, embracing a broad spectrum of industry and finance,who realized that when the war ended the world was going tobe a very different place: there could be no going back to thestate of things that existed pre-1939. The universal publicdemand for full employment and economic security, for afairer distribution of the national cake, for better educationand for a wider spread of opportunity had to be answered. TheLabor answer was the planned socialist state. This had thesupport of the overwhelming body of academic and expertopinion, including, notably, that of Dr H. C. Coombs, theDirector-General of Post-War Reconstruction.

This climate of opinion, along with the announced inten-tions of the Labor Government, was naturally giving rise toconsternation and alarm in the ranks of private enterprise.Their leaders began to seek an effective alternative, one whichwould command public support. These leaders — probablythere were no more than a dozen or so — had one important

Sir Leslie McConnan: Chief Manager of the NationalBank of Australia from 1935 to 1952.

distinguishing mark in common. They had what could fairly bedescribed as 'gravitas'. They were men of weight, sober,responsible, not attracted to money for its own sake, certainlynot to opulent living, concerned to do their best for theircountry, and prepared, if it came to the point, to put thenational interest ahead of their private concerns. It was in thisattitude of mind that the IPA could be said to have its genesis.

At the suggestion of Sir Herbert Gepp (a greatindustrialist and public servant, then Managing Director of

C.D. Kemp was director of the Institute of Public Affairs from its foundation until 1976.

IPA Review, Vol. 45 No. 1, 1992 57

SIR LESLIE McCONNAN AND THE BATTLE FOR THE BANKS

Australian Paper Manufacturers), the Victorian Chamber ofManufacturers invited me to prepare a report setting out theobjectives and structure of a new organization, financed bybusiness, to oppose the socialist plans for the post-warAustralia which then had a monopoly of the field. On thecompletion of the report it was expected that the Chamberwould take steps at least to investigate the feasibility of anorganization along the lines proposed. But for some monthsnothing eventuated — possibly because some manufacturerswere sceptical of what such a body could achieve and were

Had Chifley's nationalization grabsucceeded the whole course of Australian

history would have been altered.

also concerned that it might divert attention, and possiblyfinancial support, from the established representative busi-ness organizations. There was, too, at that time a great deal ofpessimism in some business quarters: they seemed to feel thatsome form of socialist planning was eventually inevitable andthat the best which could be done was to delay the evil day.

I have never been clear how McConnan came to beinvolved. But apparently the report to the manufacturers cameto his attention. From that time things started to move rapidly.McConnan formed a committee of prominent youngishbusinessmen, among whom were Cecil McKay (a leadingmanufacturer), Geoffrey Grimwade (a scion of the notedfamily), and Ian Potter (at that time a rising young financier).A series of meetings, chaired by McConnan, were held at theNational Bank Head Office to frame a set of objectives for theproposed body and a brief statement of what amounted to aneconomic and political creed. I was invited to participate inthese meetings. One was attended by Robert Menzies. I havevery clear recollections of this particular meeting because Icame away greatly impressed with the quiet, reassuringstrength of McConnan's personality and with the fact that,despite the presence of Menzies, he was very much the captainof the ship.

These meetings represented the first decisive stepstowards the formation of the Institute of Public Affairs. Acontrolling Council was assembled, a Chairman (G. J. Coles)appointed, and a considerable sum of money raised to provideinitial finance. All this, I have no doubt, was primarily at-tributable to the efforts of McConnan.

There was a catch about the finance. At that time therewas a sharp difference of opinion among the people interestedover whether the fledgling IPA should be primarily politicalor altogether non-political. Just around the corner loomed anelection, the outcome of which could decide Australia's fu-ture. Many of the subscriptions to the IPA carried a stipulationthat a substantial proportion should be devoted to helping tofinance the anti-Labor coalition in the 1943 election. Mc-Connan, I believe, wanted the IPA to be a non-political educa-tional body and he aimed at salvaging as much as he could

from the funds he had collected for this purpose. As it turnedout, the election was a calamity of such proportions for theUAP that it led directly to the formation of a new party — theLiberal Party.

Once the IPA had been safely launched, McConnanseemed content to playa behind-the-scenes, although far fromuninfluential, role. He was no seeker after personal kudos orpublicity. I remember he was firmly opposed to any mergerwith business interests in New South Wales (who had alsoformed an Institute of Public Affairs), which then appearedto be a logical step favoured by many. McConnan's attitudewas that this would introduce an unnecessary complicationinto the affairs of the Victorian Institute and that we shouldconcentrate on running our own ship. In this he prevailed -and he was undoubtedly right.

It would be difficult to imagine a man of McConnan'sstamp in the deregulated financial environment of the 1980s.He was not only very much a product of his times whenfinancial moderation and responsibility were taken forgranted in high banking circles, he had an ingrained Scottishcaution and canniness which made him suspicious of sweepingchanges. He was an evolutionist — not averse, it is true, to themodernization of existing structures where improvementcould be clearly demonstrated; but he was opposed to the totaldemolition of what had evolved from decades of experience.That was why he hated the phrase "the new order" which,around the closing years of World War II, was on everyone'slips. If McConnan could have returned to Earth in the 1980sand have seen the walls of what in his time were solid sedatebanking chambers splattered about with placards enticingpeople to borrow large sums of money, he would not havebelieved his eyes. This, and much of what happened in the1980s, would have been entirely repugnant to him. What wouldhe have thought, for instance, of the banks lending monstroussums of money to questionable, get-rich-quick characters,often without proper security? What would a man of hisrocklike integrity, with his deep concern for the welfare of theclients of his bank, have thought of the highly risky, indeedscandalous, `foreign loans', which the banks were recom-mending to their customers and which brought financial dis-aster to hundreds, even thousands, of borrowers? What would

he have thought of seniorbank officials, infected bythe lure of overnightriches, awarding themsel-ves huge salaries often inexcess of half a million dol-

' A lars a year? All this was aworld away from his worldand his sense of what was

.,...-L decent and honourable.The greatest achieve-

ment of McConnan's lifewas the pivotal role heplayed in the defeat ofChifley's nationalizationgrab in 1947. Had this suc-

l.B. (Ben) Chifley ceeded the whole course

58 IPA Review, Vol. 45 No. 1, 1992

SIR LESLIE McCONNAN AND THE BATTLE FOR ME BANKS

of Australian history would have been altered. Thenationalization of banking was the crucial plank in Labor'spost-war objectives; it was the obvious route to the realizationof its goals, the key to the socialist kingdom.

McConnan became the unquestioned champion of thecause of the private trading banks, the knight in armour to dobattle with the socialist dragon. (I deliberately avoid saying"with Ben Chifley" because one of the strangest features ofthis historic episode was the high regard in which the twoprotagonists held each other; each thought his opponent to bean essentially decent man).

In the years prior to Chifley's impulsive decision tonationalize the banks, the banks led by McConnan had beencontesting the Government's intention to continue into peacethe financial controls introduced during the war. This meantthat the powers of the Central Bank, the CommonwealthBank, to determine interest rates and the advance policies ofthe banks through the Special Accounts procedure, would bemaintained. In addition, the Board of the Central Bank was tobe abolished and the Governor was to be required to carry outthe policies of the Government. This meant that the inde-pendent status of the Central Bank would disappear andcontrol of monetary policy would pass from the Bank to theGovernment.

McConnan strongly opposed the Bill, but in August1945, the new Banking Act was proclaimed: Section 38 of theAct, which required the banks to transfer their governmentand semi-government accounts to the Commonwealth Bank,was the match that set the political and financial world aflame.

The Melbourne City Council, a customer of the NationalBank, decided to test the constitutional validity of this sectionbefore the High Court. In August 1947 the Court ruled thatgovernmental authorities could bank wherever they wished.Infuriated by this ruling, Chifley made his momentousdecision to nationalize the banks. McConnan immediatelyissued a statement that the banks "would contest the legality

of the scheme to the last ditch." Twelve months later the HighCourt declared that vital sections of the Act were ultra viresthe Constitution. It was a high moment for McConnan. Geof-frey Blainey in his history of the National Bank writes, "On thefollowing morning when he entered the banking chamber, onhis way to the office, he was spontaneously cheered byhundreds of officers as if the judgment of the High Court washis personal triumph."

It was now clear that the final decision would rest withthe people, in the election to be held late in 1949. As we know,the Labor Party was overwhelmingly defeated, and did notregain office for nearly a quarter of a century.

McConnan was the chief architect of the victory. He hadcomplete faith in the loyalty of the staffs of the banks to theirinstitutions; and he enlisted their support in his efforts to bringthe Government's plans undone. His strategy was summed upin a speech he made at this time. "Remember the enormousweight of 20,000 bank officers spread throughout Australiabut bonded together in a just cause. If each plays his or herpart we are the most powerful single political unit Australiahas ever known. The daily story of such an army will have atremendous impact on the public mind."

Here, then, was a man who could not have succeeded ina political career — he was too reserved, too shy, too distrust-ful of his own views, with an ingrained dislike of immoderationand histrionics — who came to play a decisive role in perhapsthe most vital political issue since Federation. If he was notthe father of the IPA, he presided at the birth. As a banker heseems aeons away from the philosophies which took hold inthe 1980s. In an article for the Melbourne Herald he wrote,"As a career the mere pursuit of money is the most soul-destroying and miserable I know. Success in such a careeralmost invariably lowers one's self-respect."

Perhaps these sentiments have a lesson for us all in thegrievous circumstances in which our country now findsitself. •

Margaret Roberts — The need for a strong, independent welfare sector(Continued from p.20)

curious historical reason, non-government agencies seemhappy to subsidize government itself! When this happens it isvery often to the detriment of the particular field in question,because in so doing the agencies lose their ability to carry outinnovative activities with what funds they do have. "Used andabused" is familiar language within the not-for-profit sector.That other suppliers to government would offer to run ser-vices and supply goods for less than full cost is simplyunimaginable!

In summary, non-government services arc a positivecommunity response to community needs. Without a strong,independent alternative to government-run goods and ser-vices we would indeed be living in a totalitarian state. Such astate would be quite unacceptable to every red-bloodedAustralian and such a state would make all our lives less `rich'.

The big issue is at what level of freedom to operate andat what level of coverage should non-government services beacceptable to society. As I have already stated, the perfor-mance of some important societal functions requires govern-ment intervention and there will always be healthy debateabout where that should begin and end. For me, the measureof a policy will turn on the twin considerations of civil andindividual rights and security of the country in which we live.Some statutory obligations are the job of the state entirely.However, the need for service innovation, for consumerchoice and for ready availability of goods and services to meetthe needs of Mr & Mrs Australia demands a strong, well-regulated non-government sector. Without the choices andopportunities this sector creates, we would not enjoy a trulydemocratic society. ■

IPA Review, Vol. 45 No. 1, 1992 59

New Men and Real Men

JAN SMITH

MYrilic heroes are not the onlypeople who must venture intodark, mysterious forests.

One of these wilder shores is theAdyar Bookshop in. Sydney, tranquilhavens strong on crystals and otherparaphernalia anathemic to the ruggedhearts of the Right.

Nonetheless, it is here that theywill find a subtler understanding of`gender politics', including the hysterianow raging in American colleges aboutdate rape and curricula focused on theworks of dead white males.

A notable treasure is Robert Bly'sIron John: A Book About Men, about ascomforting a broadside as you are likelyto find against the idea that men mustbe reconstructed, and that a father'strue role is to pitch in postnatally withnappy changing and formula fixing.

Like the relatively few conserva-tives who grapple with socio-sexual is-sues, Bly is a 1960s rebel grown wiser.For the last 20-odd years, he has beenliving in Minnesota, brooding about themale role, being a Jungian analyst andproducing the odd slim volume, mostlyof poetry, while American publishersotherwise turned up their noses just asthey did with that other heretic, Camille(Sexual Personae) Paglia.

Throughout the 1980s, Bly con-ducted workshops for fraughtAmerican males, exposing them to largetherapeutic doses of myth and fairytale.Notably the Brothers Grimm, fromwhom he takes his exemplary story -Iron John, or Eisenhans.

Iron John is a passionate, forceful,

IN REVII/W

Robert Bly, Iron John: A BookAbout Men

Addison Wesley

yet sensitive creature rather on the linesof Zorba the Greek (far removed fromSylvester Stallone), whose qualities aretotally missing in the modern Soft Male,those "lovely, valuable people ... not in-terested in harming the earth or startingwars." The trouble is, though, that theSoft Male is incapable of starting muchat all, so terrified of being labelled asexist pig that he has fallen into an im-potent puppyhood, trotting at the heelsof a radiantly energetic woman.

Well, so she seems. Jungianpsychiatrists are not the only ones whohave noticed that life with a Soft Male,eternally asking "what would you likeme to do now, dear", both in bed andbehind the vacuum cleaner, can setwomen yearning for dark decisivetruckies — a phenomenon the Frenchseem to have noticed as early as 1968,going on Louis Malle's film of theperiod, Milou in May.

Bly's diagnosis is that his unhappyaudiences lack a necessary fiercenessand resolve — not to go gunning for

Commies or beating up poofters, norlooking under beds for Soft Women andHard Men to savage on their mistresses'behalf. Instead, they must learn "joyfuldecisiveness."

Far from exerting a malevolentpatriarchy, Bly says men, especiallyfathers, have been going downhill eversince the Industrial Revolution whenthey were no longer able to take adoles-cent boys aside to discover various malecompetencies in workshops, fields andforests. Instead of developing esteemand' a sense of what masculinity is allabout, boys were increasingly reared in-doors by mothers, imbibing the idea thatwhat fathers did was grubby and inferiorcompared with the more spiritual andcultured yearnings of women.

These cravings for gentility andthe sanitization of life, so marked intoday's baby boomers, are nothing new.They are the dark flipside of educationand upward mobility, and not surpris-ingly, D. H. Lawrence, reared in in-dustrial England by a dominant mother,emerges as an early example of SoftMalehood, albeit one who by mid-lifewas working overtime on the problem.Such a boy, Bly maintains, can take oneof two routes — he identifies with women,shares their confidences and feelsashamed of his imputed crimes, or hedetermines to acquire what he imagines,erroneously, arc proper manly attributes.Both courses are equally disastrous.

In metaphysical terms, the absentfather causes a vacuum to appear in theboy's psyche, which rapidly fills withdemons. Never trust anyone over 30,

Jan Smith writes a weekly training and management page for Computing and contributes regularly to Australian Business where shewas formerly staff writer on management and professions. A novelist, and former Editor of Forum (sex magazine), :she also contributesregularly to Golden Wing and Ita.

60 IPA Review, Vol.45 No. 1, 1992

BOOKS IN REVIEW

especially old men wanting to send youto Vietnam, and otherwise confirm yourworst suspicions that age and treacherywill beat youth and talent every time.

Hence the anguish over PresidentKennedy's death, the boos for DarthVader in Star Wars, and the popularityof Dead Poets' Society or anything elsestarring Robin Williams.

Bly draws widely on coming tomanhood in other societies — Amerin-dian, African, Aboriginal, Viking -with special emphasis on the role ofolder males generally, and the oftenhighly feminine values which underlietheir apparent `patriarchy'. He makesnice observations, too, abouttelevision and comic strips, where themale has declined into an ineffectualdolt who spends his evenings slumpedon the sofa while his wife and childrenmerrily outwit him.

Iron John, which offers a solutionto this malaise, is the usual story abouta king's son. When the neighbouringforest becomes a sort of Bermuda Tri-angle in which hunters and hounds dis-appear, the king's men drag a pool anddiscover the culprit, a wild shaggy manwhom they promptly lock in a cage inthe palace courtyard.

In fairytales, anything found nearwater or in a forest is trying to tell ussomething — Lawrence's Mellors in thewoods, Thomas Mann's lissom Taddeuzon the beach. And in this case it is thatto. release Iron John, who has verydecently handed back the lad's goldenball, the boy must steal the key fromunder the Queen's pillow.

Most of the young men in Bly'sworkshops are horrified by this. Whycan't the boy just ask his mother nicely?Create some kind of consensus orwin:win situation?

Sorry, says Bly. To start on thepath to manhood, a boy must be muchtougher. Decisive. Even devious. Hecites Hamlet, who despite some ravingsand trickery turns wimpish whenever hecomes near his mother, and eventuallydrives Ophelia crazy. Soft males arebad news •for young women, althoughthe more educated ones, who remainout of touch with their bodies until 30-something, seem slow to make the con-nection. (Why else all those books about

New man, Robin Williams

indecisive, non-committing men?)The king's son, however, is bold

enough to steal the key and scarper withIron John, who sets him to guard asacred pool. Inevitably, he fails, and issent to work as a scullion at anotherroyal household. But should he needhelp, all he has to do is call, and IronJohn, who has abundant treasure, willcome to his rescue.

There now begins what Bly callsthe "ashes period", something primitivecultures understand well, allowingyoung males a time of hibernation —Vikings called it "cinder biting" —which encourages introspection andself-discovery before springing forthwith new vigour. Contrast westernsociety, where a boy who heeds this in-stinct and drops out of university is con-sidered doomed and disturbed.

Iron John is a passionate,forceful, yet sensitive

creature whose qualitiesare totally missing in the

modern Soft Male.

By the end of the story, the king'sson has come to the attention of theking's daughter, and has single-handed-ly overcome the king's enemies in theforest on three occasions with the aid ofa horse and armour magically providedby Iron John.

The message is that to become aman, a boy needs to get in touch with awilder, gutsier, more intuitive side ofhimself, which can not be found sittingat the feet of women. It can only belearnt from close encounters witholder men, and breaking free into anecstasy of discovery. Some, though,

seem to attempt it on their own, like theboy in Peter Schaffer's Equus, whoserituals by night with the horses bringshome to the psychiatrist the aridity ofhis own soul.

Like the similar transcendentmoments experienced by maleshamans, and by initiates through his-tory, this is a world away from adoptingthe feminine values of women, the onlyalternative we can now imagine to be-coming a hard, dry economic rationalistor an entrepreneurial Rambo.

But how it is to be achieved in asociety where myths exist only to beexploded, and where fathers and otherolder men spend their days in high-riseoffices, allegedly inflicting misery onother people though probably justbeing miserable themselves, is the bigquestion.

Bly admits he was lucky — hisfather was a farmer who provided manyhours of warm male communication.But he worries that with even mothersnow being absent, a similar demon-filled vacuum may soon appear in younggirls, causing them to suspect and vilifyolder women. (Soon? Educated virginshave been rubbishing traditionalwomen for years, and can even findreasons to attack non-traditional ones,especially if successful.)

Perhaps it will change as the infor-mation society begins to put morefathers, not to say mothers, back in thehome, albeit beside a modem and ableeper, where children can see whatthey do all day.

When Iron John appeared in theUK in January last year, it coincidedwith some public outrage about PrinceCharles teaching Prince Harry to drive.a Landrover around Sandringham -exactly the sort of thing Bly would classas meaningful, necessary male bonding.Yet no connection was made, andtoday, most of Australia remains in itsown enchanted forest where boys nevergrow past needing Daddies to give bot-tles and take them to kindergarten, andwhere initiationrites are something civ-ilized societies need to outgrow.

No wonder we are haunted bydreams of damp, shaggy men rattlingthe bars of their cages, demanding thatattention be paid to them.

[PA Review, Vol. 45 ,No. 1, 1992 61

Guideposts for the Nation

FRANK GARDINER

DR HEWSON'S Mother of AllRecovery Plans would, if imple-mented, come to nought unless,

nationally, we get (as they say) the fun-damentals right. And that, essentially, iswhat this collection of essays sets out toachieve: the collective wisdom of someprominent Australians successfullyfocuses on issues which, if not resolved,will leave this country in a hole which noHewson or like plan can fill.

Historically, in this lucky country,we have not been that good at objectiveself-assessment. , Other than on thesporting field, we too readily acceptmediocrity. Mr Hawke's mission to es-tablish Australia as the Clever Country,while an admirable goal, is pretty much"pie in the sky" talk. All the more reasonfor informed, public-minded people tospeak out on things as they are, ratherthan painting idyllic but unreal scenes.

The contributors to Our Heritageand Australia's Future were asked,during 1988, to deliver papers at a seriesof seminars organized by the 1988Heritage Association — a loose coali-tion of, principally, conservative-minded groups — to restore balance tothe `official' Australian BicentennialAuthority's guilt-laden program. Manyof the papers were revised and updatedfor this book.

In the foreword, Sir Paul Hasluckwelcomes "discussion that raisesawkward questions about what sort ofnation we are, how we came that wayand where we are going next." But con-trary to the claim by the Editor, JimRamsay, the collective result is, arguab-ly, too predominantly a conservativeview of the state of the nation. Despite

IN R EVII/W )r-

Edited by Jim Ramsay, OurHeritage and Australia's FutureSchwartz & Wilkinson. RRP $16.95

the eminence of the contributors, thecultural conservatism of their messagewill be unlikely to attract a warm recep-tion among our public opinion-makers.That, I expect, is quibbling, for doubt-less, the intention was to avoid a meredebate about where we have gonewrong and about how we might redis-cover our legal, political, cultural andreligious roots.

In order of their appearance (andtopic) the 1991 revised contributionsare from Sir Charles Court (Britishheritage); Dr David Kemp MP (Politi-cal/civil liberties); Dame LeonieKramer (our children's education);Professor Geoffrey Blainey (one nationor a cluster or tribes?); Senator RobertHill (Asia-Pacific Security); MichaelO'Connor (Defence); B.A. Santamaria(the crisis of Christianity); Rev Dr JohnWilliams and Babette Francis (family),Professor Mark Cooray (the rule oflaw); Assistant Police CommissionerBill Robertson (police and the law); DrMichael James (constitutional reform);Hugh Morgan (private enterprise) and,finally, John Stone (economic

freedom). Quite clearly the bookgathers together theoreticians who,above all, are also doers -- rarely thesituation in what passes for serious dis-cussion in academia of Australia's fu-ture. That future is not too bright, on theevidence presented in this tightly-struc-tured book. Perhaps, and this is grosslyunfair to the other participants in theforum, three of the writers — Court,Santamaria and Blainey — explore best,and most fluently, the dilemma which isat the heart of our national malaise:sabotage of our past; the false god ofperverted multiculturalism; and the vir-tual abandonment of religious values -even by the churches.

The whole book dispassionatelydiagnoses the "sleeping sickness" ram-pant in the nation. Positively, theauthors jointly provide guideposts tobring us back to reality. As I read thesewriters, it became clear that many of ourproblems and community inadequaciesare man- (or is it person-) made; yet, ifwe have the collective will, they can beturned around. In this direction, theHewson recovery package could be astart. Unfortunately, we are an ill-dis-ciplined, spoilt society — living thesepast decades beyond our means,economically and spiritually.

The insights and concerns of OurHeritage and Australia's Future are anapt starting point. But it is only us, collec-tively, who can turn our nation around.Whether it is with Hewson, Keating,whomever, I do not particularly care.These 14 prominent Australians have putin frightening, demanding place aspringboard for our national counter-attack. Well, that is the hope. ■

Frank Gardiner is a freelance journalist.

62 IPA Review, Vol. 45 No. 1, 1992

i<i

Richard Snape Harry G. Gelber B.A. Santamaria

Paddy McGuinness W.B. Pritchett

TI

The Future of the US AllianceCoinciding with the visit of PresidentBush to Australia in early January, theIPA's Pacific Security Research In-stitute released a collection of specially-commissioned papers on the future ofAustralia's alliance with America.

David Anderson, Director of thePSRI, said that while a strong relation-ship with the US would remain of fun-damental importance to Australia, thebasis of that relationship could nolonger be taken for granted.

Contributors to the publication in-clude Paddy McGuinness, a regularcolumnist with The Australian; Richard

Snape, Professor of Economics atMonash University; W.B. Pritchett,Defence Secretary from 1979 to 1984;B.A. Santamaria, President of the Na-tional Civic Council; and ProfessorHarry G. Gelber, currently VisitingProfessor of Government at HarvardUniversity. The authors examine dif-ferent aspects of the US-Australiarelationship — bilateral trade, securityties, regional co-operation, the jointfacilities — and arrive at very differentpoints of view. The U.S. and US: thefuture of an alliance is available from theIPA for $7.00.

IThj7 /ç?

jL , Mecu PNErs

1^ tlRRW AAA

Business Opportunities inEastern Europe

The independence of Soviet republicswould open up significant opportunitiesfor economic growth and investment,according to Professor SergeuyBerezovenko of Kiev University.Professor Berezovenko addressed anevening seminar in October jointlysponsored by the IPA and La TrobeUniversity School of Economics andCommerce. The Ukraine is providingincentives to stimulate foreign invest-ment, said Professor Berezovenko, whohas been a successful consultant advis-ing Western businesses on setting upoperations in the USSR. He foundedand was director of the first private busi-ness school in the USSR.

A panel consisting of Dr RobinStewardson, Chief Economist ofBHP; Bede Byrnes, CompanySecretary of Telecom Australia Inter-national; and Susan March, SeniorMarketing Analyst at the AustralianWheat Board, commented on Profes-sor Berezovenko's paper.

IPA Review, Vol.45 No.1, 1992 63

John Stone

MonetaryPolicyThe IPA's Economic Policy Unit,hosted a successful conference, CanMonetary Policy be Made to Work?, inDecember. It was attended by 35 senioreconomists, journalists and repre-sentatives of business groups.

SirAlan Walters

Speakers at the conference included SirAlan Walters, former economic advisorto Mrs Thatcher and currently SeniorFellow at the American Enterprise In-stitute; and Dr Don Brash, Governor ofthe Reserve Bank of New Zealand.

One problem on which discussionfocused was government interference inmonetary matters for political, ratherthan economic, ends. The proceedingsof the conference, which were reportedin The Australian, will be published inthe near future.

Sir Alan Walters also spoke to anIPA luncheon in Perth on the Thatcheryears in Britain.

Selecting the Right TeachersIPA Research Fellow, Dr Susan Moore,travelled to the US to learn how to in-terview and select teachers for teachertraining programs using the techniquedescribed by Professor Martin Haber-man at the [PA's education conference

last June. Dr Moore, along with twoschools heads and a teacher, talked toteachers, policy-makers and ad-ministrators about the AlternativeTeacher Certification Program (ACP).Dr Moore visited schools and saw ACPgraduates teaching and visited classes inwhich ACP students preparing to beteachers were being instructed.

Unlike the usual teacher selection in-terviews, whose answers reveal nothingabout the probable teaching success ofthe persons being interviewed, theHaberman method, which has beendeveloped and fine-tuned over a 28-year period, has a very high predictivesuccess rate for teachers employed byinner-city schools in the US.

The group found the trip in-valuable.

Action on Global Warmingwould be PrematureThe prospects of global warming havebeen greatly exaggerated, according toProfessor Fred Singer, a distinguishedAmerican atmospheric scientist whovisited Australia in October under theauspices of the IPA and the TasmanInstitute. "For governments... to be con-teniplating policies to control energyuse in order to deal with an allegedglobal warming crisis is nothing short ofirresponsible," he said. Pressure ongovernments to enact such policies isincreasing as we approach the so-calledEarth Summit to be held in Rio deJaneiro in June this year.

Late last year John Stone gave apaper titled `What is the DevelopmentDebate Really About?' to the Con-ference on Ecologically SustainableDevelopment organized by the RoyalAustralian Institute of Public Ad-

ministration inCanberra. Hereiterated a viewargued in the IPACurrent Issuespublication TheEnvironment inPerspective: "sofar from opposingeconomic growth,those with a true

concern for the environment should besupporting policies for maximizing itand, in particular, policies for enhanc-ing the role of private property rights inits protection."

John Stone has recently been ap-pointed as a Senior Fellow with the IPA.

State FinancesSince 1982-83, the CommonwealthGovernment has given the States a rawdeal. It has used its monopoly of taxpowers to increase its own share of na-tional resources while cutting back ongrants to the States. IPA Senior Fellow,Des Moore, said this while addressingthe 20th Conference of Economists atthe University of Tasmania in October.

Two key Backgrounders, releasedby the IPA States' Policy Unit, examinedifferences in the economic performan-ces of Australia's State Governments.The Australian States: How Different?and IPA Budget Summary and Awards:1991-92 are available from the IPA for$5.00. See also Mike Nahan's column inthis Review.

IPA Speakers' GroupDon Argus, Managing Director of theNational Australia Bank gave an inter-esting talk on bank deregulation to theIPA Speakers' Group. Forthcomingspeakers include IPA Senior Fellow,John Stone, in February; and HowardBellin, Executive Chairman of I.F. Con-sulting, in March.

For further information about theSpeakers' group, contact Mrs HelenHyde on (03) 614 2029.

DonArgus

64 IPA Review, Vol.45 No.1, I992

PROJECT VICTORIA

Australian Chamber of ManufacturesBuilding Owners & Managers AssociationConfectionery Manufacturers of Australia LtdInsurance Council of Australia LtdReal Estate Institute of VictoriaRetail Traders AssociationVictorian Automobile Chamber of CommerceVictorian Brick Manufacturers AssociationVictorian Chamber of Mines IncVictorian Employers Chamber of Commerce & IndustriesVictorian Farmers Federation

GPO Box 1469NMelbourne Vic 3001

Tel: (03) 698-4258Fa c (03) 699-1729

PROJECT VICTORIA is a research program aimed at radical reform of the Victorian economy.

Supported by eleven business associations and eleven public companies, banks and majoraccounting firms, the PROJECT is providing the means to concentrate the best skills availableon solving some of the State's most critical financial problems.

Principal consultants to PROJECT VICTORIA are the Tasman Institute and the Institute ofPublic Affairs. They are being assisted by experienced and very able people drawn from eachof the industry sectors that the PROJECT is examining.

Over the next year we will be offering detailed proposals for cutting costs and improvingefficiency in ten key areas of government activity.

The first to be addressed has been the electricity supply industry in Victoria.

As a result of our work in this area we are having continuing discussions with the SECV,ELCOM, the Victorian Government and the State Opposition and the authors of our reportinto the industry have been called to give evidence to the Victorian Public Bodies ReviewCommittee.

Work is proceeding now on Health, Workcare, Ports, Education and Fiscal Equalization andwe anticipate a similar impact in each of these areas.

Transport, Water, Local Government and Industrial Relations are yet to be funded.

Involvement as a supporter of the PROJECT offers:

• an opportunity to help to lift the Victorian economy out of its present depressed state;• direct access to first-class information on the kinds of changes that are inevitable in this

State;• the chance to build links with many of the people and organizations that will be part of these

changes.We are keen to ensure that the PROJECT represents the widest possible cross-section ofbusiness interests.

We also need additional funding if we are to complete the full program of work that isneeded.

KEN CROMPTONState Director–Victoria, Australian Chamber of Manufactures and Chairman, Project Victoria

The first frontier for Santos was the desert regions of Central Australia. In 1954, Santos took its initial steps towardsexploring this frontier for oil and gas. After 9 years, the gas was found. The first oil discovery came 7 years later. Otherexploration successes followed but only after some careful planning and a lot of disappointments. The growth thesediscoveries brought enabled the company to expand its horizons.

Santos is now involved in an exploration programme covering onshore and offshore Australia, the USA, UK,Papua New Guinea and Malaysia. This year it is expected the company will invest more than $100 million in thisexploration effort. Santos is now Australia's largest, independent oil and gas company. But there are always newfrontiers and Santos is committed to further growth in the 1990's.

Further information about Santos can be obtained from: Santos Ltd, Government & Corporate S 3

Affairs, Santos House, 39 Grenfell Street, Adelaide SA 5000. J^