So much for excellence.

The report recommends that additional government funding go to community sport (eg our many footy codes) rather than elite Olympic sports programs.

Of course, ‘framing’ comes into play here. The report want s you to believe that archery is an ‘elite’ sport while AFL and rugby league are really just community sports after all.

The report is also premised on a flawed, or exaggerated, notion that there is an opposition between community and elite sports programs.

But it is lucky that it has stirred up a hornet’s nest with its blunt rejection of the Australian Olympic movement’s claims for extra funding.

Without this controversy, the report contains nothing of interest. It is page after page of banalities and findings of the ‘no shit sherlock’ variety. Again and again, the tough issues are ducked.

Take finding 47:

Sports at all levels derive significant revenues from fast food and alcohol advertising.

Limitations on sponsorship of sport will significantly affect the industry.

No kidding, and the recommended response? None.

But there are lots of the usual lame ideas like a government program to encourage old people to volunteer to help sporting organisations. The sort of policy bumpf much loved by 20/20 conferences and the like. Butcher’s paper strategies.

Unsurprisingly, the report makes much of the health, educational, social capital etc benefits of community sport, yet there is no one on the committee with real and substantial expertise in any of these areas.

The composition of the committee is questionable, while four of the five committee members have links to the major football codes, only one has links to a major Olympic sport (hockey).

That’s not independent, that’s stacked.

Still, reading the report you get the sense that it is really just a way to help the hapless Kate Ellis reject the insistent John Coates.

Certainly, Coates got the message.

The battle will be fierce and the second-rate nature of this report (unbalanced committee, flawed arguments, little factual substantiation, unimaginative policy contribution) will not help the Government.

On Wednesday last week, during ceremonies to mark the nation’s apology, Bonney Djuric gave Prime Minister Rudd a letter seeking his support for a living memorial to the Forgotten Australians and the Stolen Generations in Sydney’s western suburbs, on a site called the Parramatta Female Factory Precinct which has long been associated with both indigenous and non-indigenous women and children committed to institutional care.

Bonney Djuric, and other ‘Parramatta Girls’, believe a living memorial could become a symbol of shared learning, giving voice to the voiceless and offer an economically-viable, culturally-rich environment for future Australians which would be of international standing.

And it would help the healing process for a lot of people.

Something like 500,000 Australians experienced care in an institution or some other form of out-of-home care during the last century. Many of these people have lived for decades with a legacy of depression, low self-esteem, phobias and nightmares which has in turn often led to alcoholism, drug addiction and prostitution. A large proportion of our prison population are drawn from the ranks of the ‘Forgotten Australians’.

In 2004, the Commonwealth Senate Community Affairs References Committee reported on the abuse of children in institutional care (Forgotten Australians: A report on Australians who experienced institutional or out-of-home care as children).

The Committee received submissions from hundreds of survivors. These detailed accounts of physical abuse and neglect, emotional abuse and neglect, sexual abuse, broad dehumanisation and cruelty by people charged with their care.

The Committee members and staff involved in the inquiry found that, ‘The scale and magnitude of the events described in evidence was overwhelming’. Indeed, two Senators broke down when speaking at the release of the report.

It is important not to condemn everyone who worked in these institutions, but it is equally as important to reveal the truth and condemn those who were responsible for perpetrating these acts, and those responsible for enabling the perpetrators to do so.

Parramatta Girls Home (PGH) operated from 1887 until 1986. During the course of that century, it was the destination for thousands of girls aged between 11 and 18 who were considered ‘at risk’.

The institution’s population represented girls from all social, ethnic and economic backgrounds including significant numbers of the Stolen Generations and many who had experienced a succession of institutions and foster care placements throughout their childhood.

PGH gained some public attention last year when it was the subject of a Belvoir Street production, Parramatta Girls starring Leah Purcell.

Bonney Djuric, who spent eight months in PGH in 1970, was an adviser on the play’s production. Written by Alana Valentine, the play pays tribute to the courage, hardship and inequality that the Parramatta girls experienced.

Australia’s convict legacy helped to shape its welfare system. In particular, those decades of transportation shaped ideas and beliefs about females who could be charged and committed to institutions for being ‘Exposed to Moral Danger’; a charge which did not apply to males. Less than two per cent of the inmates at Parramatta had been charged with a criminal offence.

The convict heritage was also pervasive in operating procedures and practices. The routines, procedures and institutional language which continued unchanged throughout the years at PGH had their origins in Parramatta’s convict beginnings.

The institution was not only associated with Australia’s colonial past in its underpinning ideas and operating procedures, but also in its physical location next to the former convict asylum known as the Parramatta Female Factory which was once the destination of all unassigned female convicts to the colony of New South Wales.

Arguably, the Parramatta site is as important in Australian history as Port Arthur and the Hyde Park Barracks. It was first explored by Captain Arthur Phillip in 1788 and shortly afterwards established as a gaol town and farm, with the first Female Factory operating by 1804 and later replaced with a grander building commissioned by Governor Macquarie and designed by Francis Greenway in 1821.

Speaking of the Forgotten Australians, the Senate Committee found that there had been wide-scale unsafe, improper and unlawful care of children, a failure of duty of care and serious and repeated breaches of statutory obligations.

The Committee recommended that the governments, churches and care providers should express sorrow and apologise for the physical, psychological and social harm caused by their neglect and worse.

Today, nearly 40 years after her own stay at Parramatta, Bonney says: ‘It is an eerie place. It could be beautiful with its old buildings and river views, but there is sense there of ghosts wanting to speak out, a sense of unspoken pain and of suffering, and the need for understanding and change.’

Bonney Djuric, and her fellow members of Parramatta Female Factory Precinct Association, want to save the area from further deterioration, while stimulating debate and raising the level of public and government awareness of the need to recognise, promote and value women’s contributions and heritage.

They propose the implementation of a dual purpose redevelopment of the site as a National Women’s Heritage Centre and the National Centre for Forgotten Australians.

They want to promote an interactive approach to historical and cultural preservation and they seek to create accessible public spaces that provide opportunities for participation in the arts whilst maintaining the historical integrity of the area.

They want the site to be a living memorial. A recognition of the wrongs of the past, but also an expression of hope for a better future for our nation and for the children who deserve better from a society as rich and sophisticated as Australia is today.

In her letter to Prime Minister Rudd, Bonney wrote that the memorial her group envisages has ‘the potential to become a world-class, leading-edge demonstration of what happens when people work together, combining art, history, technology and tourism into a site of economic opportunity, national significance and international recognition.’

Let’s hope that last week’s momentous events are not allowed to pass us behind, dimmed by the onrush of events and concerns. The events in Canberra should make us all feel a little more proud of being Australian and Bonney’s living memorial at Parramatta would be another fitting way to mark this remarkable time of forgiveness and reconciliation.

The author, a communications strategy consultant, has been advising Bonney Djuric.

The Australian’s Michael Stutchbury says this will require ‘tough-love’ policies.

Usually, this is code for giving carrots to the rich and sticks to the poor. Tough for the bottom of society, great for the top,

In economics, inequality rocks. Right?

Well, actually no.

Inequality peaked in the US just before the great depression, and it only returned to those levels just before the GFC (see Palma, Cambridge Journal of Economics).

That’s not news. Keynes pointed out that inequality made the economy more unstable.

In the period before the GFC, growing inequality encouraged people to go into debt to ‘keep up’, contributing to excessive consumer debt and a housing bubble.

This week nobel laureate and NYT columnist Paul Krugman has pointed out that the economy grew faster, and media family incomes much faster, before modern finance, and the whole neoliberal experiment, when incomes were less unequal:

Take the United States, which wasn’t damaged in the war. Take per capita real GDP. Give hostages by taking data from 1950 to 1980, which means including the 1980 recession, but stopping at 2007, so that the current slump isn’t included. Then here’s what you get:

Growth in per capita real GDP from 1950 to 1980: 2.2 percent per year

Growth in per capita real GDP from 1980 to 2007: 2.0 percent per year

Oh, and if we look at real median family income instead, we get:

Growth from 1950 to 1980: 2.3 percent per year

Growth from 1980 to 2007: 0.7 percent per year

Sorry: there’s no measure I can think of by which the U.S. economy has done better since 1980 than it did over an equivalent time span before 1980. It may be something you’ve heard, it may be something you’d like to believe, but it just didn’t happen.

We also know that more equality is better for everyone in society, with the possible exception of the super-rich, because of a recent book that brought together all the evidence, “The Spirit Level: why more equal societies always do better”. A key argument is that:

While it is often assumed that social problems bear little relationship to average incomes, the evidence suggests that income differentials within populations matter a great deal, and this is as true of American states as it is of countries around the world.

In the most unequal countries and states, there is more gender inequality, too, and these places are less generous. A higher proportion of people suffer from mental illness, and more use drugs.

Less egalitarian countries have six times as much obesity. Educational attainment is poorer, with higher dropout rates, shorter periods of paid maternity leave and less early childhood education. Teenage birth rates are higher, and it is young men from disadvantaged neighbourhoods who are most likely to be the victims and perpetrators of violence.

In more unequal countries, children experience more bullying, fights and conflict, and rates of imprisonment are five times higher. Although it is possible that heath and social problems cause bigger income differentials, inequalities are the common denominator.

The same is true for economic growth. If we want growth we have to ensure that the benefits (and the tough-love stuff) are seen to be borne more equally than in recent decades.

Unfortunately, few Australian policy makers and commentators seem willing to recognise the need for more, not less, equality.

]]> http://blogs.crikey.com.au/trevorcook/2009/11/10/more-not-less-equality-needed-for-economic-growth/feed/ 5 http://blogs.crikey.com.au/trevorcook/2009/11/09/can-rudd-save-his-ets-or-will-it-destroy-him/ http://blogs.crikey.com.au/trevorcook/2009/11/09/can-rudd-save-his-ets-or-will-it-destroy-him/#comments Sun, 08 Nov 2009 22:31:50 +0000 Trevor Cook http://blogs.crikey.com.au/trevorcook/?p=6132 Rudd is a control freak.

His government is run along command and control lines (read Cameron Stewart’s interesting piece in last Saturday’s Australian magazine).

His media strategy is a campaign strategy.

Win the day, stay in front.  Make your opponent the issue. Control the message. Make no mistakes.

This is the goldfish in a bowl approach. Every day is new day, every week is anew week.

It works for politics, it’s hopeless for government.

Government is about implementation, not just rhetoric and across-the-despatch box abuse.

The ETS (emissions trading scheme) is the focal point of Rudd’s first term as prime minister.

It’s the self-designated ‘big test’ for the Rudd Government.

It’s a sleeper, potentially much bigger than the current fuss over asylum seekers.

It is, according to government rhetoric, the biggest single economic reform ever.

Bigger than the GST.

Very few people know how it will work and if it will achieve anything.

It sounds like something straight out of the Enron playbook.

A new round of financial trickery much like the stuff that just brought the world economy close to the precipice.

Environmentalists think it is a cop out. Too many compromises with too many big polluters.

The right, Alan Jones and the rest, are screaming about ‘world government’ and ‘loss of sovereignty’.

Increasing numbers of voters are buying the Opposition line that it is just a tax and part of Rudd’s global ambitions.

Cynics are asking if Macquarie Bank (and all the other CBD law and advisory firm spivs)  think it’s a great idea why shouldn’t we be suspicious.

In the face of all this Rudd has left a vacuum.

A vacuum he tried to fill last week with 14 pointless media interviews and a bizarre rant at the Lowy Institute.

The rant has only served to convince his opponents that they are getting under his skin, and that he is according to Jones: ‘rattled’.

What is needed is a real education program, some hard facts that might help win the debate and reassure the voters.

The Rudd Government seems strangely unwilling to do the hard work of a retail communications campaign.

Two years down the track and its media and broader political strategies seem stuck in the realms of the 33 day campaign when only the the headline matters.

Time is slipping away, if Rudd et al don’t win the implementation debate this whole thing is going to blow.

And what happens if Rudd gets his ETS through the Senate and the Copenhagen conference fails to make any progress?

Doesn’t bear thinking about. But I hope Rudd’s minders have a plan B.

Scott may not ‘attend’ any particular church but he is on the Board of Management and Honorary Treasurer of Wesley Mission. His photo is in the foyer in PItt Street.

According to its website:

Wesley is a growing Christian Church and a Parish Mission of the Uniting Church in Australia, serving the community wherever the need exists.

According to Wesley, Scott is playing a critical role in shaping the organisation’s future. Wesley’s CEO noted in his annual review:

I was delighted to welcome Mark Scott, Managing Director of the ABC. Mark Scott and David Greatorex work closely with me in setting the course for the future.

There seems to be no particular reason why Scott, or the SMH, would overlook this pretty significant involvement in a religious organisation.

Given that the Wesley Mission turns over a $100 million a year, Scott no doubt takes more than a passing or casual interest in its affairs.

Perhaps, Scott considers his involvement a matter of business or philanthropy rather than personal religious faith.

Salt knows the value of a bright new social trend, be it tree changing, sea changing or now Nettels.

Yes, folks, Salt has interrogated the data (generously provided by taxpayers) and discovered (drumroll please) that many people are time poor.

Of course, as startling as this insight into our society might be, its not going to get more than a cursory media treatment without something to ’sex it up a bit’.

And that something is an acronym which is also a word. Very cute, very media-friendly.

He probably spent hours or days on it, perhaps he worked with a creative consultant, perhaps it came to him in a shower moment.

All this is great for Salt and great for his business.

And it’s another example of the marvelous value-add of PR.

The proposal itself is quite silly. The NSW Government proposes a ’single mandate’, which is just another description for a joint commonwealth-state effort. There is no rationale for a joint effort other than it keeps the NSW Government in the game, at a time when 78 per cent of voters want it out of the way. The voters recognise that the NSW Government is the problem not the solution (to paraphrase Ronald Reagan). A joint effort would ensure more bureaucracy, more red tape, more blame shifting – all the stuff that has helped to cripple the system so far.

What’s worse is that the ’single mandate’ idea doesn’t solve the crisis, it just ducks it (as most NSW Government ’solutions’ do). Beyond getting the NSW Government, and its horrible management, out of the way, the problem requires a lot more funding. That substantial extra funding has to come from patients, taxpayers and the privately insured in some mix or other. That’s the problem the Federal and state governments ought get together on. Pretending otherwise, pretending that it can all be resolved by a change of administrative arrangements, is simply dishonest.

The researchers noted that even “in instances of smoking being reflected in a negative way, particularly among younger characters, could have an impact on prompting children to smoke cigarettes.”

If anyone really believed this then surely we would immediately cancel all those anti-smoking ads?

The research found that during 400 episodes of the Simpsons there were 795 instances of smoking:

• Smoking was shown in a positive way in two per cent of the cases.
• In 35 per cent of the cases, smoking was depicted in a negative light.
• 63 per cent of smoking scenes were considered neutral.

So, the Simpsons is overwhemingly anti-smoking.  A big D’oh to the researchers.

Men are capable of reasoning and judgement, and indeed are expected to exercise it at all times in our society.  We’re not primal, ungovernable, raging beasts.  Nobody ever says “you can’t expect men to drive competently when they’re so aggressive”; “you can’t expect men not to swear at police officers when drunk”; “you can’t expect men to not rob convenience stores when they don’t have any money”; “you can’t expect men not to engage in unwanted homosexual sexual advances when drunk”, etc. ad nauseam.  It’s so obviously selective and self-serving to say this and ignore the fact that we as a society do sanction men for other forms of inappropriate behaviour, even when they’re young, even when they’re drunk, even when they’re “hot-blooded” etc. etc.  Men are perfectly capable of adhering to social expectations, especiallywhen, for example, they have the incentive of being feted as model “gentleman” rugby league players.  The problem is not some issue inherent to the biology or the psychology of the individual male.