"Lee has surrendered and Grant taken Richmond!"
17 year old Andrww Inglis Clark shouting aloud, running to his father's Iron Foundry, Collins St, Hobart, 1865
Latest Papers
The working papers collection comprises historical papers as well as current ideas and works in progress on some of the major issues and topics of our times.
There is a cycle of poverty abroad in our land that has nothing to do with material wealth. It concerns human spirit, capability and capacity, enduring knowledge, independence, self worth and well being. It is better to be materially poor than spiritually impoverished. Aboriginal Australians understand this to their core. That is why, so often, the admonitions of bureaucrats and the lures of wealth, mean nothing to them.
It was a time of wildness in thought and action...
The Bastard’s A Genius: The Robert Clifford Story
by Alastair Mant,
Allen and Unwin, 2010
Today I woke up thinking if only we could trade Joe for Annette Tripodi - the creative director of WomAdelaide. But it would be so unfair on South Australia.
Tony Abbott cannot take a trick. In the 2010 Australian national election the Liberal-National Party effectively won one more seat than the Labor Party. It also slayed Labor on the first preference vote. 44 per cent of the electorate gave their first preference vote to the Coalition compared to only 38 per cent for Labor. It also won a 2.5 per cent swing to it on the two party preferred vote against a swing of about as much against Labor. But despite all this Abbott could not convince the Country Independents, who you would think would naturally side with him, to form government. Gillard and her Labor advisors have totally outclassed Abbott since election day. They have carefully stitched up deal after deal with the Greens, the independent Andrew Wilkie and the Country independents to attain government. To add insult to injury, on the first sitting day of the new parliament, Labor’s Daryl Melham and others secured the numbers for the Liberal Peter Slipper to become Deputy Speaker ahead of Abbott’s preferred candidate, Bruce Scott. What is going on? There are five major reasons why Abbott has lost out so badly to Gillard since election day: old political thinking within the coalition, the national green labor political majority, the ideological consensus in Canberra, Abbott’s personality and the slow turn of the media towards Gillard.
Rob Oakeshot seemed a tad indulgent as he kept the nation waiting to hear which of the major parties he would support with his single house of representatives vote. More people switched on their television sets to watch who would form government for the next three years than at any time I can remember. Many would have found Oakeshot to be a tiresome pain in the arse. Nevertheless get used to independents and minority parties holding the balance of power in Commonwealth and State elections because that, in the long term, and with some possible twists along the way, is where Australia is headed.
Above all the independents will understand that Aboriginal affairs can not be run by super administrators overseeing a series of super departments in Canberra. They will understand there has to be more white and black skin on the table at local levels and that it has to matter to local communities whether public and private investments fail or succeed. They will understand that the Federal government has to stop underwriting Qantas shares by facilitating hundreds of fly in and fly out experts and start to invest in the development of local Aboriginal expertise in remote and regional communities. They will understand that COAG level “closing the gap” performance indicators cannot be an end in themselves. They will also understand that giant corporations in Australia must move beyond their public relations, symbolic campaigns and put some skin on the table in local Aboriginal communities.T
In later life Julie Gillard will think back on 2010 with consternation. Whether she wins or loses the election tomorrow, she will wonder about whether it would have been better to wait for the opportunity to become Leader of the Labor Party and Prime Minister of Australia. Gillard was bred to be ruthless, in deposing Rudd she followed sage Labor advice. But later, and even now, having endured question after question about the fate of Kevin Rudd, her conscience will have been pricked and, most of all, she will wonder whether she was a pawn for others.The
There are no drug dealers at my door step. Doormen, salesmen and officials do not expect bribes. I do not hear my neighbours fighting through thin walls. I have clean water to drink and fresh air to breathe. I do not see people being shot in the streets. The only guns in my neighbourhood are used to cull foxes and other foreign vermin. The military is not overtaking the governments and the courts. Large masses of our population are not illiterate. I have access to the best health care in the world. All citizens are paid a minimum sum if they lose their jobs and do not have access to paid work. I live in an environment in which it is still possible to feel the wild quality of nature. There are traffic jams, ugliness and urban congestion and all the resulting problems, but we are as yet better off than other world city dwellers. I do not suffer from many of the afflictions that beset many parts of the world. Yet I fear for my country.
