Hi. I am Greg and it should come as no surprise that I want to grumble about Australia Day. I grumbled about Christmas and New Year’s Day, so why wouldn’t I grumble about national Flag-Waving Day?
Public holidays and long weekends are good things, but could we please commemorate something decent, rather than religious celebrations, a horse race, two military invasions and a foreign monarch’s pretend birthday?
Labour day in October is a start, but wouldn’t it be good if we had public holidays to celebrate our unique environment, perhaps a volunteers’ day holiday, or international human rights day, and maybe a multicultural celebration. And is it too much to ask for Australia Day to be on a day that doesn’t require a re-writing of history?
Quite apart from the obvious problem of celebrating the invasion and dispossession of Aboriginal people, the day is not the anniversary of the founding of the Australian state or nation. Australia came into being in 1901, not in 1788 when a failed “tough on crime” policy put a penal colony in one small corner of our continent. And that colony was essentially a military dictatorship, so we are not talking about a great moment of Australian democracy.
It’s tricky though. Most countries’ national days mark an event of liberation from colonial rule (not its imposition), but there is no clear liberation event for Australia. It might be the advent of responsible (though not democratic) government in the 1850s, or of federation which brought about an “Australian” state. But the laws of the British parliament still applied up until 1932, and 7 years later our Prime Minister still appeared to believe that Britain declared war on our behalf. And it was only in the 1980s that the highest court in Australian law was actually an Australian court.
Of course we still have another country’s monarch as our queen, a foreign logo in the corner of our flag, and the future of Holden and Ford workers is determined in overseas Board Rooms. So perhaps we still await a definitive Australia Day. Or maybe in an era of globalisation it is not really that relevant. Or possibly nationalism was a bad and bloody idea in the first place and we would be better focusing on community rather than country, and people rather than states. Hmmm, there’s a thought.
I am Greg, and I am grumbling.
This Grumble can be heard online or by podcast.
First Broadcast: 28 January 2014
Greg's Grumbles can be heard on Radio Adelaide during SACOSS' Small Change program - 6pm every Tuesday night. 101.5FM or online.
Monday 27 January 2014
Monday 20 January 2014
25. Asylum Seeker Policy
Hi. I am Greg and I want to grumble about asylum seeker policy. This week SACOSS launches a state election policy around the treatment of asylum seekers in our communities. A number of SACOSS members provide services to asylum seekers who are living in South Australia waiting for determination of their cases, but I can’t tell you how the SACOSS policy was developed or why state government intervention is important in relation to what is primarily a Federal issue, because that is an operational matter and I can’t comment on operational matters.
However, I can talk about other countries, and so I want to grumble about the treatment of those on a particular ship full of asylum seekers. Over 900 asylum seekers, members of a religious minority fled a brutal dictatorship that was very clearly persecuting them. The boat sailed to Cuba but was denied entry there. In sight of the United States they pleaded for entry, only to be sent a response from the State Department that said that passengers must "await their turns on the waiting list and qualify for and obtain immigration visas before they may be admissible." There are conflicting reports about whether military vessels were sent to turn the boats away – perhaps another operational matter we may never know with certainty.
The ship sailed north, but Canada also rejected the asylum seekers, and the boat went back to the region it came from. Some of the asylum seekers were settled in friendly countries from there, but 254 were murdered by the dictatorship.
The story is well-known: the year was 1939, the ship was the MS St Louis and the passengers were Jews fleeing Nazi Germany. But from the shameful treatment of those desperate people and many thousands like them, the Refugee Convention was created – and signed up to by Australia 60 years ago tomorrow (22 January 1954).
But I want to grumble because despite the Convention, the story of the St Louis has way too much resonance in contemporary Australian debate. And because the Australian Human Rights Commission reports a “significant gap” between Australia’s human rights obligations and our current treatment of asylum seekers. And because Commission’s Chair is right that “the denial of work rights to asylum seekers living in the community on bridging visas … may force individuals and families into poverty and lead to breaches of multiple human rights.”
Welcome to the lucky country.
I am Greg, and I am grumbling.
This Grumble can be heard online or by podcast.
First Broadcast: 21 January 2014
However, I can talk about other countries, and so I want to grumble about the treatment of those on a particular ship full of asylum seekers. Over 900 asylum seekers, members of a religious minority fled a brutal dictatorship that was very clearly persecuting them. The boat sailed to Cuba but was denied entry there. In sight of the United States they pleaded for entry, only to be sent a response from the State Department that said that passengers must "await their turns on the waiting list and qualify for and obtain immigration visas before they may be admissible." There are conflicting reports about whether military vessels were sent to turn the boats away – perhaps another operational matter we may never know with certainty.
The ship sailed north, but Canada also rejected the asylum seekers, and the boat went back to the region it came from. Some of the asylum seekers were settled in friendly countries from there, but 254 were murdered by the dictatorship.
The story is well-known: the year was 1939, the ship was the MS St Louis and the passengers were Jews fleeing Nazi Germany. But from the shameful treatment of those desperate people and many thousands like them, the Refugee Convention was created – and signed up to by Australia 60 years ago tomorrow (22 January 1954).
But I want to grumble because despite the Convention, the story of the St Louis has way too much resonance in contemporary Australian debate. And because the Australian Human Rights Commission reports a “significant gap” between Australia’s human rights obligations and our current treatment of asylum seekers. And because Commission’s Chair is right that “the denial of work rights to asylum seekers living in the community on bridging visas … may force individuals and families into poverty and lead to breaches of multiple human rights.”
Welcome to the lucky country.
I am Greg, and I am grumbling.
This Grumble can be heard online or by podcast.
First Broadcast: 21 January 2014
Monday 13 January 2014
24. Cory Bernardi
Hi. I am Greg and I want to grumble about Cory Bernardi. There is a lot of that about lately as many people have rushed to social media to vent their outrage at Cory’s book, The Conservative Revolution.
But what is striking – and what I want to grumble about is how few of the people sounding off have actually read the book. Some admit they haven’t read it, many more are just hurling generic abuse with no real engagement with the text – which to me is just a little too close to what the right does when it dismisses whole swathes of research on the basis of alleged “common sense” or anecdotal experience.
Now I understand that you may not want to legitimise or reward conservative propaganda by buying the Bernardi book, and sometimes parody is the best way to attack offensive views. But sarcasm is often a low form of wit and much of the commentary is not critique – it is simply abuse. Even if his ideas are wrong, silly or offensive, he has held these views throughout his political career. What makes writing them down so special as to warrant this outcry?
What we should really be outraged about is that a man who holds these views got re-elected to the Senate almost by default. Sitting at the top of the Liberal ticket in South Australia (what was that about him not representing the views of the government), he didn’t attend various campaign fora in the lead up to the last election, said very little publicly and did not feature in the media which fixated on the Presidential-style contest.
How many people who put a 1 in the Liberal box on the big Senate ballot paper knew that they were voting for a conservative revolution built, according to the advertisement for the book, on faith, family, flag, freedom and free enterprise. A nice alliteration, even if somewhat self-contradictory.
So fine, go ahead and grumble about Cory and his book, but where was this critique in the lead up to the election when it might have mattered more? Where was the media exposure? How many now exercising their wit and outrage actively campaigned for something different? And what of those who actually hold such beliefs, I doubt we will change their mind by simple abuse. Social media is easy, social change is hard.
I am Greg, and I am grumbling.
This Grumble can be heard online or by podcast.
First Broadcast: 14 January 2014
But what is striking – and what I want to grumble about is how few of the people sounding off have actually read the book. Some admit they haven’t read it, many more are just hurling generic abuse with no real engagement with the text – which to me is just a little too close to what the right does when it dismisses whole swathes of research on the basis of alleged “common sense” or anecdotal experience.
Now I understand that you may not want to legitimise or reward conservative propaganda by buying the Bernardi book, and sometimes parody is the best way to attack offensive views. But sarcasm is often a low form of wit and much of the commentary is not critique – it is simply abuse. Even if his ideas are wrong, silly or offensive, he has held these views throughout his political career. What makes writing them down so special as to warrant this outcry?
What we should really be outraged about is that a man who holds these views got re-elected to the Senate almost by default. Sitting at the top of the Liberal ticket in South Australia (what was that about him not representing the views of the government), he didn’t attend various campaign fora in the lead up to the last election, said very little publicly and did not feature in the media which fixated on the Presidential-style contest.
How many people who put a 1 in the Liberal box on the big Senate ballot paper knew that they were voting for a conservative revolution built, according to the advertisement for the book, on faith, family, flag, freedom and free enterprise. A nice alliteration, even if somewhat self-contradictory.
So fine, go ahead and grumble about Cory and his book, but where was this critique in the lead up to the election when it might have mattered more? Where was the media exposure? How many now exercising their wit and outrage actively campaigned for something different? And what of those who actually hold such beliefs, I doubt we will change their mind by simple abuse. Social media is easy, social change is hard.
I am Greg, and I am grumbling.
This Grumble can be heard online or by podcast.
First Broadcast: 14 January 2014
Monday 6 January 2014
23. Statistics
Hi. I am Greg and I want to grumble about statistics. It is not that, as the saying goes, there are lies, damned lies and statistics. Statistics here are maligned as they simply give us the answer to the question asked, and in doing that they illuminate important trends and social processes. Yes, at the same time they hide other things that don’t fit the categories used to make the stats, but all knowledge does that – our view is shaped by our foundational assumptions and frameworks.
Now I have been known to use the odd statistic in political debates, but my grumble is that some statistics are so powerful that they cease to be constructed numbers and become more important than the thing they represent. For instance, CPI (the Consumer Price Index) is the cost of living, not the experience of people struggling to pay bills. I suppose you could expect that in a country whose national sport is little more than double-entry book-keeping, with the 6-ball space between the advertisements taken up with discussions of figures, averages and historical aggregates.
Of course cricket statistics are mostly harmless, but it is a worry when national policy is based blindly on statistics – without questioning the assumptions behind them. For instance, when commentators talk about the economy and market forces, it is worth remembering that less than half the goods and services produced in Australia in any year are produced in a market economy. The rest are produced in the home, in the voluntary sector or by government – and often produced very efficiently! GDP – Gross Domestic Product – is not the economy!
Similarly, our environment doesn’t count in economic statistics – hence the push to introduce it via something like a carbon tax. But in the battle of statistics between atmospheric parts per million and economic dollars per capita, there was only ever going to be one winner – and that really is the point. Statistics are useful for getting attention and making arguments, but ultimately policy is decided by power not by facts and stats. So can all the well-meaning academics and policy-wonks stop tieing up our community organisations and social movements with intricate policy debates that don’t matter, and can we get on with mobilising the political power we will need to see the world changed for the better.
I am Greg, and I am grumbling.
This Grumble can be heard online or by podcast at https://radio.adelaide.edu.au/gregs-grumbles-23/
First Broadcast: 7 January 2014
Now I have been known to use the odd statistic in political debates, but my grumble is that some statistics are so powerful that they cease to be constructed numbers and become more important than the thing they represent. For instance, CPI (the Consumer Price Index) is the cost of living, not the experience of people struggling to pay bills. I suppose you could expect that in a country whose national sport is little more than double-entry book-keeping, with the 6-ball space between the advertisements taken up with discussions of figures, averages and historical aggregates.
Of course cricket statistics are mostly harmless, but it is a worry when national policy is based blindly on statistics – without questioning the assumptions behind them. For instance, when commentators talk about the economy and market forces, it is worth remembering that less than half the goods and services produced in Australia in any year are produced in a market economy. The rest are produced in the home, in the voluntary sector or by government – and often produced very efficiently! GDP – Gross Domestic Product – is not the economy!
Similarly, our environment doesn’t count in economic statistics – hence the push to introduce it via something like a carbon tax. But in the battle of statistics between atmospheric parts per million and economic dollars per capita, there was only ever going to be one winner – and that really is the point. Statistics are useful for getting attention and making arguments, but ultimately policy is decided by power not by facts and stats. So can all the well-meaning academics and policy-wonks stop tieing up our community organisations and social movements with intricate policy debates that don’t matter, and can we get on with mobilising the political power we will need to see the world changed for the better.
I am Greg, and I am grumbling.
This Grumble can be heard online or by podcast at https://radio.adelaide.edu.au/gregs-grumbles-23/
First Broadcast: 7 January 2014
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