Imperial Fruit: Bananas, Costs and Climate Change

The curved course of the ubiquitous banana has often been the peel…

The problems with a principled stand

In the past couple of weeks, the conservative parties have retained government…

Government approves Santos Barossa pipeline and sea dumping

The Australia Institute Media Release Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek’s Department has approved a…

If The Jackboots Actually Fit …

By Jane Salmon If The Jackboots Actually Fit … Why Does Labor Keep…

Distinctions Without Difference: The Security Council on Gaza…

The UN Security Council presents one of the great contradictions of power…

How the supermarkets lost their way in Oz

By Callen Sorensen Karklis Many Australians are heard saying that they’re feeling the…

Purgatorial Torments: Assange and the UK High Court

What is it about British justice that has a certain rankness to…

Why A Punch In The Face May Be…

Now I'm not one who believes in violence as a solution to…

«
»
Facebook

The Irony of Political and Religious Power

By Brian Morris

Politics and religion have enjoyed a symbiotic relationship since Christianity became the Church of Rome in the 4th century. The legacy continues with impending legislation.

Power does have a tendency to corrupt and – in the hands of many political and religious leaders (over many centuries) – all evidence points to the fact that too much power can indeed corrupt absolutely!

Throughout 2021 there will be an increasing sense of irony as politics and religion come under greater scrutiny. Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Kate Jenkins, has begun her inquiry into the toxic workplace culture in federal parliament. Allegations of rape and sexual harassment have finally come to a head, together with a side issue of historical rape alleged against Attorney General Christian Porter.

Central to this political quagmire is the “elite privilege” enjoyed by parliamentarians, especially ministers, to “hire and fire” at will – with no questions asked, or answered – according to ABC’s March 7th Insiders program.

It’s therefore ironic that Christian Porter is the architect of a Bill – soon to be introduced into parliament – that will provide bonus “privileges” to all religious institutions. The new law will give more power to hire and fire any employee, based on their religion and compliance with the religious “ethos” of that institution.

While Canberra is dragged kicking and screaming to confront its chauvinistic internal culture, it also appears that religious institutions have learnt little from recommendations of the Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse. Their hubris comes from centuries of enshrined power to control believers and influence social policy.

Christian Porter’s ‘Religious Discrimination Bill’ is a prescriptive devise which panders to a religious culture that is socially divisive. It is based on a logical fallacy that all religions have been deprived of their “religious freedom” – a claim roundly repudiated by Phillip Ruddock’s original Religious Freedom Review. Attorney General Porter has cherry-picked that review to concoct a ‘Religious Discrimination’ law that is blatantly anti-secular.

What is the imperative for Catholic schools to only hire a maths teacher steeped in the ethos of Catholicism? Equally, why is it essential that an Islamic institution hires only a Muslim gardener, or a Jewish chemist is able to discriminate against female customers, based on his own narrow religious beliefs?

Our federal government administers a workplace culture that remains gender divisive, with a predominance of cabinet ministers who are strongly religious – and a number who openly proclaim their faith; most notably Scott Morrison who flaunts his Pentecostalism. But a growing concern is with Christian lobbies who now actively recruit candidates to stack federal and state parliaments with more Christian MPs.

Religion in Australia does not require additional privileges to exert greater religious power. The national census in August this year will again show a substantial increase in the ‘No Religion’ demographic – historically kept low in comparison with our cousins in New Zealand, UK and Scandinavia, due to our strongly Christianised parliaments and a misleading census question on ‘Religious Affiliation’.

Our constitution was originally framed as a ‘secular’ document but successive conservative governments, and a number of unfortunate High Court decisions, have led Church authorities to repeatedly claim (incorrectly) that Australia is a “Christian nation.” It is not.

Christianisation of education has steadily increased since Prime Minister Robert Menzies began eroding secular public schools in favour of government funding for Catholic education. Today, with clever marketing, 40 per cent of children attend taxpayer funded private religious schools – close to the highest rate among all OECD nations.

Christian Porter’s Religious Freedom Bill seeks to escalate religious privilege within the highly labour-intensive sectors of education, health and aged care. It is ironic that the toxic culture of parliament is about to pass more divisive legislation that will make religious-based health and education a “closed shop” for the faithful.

Brian Morris is a former Journalist and Public Relations professional and the author of Sacred to Secular, a critically acclaimed analysis of Christianity, its origins and the harm that it does.

 

 

Like what we do at The AIMN?

You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.

Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!

Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be gratefully accepted.

You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969

Donate Button

Open letter to Scott Morrison and Christian Porter

By Tracie Aylmer

The first time it happened I was 16-years-old, in 1988 in Sydney. Thinking back, I was groomed by the perpetrator to accept him touching me, with intent to kiss me. If I had known he was going to touch me without the grooming he did to me, I wouldn’t have accepted for him to have touched me in the first place.

I was very vulnerable and had a really hard time at both school and home. I guess he saw me as an open target.

After the event I felt so ashamed. As he had called my place asking when I was going to return to his shop, I told my sister what he had done. I remember her telling him I was never going to go back, and to never call my place again.

There are so many more times. So many sexual assaults. Quite a few lost me my job. All of them had me in tears. I lost confidence. Each time, I had to start my life over again. I crumbled, not knowing how to restart my life (yet again).

I have studied, finding law easy. It didn’t get me a long-term job as by then I was considered too old.

The scars have held me back. I know that now.

I’m studying again – two full-time TAFE qualifications at the same time. I thought that time had healed the pain I’ve gone through in my life. I thought I was strong enough to turn the corner and strive for the incredible person that I am.

The past few weeks have brought it all crashing down on me again. The pain is front and centre again.

Mr Morrison, the fact that, without evidence, you believe Mr Porter is horrifying and disgusting. You believe your boys club without any question yet refuse to believe the mountains of evidence and proof of pain of the victims. You are the problem with this society, as you are not taking these rapes seriously.

You are not showing yourself to have any standard whatsoever. You blatantly lie, and we can all see it. You triggered me beyond anything these past few days, and I hold you in complete and utter contempt for doing so.

I do not need for you to behave without accountability over something as serious as rape and sexual assault. You did wrong, and I hope you lose your job emphatically over this fiasco.

Mr Porter, do you really think the country believes you? A recent investigation revealed your “history of sexism and inappropriate behaviour.” Do you think now that your boys club will now protect you?

Poor you thinks that mental health care is needed (let’s get the violins out). I really don’t care if you’re having mental health care sessions. Women who have been the victims of sexual assault or abuse face or have had a life-time of mental health care sessions. Do you or your government care about them?

You have triggered the whole country over your alleged behaviour and your response to it.

Resign! You are worthless now. You have destroyed the office of the Attorney General by your alleged behaviour. No one will believe or trust the legal system again. And neither will they believe or trust the Morrison government or its Ministers. Congratulations on the part you played in that.

Like what we do at The AIMN?

You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.

Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!

Donate Button

We Are NOT Prey

By Dee

Years ago, in the office of a counsellor I disclosed about being sexually assaulted. Opening up to the woman on the other side of the room involved more than one instance of sexual assault.

My story with the counsellor started with an event that my friends all told me was not rape, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was. This was not my first experience with sexual violence, I was assaulted by a man who wanted to teach me to protect myself when I was a five-year-old girl, he was my babysitter. I was attacked again as a nine-year-old this time by the man across the road who was the caretaker of a hotel and allowed my siblings and I to use the pool. That was where he assaulted me, and it was the last time I swam there.

But the assault that I opened up about to my counsellor was one my friends told me was not what I suggested it was; rape. I had been in a relationship with someone who was having an affair and was not being secretive about the other woman. Once it was apparent the relationship was over my friends invited me out and I drank too much that night. In my drunken state I expressed an interest in one of my girlfriend’s mates, he overheard me and began showing enthusiasm in me that evening. I had met this man a few times, he had frequented our outings on many occasions, and he seemed like a really nice guy.

I do not remember the ending of that evening, being too drunk to have a cohesive memory of the night. But the following morning I woke up in my bed with him beside me. We were both naked and when I asked what had happened, he seemed perplexed that I did not recall the sexual interactions we had merely a few hours beforehand. He explained that he had carried me inside from his car having driven me home, he undressed my unconscious body and, in his words, “You had said you wanted to have sex, so we did.” While I was in a drunken, unconscious state.

I was shocked with his blatant explanation of how he had just helped himself to my body and felt utterly ashamed that I had been taken advantage of so completely. But the man lying in the bed beside me was oblivious to my horror. It was not until much later on, after I had dressed, and he had left that I spent some time coming to terms with what had happened. I could not move past his explanation that I had said I wanted to have sex with him, and so he just did. Not a single one of the friends in my group accepted my suggestion that it was rape, they tried telling me I was just having second thoughts and not happy that I had given it up. They told me I was making shit up. They were angry that I would even suggest this man would do such a thing to anyone, he was a nice guy.

It took barely a few days before the group had completely shunned me, I would walk into the lounge room of the home I lived in and the conversation would stop. I received pointed, sideways glances and endured odd silences. The moment I left the room the whispering and giggling would start again. He never returned to the home while I was there, but it was obvious that I was no longer welcomed to continue living in the home, so I left. I ended up leaving town entirely, and after a short stint working on a mango farm where the owner also attempted to sexually assault me, I went further out of town. I ended up ‘on country’ to be closer to my Aboriginal culture, which aided somewhat in healing the wounds I had established as a result of that night. But those wounds have become a scar I am forced to carry.

This was not my last experience with sexual assault, I currently have a case waiting to go to court but this time I was believed. Not merely by those around me but likewise by the Police when I went to report the assault. Last time I was re-victimised by having to justify being drunk and encountering a sexual predator who took what he wanted from me. The last time I experienced victim blaming by the same Police Officers responsible for protecting the general public. In the exact way I endured gaslighting and victim blaming from the people who were meant to be my friends. The last time without any support whatsoever I was left feeling as though my sole choice was to flee and attempt to forget the wounds I suffered.

Last time he got away with it.

This time I was believed, and I pressed charges against my assailant. Because I now have a support network who have aided me in moving past the traumas of being the victim of a sexual predator, this time I have been stronger.

I hope there is never a next time, but that is up to the men of Australia.

Like what we do at The AIMN?

You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.

Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!

Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be gratefully accepted.

You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969

Donate Button

Politics is a charade

By Ad astra

Charade: an absurd pretence intended to create a pleasant or respectable appearance.

We, the people, are the victims of such deliberate pretence by the political class.

Do any of you need convincing of this cruel reality?

If you do, reflect for a moment on the proceedings of Donald Trump’s so-called ‘impeachment trial’ in the Senate that was thrust at you every day on your TV screens. There you saw both sides of the ‘debate’ pretending that it was a serious attempt to ascertain the facts and reach a reasoned conclusion about whether Trump incited the riotous behaviour at the Capitol building on January 6 that we all saw in such graphic detail on our TV screens, and whether his words: ”Fight like hell or you won’t have a country” were simply rhetorical flourish, or whether they were calculated words of incitement?

Even a cursory glimpse at the Senate process exposed it as a charade, indeed the most cynical we are ever likely to witness during our lifetime! From the very beginning we knew what the outcome would be: Trump would be acquitted.

The February 10 issue of The New York Times spelt this out in an article that asserted: ”Donald Trump’s impeachment team is trying to rewrite the narrative of January 6, calling the charge against Trump ‘a monstrous lie’.” It went on: ”Trump’s team insisted that he never glorified violence during his presidency, and that he consistently called for peace as the rampage of the Capitol unfolded. By showing video clips of Democrats urging their supporters to ‘fight’ and Donald Trump venerating ‘law and order’ they sought to rewrite not just the narrative of Trump’s campaign to overturn the election, but also that of his entire presidency.” Charade writ large!

Of course, Trump is a supreme master of charade. Can you recall a more striking example than Trump’s insistence that despite the vote count that showed he had been convincingly defeated by Joe Biden in the recent Presidential election, he had actually won it in a landslide, and had been ‘robbed’ of his due only because there had been widespread corruption in multiple jurisdictions all across the US? If he really believed that, his deranged mental state could be the only plausible explanation.

When we hear China’s CPC feigning distress at Australia’s ‘dumping’ of our barley and wine on their markets, we know immediately that is yet another charade, Chinese style, that permits them to retaliate.

But we don’t need to look at the US for examples of charade.

When PM Morrison stands outside the parliament and repeatedly refuses to commit to a zero emissions target by 2050, because he can’t until he knows how to reach it, we all know that’s a charade.

When he insists that his office had nothing to do with Bridget McKenzie’s ‘sports-rort’, the evidence exposes that distortion of the truth as a charade.

When he pretends that the illegal attempts to retrieve so-called ‘over-payments’ by Centrelink were appropriate, he perpetrates another charade.

More recently, when asked to explain the actions of maverick Craig Kelly’s repeated spread of false health information on his web platform, our PM responded (complete with smirk) with: “He’s not your doctor, and he’s not mine”, and even more irrelevantly, “He’s doing a great job in Hughes”, you immediately recognise the cynical charade those words portray.

Still more recently, there was the alleged rape of Brittany Higgins in the office of Defence Minister’s Linda Reynolds, which evoked this response from Brittany: “It was the sight of the Prime Minister standing on a podium with Australian of the Year Grace Tame, a survivor of sexual assault that hardened my resolve to speak. I was sick to my stomach. He’s standing next to a woman who has campaigned for ‘Let her speak’ and yet in my mind his government was complicit in silencing me. It was a betrayal. It was a lie.”

This is charade writ large, and in a distressingly extreme form.

Of course, charade is universal. You’ve see Boris Johnson perpetrate charade after charade as he pretends he knows the solution to the UK’s escalating COVID-19 crisis, that worsens by the day. Many would call it simply BS! You’ve seen Vladimir Putin’s charades again and again.

Years ago, writing in The Hill, in an article titled: Change tack: Don’t embolden Putin to continue his charade, Mareh Sarif detailed the unsuccessful attempts of successive US Presidents to reach rapprochement with him. Master of charade, Putin outmanoeuvred his counterparts again and again. He had Trump on a string despite Trump’s bluster. We can envisage him smiling from the safety of the Kremlin at Trump’s egomaniacal ineptitude, stupidity and arrogance. Is there any doubt that Putin interfered with the recent Presidential election?

Do these examples convince you that politics is a charade? Do tell us of other instances.

This article was originally published on The Political Sword

For Facebook users, The Political Sword has a Facebook page:
Putting politicians and commentators to the verbal sword

Like what we do at The AIMN?

You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.

Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!

Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be gratefully accepted.

You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969

Donate Button

Industry partnership delivers real world training in homelessness

Media Release from Medianet

RMIT students are gaining a unique perspective through the first homelessness and housing course developed in collaboration with industry.

The popular summer intensive is part of an industry partnership between RMIT and Unison Housing.

Course coordinator and Deputy Director of the Unison Housing Research Lab at RMIT Dr Juliet Watson said the course – currently running for the fourth time – covered homelessness from policy, practice and research perspectives.

“We break down myths about homelessness,” she said.

“We look at how homelessness is defined, the variety of ways people become homeless or are at risk of becoming homeless and the experiences of different groups.

“Homelessness and housing affect every other area of your life – your employment, your relationships, your family life, your economic status.

“Anyone working in the fields of social work, youth work and psychology needs to have an understanding of this.”

The Lab is a unique partnership that combines academic research and industry knowledge to support a research agenda focused on improving the lives of Australians facing housing issues.

Unison Director of Housing and Homelessness Sue Grigg said the partnership provided critical, evidence-based research.

“Sharing this knowledge is essential to inform practices and service delivery across the sector, as well as government policy,” she said.

“With this course, we are providing the next generation of social workers with a unique opportunity to have direct access to real life, data-based research and sector experts.”

The course is being run online as an elective, with the bulk of students coming from the social work and human services cluster.

Watson said the practical aspects of the course were always popular with students.

“We really draw on the expertise of Unison as our industry partner and other non-government organisations and advocacy groups to shape the course,” she said.

“A key aspect is visiting services and having a speaker from the Council to Homeless Persons’ Peer Education Support Program where people who have experienced homelessness have the opportunity to improve the service system by sharing their experiences.

“I was worried about having the same access to external speakers due to having to move the course online because of COVID-19, but all our industry stakeholders continue to be incredibly generous with their time and expertise. I believe this is because they really value what the course is teaching.”

Bachelor of Social Work (Honours) student Holly Byrden said she had enjoyed her first summer subject.

“The highlight has been different speakers pretty much every session,” she said.

“We just had someone talk about her own experiences of homelessness, which I really enjoyed, and also visited an agency just before lockdown.

“We talked to the assistant manager and learnt how the workplace is run and what it’s like to work there.

“I’m not 100% sure what kind of work I want to do, but homelessness is something I’m interested in.

“Studying social work, I feel like I’ve found my niche and I’m around like-minded people. I want to work in a job where I can help people.”

Like what we do at The AIMN?

You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.

Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!

Donate Button

Jellyfish, not jaws what we fear in the ocean

University of South Australia Media Release

As the weather heats up this week, shark sightings and the possibility of an encounter will again become a popular topic of conversation. And if mass media accounts are anything to go by, you would be forgiven for thinking we all share this fear of potentially meeting Jaws on our next trip to the beach.

But according to new University of South Australia research, it is drowning and other animals – such as jellyfish, crabs, and stingrays, not an encounter with Jaws, that people fear when they take a dip.

In a survey of 400 participants who were prompted to explain why they were afraid of going in the ocean, sharks appeared well down the list, coming in fourth behind drowning, other animal encounters and deep water.

UniSA Online course facilitator for psychology, Dr Brianna Le Busque says the results of the study are surprising, given the media’s portrayal of shark-human interactions and the animal’s vilified status in popular culture.

“We’ve all seen Jaws and read the sensationalised headlines about shark “attacks” – given sharks’ representation in the mass media, it would be easy to assume that everyone’s biggest fear is an encounter with a shark,” she says.

“In reality, our study found more people fear drowning than sharks when it comes to swimming in the ocean.

“It’s promising to see that people’s fears are actually aligned with the statistical chance of these threats, given many more people drown per year compared to fatal shark interactions.”

The results are good news for shark conservation as they indicate a shift in public perception, according to Dr Le Busque. She says changing people’s perception of sharks is critical to protect them, with many species experiencing population decline.

“Even though many shark species are at risk of extinction, mass media still tends to focus on threats from sharks to humans, rather than from humans to sharks,” she says.

“This can have devastating consequences for the world’s shark population with effects we will all feel.

“Sharks play an integral role in our marine ecosystem. They have been around for more than 400-million years keeping our ocean habitats intact, which is important as oceans provide much of the oxygen we need to live.

“We know that people are less likely to support conservation initiatives and more likely to support potentially harmful mitigation strategies if they fear sharks. To support shark conservation, we need to reduce the perception of risk sharks pose to better reflect reality.

“That’s not to say we need to get rid of this fear altogether, but we need the fear to be proportionate to the threat.”

Dr Le Busque, whose research focuses on the psychology of shark conservation, says another interesting finding from the study was that 22 per cent of respondents had experienced a known encounter with a shark in the wild.

“This number was far higher than we expected – almost one in every four people had seen a shark in real life,” she says.

“In a way, this finding reaffirms the need for us to reframe how we view shark and human interactions – most sharks species are not known to harm humans.”

The results from the study were published in Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences in a paper titled ‘People’s fear of sharks: a qualitative analysis’.

 

Like what we do at The AIMN?

You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.

Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!

Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be gratefully accepted.

You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969

Donate Button

Bubble Politics

By Ad astra

As we emerge from four years of disastrous Trump politics, fervently hoping for a modicum of normality in US politics, we find ourselves confronted with a growing phenomenon: the desire of many to live in a bubble of their own choice.

We saw this coming as the likes of Fox News in the US fostered a cult of Trump followers, feeding them with a consistent diet of what they wanted to hear. They lapped it up and came back for more. Trump was their idol, a reliable source of intelligence. They needed no more. Rather than seeking uncontaminated truth, they sought only re-affirmation of their pre-existing views, their ‘truth’. Fox gave it to them in spades.

Herein lies an impending disaster. If individuals and groups choose to insulate themselves from what they don’t want to hear or know, what happens to our inherent sense of curiosity, to humankind’s constant search for truth, for knowledge, for understanding, for advancement? It atrophies and dies. The death of curiosity would herald the death of science.

Yet we know that is what is happening. So many do not want to wrestle with new concepts, new revelations, new facts. As Robert Kuhn so persuasively argues in his seminal book; The Nature of Scientific Revolutions, the inclination of humans is to cling tenaciously to what they already believe, to ignore conflicting evidence no matter how sound. The classic example is phlogiston theory that asserted that substances that burned in air were rich in a substance named phlogiston; the fact that combustion soon ceased in an enclosed space was taken as clear-cut evidence that air had the capacity to absorb only a finite amount of phlogiston. The logical conclusion was that when air had become completely devoid of phlogiston, it would no longer be able to support combustion.

Despite steadily increasing evidence that the phlogiston theory was no longer tenable, believers adhered to it tenaciously, twisting and turning to find supporting evidence, even though there was none. The complexity of their arguments was astounding, but as ingenious as were their attempts to avoid having to concede that their theory was untenable, they eventually had to admit that they were wrong, As a radical change of belief became unavoidable, they experienced a profound yet sudden epistemological change that Kuhn labelled ‘a paradigm shift’, a term now in common use.

It was only when Lavoisier developed his theory that combustion was a reaction between the burning substance and oxygen, that the phlogiston theory eventually died from inanition.

Even while this piece was being written, we saw Sean Hannity of Fox News bad-mouthing newly-installed US President Joe Biden with these words: “Biden’s speech was ‘forgettable’ and akin to that of a high school president’s acceptance speech “from a guy who was desperately craving a nap.” He went on to dismiss Biden’s calls for unity as “hollow” and “total and complete BS” and said he spouted “worn-out, liberal socialist cliches.” But that was not what really ticked off supporters of the new president. It was when Hannity called him “the weak, the frail, the cognitively struggling Biden” that even his sycophantic audience called him out. The major news networks raced to distance themselves from him, appropriately leaving him looking isolated and stupid.

Hannity lives in his own bubble, where he feels comfortable. Let’s leave him there to stew in his own juice.

It is a sad reality that more and more people are choosing a bubble in which to live where they are never confronted with facts that they simply don’t want ever to know about. They are content to wallow contentedly in a thick sickly soup derived from their preferred ingredients, lapping up their chosen diet of ‘facts’, no matter how implausible.

This is the world in 2021!

This article was originally published on The Political Sword

For Facebook users, The Political Sword has a Facebook page:
Putting politicians and commentators to the verbal sword

Like what we do at The AIMN?

You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.

Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!

Donate Button

Seeking the Post-Covid Sunshine: Making the Gig Economy More Inclusive

By Denis Bright

A century after that prior attempt at Return to Normalcy in the wake of the Spanish flu pandemic and the burdens imposed by the Great War (1914-18), political elites are about to steer a new exercise in the economics of corporate modernism.

Perhaps the challenges were greater a century ago. There were an estimated 15,000 deaths from the Spanish flu pandemic in Australia and 60,000 war fatalities in a national population of less than 6 million. Still, there are real challenges associated with the federal LNPs rhetorical plan for the future. You’re welcome to grasp the embedded political agenda from the LNP’s site.

The conservative Nationalist Coalitions of the 1920s offered no real plans for economic and social recovery from the challenges of those difficult times. In juxtaposition, the post-war recovery in the post-1945 era which delivered a national unemployment rate below 2 per cent for the next thirty years with the exception of temporary recessions on the LNP’s watch in 1953 and 1961. Even in those worst years, unemployment was still below 3 per cent (Labor History No.108-May 2015). The Arab oil crisis followed in the mid-1970s and the tolerable unemployment rate doubled to 6 per cent in mainstream media reports which were not qualified by any explanation of the social reality of the employment data being transmitted.

 

Work Practices in the Gig Economy

In today’s gig economy, the Morrison Government will return to corporate-led recovery after 31 March 2021 when JobKeeper and JobSeeker will be scaled back as promised as resources are directed in the federal budget (likely on 11 May 2021) to business and investor sectors which are the key LNP support bases.

On the surface, economic trends are promising. Eyewitness news reports focus on the well-publicized unemployment rate of 6.4 per cent in January 2021. This good news must be tempered by an ABS criterion that defines employment as one hour or more a week for each reference week in the monthly employment surveys.

Underemployment is a big qualifying factor in the ABS data released on 18 February 2021. The underemployment rate is currently over 8 per cent of the workforce.

The growth of independent contracting is staggering. It represents another 8.2 per cent of all employment.

As a bicycle rider, I often whisk past independent contractors waiting at food outlets to deliver fast food for a few dollars a time is revolting sight. Such legalized practices are returning society to the piecework era offered in the early phases of the industrial revolution in Britain which is now is dire straits after BREXIT and a badly managed COVID-crisis.

By coincidence, I enjoyed a travel documentary on life in Cornwall in Britain’s new gig economy where wealth accumulates across an immense social divide. Young entrepreneurs offering food services to beach goers from mobile vans live out of cars and caravans on windswept frosty moorlands to escape unaffordable rentals in England’s surfing paradise. This is social reality in Cornwall’s post-tin and clay mining booms. The documentary is available on YouTube.

Inappropriate employment vetting is widening the wage divide in both private and government sectors (ABC News, 13 July 2019 by Laura Tingle):

The Herald Sun reported this week that two staffers wanting to work for federal ministers failed high-level security checks and that more than 90 people looking for jobs in the Australian Public Service had been denied security clearances in the past four years.

“The vetting process, aimed at catching foreign spies and people vulnerable to blackmail and coercion, has been criticised over a backlog of cases, delays of more than a year and the use of private contractors,” the paper reported.

Yet if one of those people then decided to run for Parliament, there would be no formal process that stopped them, other than perhaps a quiet word from security agencies to political parties that their candidates might pose exactly the sort of risk section 44 is supposed to deal with.

And the rules apply differently to politicians when it comes to leaking things, too.

A battery of corporate vetting agencies has been fostered by the federal LNP to assist in maintaining a docile non-unionized workforce.

The corporate firm Intelligence Studio boasts of its capacity to delve into the private lives of wage-earners with a range of legitimate and less orthodox checks.

Open Source and Social Media Presence – A ‘deep dive’ is conducted of the world wide web and also social media platforms. This data is accessible by anyone including your competitors, investors, and customers therefore we will conduct pre-emptive searches to identify any adverse intelligence the applicant may bring to your company and also give you further insight into the applicant’s associations, habits, interests and activities.

I would recommend that readers take up offers to have taxpayer funded coffee and drinks with federal LNP members which are commencing a through mobile offices so that MPs are actually away of the return to dire straits on the labour market. I took the opportunity this weekend and was pleased to meet and greet with an affable LNP member who took notes of my concerns but was completely unaware of the extent of employment vetting in both private and public sectors.

Both of my parents suffered from employment vetting in the interwar period when gaining a permanent job was always difficult. This might appear to be a repetitive reference (AIM Network, 20 May 2020) but I am fairly confident that subterranean and sectarian employment vetting sill operated under the Bjelke-Petersen National Party Government in Queensland until the 1980s and perhaps beyond when I recall the promotion trails of some of my teaching colleagues. Employment rights continue to be eroded in more subtle manners through contemporary employment vetting.

Challenges of Non-Unionized Workplaces

Such background checks have the capacity to discourage trade union membership.

This screening activity means more profits for employers as shown by the variation in incomes for unionized and non-unionized employees in the median weekly earning data.

Almost completely overlooked in the rush to more vetting of employees is the slow pace of business investment as revealed in the latest but somewhat delayed RBA charts on trends in the business sector. Data for the December Quarter will not be available from ABS until later in February 2021.

There are alternatives to sustainable investment creation through the initiatives of the RBA, the Future Fund, state and territory based investment funds and overseas investment.

Australia has significant deposits ($5A billion) in the Beijing-based Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) from Tony Abbott’s time as prime minister which could be used to promote Belt and Road Projects in Northern Australia in particular to build up Darwin as a key export terminal with supportive transport links and processing plants for food and resource exports.

Such initiatives would bypass the environmentally sensitive use of Coral Sea industrial and coal export terminals while coking coal exports are still a player in the Australian export economy for the next decade at least.

Fellow Australians must be satisfied with the trendlines to the September Quarter of 2020.

It is the Labor Party which can from a majority government to implement a more inclusive plan for the future.

Following negative reactions to the Green’s Caravan to once marginal electorates like Capricornia and Flynn just prior to the 2019 federal elections, there will be some reappraisal of the value of campaigning against coking coal exports until more sustainable energy policies are up and running under a future Labor Government with commitments to electric cars, hydrogen fuels and a more rounded commitment to alternative energy and sustainable cities.

Possibilities for Consensus-Building

The success of Premier Palaszczuk’s state election campaign in 2020 does suggest that co-operation can be forged between traditionally rival sections of the Labor Party’s trade union support base to deliver a better range of environmental, community and infrastructure outcomes which are needed in the electorate. This was indeed the essence of the pre-1957 style of politics in Queensland which kept Labor in office for forty years after 1915 with the exception of the disastrous single term of the Moore Government (1929-32).

The Sunday in Brisbane on 14 February 2021 contained a speculative and largely unsourced opinion piece from journalist Hayden Johnson on the possibility of changing campaigning tactics from the CFMEU to address the consequences of the Green Caravan to Central Queensland just before the 2019 Queensland elections:

Behind the scenes changes in Labor’s factional re-alignment are indeed a sensitive issue with both Labor insiders and members of environmental networks. While this article by Hayden Johnson has its limitations, it is to be commended for raising an important issue for discussion.

Critical journalists should be sensitive to the extent of subterranean politics between political elites. Both helpful comments and refusals to comment are all significant. I have sought comments from within the trade union movement and from environmental networks with mixed success in terms of access to information and respect for the genuine inquiry processes which are at the heart of investigative journalism.

As media adviser at the Australian Conservation Foundation in Melbourne, Josh Meadows offered a helpful commitment to a sustainable jobs agenda and instantly understood the value of the phone inquiry (Authorized Quote from the ACF):

ACF is certainly aware of the importance of combining job generation with environmental protection.

In September 2020 ACF released a report by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) setting out how Gladstone can build on its success as an industrial and export centre to become a renewable energy powered hub for industries like aluminium, steel, cement and hydrogen.

Meanwhile, the cross the board consensus which saw the Palaszczuk Government comfortably re-elected on 31 October 2020 can be applied to a dozen or so Queensland federal seats which are currently help by the LNP.

A more broadly based Labor Movement through factional realignment has real potential to take Australians out of the excesses of the Gig economy without more corporate intrusions into the private lives of employees as advocated by Intelligence Studio to offer a more docile compliant workforce in which wealth accumulates and social democracy suffers more injustices (Image: Intelligence Studio):

 

 

It has been a rough week for the federal LNP. Its support for vetting of lowly employees contrasts with permissiveness in the corridors of power and influence.

Denis Bright is a member of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA). Denis is committed to citizen’s journalism from a critical structuralist perspective. Comments from insiders with a specialist knowledge of the topics covered are particularly welcome.

 

Like what we do at The AIMN?

You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.

Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!

Donate Button

Cleaning up renewable energy: stewardship strategies for solar panels and wind turbine blades

University of South Australia Media Release

Researchers at the University of South Australia are leading a national push to ensure the dream of renewable energy doesn’t become a nightmare of waste management.

Australia has the highest proportion of household photovoltaic (PV) systems in the world, with more than 21 per cent of homes – or around 2.59 million – now possessing a solar energy system.

With most PV systems paying themselves off in three to five years, the average 25-year life span of solar panels makes them an excellent investment, delivering a good return for decades after their cost is recovered.

Eventually, however, all good things come to an end, and increasingly, industry experts are starting to ask what we’re going to do with all these solar panels when they are due to be replaced.

In Australia alone it is estimated more than 100,000 tonnes of solar panels will enter the national waste stream by 2035.

Solar energy expert, Professor Peter Majewski, is leading research at UniSA’s Future Industries Institute (FII) to help establish a lifetime stewardship scheme for Australia’s PV industry, ensuring end-of-life strategies are in place long before solar waste peaks.

“We have time to plan for this and ensure the processes are in place, but we have to start acting now, as the right practices may take some time to implement,” Prof Majewski says.

“There are good stewardship programs in place for products such as paint and tyres in Australia, and we would like to see a similar system in place for solar, where the disposal process is pre-planned as an integral part of the product lifecycle.”

While retired solar panels are relatively safe and stable, they are classified as e-waste, meaning they cannot be put into landfill in Victoria. With similar bans likely to follow in other states, the need for alternative solutions is clear.

One major challenge facing the solar industry is the low recycle value of PV panels, coupled with the high energy requirements of the currently available collection and recycling processes.

“There is only a little over $5 in recyclable materials in each panel at current market value,” Prof Majewski says.

“The high volume of panels will eventually offset this low value to an extent, but at the moment, we can’t expect market forces alone to drive recycling, and investment is needed to establish a waste management scheme and to improve the technology available for that process.”

Prof Majewski’s team at FII are currently working on developing both policy and technological solutions to PV’s end of life problem, and he believes the integration of both dimensions will be key to a successful stewardship scheme.

“Regulation around collection and recycling targets will be important to drive the process initially, but developing the best disposal techniques is essential, and this may even influence manufacturing techniques and what goes into the panels to start with.”

End-of-life management for PV isn’t the only challenge facing the renewables industry, and a similar disposal problem exists in relation to the blades of wind turbines, which are large and notoriously difficult to recycle.

“These blades are the size of an airliner wing, and they have been built to withstand hurricane-force winds, so they are a big challenge when they get to the end of their life,” Prof Majewski.

“As with solar panels, that disposal challenge requires planning and preparation, but approached the right way it doesn’t have to be an insurmountable problem, and we are beginning to look at strategies for how to deal with these blades as they come offline.”

 

(Professor Peter Majewski is Research Professor in Advanced Materials at UniSA’s Future Industries Institute).

 

Like what we do at The AIMN?

You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.

Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!

Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be gratefully accepted.

You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969

Donate Button

Travesty – a false or distorted misrepresentation of something

By Leonie Saunders

What the Morrison government aided and abetted by the ineptitude of a sycophantic Opposition is a travesty.

Comparing Facebook to Google with regards to the distribution of news is like comparing apples with oranges.

The only comparison that can be made is that like Murdoch’s NewsCorp, Google and Facebook do not pay taxes – see Crikey’s article – “Tax dodging News Corp continues to rip Australia off – and is subsidised by taxpayers to do so“. Unfortunately, for verification purposes one of the many consequences of the Government’s pernicious agenda to undermine public interest journalism being shared on Facebook is I am unable to share the link to Crikey.

Now for some clarity as to the current travesty the Morrison Government is promulgating.

To begin with, unlike Facebook, Google’s search engine scrapes (indexes) news content that publishers do not provide voluntarily. Google has long been moving to an answer engine and not a search engine for sometime and has been coming under fire from many who rely on search traffic for their business. In short, Google is known for not paying for the content that supports its free search engine which drives its business model (advertising, i.e. using your data and traffic history to support an advertising business model).

On the other hand, whilst it is true that Facebook also sells our data to advertisers, it does not scrape (index) content on other websites into its platform. The reason news publishers and Government willingly post information on Facebook is due to the size of its Australian information sharing audience. News publishers and governments willingly add links on Facebook in the hope that its users will follow the links to their respective websites.

I can’t help but conclude that Murdoch – as an inherent monopolist – is jealous that it wasn’t he who cornered the social media market. Which, come to think of it, is somewhat oxymoronic given that if Murdoch owned Facebook, the social ingredient would no longer exist.

That most significant aspect revealed in the law that the Morrison Government proposes is that the government – and indeed the political class and mainstream news media journalist alike – are fundamentally averse to open public debate. Glass-jawed egotists populating Government and news media outlets are typically hostile to their work being viewed through a critical lens. Facebook providing a platform for critical thinking Australians to engage in open political debate is anathema to them. Indeed, critical thinking is the nuts and bolts of grass roots ‘journalism’. But more on that in a bit.

This law like most that the Australian government is proposing to introduce next week is inept and full of holes. It is extraordinarily vague in its application and understanding. Equally inept was Facebook shutting down some Government and non-Government pages. And despite the fact that the majority of these pages were quickly reinstated, the failure of media organisations to report the news accurately without cherry-picking to support their bias is proven by the fact that we are not getting that information from them now, are we?

Nevertheless, it must be acknowledged that PR-wise the people running Facebook in Australia were stupidly ham-fisted. Fancy giving the Government a big stick talking point to divert public attention from the real travesty going on with the legislation being proposed.

With respect to the nature of this page, let us ‘connect the dots’ behind the motivation behind this proposed law. The Murdoch press hides the majority of its content behind a paywall; wanting its users to pay for the content they publish. Whilst that is a business model Murdoch’s NewsCorp and other publishers have the right to pursue. It is ironic that they complain the loudest by using a ‘free’ platform like Facebook which allows them to drive significant traffic to these paywalls by people sharing news articles.

Facebook claims the company generated approximately 5.1 billion free referrals to Australian publishers worth an estimate of AU$407 million and News makes up less than 4% of the content people see in their news feeds.

The Government wants Facebook to pay for any links shared to news articles. The same links that go to a paywall wants you to pay for reading said content. This approach flies in the face of the democratic integrity that people sharing information on the Internet was originally designed to facilitate. Furthermore, aided and abetted by a sycophantic Labor Opposition, the Morrison Government is setting up a double-dipping system in which paywalled news outlets like Murdoch’s NewsCorp will benefit twofold.

Now that Google has created a ‘news showcase’ product that will pay millions of dollars to news publishers, as it should if it’s using content for its benefit, the public can only hope that rather than the clickbait headline shit put out by Murdoch et al, the money paid to news publishers by Google will not be sucked up by the major shareholders, but instead will go towards quality investigative journalism that is sorely lacking in the modern Western world’s mainstream commercial media outlets. We must never forget that as a search engine Google is inextricably intertwined with the content it indexes.

Back to the support of grass roots journalism.

I ask you, are Australia’s high quality independent news media publishers, freelance journalists and even pages like ours going to receive any financial compensation for publishing, discussing, critiquing and critically analysing news stories? I think not.

It will only be the big players who get compensated in this ‘law’. Ipso facto this is not a law proposed to support public interest journalism at all. But rather, it is crafted to support Mr Murdoch’s media empire.

Are academics going to be compensated for the valuable information they provide for free through articles shared oh Facebook? Information which is of a far higher standard than the powerful media monopolies which use their position to push their owner’s political agendas.

One could also propose that this action plays very nicely into the hands of the Government who would rather tear down and disperse the audience from the new ‘public square’ of debate. How fortuitous it is that Government policies and actions will not be as easily discussed or shared across the 40% of Australians who use Facebook for their news. How easily would we learn of the mishandling of Dutton’s grant applications or pork barrelling sports grants leading up to an election? This list of this Government’s crimes and misdemeanours goes on and on. Controlling social media is an early sign of Fascism. The public’s ability to share and disseminate information so widely via the Internet has concerned Governments for many years now. Authoritarian governments ban the platform completely in their countries so the public cannot voice their dissent.

So whilst the Government protests Facebook removing the information posted by this country’s news outlets on the platforms pages, I would argue it’s a smokescreen as this law plays just nicely into keeping the public silenced in respect to the dissemination of news and current affairs that has for far to long been under NewsCorp’s control.

The blessing and curse of the Internet is the huge amount of information available to us, both good and often very bad. It is a reflection of our society.

 

 

Like what we do at The AIMN?

You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.

Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!

Donate Button

The Age of Aquarius

By Ad astra

Older folks will remember the musical Hair with its opening song Aquarius:

”This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius,
When the Moon is in the seventh house and Jupiter aligns with Mars,
then peace will guide the planets and love will steer the stars.”

Devoid of poetic imagination, astrologer Neil Spencer, rubbished the lyrics as ‘astrological gibberish’. His literal take was evident in his words: ”Jupiter aligns with Mars several times a year and the Moon is in the 7th House for two hours every day.”

Let’s leave Spencer to his own world of astrological reality where no doubt he feels comfortable, and reflect on what these words mean in a poetic sense. How many of us yearn for a world where peace will guide the planets and love will steer the stars.

As Donald J Trump recedes into a world where all he has left is the reality he creates for himself and what’s left of his ardent followers, where he can still convince himself that he is important, that he is still adored, and that in time he will return triumphant to once again lead his country and the world, the rest of the thinking world breathes more easily in the knowledge that Trump is finished, that his appalling behaviour will no more assail us, and his words and proclamations no longer anger us.

Don’t we all long for peace, decency, collaboration, and unity of purpose. We want to hold hands with those who acknowledge the urgency of the problems we all face: a steadily warming planet with the existential hazard that poses for all living things; civil discord that threatens collaborative endeavour; domestic violence that’s tearing apart so many families, the exploitive behaviour of so many entrepreneurs who cheat us ruthlessly, and the threatening behaviour of the world’s bullies: China’s CPC, Russia and Iran.

The Age of Aquarius is what we yearn for. Is it possible? Will President Biden’s benign yet firm approach draw us closer?

Enjoy listening to The Fifth Dimension giving The Age of Aquarius the oomph it deserves. We can only hope, indeed fervently pray for a new Age of Aquarius soon, very soon.

 

This article was originally published on The Political Sword

For Facebook users, The Political Sword has a Facebook page:
Putting politicians and commentators to the verbal sword

Like what we do at The AIMN?

You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.

Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!

Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be gratefully accepted.

You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969

Donate Button

The sad joke

By 2353NM

There is an old joke about the boy who lived in Inflatable World who, after going on a rampage with a pin, was lying deflated in a bed in the Inflatable Hospital. His school principal was sitting beside him and giving him a lecture on ethics and morals; ‘your rampage has caused a lot of damage, you’ve let your parents down, you’ve let your friends down, you’ve let your school down and you’ve even let yourself down’.

Former President Donald Trump could be the inflatable boy, lying in the Inflatable Hospital. In the space of four years, his actions have ensured the Republican Party (that he claims to represent) has lost both houses of the US Congress as well as the Presidency. He has also turned ’the last bastion of democracy’ into a country where a false and misleading propaganda campaign generated an insurrection.

Trump was voted out of office legitimately. He is the first President to be impeached by their House of Representatives twice. He will also go down in history as the tenth US President that ran for re-election and lost. Rather than accept the verdict of the nation, he has wasted considerable amounts of his supporters’ money and everyone’s time pursuing increasingly bizarre claims of fraud through the legal system. To the credit of the judges (some of whom he appointed) they have ruled that the election process was fair and reasonable, based on the evidence presented.

We have no reason to be sitting smugly on this side of the Pacific claiming it would never happen here. There is no claim from a politician that the Australian Electoral Commission arranges for votes to be tampered with — with compulsory voting it would be hard to explain 120,000 ballot papers being received in an electorate with 100,000 voters. Neither is anyone suggesting the AEC or anyone else has truckloads of ballot papers that ‘were prepared earlier’ that arrive after the polls close being substituted for ‘legal’ votes in counting centres. All of these accusations were made by Trump in the US.

We do have politicians that superimpose the party’s will over the will of their constituencies. In most parts of Australia and at all levels of government, people stand for election to represent the voters in a specific area, be it one or two localities in local government, a region in state government or a larger area for the federal government. Unlike the USA, most Australian politicians are ‘influenced’ to publicly support their party’s stated position on almost all issues. Crossing the (Parliament) floor to vote against a proposal that has inimical effects on the majority of the community that put you into Parliament in the first place is likely to see you excommunicated from the party room, removed from any discussion on the party’s policy going forward and having some party loyalist standing against you at the next election. It’s also interesting to note that communities that take the chance of electing a representative that is not aligned to a political party frequently choose to reelect them rather than revert to one of the two major parties at the next opportunity — examples being the seat of Indi in Victoria, Clarke in Tasmania or Bob Katter’s long-term representation of the electorate of Kennedy in North Queensland.

We do have concentrated media ownership. In 2016, the year of the most recent figures, 57% of newspapers in Australia were owned by News Corp, ultimately controlled by Rupert Murdoch, a former Australian who became a US Citizen in 1985 to further his media interests in the USA. News Corp also owns 65% of Foxtel. In October 2020, Former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd launched a petition on the Australian Parliamentary Services website to call for a Royal Commission into the actions of News Corp. The petition was supported by a number of influential people including former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. The Guardian reported last November that the petition had reached almost 500,000 signatures and generated a number of unfavourable stories about Rudd in News Corp publications. If it did nothing else, it broke the Parliament House internet. Current Prime Minister Morrison is yet to act on the petition.

We do have members of Parliament who support the same crackpot theories as Trump, without censure. As Michael Pascoe reported in The New Daily on 8 January, Morrison was asked if he had a problem with the madness championed by some of his side of Australian politics.

Reporter: “Will you condemn conspiracy theories being promoted by members of your own government?”

Morrison: “No.”

Pascoe also noted that Morrison refused to condemn the violence that occurred when the US Capitol was stormed by rioters in January, unlike Conservatives such as the UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. A week later, Acting Prime Minister and Nationals Party leader Michael McCormack added fuel to the fire generated by LNP backbenchers spreading false or unsubstantiated statements on social media by stating

Facts are sometimes contentious, and what you might think is right somebody else might think is completely untrue.

“That is part of living in a democratic country.

In 2015, on the release of a report into bullying and harassment in the military, Australian Army Lieutenant General David Morrison stated: ‘The standard you walk past is the standard you accept’. The comment was reflected on by a writer for The Huffington Post who went on to suggest

Every time we accept the status quo of poor behavior, we are endorsing it. A strong leader should not only advise of behavior that is appropriate, they should embody it. They should be the person telling us that we don’t tolerate bullying or harassment.

Morrison and the state premiers aren’t necessarily being booted permanently from Twitter or Facebook or inciting mobs to invade the Parliamentary buildings on Capital Hill, Spring St or George St, but they are implicitly supporting behaviours that demean the democratic process by not speaking out about them. They, and the parties they represent, are also openly involved in a winner take all battle where belittling, bullying and harassment of those with different opinions is not only common, but expected.

In recent months, the US has seen the results of a winner take all battle of wills for the future of the country. Let’s hope our leaders observe, reflect and actually lead, before it’s too late.

What do you think?

This article was originally published on The Political Sword

For Facebook users, The Political Sword has a Facebook page:
Putting politicians and commentators to the verbal sword

Like what we do at The AIMN?

You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.

Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!

Donate Button

Seeking the Post-Covid Sunshine: Anticipating the Shock of a Return to Normalcy Yet Again

By Denis Bright

The structural shadows of past challenges are always present for better or for worse even decades later.

Let’s take the Spanish flu virus of 1919. Along with HIV/AIDS Pandemic, Spanish flu was the worst public health disaster since the arrival of the Black death in the fourteenth century.

The Spanish flu Pandemic (SFP) (1918-20) was one of the deadliest public health crises in human history. This virus resurfaced in 2009 as the swine flu pandemic. The Spanish flu’s association with bacterial infections made precise diagnosis difficult.

About one third of humanity (or 500 million) people caught the Spanish flu. The death toll was probably in the 25-40 million range. There is no precise data and Spanish flu was often associated with other influenza and pneumonic conditions.

The pandemic came at an awkward time as millions of troops were returning home to their respective countries from the Great War (1914-18) in conditions which fostered the spread of diseases in crowded ships on wintery seas after the peace in late 1918.

Successful Medical Management of Spanish flu

Conservative governments in Australia, Britain and the US (after the election of Republican Calvin Coolidge in 1920) rushed to manage the return to Normalcy as a matter of urgency.

In the absence of a National Cabinet during the Spanish flu crisis of 1919, the Commonwealth Government under Billy Hughes was soon committed to a selective national quarantine that still had to allow Australian troops to return. The Commonwealth Serum Laboratories (CSL) produced three million free doses of vaccines according to the National Museum’s coverage of these events.

 

Influenza quarantine camp setup at Wallangarra, Queensland, 1919 (Image from the National Library)

 

This source notes that Australia had to cope with 15,000 deaths from Spanish flu from a national infection rate of 40 per cent of the population. The mortality rate was 2.7 per 100,000. With its shorter involvement in the Great War, the US had an incidence rate of less than one third of the population and with between 500,000 and 850,000 deaths or between 0.5 to 0.8 per cent of the population.

Britain had a death toll of 250,000 in a population of over 40 million. Here Spanish flu was a much more serious challenge than in Australia. Even Prime Minister David Lloyd George contracted Spanish flu. He survived the virus but was deposed by his own Conservative Party in 1922 before yet another coup brought Stanley Baldwin to Downing Street for much of the interwar period until another successful coup by Winston Churchill in 1940.

A Focus on Return to Normalcy

In the conservative traditions, leaders of the four leading English-speaking democracies fostered a return to normalcy through corporate ideology in countries crippled by debt from commitments to the Great War. As Prime Minister of Canada (1911-20), Sir Robert Laird Borden developed a strong rapport with Britain and is shown strutting with Winston Churchill as First Lord of the Admiralty in 1912 (Image: French National Bibliotheque).

The lighter involvement of the US in the Great War gave the Coolidge Administration a head-start in the 1920s and a transition was not required in Republican Ranks until the emergence of Herbert Hoover (1929-33) at the onset of the Great Depression.

The 1920s brought great social changes in Australia as popular culture tuned into the US in lifestyle changes which would have made the top-hats of 1912 a source of larrikin humour just a decade later.

The Great War had been a war for the defence of the British Empire against its Continental Rivals.

Victory had liberating qualities as the Australian character interacted with Hollywood lifestyle models either directly or even through local cinema productions and popular songs.

Constitutionally, the four major English-speaking Colonies of Empire (NZ, Australia, Canada and Britain) were allowed to flourish in differing directions. In the New British Commonwealth, a new independence was offered to the former Dominions.

Australia did not take up the offer until 1942 and finally terminated appeals to the Privy Council from High Court in 1986.

Before the onset of the Great Depression (1929-32), the Australian spirit flourished with the growth of cities and the diversification of our trading economies which supplied distant Imperial and Asian markets, including Japan.

Changes in fashions were reflected in both dress and fashions and lifestyles which were of little challenge to the structures of power and influence. Politically harmless sporting events, movies, home construction and travel ventures were made possible by a veneer of prosperity.

Trade union membership fitted into the national character during the 1920s with about a half of the workforce unionized according to ACTU historical estimates. Unionism extended into white collar industries and militant varieties of unionism were popular in mining, ports and transport sectors. The presence of Communist leadership was not deemed to be a particular threat to society and even welcomed by Irish Australian Catholics in their confrontation with British elitism.

The gains made in the 1920s were of course challenged after the Great Depression, but trade union membership rates remained firm as factories and government services expanded. Slow recovery from the Great Depression definitely widened the wealth and class divides in society as smaller non-unionized family businesses were able to shed staff without any challenge. I shared some of my parents experiences in Ipswich in a previous article on 8 May 2020.

Adaptive Conservative Leadership

The Great War and the Cold War of the 1950s enabled conservative Australian leaders to become the normal party of government without much of a plan for the future beyond a commitment to market ideology and strategic support for Britain and then the USA.

Few countries would so willingly invite nuclear weapons to be tested here on behalf of Britain and both Britain and the US in Micronesia.

The tradition of cultivating great and powerful international friends has been an ongoing conservative agenda since the federation era. With the arrival of the Biden Administration, the return of professional diplomacy is back on the agenda on issues such as human rights and climate change but Scott Morrison is keen to maintain some tensions in relations with China for domestic political wedge politics:

China raised on call

The Prime Minister indicated that the two men also discussed China, although he did not provide any details.

“As you would expect, we discussed regional issues in the Indo-Pacific fully,” Mr Morrison said.

He played down the prospect of any significant shift in US policy towards China under Joe Biden, saying the differences were largely of “nuance” and expression.”

And he said Mr Biden had described the US-Australia alliance as the “anchor of peace and security in the region.”

Progressive Australians do not dare to interrupt this old narrative or seek alternative strategic agendas which strengthen Australian sovereignty.

One of the great defences of Australian social democracy was the high rates of trade union membership during the recovery years from the Great War and the Spanish flu of a century ago.

Trade union membership was almost a half of the workforce during the difficult years of the interwar period and increased during the post-war period as manufacturing thrived and the white-collar government workforce increased (Parliament of Australia 2018):

 

 

With the current density of trade union membership probably now less than the 14 per cent registered in the Parliamentary Paper (2018), employers in private firms outside the mining, transport and construction sectors are having a field day in discouraging trade union membership by security checks on potential employees.

Eligibility and Vetting Models developed by the federal Attorney-General’s Department for government employment or contractors performing government services are available for use by employers generally and for administration by private security assessment firms often with overseas expertise:

Eligibility and suitability of personnel

This policy details the pre-employment screening processes and standardised vetting practices to be undertaken when employing personnel and contractors. These processes provide a high-quality and consistent approach to managing personnel eligibility and suitability risk across government.

Each entity must ensure the eligibility and suitability of its personnel who have access to Australian Government resources (people, information and assets). Entities must use the Australian Government Security Vetting Agency (AGSVA) to conduct vetting, or where authorised, conduct security vetting in a manner consistent with the Personnel Security Vetting Standards.

 

 

Trade unions and human rights organizations should make a thorough investigation into this intrusion into private lives which cultivates a docile workforce that would have horrified Australians a century ago. No one wants to see crocked characters gain access to corporate and governmental promotion trails. However, such rigorous assessments of staff members and new recruits seem to allow blind spots which tolerate systematic tax avoidance and harassment of employees in the interests of corporate work goals. Some optimum balance must be achieved.

The post-1945 Australian reconstruction model seemed to offer a better balance with unemployment rates below 2 per cent for thirty years with the exception of sharp recessions in 1953 and 1961. Even then, the aberrant unemployment rate was still below 3 per cent (Reference from Anthony O’Donnell in Labour History May 2015). Weeding out of potential trade unionists even prior to recruitment was an unheard-of corporate tactic except perhaps in the most sensitive security areas.

Assessment of existing and potential employees stands in sharp contrast to procedures to control corporate tax avoidance which extends to the so-called pillars of corporate responsibility as raised in my previous article on the antics of the Old and New Media.

The Labor Movement collectively is on safe grounds if it questions the extent of legalized tax avoidance at the expense of those Mom and Dad Households. Questioning the excesses of corporate donations to political parties from the difficult to retrieve returns on the AEC site is a vital campaigning tool.

Amendments to federal disclosure enable political donations of below $14,300 to escape declaration in the current financial year to 30 June 2021.

Despite the saturation advertising of the United Australia Party or the Palmer United Party, there are no returns listed on the AEC site since 2015-16.

If potential job applicants are subjected to rigorous security and personal background checks, similar scrutiny should apply to political parties which survive increasingly on government funding for their campaign activities.

Expect security checks to be a growth industry in the return to normalcy in contrast to the tolerance of a century ago and hope that it can be applied equally to the bastions of power and influence.

The experiences of the interwar period show how responsible militancy had left its mark but in a workforce with high rates of trade union membership in key industries. With opinion polls tightening against the federal LNP during the current parliamentary session expect Scott Morrison to lift his game plan during the long pre-budget recess when there is no scrutiny from parliament and the mainstream news media has free reign in top-own communication.

Let’s hesitate before the green light is extended to Normalcy if the foundations of this Normalcy are not fully accountable in the traditions of Josh Frydenberg’s economic statement on 12 May 2020 with its $60 billion accounting error.

Denis Bright is a member of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA). Denis is committed to citizen’s journalism from a critical structuralist perspective. Comments from insiders with a specialist knowledge of the topics covered are particularly welcome.

 

 

Like what we do at The AIMN?

You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.

Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!

Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be gratefully accepted.

You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969

Donate Button

Anger

By Ad astra

I might have titled this piece ‘Rage’, but not wishing its thrust to be confused with Rage, the all-night music video program broadcast on the ABC on Friday nights and Saturdays, I have stuck with the less emotive word ‘anger’. You all know what ‘anger’ means.

It is with some trepidation that I write this piece. Like most ordinary people, I prefer a peaceful life, light on the emotive elements that it can throw at us. Yet, unavoidably, all of us live in a world redolent with anger. It’s everywhere. It seems sad that it is so.

Even a cursory glimpse back in time reminds us that anger has always been a striking feature of human interaction. Julius Sumner Miller would have asked: Why is it so?

In this attempt to explain the nature of anger, I won’t be assailing you with a heavy metaphysical treatise; instead I will point you towards longstanding features of this phenomenon among members of our species, homo sapiens

If you pushed me for a simple answer to the genesis of anger, I would target ‘selfishness’ as the prime cause. At the church I attended in my youth, the most frequent topic of the sermon was ‘selfishness’, which the preacher regarded as possibly the most egregious sin of all.

From the very beginning, we have focussed on our own needs. As babies we scream for milk when we’re thirsty. We cry when we’re uncomfortable with soiled nappies, when we have a bellyache, or when our bedding needs tidying. As we grow, we seek human attention, gentle soothing, and a warm embrace. We reveal that we are more than eating and excreting machines; we need human interaction, even love. And if we don’t get what we want, we become angry and ‘scream blue murder’.

Our needs seldom diminish. Instead, with every passing year we seem to need more. While there are generous souls who devote their lives to others, most focus on themselves, forever seeking what they need, and want. They learn how to put a gloss on what they want so as not to appear to be too selfish, too focussed on their own desires. The hide their self-centredness.

To visualise the magnitude of this, multiply it millions of times – across families, the community, the nation, and indeed the world in which we live.

Yet anger has its inevitable consequences. When people are angry they seek redress for the wrongs that have made them angry. Looking back in history we see this classically demonstrated at the time of the French Revolution during which there was widespread discontent with the monarchy which at that time controlled the economy. The poor economic policies of King Louis XVI resulted in crippling poverty among the masses. Yet he and his wife Marie Antoinette showed callous disregard for their plight. ‘Let them eat cake’ was her haughty response for which she eventually paid with her head on the guillotine. Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables is the popular stage representation of this historic time.

We experience anger every day: when a rude person pushes us away to take the last seat on the bus, or edges into a queue, or grabs the last sausage at Bunnings. This variety of anger harms us. We feel the consequences. We feel ‘hot and bothered’.

Yet there are laudable angry responses. Those with a finely-tuned social conscience justifiably feel anger at injustice, unfairness and inequality. Homelessness, chronic unemployment, insecure work, uncongenial or dangerous work conditions, worker exploitation, pay theft, bullying, intimidation, and sexual harassment all deserve an angry response and corrective action. Here, anger is appropriate, indeed necessary.

To this sorry catalogue add flagrant corporate greed, executive self-interest, wilful exploitation of clients, even criminal behaviour, all perpetrated by the pillars of society that once we learned to trust, but now despise because of their culture of self-interest and the corruption that follows. Banks, financial advisers, stock brokers, corporate lawyers, lobbyists, narrow-interest advocates, and an array of strong-arm trade union leaders make up a motley collection of self-interested individuals and groups primarily out for themselves, all using client concern as a deceitful charade. They all make us angry. Domestic violence, child abuse, school bullying, paedophilia, elder neglect and exploitation, and now social media bullying, cyber abuse and crime all join the long list of offensive behaviours that cause pain, distress, loneliness, and anger.

So let’s give anger its just due. Those of us who write political pieces do so because we are angry. Angry at the unfair deal life inflicts on so many, angry at the indifference to their plight that society and so many politicians exhibit, angry at their reluctance to address these needs, angry at their self-centred preoccupation with their own political needs and wants ahead of the needs of those who interests they are elected to represent.

We see anger as the driver of our actions. Expect us to be angry.

Long live anger.

 

This article was originally published on The Political Sword

For Facebook users, The Political Sword has a Facebook page:
Putting politicians and commentators to the verbal sword

Like what we do at The AIMN?

You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.

Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!

Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be gratefully accepted.

You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969

Donate Button

The Hummingbird

By 2353NM

You might remember 2020. It was the year that Australia’s state and territory leaders demonstrated who really ran the country. At various times during 2020 a number of states and territories restricted entry to and movement around their jurisdictions on the basis of minimising the transmission of the COVID-19 virus. Despite Prime Minister Morrison and some of his Ministers claiming the restrictions would ruin the economy and were too onerous and counter-productive, the process of lockdown and minimising movement seems to have been effective and restricted the ability of the virus to spread.

Apart from keeping people alive, there is a direct economic benefit to minimising the spread of the virus as the majority of Australians were able to go out and spend money to stir the economy from its COVID-induced slumber. Even the government contributed through the funding of various packages that had the additional, but sadly short term, benefit of bringing social security payments up to a level where people could actually live on the payment. It is probably coincidental that the rate was increased when it was assumed that a lot of people that make up Australia’s middle class (who the Coalition believe make up Morrison’s quiet Australians) would be requiring assistance. You also might remember that while Morrison was claiming to ‘accept the science’, he was far less critical on some jurisdictions around the country that had (and still have) Liberal Premiers, such as New South Wales, Tasmania and South Australia.

At the end of December, Paul Bongiorno wrote a piece for The New Daily titled PM shirks duty in gold-standard quarantine blame game that discusses the failure of the Morrison Government to implement quarantine facilities as required by the Biosecurity Act 2015. Morrison passed the responsibility to the states. Bongiorno notes

Mr Morrison is more than happy to leave it to the states to apply their health acts to contain the virus — it gives him gold-standard scapegoats and masks his own dereliction of constitutional duty.

Dennis Atkins, writing for InQueensland made similar comments in discussing Queensland Premier Palaszczuk’s management of the issues around the pandemic. As Atkins pointed out,

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s unswerving position on border closures has been based on scientific and health advice.

Atkins was far less complimentary to Morrison when discussing the recent failure of the ‘gold standard’ New South Wales pandemic management process on Sydney’s Northern Beaches.

The primary take out from this cluster (never has this word been more apt) is that Scott Morrison finishes 2020 where he began it — he is a blatherskite of Olympian standard.

Following the science has proven to be a success. Australia’s total case numbers have been routinely surpassed by daily new infections in the USA where former President Trump used a number of ineffectual strategies (including blaming other countries for deliberately introducing the virus and ignoring the science of minimisation of contact with others) to stop those who had the infection but didn’t know it. On 9 December 2020, more people in the USA died from COVID-19 than all who were killed on or after September 11, 2011 as a consequence of four co-ordinated terrorist attacks on US soil.

Environmental scientists tell us that there are significant detrimental impacts to our and our descendants’ lifestyles if the rise in global temperature cannot be kept below 1.5 degrees, yet Morrison and a few other luddites around the world continually claim that the economy wouldn’t survive the changes required. Every state in Australia, as well as 73 nations, 398 cities, 786 businesses and 16 investors have indicated that while a commitment to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 is not easy, they intend to get there. The Coalition Federal Government is not one of them and Morrison is being treated like an environmental vandal that he is.

The Prime Minister will not be among 70 world leaders invited to speak at the UN’s virtual Climate Action Summit this weekend after Australia’s climate ambitions were deemed unacceptably weak to be offered a place.

Two of our three largest coal customers, Japan and South Korea, announced during 2020 they intend to be net-zero emissions countries by 2050 and the other (China) claimed they will be net-zero by 2060, demonstrating a shrinking future demand for coal in any case.

Given the evident lack of planning and concern for the future shown by the Coalition Government, it’s probably just as well that the number of people employed in the mining industry is nowhere near as many as proponents would suggest

According to the government’s own statistical agency, of the 12.9 million Australian workers in 2019 only 52,100 worked in coal mining with a further 28,100 employed in oil and gas extraction. When jobs in refining and energy supply are factored in, a generous estimate of employment in the fossil fuel industry is 133,100 people.

Oh dear. But it gets worse,

So, having established that 99% of Australians don’t work in the fossil fuel industry, let’s deal with the next stone climate denialists like to throw, that coal mining is the “backbone of regional Australia”. The government’s own data shows that it’s entirely untrue.

According to the ABS Census data, Sydney and Melbourne are among our biggest “mining hubs”. The Queensland Resource Council released some rather embarrassing research which showed that far more “inner-city elites” worked in mining industry than in any part of regional Queensland. The same data also showed the inner-city mining workers earned significantly higher pay than the workers based in regional Queensland.

The claims that permanent job losses are inevitable are somewhat overblown anyway, as University of Technology Sydney and Clean Energy Council produced a report in mid-2020 that forecast significant increases in employment in regional Australia to service the roll out of renewable energy production.

Morrison claims as his justification for sitting on his hands and doing nothing to manage emissions is that Australia only produces about 1.3% of the world’s emissions and our actions would be inconsequential. Professor and Nobel Laureate Wangari Maathai is an environmentalist who founded the Green Belt Movement in Kenya. Despite considerable opposition, the Movement has planted 51 million trees in Kenya and trained over 30,000 Kenyan women in forestry, bee keeping and other professions that provide an income while protecting the environment. She compares her work to a hummingbird.

One day a terrible fire broke out in a forest, and a huge woodlands was suddenly engulfed by a raging wild fire. Frightened, all the animals fled their homes and ran out of the forest. As they came to the edge of a stream they stopped to watch the fire, feeling very discouraged and powerless, and grieving the destruction of their homes. Every one of them thought there was nothing they could do about the fire — except for one little hummingbird.

This particular hummingbird swooped into the stream and picked up a few drops of water, then flew into the forest and put them on the fire. Then it went back to the stream and did it again, and it kept going back, again and again and again. All the other animals watched in disbelief; some tried to discourage the hummingbird.

“Don’t bother.”
“It’s too much.”
“You’re too little.”
“Your wings will burn.”
“Your beak is too tiny.”
“It’s only a drop.”
“You can’t put out this fire.”

And as the animals stood around disparaging the little bird’s efforts, the bird noticed how hopeless and forlorn they looked. Then one of the animals shouted out and challenged the hummingbird, asking in a mocking voice, “what do you think you are doing?” And the hummingbird, without wasting time or losing a beat, looked back and said, “I am doing what I can.”

So much for accepting the science. Morrison is happy to ride on the coat tails of the State premiers by claiming to have accepted the health science but he clearly doesn’t accept the climate science. We need less marketing and more hummingbirds.

What do you think?

This article was originally published on The Political Sword

For Facebook users, The Political Sword has a Facebook page:
Putting politicians and commentators to the verbal sword

Like what we do at The AIMN?

You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.

Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!

Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be gratefully accepted.

You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969

Donate Button