AID, TRADE AND DIPLOMACY: THE RE-EMERGENCE OF IDEOLOGY IN AUSTRALIA’S OFFICIAL DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE.

Posted on by

Australia’s foreign aid and the development of a regional labour market

In July 2014 Foreign Minister Julie Bishop announced Australia’s new overseas aid framework, much of it foreshadowed in the 2014-2015 budget and the Coalition’s policy at the 2013 Election. Key features include a regional focus in overseas development assistance, the re-emphasis of the Australian national interest, leveraging ODA in extending Australia’s influence, and the elevation of private sector development to the equivalent of human development. An environment conducive to regional economic growth is identified as the key to poverty reduction. All new aid investments must consider private sector growth. Empowerment of women and girls is among the government’s six ODA priorities. Aid programs need to conform to new criteria and be assessed against new performance benchmarks, and aid will not be reinvested in non-performing programs. There’s also the concept of ‘non-conforming recipient states’ which provides a basis for conditionality.

Focusing on an early development program undertaken within this rubric and comparing it with past programs, this essay analyses the Abbott Government’s approach to ODA, identifies potential benefits, potential shortcomings and pitfalls, and attempts to discern to what extent it truly represents a ‘new aid paradigm’.

AusAID was merged within DFAT, reflecting a stated conflation of aid, trade and diplomacy. Within the government’s new rubric of ‘economic diplomacy’ aid is un-self-consciously recast as a tool in the diplomatic arsenal.  This approach is evident in the increase in aid to Cambodia as part of an agreement on refugee resettlement, an even larger total increase in assistance to Manus Island at the same time as a decrease to PNG overall (ACFID, 2015), and may be seen as an element in the 39.5% decrease in aid to Indonesia (ACFID, 2015) in the wake of the Australian phone tapping scandal and immediately following the diplomatic furore over the execution of convicted drug traffickers Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan.

The coalition’s platform at the 2013 election included a commitment to increasing the foreign aid program to 0.5% of gross national income (GNI) and thereafter align the growth of ODA to increases in the consumer price index (Wade, 2013). In its 2015-2016 budget the coalition government reduced foreign aid to 0.22% of GNI.

 “we will pursue Australia’s national interest in a clear-eyed way that recognises the changing economic realities in our region, and seeks to derive the greatest return possible from Australia’s aid investment” – Julie Bishop[1]

Aid is an investment for which we demand the greatest possible return. It is an essentially economic endeavour and its purpose is to serve the Australian national interest. Couched in this language the current government’s philosophical approach to aid appears a continuation of the neoliberal development project of the past few decades, only that it drops the pretence of being foremost about poverty reduction in recipient communities. Economic diplomacy elicits not only the political utility demonstrated by the Cambodian, Manus Island and Indonesian examples, but aid for the purposes of establishing trading relationships, specifically with Southeast Asian and Pacific Island states.

Little empirical evidence is available yet of the application of the new economic diplomacy paradigm in the aid sphere. DFAT’s Skills for Economic Growth (Solomon Islands) is an aid program currently moving between design and implementation phases.  Its focus is post-school technical and vocational education and training (TVET). Its objectives are to provide ‘labour market relevant’ education and training, equitably to male and female, rural and urban, poor and disabled; to develop an integrated network of quality assured post-school institutions across the Solomon Islands, improving career options; and to leave the Solomon Islands with an economically sustainable post-school education system.  Though the genesis of this program was a 2012 concept note, the Abbott government adopted it and produced a design document reflecting ‘contextual changes’ (DFAT, 2014). The Abbott Government’s retention of the previous government’s goals and objectives for the program indicates greater continuity in Australian ODA than Minister Bishop’s rhetoric suggests. It is an early exercise of the government’s Pacific Education and Skills Development Agenda and Delivery Strategy (PESDA).

Contextual changes include the establishment of the Solomon Islands National University (SINU) in 2012, development of a domestic education plan and legislative framework, and the conclusion of an EU funded TVET program. This last change occurs at the same time as Australia’s ODA pivots to the Indo-Pacific and may be an early indication of a global trend toward greater regionalisation of development assistance (which deserves exploring in another research exercise).

According to the DFAT design document, the program aligns with the Solomon Island Government’s Budget Strategy and Outlook Paper (2014) which cites the needs of the TVET sector, a commitment to project investment in agriculture, forestry, tourism, commerce and industry, fisheries, lands, mines and energy, finance and banking, and a transport plan flagging improvements in roads, wharves and airports (DFAT, 2014, p.3). These do coincide with ODA priorities outlined by the Abbott Government. The program’s objective of leaving Solomon Islanders with ‘internationally recognised’ qualifications also coincides with the SIG goals of defining skills in demand domestically and internationally and developing a workforce with skills to take advantage of international labour opportunities (DFAT, 2014, p. 3). This infers an approach that not only envisages the development of a labour force to meet Solomon Islands demands but also Australia’s. At the same time the SIG acknowledges contraction of domestic agriculture, forestry and mining sectors, but expects growth in the construction, manufacturing and service sectors, including telecommunications. A thorough exploration of the rationale is not possible in this essay but it indicates the development of a ‘regional’ labour market that would enable for example provision of Australian seasonal agricultural labour (already), the establishment of Solomon Islands call centres servicing Australian businesses in the way India and the Philippines have in the past decade, and fly-in-fly-out miners to Australian enterprises in both the region (such as nearby Bougainville) and mainland Australia. Such possibilities at least in part inform the program design’s conception of private sector partnerships.

This is consistent with the existing neoliberal development approach that for example in the NAFTA context sees manufacturing for the US market occurring in Mexico, and the informal provision of US domestic farm labour. At the 2009 census 45% of the Solomon Islands adult population were in the 15-29 age group, just over 20% of the labour force were in the formal economy, 37.4% were in the informal economy, and the largest proportion (41.7%) were in the subsistence economy (DFAT, 2014). Australia’s 2015 Intergenerational Report projects that by mid-century the number of Australians aged 15-64 per person aged 65 and over will reach 2.7 people, down from 4.5 currently and 7.3 in 1975 (Australian Government Treasury, 2015). Constructing a labour force throughout the nearby Pacific could be in Australia’s national interest. It also coincides with Foreign Minister Bishop’s acknowledgement of remittances as a major source of capital flow to developing countries. If these factors are part of the rationale behind Australia’s aid policy then it probably would represent something of a paradigm shift.

Patrick Kilby (2008) explains the positive impact short term labour migration and associated remittances have on poverty reduction, status of women and employment in the migrant’s country of origin. Kilby observed in 2008 that despite the importance of remittances in the Asia-Pacific region, Australian foreign aid policy remained unmindful of labour migration – if reference was made it was in relation to people trafficking. This appears to have changed. Kilby explains however that unregulated labour migration (such as in the North American example) suits the neoliberal development paradigm, while at the same time minimising remittance generating income and associated development benefits in the home country. Therefore foreign aid policy should address labour migration, regulate it, and create an economic environment that maximises remittances (Kilby, 2008).

The Skills for Economic Growth (Solomon Islands) program has a ten year investment strategy but identifies three short term key result areas (KRAs) centred on the SINU, provincial training, and national system development. Presumably these would in part inform the Australian Government’s performance assessments in the context of a new emphasis on accountability and promise to drop non-performing programs (DFAT, 2015). Controls are necessary, but have the potential for inflexibility and paternalism. The threat of withdrawal of funding itself is a source of wasted, inefficient investment when programs are not seen through to sustainability.

The program design documents acknowledge the low participation and completion rates of women in non-traditional technical education. To address this they will design a specific communication program for women and girls, develop gender neutral courseware and promotional material, provide incentives for training providers, award equal number of scholarships to women and men, and encourage providers to offer study and welfare support.

The program design documents provide commentary about SIG legislation. Of particular relevance to this program the Australian Government suggests changes to the proposed Qualifications Act and to the Education Act, but goes further to describe the Solomon Islands Labour Act and Electricity Act as “out of date” (DFAT, 2014, p. 7). This commentary may stem from a history of involvement in the previous decade when Australia’s ODA, both in general and specifically to the Solomon Islands, had a greater focus on governance (Luke, 2006). The critique of adjunct legislation is consistent with the Abbott Government’s aim of increasing Australia’s influence through ‘economic diplomacy’. Placing it within the design of a development aid program is a case of exercising influence. The related Investment Design: Solomon Islands Education Sector Program 2 document goes further, spelling out the involvement of Australian funded TA in SIG policy development (DFAT, 2014, 2).

Shahar Hameiri (2015) suggests Pacific Island states are embracing Chinese development aid and foreign direct investment (FDI) as a means of securing their own policy objectives and limiting Australian interference in domestic governance processes. In 1997, then new Foreign Minister Alexander Downer released a review of the Australian Aid program entitled “One clear objective: Poverty alleviation through sustainable development”. By 2005 an OECD review indicated Australia’s aid program was failing the global South, its focus shifting from poverty reduction to instead being used as a tool of interventionist foreign policy (O’Connor, Chan, Goodman, 2006). In 2006 Aid/Watch paraphrased the then AusAID Director General, Bruce Davis – ‘the times of just “doing good” with the aid program are now over. Instead the aid program today must focus on ‘building a strategic environment that favours Australia’s interests”’ (cited in O’Connor, Chan, Goodman, 2006). Foreign Minister Julie Bishop’s ‘new aid paradigm’ appears only superficially different from the old one. A point of difference may be the absence of pretence about its major purpose.

The Regional Assistance Mission in Solomon Islands (RAMSI) was an Australian led police and security operation beginning in 2003 in response to civil unrest around issues of customary land ownership and compensation. A year after RAMSI began, DFAT released the report “Solomon Islands, Rebuilding an Island Economy.” According to Aid/Watch the report signalled a shift in RAMSI’s focus from peace-keeping to business promotion. Funded by BHP-Billiton, the report recommended that land holdings in the Solomon Islands be registered, citing communal ownership as a barrier to wealth creation. Commercialisation of land title could enable greater exploitation of Solomon Islands’ mineral resources (O’Connor, Chan, Goodman, 2006).

With the security situation in the Solomon Islands stable the last RAMSI forces were withdrawn in 2013. The Abbott Government’s aid priorities, with an emphasis on private sector investment and economic growth, fit into a narrative which can be traced back through these RAMSI occurrences and the thematically similar Enhanced Cooperation Program in Papua New Guinea. The ‘new aid paradigm’ Skills for Economic Growth (Solomon Islands) program also fits into this narrative as it integrates private sponsors into the picture who will ensure TVET provides Solomon Islanders with the technical skills relevant to labour opportunities resulting from the sponsor’s private enterprise in the region.

 ‘Since 1997 Australian Aid has been explicitly in the service of the “national interest.” The Government’s definition of the national interest is increasingly centred on countering regional “security threats” with the additional focus on supporting Australian commercial interests.”­ – Aid/Watch (O’Connor, Chan, Goodman, 2006)

In the past Australian Aid programming has depended heavily on technical assistance (TA), accounting for 40% of total spending compared to an OECD average of 20%[2]. In 2011 ActionAid ranked Australia’s ODA 14th out of 26 major donors due to this emphasis on non-recipient driven TA which ends in the pockets of Australian contractors (cited in Hamieri, 2015). During RAMSI 75% of the annual budget of $200 million was spent on TA (Hamieri). Rather than providing budget support to the Solomon Island Government (SIG) the Skills for Economic Grown (Solomon Islands) program engages a managing contractor, and at least half the program’s senior resources are specialist contractors reporting to DFAT Honiara (DFAT, 2014). The program’s mode of delivery does not represent a new paradigm with regard to TA. However the program is a component of the broader Solomon Islands Education Sector Program 2 for which delivery is described as “Mixed Modality”. Australia’s comparatively heavy reliance on TA is compatible with longstanding orthodoxy that aid programming should generate income for Australian companies, not incidentally prioritising ‘governance’ over ‘government’, an approach which Aid/Watch describe as ‘boomerang aid’ (O’Connor, Chan, Goodman).

The Skills for Economic Grown (Solomon Islands) is a big business, big picture program and this arguably necessitates a high degree of TA and close DFAT control. It isn’t always the delivery mode for Australian ODA. Australia was a major donor in the two year Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) program ‘Challenging the Frontiers of Poverty Reduction’ (CFPR) beginning in 2002. This highly successful microenterprise program was innovative in that it operated on asset transfer rather than cash funding. In circumstances of deep poverty, cash often necessarily goes into day-to-day survival – short term help rather than sustainable income generation. Give somebody livestock and the outcome is different (Mahmuda et al.). Australia’s involvement was arms-length. It would be interesting to know if customary landholders in Guadalcanal would see more utility in a cow than a technical education and a nearby mine.

Australia’s ODA dedicated to governance (with an emphasis on law and justice) increased from 15% in 2000-2001 to 36% by 2005-2006, while spending on health, education and infrastructure decreased (O’Connor, Chan, Goodman), reflecting the preoccupation with security after 9/11 and the 2002 Bali bombing. By 2012-2013 governance accounted for 18% of ODA and in 2015-2016 it accounts for 10.8%. While this is a marked shift in aid priorities it demonstrates the exceptional circumstances in the years after 9/11 and not the emergence of a new aid paradigm more recently.

The current securitisation of asylum seeker boats is a residual effect of this earlier period. It’s a foreign policy preoccupation which predates and parallels the terrorism threat. Since the Howard Government’s ‘Pacific Solution’, offshore asylum seeker detention and ODA have been explicitly linked. The Nauru example demonstrates the risks of the Australian Government attaching a neoliberal agenda. Howard Government aid conditionality (communicated within MOUs between Australia and Nauru about the management of detention centres) included a study on the privatisation of the telecommunications authority and other state owned enterprises, the reform of power and water services according to the preferred ‘user pays’ option of an Australian TA, public sector reform including reduction in pay and substantial reduction in size of the public service. The result – several state-owned enterprises were privatised, which in a small island state meant the transferral of public monopolies to private monopolies. Government offices are staffed by Australians while privatisation has increased unemployment and resulted in unaffordable and unsustainable services. It has created poverty and Nauru has become aid dependent (MacLellan, 2013).

Australia’s shift in focus to the immediate region is summarised by Tony Abbott as ‘more Jakarta, less Geneva’ (Wade, 2014). In quantitative terms it is expressed in the 2015-2016 budget through a 70% decrease in ODA to Africa, 43% to the Middle-East, a 40% decrease to South and East Asia (excluding Cambodia, Timor-Leste and Nepal) and 10% and 5% in the South Pacific states and Papua New Guinea respectively (Lowy Institute, 2015). This follows a 10% cut in Australia’s overall foreign aid budget in real terms in 2014-2015 (Wade, 2014).

The post-Cold War era saw a growing emphasis on humanitarian intervention, and the consensus around the Millennium Development Goals coincided with a globalisation of aid in which global human rights, poverty reduction and development were seen to contribute to the security and prosperity of all. This was reflected for example in DFAT’s 2003 white paper (Makinda, 2015). In an earlier era ODA and FDI focused on economic and political spheres of influence, such as former colonial possessions. From this perspective Australia’s dramatic cut in ODA to sub-Saharan Africa might be rationalised. In the absence of economic or political imperative, ODA to Africa could only be justified in human development terms, such as tackling poverty, health, education. In this context Australia’s regionalisation of ODA could be representative of a more donor-driven approach. Regionalism is less relevant with a human-centred approach as locus is informed more by greatest need or greatest potential to make a difference.

The Abbott Government’s regional emphasis is an element of its ‘new aid paradigm’. Reduction of ODA to sub-Saharan Africa contrasts with the previous Labor Government’s policy which saw ODA increase in consecutive years to 2013-2014, and the Abbott Government reversed Labor’s decision to join the African Development Bank. Writing after the 23.3% cut in ODA to sub-Saharan Africa in 2014-2015, but before a further 70% cut in 2015-2016, Samuel Makinda (2015) says Australia’s engagement with Africa in recent years was driven by a conception of national interest informed by humanitarianism, support for mining corporations, and the bid for a UN Security Council seat. Makinda cites the 2012 Hollway review – ‘choosing aid activities because of specific national interests is, and should remain, the exception.’ (Hollway et al 2012, cited in Makinda 2015, p. 58). Makinda describes a more sectoral rather than regional approach in which Australia tackled problems where it was best able to make a difference in relation to the Millennium Development Goals. If that were the modus operandi of the previous government then the Abbott Government has moved markedly away from it. Makinda’s reference to the MDGs incidentally highlights the need for a new frame of reference after 2015, a new paradigm.

However Makinda argues that sustaining ODA to Africa remains in Australia’s national interest.  He says “the strongest rationale for Australia’s development assistance to Africa remains the moral humanitarian imperative to reduce global poverty” (Makinda, 2015, p.59). He highlights Australia’s soft-power influence, extended for example through scholarships that brought African students and 90 cents for every scholarship dollar back to Australia. There remains an economic interest – 200 Australian based mining and exploration companies operate in 42 African countries, representing an AU$65 billion investment in the resources sector. Average annual rate of growth in African economies was 5.7% between 2002 and 2012 (Carr 2012, cited in Makinda, p.63). Africa’s growing middle class will see consumer spending reach US$1.4 trillion by 2020 (Mckinsey Global Institute 2010, cited in Makinda, p. 62). Finally, the multilateral imperative – the need for African support in Australia’s bid for a UN Security Council seat – remains. Makinda explains that historically Australia has served on the UN Security Council every 10 years or so, the gap between 1986 and 2013 being the exception. Altogether this highlights that Australia’s prioritisation of ODA to Africa comes at a cost to diplomatic and trade interests. What Africa can’t provide though is a regional labour force.

Though the term ‘user led’ appeared briefly in the Minister’s statement launching the new aid paradigm, the principle of Australian national interest restricts the interests of recipient states in program scope. While infrastructure, agriculture, fisheries and water management are particular development foci, the term ‘sustainability’ is conceived as something pertaining to ‘resources’, and use of the term ‘environment’ appears limited to  “enabling environment for business, investment and innovation”. FDI is an indispensable component of development capital, but emphasis on the private sector, particularly in the context of public sector reform, can be symptomatic of a rigid ideological approach that results in outcomes such as the Nauru experience. The profit motive invariably places short-term pressure on returns from development. Australia’s aid should not be conceived as an instrument to extract surpluses in our favour.

References to Solomon Islands’ Electricity and Labour Acts couched within an aid program delivery design are reminiscent of the Nauruan detention centre MOUs and could signal the type of reform agenda that neoliberal conditionality foisted on developing countries in previous decades. Chinese aid is an alternative, and it’s doubtful the Australian national interest is served by driving Pacific Island neighbours in that direction.

Kilby (2008) explains how Australia came slowly to the neoliberal project. What we may be seeing exercised through foreign aid policy is more than an incremental advancement in that agenda, one that liberalises not only trade and investment, but a regional labour market. The new aid paradigm probably does represent evolution in Australian ODA.

 

 

 

References

ACFID. “Federal Budget Analysis, 2014-2015.” Deakin ACT: Australian Council for International Development, 15 May 2014.

ACFID. “Federal Budget Analysis, 2015-2017.” Deakin ACT: Australian Council for International Development, 14 May 2015.

Australian Government Treasury. “2015 Intergenerational Report.” Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia, 2015. Web, Accessed 1 Jun 2015 at http://www.treasury.gov.au/PublicationsAndMedia/Publications/2015/2015-Intergenerational-Report

Australian Government Department Of Foreign Affairs And Trade. “Education Sector Program – Skills For Economic Growth (Solomon Islands): Investment Design Document”.  Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia, 2014. Accessed 31 May 2015 at http://dfat.gov.au/about-us/grants-tenders-funding/tenders/business-notifications/Pages/education-sector-program-skills-for-economic-growth-solomon-islands-investment-design-document.aspx

Australian Government Department Of Foreign Affairs And Trade. “Investment Design: Solomon Islands Education Sector Program 2”.  Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia, 2014. Accessed 31 May 2015 at http://dfat.gov.au/about-us/grants-tenders-funding/tenders/business-notifications/Documents/solomon-islands-education-sector-program-2-draft-qae.pdf

Australian Government Department Of Foreign Affairs and Trade. “Australia’s new development policy and performance framework: a summary”.  Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia, 2015. Accessed 1 June 2015 at http://dfat.gov.au/about-us/publications/Documents/aid-policy-summary-doc.pdf

Browne, Stephen. Aid & Influence: Do Donors Help or Hinder? London: Earthscan, 2006.

Hameiri, Shahar. “China’s ‘charm offensive’ in the Pacific and Australia’s Regional order.” The Pacific Review, 1 February 2015, p.1-24

Kilby, Patrick. “Migrant Labour, and the neoliberal development paradigm: balancing the contradiction in the Australian Aid program.” Australian Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 62, No. 3, September 2008, pp. 345-356.

Lowy Institute for International Policy. ‘Australian Foreign Aid’.  2015. Accessed 31 May 2015 at http://www.lowyinstitute.org/issues/australian-foreign-aid

Luke, Garth. “Australian Aid: A Mixed Bag.” Conflict, Security and Development: The Reality of Aid, Asia Pacific Edition 2006. Quezon City: IBON, 2006. Pp 73-77.

Maclellan, Nic. “What has Australia done to Nauru?: Politics, privatisation and policing under the ‘Pacific solution’” [online]. Overland, No. 212, Spring 2013: 4-11. Availability: <http://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=201223853;res=IELAPA> ISSN: 0030-7416. [cited 11 Apr 15].

Mahadevan, Renuka and Asafu-Adjaye, John. “Exploiting comparative advantage in agriculture and resources: the way forward for Small Island States.” The Australian journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, 57, pp. 320-343.

Mahmuda, Ismat and  Baskaran, Angathevar and Pancholi, Jatin. “Financing Social Innovation for Poverty Reduction: A Case Study of Microfinancing and Microenterprise Development in Bangladesh.” Science, Technology and Society, 2014, Vol. 19:2. Pp. 249-273.

Makinda, Samuel. “Between Jakarta and Geneva: why Abbott needs to view Africa as a great opportunity.” Australian Journal of International Affairs, 2015, Vol.69( 1), p.53-68

O’Connor, Tim; Chan, Sharni and Godman, Dr James. “Australian Aid: Promoting Insecurity.” Conflict, Security and Development: The Reality of Aid, Asia Pacific Edition 2006. Quezon City: IBON, 2006. Pp 78-92.

Padilla, Arnold and Tomlinson, Brian. “World Aid Trends.” Conflict, Security and Development: The Reality of Aid, Asia Pacific Edition 2006. Quezon City: IBON, 2006. Pp 44-69.

Wade, Geoff. “Issues in Australian Foreign Policy: January to June 2014.” Australian Journal of Politics and History, 2014, Vol.60(4), pp.606-620

 

 

[1] Julie Bishop, “The new aid paradigm”, speech to National Press Club, Canberra, 18 June 2014, cited in Wade, 2014.

[2] Keane, B. (2010) ‘Who profits from our foreign aid?’, Crikey, 12 July, cited in Hamieri (2015).

Intrastate conflict in post-independence South Sudan.

Posted on by

Vast growth in the number of states since World War II has coincided with a greater proportion of conflicts being intrastate in nature. This can partly be attributed to internal power struggles resulting from de-colonisation, domestic manifestations of international polarisation during the Cold War, and later structural change coinciding with the end of the Cold War. Yet three domestic factors commonly provide the preconditions for civil or intrastate wars. Firstly, these conflicts depend on ethnic or identity divisions within a state used to justify hostility and mistrust between groups. Secondly, a real or perceived existential threat that motivates one or more groups within a state to rise against another. Thirdly, the political opportunity offered by a weak state. In addition, a number of factors ensure intrastate wars have a transnational dimension. Identity groups cross state borders, there’s the complicity of nearby hostile governments, active ethnic diaspora, and an international regime that facilitates intervention on humanitarian grounds or in the interest of regional stability. All of these structural elements are evident in the conflict in South Sudan since 15 December, 2013.

In the late colonial era Sudan was a jointly British and Egyptian administered ‘condominium’. Borders between Northern and Southern Sudan cut across tribal lands and sometimes shifted to suit colonial administration. Post-colonial Sudan saw two protracted civil wars in the forty years before the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) of 2005. A succession of oppressive regimes in Khartoum faced uprisings in the west and south of the country – struggles for self-determination by ethnically diverse populations. The politically dominant Arabic northeast of the country, aspiring alternatively to a Socialist, and after the Cold War an Islamist state, reaped the benefits of development, while secularist black-African communities elsewhere in the country, including Sufis, and in Southern Sudan, Christians, were politically and economically repressed. Under the leadership of John Garang, the Sudan People’s Liberation Army and Movement (SPLA and SPLM) fought a civil war against successive regimes in Khartoum from 1983 to 2005 that was not essentially secessionist, but which sought political and economic empowerment for the tribes of Southern Sudan.

This period of conflict produced many of the ethnic atrocities that today contribute to divisive identity myths fanning the civil war in newly independent South Sudan.

Garang didn’t live to see South Sudan’s independence on 9 July 2011 amid optimism and unity across its diverse population. Both Garang and his successor, Salva Kiir, came from Dinka tribes who represent the largest ethnic group in South Sudan. Reconciliation in 2002 between Garang’s SPLM and Nuer leader, Riek Machar, contributed to the achievability of the CPA. Machar had split from the SPLA/M in 1991 and through the 90s undermined the movement with the initially covert support of Omar al-Bashir’s regime in Khartoum. Khartoum has long fuelled division within rebel movements, and is accused of complicity in the conflict in post-independence South Sudan. Machar is implicated in the 1991 Bor massacre, an event which contributes to mistrust between Dinka and Nuer, South Sudan’s second biggest ethnic group. Vice-President since independence, Machar fell out with President Kiir in July 2013. In the ensuing conflict Machar is accused of fanning Nuer mistrust of numerically superior Dinka to exploit division, as he did during the 1990s. War since 2013 has resulted in 500,000 additional refugees and 1.5 million internally displaced people.

At independence in 2011 some matters remained unresolved from the CPA – the demobilisation of former SPLA in South Kordofan and Blue Nile states on the Sudan side of the border, and the self-determination and territorial boundary of the border region of Abyei. Prior to July 2013 most observers saw these as the biggest threats to peace in South Sudan. Al-Bashir’s regime is accused of repression and ethnic cleansing in these three border regions. In Abyei, a permanent Dinka population once coexisted with Mesiria, a nomadic Arabic tribe who occupy the northern part of the region periodically each year. Through most of the colonial era Abyei was administratively within the border of Southern Sudan. Before Sudanese independence in 1956 the border was redrawn, placing Abyei within northern Sudan. In the months leading up to South Sudan’s independence in 2011, ethnic violence culminated in Khartoum’s military occupation of Abyei. The crisis was diffused by the insertion of Ethiopian peacekeepers under a UN and African Union mandate.

In security terms, a weak state is one that doesn’t hold a monopoly on coercive violence. At the time of independence, South Sudan’s security was underwritten by political and economic support from the US and by AU troops, not only Ethiopian peacekeepers in Abyei but also by Ugandan soldiers operating in Western Equatoria along the borders with Central African Republic and Democratic Republic of Congo, where Joseph Kony’s incursions faced no South Sudanese defence. It’s in this context that from his ethnic Nuer base in Unity, Upper Nile and Jonglei states, Riek Machar has been able to mount a violent campaign against Kiir’s government, and indeed in the capital Juba.

The behaviour of colonial powers continues to influence postcolonial intrastate conflict for decades. Regional and global geopolitics affect the relative power of a state and its opponents. However, the recent conflict in South Sudan demonstrates that exploitation of ethnic division and historic grievance, the insecurity of an identity group, and the opportunity posed by a state’s weakness are more important factors leading to intrastate war.

Nan eulogy

Posted on by

We sometimes think we live in a time of immense and rapid change, but often we’re thinking in terms of gizmos, or the variety of stuff we can buy.

Nan was born in the depths of the Great Depression, when unemployment, homelessness and hunger were common. Australia as a nation was less than 30 years old. God Save the King was our national anthem, and our flag would not be the official Australian flag for another twenty-four years. Canberra hadn’t yet been officially named. The last convict transportees had been shipped to Australia less than a lifetime earlier. Cars were only beginning to come into widespread use, horses played a practical part in everyday lives. ANZAC Day marches were a recent idea, and the participants were all First World War veterans, many of them still young men. Even a roof over your head didn’t guarantee you more than a dirt floor. Her own family lived on what they could grow in their garden and the rabbits her father trapped. Australians divided themselves vividly between Catholic and Protestant. In parts of Australia, Aborigines continued lifestyles that had existed since our European ancestors lived in caves.  The bodyline cricket season hadn’t yet been played.

People don’t just live through transition, they’re active participants. They’re responsible for it. It’s people like Nan who brought us from that – to where we are today.

World War II happened during a formative part of Nan’s life, and while it brought austerity to all and terrible sacrifice and loss to many families around Australia, it also brought violence to her own home town. We can’t imagine the terror experienced by a 14 year old girl when more than 1100 escapees were on the loose after the Cowra Breakout. 231 Japanese and 4 Australian soldiers were killed in or around her home town. Real terror of the type we entertain ourselves with in movies, books, TV and computer games nowadays. It was real and she lived it.

The post-war decades saw incredible growth and prosperity for Australia. Modern homes, a car for every family, refrigerators, leisure time, and jobs that could pay for it all – these things only became a reality in Nan’s lifetime. To come from The Depression to that, filled people with optimism. For a long time it was possible to believe the future could only keep getting bigger and brighter, and this no doubt influenced Nan’s outlook. The first decades of her married life were dynamic – moves from Cowra, to Forbes, Dubbo, Cessnock, the Central Coast, and finally to Canberra, the birth of 11 children, and by the late 60s – grandchildren.

The world was changing in big ways. Nan’s daughters were liberated and this meant greater participation in the workforce in the days before the child care system we have today. Nan played a part in raising my sister Lesa, my cousin Dana and I. We were only the first of many of her grandchildren in whose life she played a practical everyday part. It was often only through Nan’s support her daughters were able to participate in work, and that has a lot to do with the prosperity we as descendants and as a society enjoy today. It’s only in recent years people have begun to think about the value of this unpaid domestic work to our economy. But let me tell you – the contribution Nan made was immeasurable.

To my knowledge, apart from one special exception, Nan is survived by all her descendants – children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and now great-great-grandchildren – eighty-five or six of us in all. From where we sit today it’s easy to overlook how extraordinary this is. When Nan was born, and for every generation before her, mortality rates and life expectancy made such an achievement unthinkable. Incredible change and it was achieved by the people of her lifetime. We might picture some character in a lab-coat, fiddling test-tubes to come up with a vaccine for polio, or new antibiotics, and these things did happen in Nan’s lifetime. However, it’s not just improved ideas in medicine, hygiene, nutrition and safety – it’s how we respond to them, and how we put them into practice. How we become the change. Its Nan’s child-rearing that got us here, and by the example she passed on to her children.

Being so numerous, the people of Australia owe us all a tremendous debt for occupying so much of Nan’s time and energy. Imagine if she’d been free for to pursue her other great interests, such as politics? Nobody here could doubt that she’d have forced her way to the front of the pack. It would be totalitarian, and tens of thousands more Australians would have got their back-sides smacked by Nan’s wooden spoon.

If I told you that Mary Anastacia Norton was a timid person, who liked to keep her opinions to herself, you’d say – “This bloke’s turned up at the wrong funeral.”

Here’s the thing – Mothers Have Opinions! It’s practically the job description. From the day we’re born, mothers have an opinion on every aspect of our lives. Sometimes that brings us into conflict with them.  Mothers are our checks and balances. Mothers and their input keep us true, cause us to look at ourselves, and whether we adjust ourselves according to their views, or we use them to reinforce our own divergent ones, it makes us who we are. When we disagree, that is simply independence.

Every time I saw Nan she’d repeat some old anecdotes about me. How many of us had that experience – rolling our eyes and thinking – ‘here we go again.’ Mostly they were benign – “Remember that time you got your head stuck between the railings on my front step? ” “Remember the time you kids were smoking under the house?” Others would cause you to cringe – reminders of your own limitations, and more importantly – that she knew them.  Last time I saw her there were none of this second type, only fond memories. It was a sign. In her last days all those transgressions were forgotten. That’s a message you can all take away from here today – All Is Resolved.

In a long life there are ups and downs. One constant through all Nan’s life was her friendship with Valda Harper. Friends since they were tiny, Valda was Nan’s bridesmaid. Through all the years, Nan cherished the twice-yearly phone calls on each of their birthdays. Thank you, Valda, for a loyal friendship that made her life so much richer.

One of Nan’s most treasured mementos was the medal awarded to her grandfather, Alf Munz, by the people of Murrumbidgerie, present day Wongarbon near Dubbo, in recognition of his service during the Boer War. This was a source of tremendous pride for Nan. The Boer War is linked in time with Australia’s Federation, our first foray onto the world stage as a nation in our own right – and her own grandfather was part of it. Son of German migrants, by the time of World War 1, Alf found himself labelled “Mun the Hun”, Nan used to say. Nan was not immune to the lessons of her forebears.

One of the greatest experiences of Nan’s life was her visit to Ireland, where she travelled to the places where many of her ancestors originated. The absolute thrill that trip gave her, and the joy it brought her to reminisce about it forever after. Special thanks go to my uncle Glenn for making that possible.

A long and eventful life is not without tragedy. The tragic loss of her brother Jimmy in 1971, a young man with a young family, never left her. Nan cared for her own mother, Maggie, through illness during the last years of her life. Nan keenly felt the heart-break and suffering her mother endured. The scars of these two losses were never too far from the surface. Another tragedy of Nan’s life was the loss of her home and business during the recession of the early 90s. It was a terrible injustice and one can only imagine how powerless it left her feeling, as it must have seemed like all those years of growing prosperity suddenly fell away irretrievably. Though in time she recovered from each, experiences like these alter a person, leaving you never quite the same again.

Nan always left an impact so it was true to form of her to ‘check-out’ on Christmas day. She made sure the day of her passing wouldn’t be forgotten. At least she had the courtesy to wait till the end of the day so we all got a chance to enjoy Christmas with our families.

I was very fortunate to see Nan a couple of times during her final days. That first time I saw her in the hospital I was shocked by how frail she looked. I returned the next day and she was much brighter – she’d had a good sleep. Despite her frailty, in her final days she was more positive and she had greater clarity than I had seen in a long time.

We comfort ourselves in the knowledge that Nan’s journey has ended. Her illness in recent years had left her very dependent on others. There are some types of support in your frailty that you simply don’t want to burden others with, and yet it just happens that way, it’s not like we have a choice. Nan was especially thankful to my cousin Chloe for being there. I know that Chloe, for her part, wouldn’t have thought twice about taking care of Nan.  She was part of Nan, and Nan was part of her. Special thanks to Nan’s nurse, Karen, affectionately known as number 12, whose service went beyond the call of duty. Thanks also to Anne-Maree and Lorraine for nursing and for cleaning.

Most of all, our greatest debt of gratitude is to my grandfather, Ron Norton.  Pop, without you, in recent years where would she have been? For the past 65 years for that matter. You have been the dutiful husband. In sickness and in health you were there, and now in your grief you go beyond. We’re here for you.

One of the happiest things I saw in recent times was an incredible love and devotion between Nan and Pop. It was really inspiring to see them so close and loving in her final days, in a way I have never seen before. Very, very touching.

The last time I saw Nan, like always her conversation included bits of news about her children, grandchildren, great grandchildren and great-great grandchildren. She was always aware of every one of us, what was going on in our lives. She felt our losses and took pride in our achievements.  I thought about her own personal losses I mentioned before and how in time she recovered. When I think about her 85 or 86 descendants and look around at many of them today I realise why. You see, you are her greatest achievement. You are her life’s work.

My grandmother, Mary Anastacia Norton, known as "Molly" on the right, with lifelong friend Valda Harper on the left.

My grandmother, Mary Anastacia Norton, known as “Molly” on the right, with lifelong friend Valda Harper on the left.

I remember the quiet

Posted on by

I remember a train to Meiji Jingu
I remember uncertain eyes
I remember a chapter ended,
in the quiet dim of her place in Hakusan

I remember a hero’s mission
I remember his weakness too
I remember a chapter opened,
with bright white at his room in Vaucluse

I remember the author’s depictions
I remember onyx deep nail polish and eyes
I remember the heroine’s Eartha Kitt voice,
timbre thick and warm as a purr

I remember a two-city backdrop
I remember vibrant neon and high-rise skyline
I remember where sleeping sailboats rocked gently
on moonlit harbour waters too

I remember each act in the story
I remember each page that was turned
I remember the plot only deepened
with Hie Jinja’s Shinto rites.

I remember a character’s sacrifice
I remember her alien and displaced
I remember a life newly formed of them
the next story foreshadowed in love

I remember each turn and each dip in this tale
I remember each hope and each loss
I remember, I remember the quiet dim
of Hakusan, where in story they were wrote.

The law can’t get him, but the history books will.

Posted on by

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/09/22/howard-embarrassed-about-joining-2003-iraq-war

Alan Wilkie is far from unique in stating this man should be held criminally culpable. WMDs were never a motivation and the majority of us could see straight through it (polls at the time were saying two thirds of Australians were opposed the war) yet Howard expects us to believe he couldn’t? Hundreds of thousands of terrorised Iraqis were murdered and the US treasury was bankrupted while Halliburton profits and the price of a barrel of oil soared… justified with absurd lies like Colin Powell’s ‘mobile chemical weapons factory’ trucks? Not on your life, not when the history is written. The criminal US Republican leadership captured Howard with a third carrot – racial exceptionalism. Greed and a naïve sense of superiority have eternally been the root cause of war. The war these guys foolishly started is still brewing, will last many decades and might inevitably reach our shores. Justice virtually demands it, because what these guys prove is there is no justice in the rule of international law. If there were any justice, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Blair, and this man would be dragged before Nuremberg style trials. The best we can hope for though is to ensure these men are afforded their proper place in history. In John Howard’s dwindling years he sees the history books written, and invariably they do in fact leave us with a picture of a man who conspired to mass murder.

A personal transition

Posted on by

Today’s my last day after 18 years in the service of Her Majesty and the State of New South Wales. I’m very proud to have been part of an organisation responsible for the protection, preservation and promotion of our natural environment and the historic and cultural heritage of NSW including our Aboriginal heritage, and which contributes greatly to the science of our living world. I started with the National Parks & Wildlife Service on a Monday in early December 2000 after moving into a new home the previous Friday and welcoming my wife Chizuru and baby Bryce on the Saturday from Japan. NPWS merged with several agencies in 2003 to form the then Department of Environment and Conservation and I worked in that environment portfolio through it’s various iterations, currently operating under the banner of the Office of Environment and Heritage.

In August 1996 I joined the Legal Aid Commission of NSW, initially in the Mental Health Advocacy Service, a team protecting the legal rights and assuring the State’s responsibilities toward probably our most vulnerable citizens. At the same office we also ran the Child Support Service, integral to a legal system which endeavored to ensure that single parents aren’t left with the sole financial burden of raising children, simply that both parents take responsibility. I worked for some time in Civil Law Referrals who, among other things, at the time ensured that victims of crime could be compensated even if they weren’t wealthy enough to afford a lawyer. For a short period in 1995 I’d also worked for the NSW Legislative Assembly in the office of Hon. Grant McBride MLA who would go on to become a Minister in the Carr Government.

Eighteen years is a big chunk of anyone’s life but I have no regrets about leaving it behind. It’s time to grow in another direction.

 

Hanging Rock within the World Heritage listed Blue Mountains National Park. For five years this was part of my territory as a Metropolitan IT Officer within the Environment and Heritage portfolio.

Hanging Rock within the World Heritage listed Blue Mountains National Park. For five years this was part of my territory as a Metropolitan IT Officer within the Environment and Heritage portfolio.

I am your name is

Posted on by

A poem written for the Equatorian Community Welfare Association, but dedicated to all the people of South Sudan.

 

I am your name is  

by Mark

 

I am Nation

World’s youngest nation

Take my hand, guide my heart

Set me safely on my path

 

To me you are everything

Only with you do I begin

Turn fonduk and nourish

Safe rokuba shelter me your wish

 

I cry when you scold

Lose my fear when you hold

Grow strong I will

And all your dreams for me fulfil

 

You are my mystery

Today you’re so near to me

We are one it does seem

Sad tomorrow it was just a dream

 

I love you, though of you I’m frighted

My faith we will be reunited

Too briefly our fingers entwined

I lost you before you were mine

 

I am Nation

World’s youngest nation

Not my sister, my daughter, my aunt, wife or niece

You are my mother, your name is Peace.

Fallujah Chapter 8

Posted on by

The taxi turned into Allée des Deux Trianons, Versailles, at precisely 7:30, fitting into a long line of cars offloading passengers in turn at the Grand Trianon. The line of cars moved ahead slowly as more than one limousine lingered at the disembarkation point for its celebrity occupants to make an ‘entry’ before the Grand Trianon’s peristyle.

“Come on, let’s walk,” said Felicity as their taxi inched along. “We can take a shortcut through Marie Antoinette’s Estate.”

“Is that allowed?” said Alan, frowning unsure.

“Excellente idée” said Gerome, already handing a large note to the taxi driver.

They climbed out of the taxi, and when it u-turned conspicuously out of the queue Felicity had already thrown her Christian Louboutins over and was now climbing the fence. “We can cut through the gardens,” she said.

“Here, give me a boost,” said Gerome to a bewildered Alan, who nonetheless leaned down and linked his hands to offer his boss a lift.

Now that the precedent was set, after a moment’s thought occupants of several other vehicles began disembarking right there on the long gravel drive amid playful conversation and laughter. A few followed Felicity’s lead and climbed over the fence to enjoy an early evening walk through the garden, but most preferred to walk along the tree-lined drive up to the Grand Trianon.

Two thirds of a moon cast just enough light to navigate the garden path. They crossed a small bridge and passed a domed marble structure that Alan thought captured the moonlight magically.

“Le Temple de l’Amour,” Gerome commented.

They stopped briefly and looked up at it before they continued on. The path wound alongside what appeared a narrow pond of water-lilies, eventually coming upon a more grand structure, lit up to magnificent effect.

“Le Petit Trianon,” said Gerome.

“Built for Madame de Pompadour,” explained Felicity, “…Louis XV’s favourite squeeze.”

The gardens from here were more formal and lit all the way up to the Grand Trianon. Felicity and her two gentlemen led a few small groups along a broad gravel avenue, past flowerbeds and wide ornamental pools, and past the ‘French’ Pavilion. Mirthful conversation mingled across groups of strangers, adding a sense of festival to the whole event.

They reached the Grand Trianon with at least a dozen cars still waiting to disgorge their dazzling occupants.

Walking straight past the peristyle across which all the fabulous attendees were making their splendid entrances, they made their way instead directly to the Garden Room where a jazz quartet entertained guests spilling out down the steps and into the garden where trays of champagne and hors d’oeuvre were circulating.

“Gerome you sly bastard,” somebody called out. Gerome turned to greet the man with an enormous smile and amid a lot of back-slapping, hand-shaking and “Ça va?” and “Ça va! Ça va bien!”, Gerome introduced Felicity and Alan to Frederic Oudea, Deputy Chief Financial Officer at Société Générale. The schmoozing was underway in earnest. In fact Gerome seemed to know half the well-heeled charismatics at the party, industrialists and politicians, movie stars and recording industry execs. The representatives of various NGOs and charities circulated, like classy whores in a first class brothel or hyenas round a slaughtering pen Alan couldn’t make up his mind.

Doctor Beauvoir seemed to take to it naturally, slipping easily into jovial banter with complete strangers, many of them well-known identities and some of them simply oozing status and wealth. Noticing that Alan was less than comfortable in this environment she drew him into conversation more than once, and proved so adept at this that Alan could almost have believed himself a natural raconteur.

Pretty soon guests were asked to make their way into the Cotelle Gallery, where almost its entire fifty metre length was consumed by a row of four great dining tables, each resplendent in full formal setting beneath the famous Montcenis chandeliers. A small platform with a rostrum had been placed to one side midway along the Gallery, just high enough so that all guests could see the speaker. Places were labelled and Gerome, Felicity and Alan found themselves seated directly to the right of the rostrum amid Liliane Bettencourt with her chaperon, eighteen year old grandson Jean-Victor Bettencourt-Meyers, and the year’s pop princess, Jenifer Bartoli.

While other guests began taking their seats Madame Bettencourt, resplendent in majestic Givenchi dress and Cartier jewellery, remained standing, grandson diligently at her elbow, in steady conversation with Gerome and two other dignitaries.

“André sends his regards, Gérome. He always said how thankful he was to have you and Lionel over at Parnibas. He appreciated your expert service and your excellent advice.”

“I‘m sure Gérome feels very fortunate for the association with Monsieur Bettencourt and L’Oreal too, Liliane. The bankers do alright for themselves with our money, and you certainly have plenty of it for them to do alright with,” said Jeaneé Plantin, UNESCO Assistant Director-General and Mistress of Ceremonies for this evening’s event, raising a few chuckles from everyone except Gerome.

“Ouch, that stings,” said Gerome. “See the level of respect I get Berglind?” he implored OECD Deputy Secretary-General, Berglind Ásgeirsdóttir. “I don’t recall UNESCO ever complaining about the bank’s support, or L’Oreal’s for that matter,” he added with a nod at Madame Bettencourt.

“I feel it too, Gérome,” said Ásgeirsdóttir smirking. “Sometimes it seems keeping the world’s finances in order is a thankless task. We can at least take consolation in the knowledge it’s a Buddhist virtue, personal sacrifice for the benefit of others without seeking recognition.”

“The fastest way to universal transcendental enlightenment is more bankers in the world, I always say, self-sacrificing breed that they are,” quipped Plantin.

“Twenty years running this NGO and you still think of me as nothing other than a banker Jeaneé.”

“Oh ‘Romie, don’t be so sensitive. You know I’m only teasing, mon cherie.”

“Try as we might, we can never outrun our past. I should know, I have more past than just about anyone,” said Madame Bettencourt. Gerome, Plantin and Ásgeirsdóttir were lost for words. “It would be nice if people would let us move on. Instead, as the years go by all we seem to do is accumulate more of a past,” she added, pensively. “How is Lionél nowadays?”

Gerome looked at Liliane Bettencourt a moment bewildered. “Lionél Rochefort passed away, sadly. He was a great man, a great boss.”

“Mon dieu, such terrible news. How did it happen? When?”

“Let me see… September ’93 it was. Almost eleven years ago now,” explained Gerome sombrely.

When entrees arrived it was Plantin’s cue to take the rostrum, and Ásgeirsdóttir was able to gently suggest they take their seats.

Though humanitarian aid was not core business for UNESCO, Gerome owed his prominent position this evening to the intervention of Liliane Bettencourt, who was attending both as a major sponsor and as representative of the Alliance Internationale des Femmes. On accepting UNESCO’s invitation to this gala event, eighty-one year old Bettencourt requested the guest list so she could indicate her preferred seating arrangements. ‘Preferred’ actually meant who she would have at her table. She was both relieved and heartened to find Gerome’s name on the guest list, somebody with whom she could be comfortable, whose past association with her ailing husband provided warm reminiscences of happier times, and with whom she’d shared many an event like this one in days past.

Pop star Jenifer found herself within the most élite circle of this exclusive event on account of young Jean-Victor Bettencourt-Meyers being a fan. Reviewing the guest list with her personal assistant, coming across the name ‘Jenifer’, Madame Bettencourt had remarked “Jenifer who?” Her PA tried very hard to explain why it was just ‘Jenifer’ to no avail. “Who on earth has the name ‘just Jenifer’?” When her PA remarked that her grandson Jean-Victor was listening to Jenifer all the time, Liliane hatched the plan to have him accompany her and surprise him by having the beautiful young songstress seated right beside him. It had to be said, among all the dazzling beauties and starlets circulating so far this evening, the lad’s eyes appeared compulsively drawn to the singer, who in a vintage Bulgari dress and with Prada accessories cut an improbably unique and striking figure upon this sea of glamour. As he and his grandmother took their seats his heart indeed skipped a few beats as it became clear he was to be seated beside Jenifer, who’d been making introductions with Alan and Felicity.

“Madame Bettencourt, let me introduce Mister Alan Steiger, our chef de mission in Iraq, and Docteur Felicity Beauvoir, who will be flying out to our Iraq mission tomorrow to take up a position as surgeon.”

Madame Bettencourt nodded her assent and smiled.

“Oh,” said Jenifer. “You work in Iraq?”

“Oui.”

“And you must be?” said Madame Bettencourt, feigning ignorance.

“Jenifer,” said Jean-Victor.

“Bonsoir.”

“Oh this is Jenifer? You have a beautiful voice ma chère,” said Madame Bettencourt, who couldn’t actually recall hearing the pop music that came from this dark-eyed nubile, merely the genre. “My grandson Jean-Victor listens to you all the time.”

“I have your CD,” said the teenager, smiling ear to ear.

“Oh. That’s wonderful,” replied the young pop star. “You’ll have to let me sign it for you.”

The boy’s face went ashen. “I don’t have it with me,” he said, as though a great travesty had occurred. “I… I didn’t know you’d be here.”

“I have a new one coming out in a couple of months so how about if I send you a signed copy?”

“Oh, really? That would be wonderful,” said Jean-Victor utterly smitten.

“Docteur Beauvoir?” said Madame Bettencourt, considering. “Any relation to…?”

“Yes, he’s my father,” replied Felicity.

“Oh. I see,” said Madame Bettencourt, forcing a smile. Felicity smiled back.

“And I am very pleased to meet you,” said Gerome reaching across and shaking Jenifer’s hand before taking his seat opposite Liliane Bettencourt at the end of the table. “We’re very thankful for your support.”

“I’m very proud to be involved.”

“Oh,” said Madame Bettencourt, caught off-guard. “You’ve made a contribution to Gerome’s charity?”

“In such a troubled world I think his NGO does very important work. I’m just honoured that you’re personally aware of my donation, Monsieur Trembleau.”

“Very commendable of you ma chère,” said Madame Bettencourt, providing a polished performance of disguising her irritation.

Gerome could barely conceal his glee as he leaned back in his chair introducing Berglind Ásgeirsdóttir to Jenifer, Alan and Felicity. This was turning out better than he could have imagined. All he had to do now was publish an article in Le Figaro commending the young star for her generous contribution. Liliane Bettencourt could never allow herself to be outdone by this week’s celebrity nymphette, and the donation would be quadrupled.

“Well this year with your generous support we’ll be helping these two provide food, shelter and medical care to the terrorised women and children of Iraq,” Gerome told Jenifer, tilting his head toward Felicity and Alan.

Conversation halted as Jeaneé Plantin got the evening’s formalities underway.

“Mesdames et monsieurs,” she said, taking the rostrum. “On behalf of UNESCO Social and Human Sciences I welcome you to this evening’s charity gala event as part of our International Symposium on Gender, Peace and Conflict.” She paused to allow her intrusion into the hum of conversation to settle over the gallery, beaming theatrically at no one in particular, an orator of phenomenal technique as Gerome recalled.

“Firstly I would like to thank Madame Noëlle Lenoir, Minister for European Affairs, and Mr Osman Topčagić, Director of the European Integrations Directorate of Bosnia and Herzegovina for joining us here tonight. I’d also like to acknowledge Christine Albanel, President of the Museum and Domain of the Palace of Versailles, and thank you and your staff for preparing this marvellous venue.

“How lucky we are on such a beautiful evening,” she continued after a moment, smiling directly at a random few faces at the tables around her. “…to be here at this magnificent place. It’s one of the best things about working at UNESCO, the role we play in the recognition and preservation of the cultural and natural wonders that constitute our World Heritage list. But of course we have no more claim over them than anyone else, they represent a common heritage, they belong to all humanity and indeed in many ways, particularly those natural wonders, they transcend even humanity. As a Frenchwoman though, I reserve the right to claim Versailles as especially mine.”

She swayed backward ever so slightly before leaning forward as though she were Maria Callas taking a breath before launching into a new verse.

“Civilisation,” she declared, “…is a term we don’t use much anymore outside the ancient history classroom. Historically its usage was tied to the inverse concept of the ‘primitive’, and thankfully we no longer look at the magnificent achievements of our own cultures,” she said, allowing herself a moment to look across the Cotelle Gallery and absorb it, “…and use them to define the uncivilised, the ‘primitive’, to identify the lesser human beings, the social and cultural ‘untermunchen’.” She paused again momentarily to allow her use of the term to sink in.

“So we moved beyond the term ‘civilisation’ to demonstrate we don’t see ourselves as exceptional, or more accurately that we don’t see others as unexceptional.”

“I favour bringing back the term civilisation as a means of introducing a new counter-concept, de-civilisation. Yes, easy to forget that ‘civilisation’ is not essentially a noun.” She looked over at the party at the head of the table to her left. “Perhaps no-one here will have a more intimate appreciation of what I mean by de-civilisation than our Sarajevan visitor, Mr Topčagić [Topcagic’s own story of Bosnian war.]

“Three hundred years ago an ailing Louis XIV was visited here at the Grand Trianon by his five year old grandson. The Sun King told young Louis XV to keep France in peace for ‘it is the ruin of peoples!’

“Of course, Louis XIV’s conclusion was no semi-divine flash of brilliance. Actually it’s a pretty ordinary thing to say. Like me you probably know numerous people who say much the same thing all the time. I’d even dare to suggest most of you here tonight are in agreement with the Sun King. Yet peace is so often mislaid and this universal lesson about conflict all but forgotten.

“How is it that despite an indelible connection to our past and all the historical examples that are well remembered, successive generations forget the universal detriment brought by conflict? It’s because the lesson is not about peace or conflict, it’s about the ethno-centric assumption of exceptionalism. One thing that UNESCO’s World Heritage List demonstrates is that all peoples and all lands of the world are exceptional.

“Sadly, much of the work of UN agencies and their partners is in damage control – dealing with the consequences of conflict, most often, overwhelmingly in fact, the consequences upon women and children.

“Uniquely among UN agencies, the natural role I’ve come to realise for UNESCO to play is instead to develop, encourage and exploit civilising influences as a force for prevention. Women, it would seem, have a unique stake in this. Firstly, as I mentioned, we’re a disproportionate representation among recipients of humanitarian aid, the victims of conflict if you like and all of its ghastliness including sexual violence, displacement and insecurity, but women also represent an increasing proportion of active players in conflict, as in much of the world women are taking an increasing role in the military. Women are taking part in irregular offensive action too. You’ll find women among the FARQ guerrilla fighters in Colombia, and among suicide bombers in the Middle-East.

“In nations across the world, and yes this includes the developed world, women are only just starting to become players among the political elite from whence the genesis of conflict inevitably comes. We’ve new powers of influence women have seldom known before. The questions is – are we really going to be a civilising influence, a force for peace? I’d like to think so, not because of any assumptions about the innate pacific qualities of womanhood, simply because the gender balance is the biggest change in the dynamics of conflict since classical times.

“Despite rhetorical if accurate assertions that men are responsible for more acts of violence, it doesn’t logically follow that empowered women are any less likely to deliver conflict. It is a comforting thought though, an idea we’ve been trying to imagine ways to employ in the cause of peace since at least 2400 years ago when Aristophanes wrote Lysistrata.”

She paused as a few sniggers echoed around the gallery. Smirking, she continued. “What it does guarantee however is that we have a seat at the table as conflict is being played out and perhaps more importantly during peace-building.

“So what evidence is there to be optimistic that the increasing influence of women is going to be a force for civilisation, or more accurately, against de-civilisation, when for example in so much of the world women remain powerless? Well, that’s what I expect to find out through the course of this week. The implication of an increasing influence of women on conflict and peace is a theme among many of the speakers and papers being presented at this symposium. Of course it’s not the only theme.

“Already at this symposium we’ve heard Dr Eugenia Date-Bah explain both the importance and opportunity that exists in the appropriate employment of women in post-conflict reconstruction and the effect it has on the sustainability of peace building and nation building.

“Those of us lucky enough to have been at UNESCO House this morning to hear Betty Reardon speak will be utterly persuaded of the role gender can play in non-violent conflict resolution, and how important equity in education is in achieving that.

“Looking ahead at the programme for the rest of this week I am overwhelmed with anticipation. Thank you, each and every one of you for coming to make our symposium a success.

“I will wrap up now, not because I don’t have a lot to say on the subject but because while I watch you all savouring your entrées I see my own getting cold over there.” She garnered a few chuckles, particularly among those who knew she could talk the leg off an iron stove.

“After dinner we’ll have an opportunity to circulate a while before I introduce Minister Lenoir who has some interesting news about European intergovernmental initiatives, and Mr Topčagić who will share some experiences of the Balkan wars, Europe’s last major conflict. Please, enjoy the evening.”

Gerome stood amid the clapping, kissed Plantin on the cheek as she returned to their table before sliding her chair beneath her as she took her seat at the head of the table between himself and Madame Bettencourt. When applause subsided and guests turned to the extravagant meal being laid out before them an orchestra of conversation quickly engulfed the Cotelle Gallery. For Plantin’s benefit Gerome made introductions again.

“I understand your father’s Algerian,” said Madame Plantin to Jenifer.

“Oui,” said Jenifer. “My complicated heritage has been one preoccupation of the media, but my Algerian father is often the topic of conversation.”

“It’s something you have in common with Docteur Beauvoir here,” said Gerome.

“Your father’s Algerian too?”

“My grandmother. My grandfather was a Lieutenant in le Legion, he came home from North Africa in ’55 with an Algerian bride and a young son.”

“A Legionnaire?!” Madame Bettencourt reconfirmed with glowing admiration, being of that last generation to have known the French Empire and the rugged national symbolism of le Legion. “Soon after he was elected to the National Assembly my husband sat on the commission for overseas territories. In 1955 the Legionnaires in Algeria were a major point of discussion in our household,” Then her smile turned into a frown as a memory had her aghast. “So your grandfather was not among that rabble involved in the Officer’s Putsch in 1961?”

“No,” said Felicity with a laugh. “He was back home in Valbonne growing fruit by then,”

Reassured, Bettencourt smiled and nodded assent.

“Growing fruit in the Cote d’Azur? Sounds like an idyllic vocation for a retired soldier,” Plantin commented.

“How romantic,” agreed Jenifer.

Conversation over dinner covered the backgrounds of everyone except Liliane Bettencourt, Gerome and Jeaneé Plantin, from Jean-Victor’s planned university studies and Jenifer’s forthcoming second album, to Felicity’s work in the South Pacific and Berglind Ásgeirsdóttir’s yearning for snowfall. It finally settled upon Alan’s mission in Iraq and comparisons with those earlier conflicts like the Algerian war.

“How rudimentary humanitarian efforts were back then, and how challenging it must have been,” commented Ásgeirsdóttir.

“Well, most of what we need to do is rudimentary stuff – clean water and food, clothing, shelter and basic medical care,” said Alan, who’d reluctantly been drawn into conversation. “We may be better resourced nowadays but bureaucratisation has added its own difficulties, we’ve added layers of inefficiency that simply weren’t there before. How much less of my day would be consumed by administration around politics and accountability, and how much more of our time would have been spent delivering humanitarian aid if we’d been doing this for instance in Algeria in the ‘50s?”

This gave the party something to ponder over the haute cuisine and superior wine being lavishly served them.

As meals were coming to an end several guests started moving around and visiting acquaintances, and all around the Cotelle Gallery parties began to form. Gerome, Plantin, Bettencourt, Ásgeirsdóttir and Jenifer were soon very occupied, so that Felicity, Alan and Jean-Victor were left to form their own little party in the recess of a window overlooking a geometric garden toward the Grand Canal, in between Jean Cotelle II’s Vue de l’Orangerie et du château à partir de la pièce d’eau des Suisses and his Bosquet de l’Arc de Triomphe-Salle basse. Felicity’s two gentleman companions were reserved to say the least. Jean-Victor forced a comment on the nearby painting of l’Orangerie.

“It’s very nice,” he said inanely.

“Yes it is,” agreed Alan, stepping over to take a closer look at its surface, imagining that yes, that is what a 17th century oil painting looks like close up.

“The garden looks exactly the same today,” said Jean-Victor.

Felicity smiled as the two men looked on awkwardly at the painting, as though imagining they were making the impression of consumedly appraising an exquisite masterpiece but in fact using the gesture to avoid conversation with anyone else in the crowd.

“It’s an interesting idea isn’t it, art imitating life and then life being artificially held still so that it conforms thereafter to the art,” said Felicity.

Both men nodded and said hmmm… as though considering her appraisal in depth.

“His work hangs all around the gallery,” Jean-Victor said stiffly.

“How much would paintings like that be worth do you think?” Alan pondered, feigning interest.

“I don’t know,” said Jean-Victor, who hadn’t yet developed the knowledge of art acquisition that he would no doubt one day need. “All together they must be worth a couple of million euros,” he surmised, gesturing at the paintings hanging the length of the Cotelle Gallery.

As Felicity followed her disinterested companions’ eyes around the gallery she couldn’t help observing that was approximately the value of her own father’s work presently on display. She nudged Jean-Victor with an elbow. “See Pierre Cabot over there,” she said, lowering her voice and nodding discretely toward the veteran action movie star. Her two companions leaned closer to hear.

“Yeah,” said Jean-Victor attentively.

“Three facelifts,” she whispered.

The boy’s eyes widened, and Alan’s no less, as they both glanced compulsively toward the star.

“Helene Cardinale over by the rostrum,” she continued, pointing out the former fashion model and now department store figurehead. “Frequent flyer kilometres on the liposuction table.”

“Nooo?!” said Jean-Victor in amazement.

“Yes,” said Felicity nodding. Alan blinked in astonishment. “My father’s a cosmetic surgeon,” she explained.

“He is?”

“Aha.” Felicity nodded discretely toward various celebrities and other identities around the gallery. “Breast enhancement… nose-job… botox… tattoo removal… breast enhancement and botox… facelift… lipo’… breast reduction,” she rattled off.

Alan frowned at the last one “Really?”

Jean-Victor giggled.

Henri Beauvoir grew up the eldest son of a Southern orchardist and bee-keeper, the former Lieutenant of the Foreign Legion. His Algerian mother moved to her Lieutenant’s native Provence at a time when Algeria was still considered part of the French mainland. In the decade after France’s North-African territory gained independence in 1962, Samira Beauvoir became increasingly culturally isolated. Intensely proud of her heritage, she’d often find cause to declare so in her dealings with the townsfolk of Valbonne where they’d settled. While appreciated by her husband and many leading community figures, among Valbonne’s more parochial inhabitants, who took the view that Algeria was a land of towel-heads and turncoats, she was often the butt of racial slur. This perhaps contributed to a sense of restlessness in the young Henri.

His father’s orchards and apiaries delivered the family an adequate if somewhat hardworking existence, but Henri’s ambitions were not quite so modest. By his late teens he was making the daily and nightly commute downhill to the resort towns of the Cote d’Azur where he worked in the cafes and hotels. A determined worker with an outstanding eye to detail, he soon found himself working in the most exclusive hotels serving Europe’s most affluent, for whom the Cote d’Azur was a favoured playground. With his mother’s dark eyes and brown skin, his father’s lean muscular frame, and his own unique intensity and highly developed sense of self-possession, Henri found popularity among the region’s transitory patrician inhabitants who saw him as another exotic Mediterranean attraction, and he was often invited to parties as a curiosity, a touch of local flavour. Many of them returned year to year including a family from Normandy who possessed a villa in Antibes, a berth in the local marina, and a wild blonde blue-eyed daughter named Blanche who represented Henri’s own idea of the exotic.

The relationship was seasonal for a few years, an open secret, and did not continue at a distance whenever she returned home to Rouen. While the family discreetly accepted Henri as Blanche’s holiday play-thing, any suggestion that a courtship was occurring would have been quite absurd. Henri was the pleasant young local who took your breakfast orders or served you Long Island Iced Teas at le Martinez.

Henri understood all too well his social limitations and it rankled. What they often mistook for an endearing nonchalance was in fact a great big chip on his shoulder.

This all changed though in 1971 when Henri’s father concluded negotiations with the agency funded by both national and provincial governments for the acquisition of land for the establishment of the enterprise estate, Sophia Antipolis. Great tracts of land through the middle of this planned sprawling new technology park were occupied by the former Lieutenant Beauvoir’s prized orchards and apiaries. Monsieur Beauvoir retained small landholdings outside of Sophia Antipolis, but his compensation was of such proportion that any agriculture he undertook hereafter was essentially as a hobbyist.

Now almost twenty, first son Henri who’d been both smart and conscientious during his schooling, matriculated without difficulty and was dispatched to Paris to study medicine. Never again would Henri suffer the barbs of his mother’s race or his father’s income. Never again would he be subject to social stigma. Or so he thought.

Henri’s escape from the small town of his childhood coincided with Blanche outgrowing her own provincial beginnings. They ran into each other by chance at a café on Boulevard Saint Germain. Both liberated by the boundless opportunity that Paris represented, and somewhat assisted by the times, their once teenage urges for each other now re-ignited in an explosion of passion, the consequence of which was the arrival two years later in 1974 of a bounding baby Felicity. A marriage did occur, and it saw out the decade, but just as Henri reacted to his former modest social standing by becoming exceedingly conservative, Blanche reacted to her own staid Northern upbringing by submersing herself in Paris’s avant-garde fashion, art and music scene, finding her feet at precisely the punk rock era. Though finally if informally separated since 1984, they remained technically married right to this day, more as a result of oversight than of lingering attachment.

Henri’s determination was such that he was able to enter the competitive discipline of surgery, and he pursued the then still somewhat obscure but already lucrative specialisation of cosmetic surgery. Incredibly, right from his internship he found himself catering to the same class and sometimes even the same individuals he’d served cocktails and lunches to less than a decade before. The same remarkable work ethic and attention to detail he’d displayed back then guaranteed that Henri soon earned a reputation and eventually even an income to rival most of them. By 2004 Henri knew a good proportion of France’s, indeed Europe’s ruling classes more intimately than almost anyone, making him as well connected and deeply respected as anybody at UNESCO’s event tonight at Versailles. But Henri would never, could never be invited to an event such as this. His relationships with these people were intensely private. Not one of them would hope to see him at an event like this, knowing as he did their most intimate secrets.

“Watch out, here comes your grand-mère with Tummy-tuck,” said Felicity as Bettencourt bounded toward them with Jean-Pierre Gaumont, head of StudioCanal trailing.

“Jean-Victor, there’s someone I want you to meet,” said Liliane. “See, Jean-Pierre, isn’t he as handsome as I said.”

“Pleased to meet you,” said Gaumont, reaching for the young man’s hand. “Your grand-mère tells me you have an interest in cinema.”

“Well I’m not sure I’ve yet met anyone who doesn’t,” said Jean-Victor, shaking the studio boss’s hand with a broad smile. Unable to control the urge he glanced down at Gaumont’s waistcoat, then burst into laughter.

“And you must be…” said Gaumont, releasing young Jean-Victor’s hand and turning to Felicity and Alan.

“Docteur Felicity Beauvoir.”

“Pleased to meet you,” said Alan, taking Gaumont’s hand with a grin. “Alan. Alan Steiger.”

For the rest of the evening Alan, Felicity and Jean-Victor were inseparable buddies, sharing as they did a gentle comedic disdain for the pomp of the event. As they circumnavigated the gallery they garnered a few of their own discreet commentators. Whispers of “Bettencourt’s grandson” were followed by subtle alluring stares from glamorous lasses and one or two cougars. The singularly understated elegance of her olive-brown George Hameika dress and tiny pendant of simple Arabic design, her uniquely naturally tanned skin and the sun-bleached tips of her hair, at the end of winter no less, contrasted against both the lustre of her gold Christian Louboutins and the orangeness of some of the more radiant ladies, unassuming as it may have been, marked Felicity as quite astonishing all the same.

“His suit hangs off him like a potato sack and the trousers don’t match the jacket,” Liliane Bettencourt herself observed piteously of Alan. She imagined him the hard working school teacher of humble middle-American origins, scouring the racks at charity bazaars, carefully accumulating his wealth in food stamps until lifted from menial obscurity by a benevolent Gerome. She would make a point of taking him aside at some point in the evening and making her €5 million NGO pledge directly to Alan. Gerome would be enormously impressed and thankful for her altruism.

 

Vue de l’Orangerie et du château à partir de la pièce d’eau des Suisses

Vue de l’Orangerie et du château à partir de la pièce d’eau des Suisses – Jean Cotelle the younger

 

 

 

Glamis is fallen

Posted on by

A quote I think from Polanski, not Shakespeare, and maybe there’s something very fitting about the unauthenticity of that too.

Only seven years ago many of us were tuning into breakfast TV on a network we otherwise didn’t watch, to see two lieutenants of their respective parties, Kevin Rudd and Joe Hockey, make daily celebrity appearances to provide a light-hearted angle on the day’s politics we could chew over with our vegemite toast. Rudd was a great communicator, intelligent, fun, and displayed great showmanship with his light adversarial banter alongside Hockey. If any of us had predicted then that Rudd would be Prime Minister within a year though, we would have got just as many chuckles as the Rudd and Hockey show.

The public loved Rudd and this carried over into his first Prime Ministership, deservedly it seemed for a while. Rudd’s first year or so in the top job seemed frenetic. He was here, he was there, spruiking one watershed initiative after another. In Prime Ministership his persona had turned out to be like the lovable daggy uncle, and for those of us in that general area of the political spectrum, his infectious energy and enthusiasm convinced us we’d got ourselves the spiritual, ultimately more effective descendant of Whitlam. Yet within two years the wheels had fallen off horribly.

The emmissions trading scheme, Rudd’s strategy to cut carbon pullution, which he’d previously described as the greatest moral, economic and social challenge of our time, the flagship initiative of his Prime Ministership in fact, was dropped like a led balloon. From the day he announced this it was clear the whirlwind had run out of puff. You could see it in his body language.

By the end of 2009 Rudd’s Government was already floundering. Nothing captured this like the home insulation scheme administered by his Environment Minister, Peter Garrett. Like so many Labor initiatives, the idea was sound, but got utterly destroyed in the execution. A rebate to householders for installing insulation bats which would cut household energy bills, and carbon emmissions, was an obvious win-win. But the private contractors installing the ceiling insulation were cutting corners, providing shonky service (a theme I’ve seen repeatedly in more than a decade and a half as a public servant under Labor administrations) which ultimately resulted in house fires and 4 deaths.

Yet instead of holding these contractors to account, making an example of them by ensuring such gross negligence was prosecuted very publicly to the fullest extent of the law, Garrett stood in front of the television cameras and whined that he hadn’t administered the scheme incompetently. It was a pathetic response from Garrett, rightly rewarded by Rudd when he was dumped from the Ministry. For someone like me though, a teenager of the 80s who’d been a fan of Peter Garrett’s music and his activism, and who’d felt honoured in more recent years to have had a more personal connection, Garrett’s performance was deeply disappointing.

Rudd’s second stint as Prime Minister appeared to be following the same pattern. While some in the media speculated, late in the day, that his reputed private personality disorders might be rearing their ugly head again, I don’t recall anyone articulating that the early days of Rudd’s second Prime Ministership seemed reminiscent of the “he’s here, he’s there” whirlwind of optimism and momentum that characterised the early part of his first stint. I could barely watch, sitting here wondering how long until this started to implode like last time.

Peter Garrett’s parliamentary career will sadly go down as fundamentally commiserable. The last memory of it I will forever recall, is Garrett standing beside Julia Gillard at a school in Sydney’s south earlier this year, nodding, blinking, then glancing at her quickly to punctuate every second sentence of her school funding announcement, over and over in some moronic cyclic gesticulation, before being given the floor to add a ten second rhetorical footnote to Gillard’s speech, like some cardboard cut-out of a politician. It was truly, truly pathetic to watch.

Those who blame Gillard’s demise on some sort of inate mysogyny in Australian politics, or on Rudd’s constant white-anting, are, like so many other Labor analysts, completely missing the point. The point at which the 2013 election was lost was Gillard’s pronouncement during the 2010 campaign that there would be no carbon tax should she win Government. After the election, Labor very quickly lost the trust of the Australian people and never regained it.

Another event during that 2010 campaign is very instructive. Who recalls when, halfway through the 2010 campaign, Gillard pulled up and said “alright I got it, from now on you’re going to see the real Julia”. She immediately turned around and proceeded to carry on precisely as before, trying to second guess how to push the right buttons with the Australian public rather than speaking to us from what was in her own heart. This is the reason we switched off to Labor. It’s the Labor modus operandi by which she operated, and nothing whatsoever to do with Gillard’s gender. The mysogyny theorists are just as out of touch as a generation of Labor strategists who think there are dividends to be gained from treating politics like applied psychology. It provides only short lived victories because, as I argued last year, it has, for example, now simply handed Tony Abbott a mandate to repeal the carbon pricing scheme. The Gillard/Rudd era’s apparent legacies won’t last a year beyond their parliamentary careers and that is a direct result of Labor’s political methodology of the past decade.

Our defective media created Labor’s leadership instability, but the Party’s institutional weakness was such that it allowed it to happen. Only a few months ago, as the media ground away at the Labor leadership issue (and it’s their persistence that ensured life imitated art), I felt there was no way Kevin Rudd could seriously be coveting the leadership before the election. It was bleedingly obvious that would have been taking the wheel of the bus as it was going over the cliff. How could he possibly be interested? It was in Rudd’s best interest to just sit back and let the train wreck happen, come in as the guy on the white horse after the election and take the more thankful task of rebuilding. Why would he want to take the hit for Julia? The fact he eventually accepted the leadership possibly speaks volumes about his own ego, but probably has more to do with influential members of the party finally conceding, under sustained pressure from the media, what the rest of us had known a long time. Gillard was never going to regain the trust of the Australian people.

Anybody who thought Rudd could achieve anything more than stemming the flow of blood was deluding themselves. Rudd has at least managed to achieve that, the most Labor could have expected. Yesterday morning, and even into the early evening, the commentariat were predicting Labor to be looking at 45 seats or less, with Queensland and places like Western Sydney leaving Labor en masse. It didn’t happen, and while it would be nice to think the media pundits might learn from their inadequacies, I won’t hold my breath. Instead the number looks likely to be around 55 seats. Yes, the primary vote was historically low, but that’s a means of protest we voters have to communicate our dissatisfaction. In the end, 55 seats is the truest reflection of preference.

It would be nice to think Labor will get the message, but again, I won’t hold my breath. Labor underwent an extensive internal review a decade ago, the lessons learned soon all but forgotten.

As a footnote, I should mention the outcome for the Australian Democrats at the election. A year ago I reported that having lost faith after 17 years as a member of the ALP, I had to my surprise some months later re-discovered the Democrats. Sadly I have to report my enthusiasm was very premature. I soon discovered the Australian Democrats to be utterly riven with stultifying division, borne out of self-interest and petty personality issues, and consumed by the parochial. In my own State, New South Wales, the once third force in Australian politics managed a sub-paltry 0.21 % of the Senate vote at first count. By my estimation, this is precisely where the Democrats belong. The incompetence of those responsible for the Democrats candidate assessment process and campaign was gobsmacking to watch. Despite an enthusiastic infusion of potential new talent in the year-and-a-half I was involved, a measure of people’s dissatisfaction with the major parties and something that should have been exploited, it was crowded out by the self-styled elder statespeople of the Democrats who’ve demonstrably taken the party from nowhere to oblivian over the past decade. To my fellow NSW Democrats, please enjoy the nothingness your position in the Australian democracy represents, you’ve earned it.