This page added on Tuesday, 4th March 2008
Australia is a dry country at the best of times - but especially so over the
last several years, during which we've been suffering a prolonged drought.
So when we do get a bit of rain, it's a noteworthy event.
Exactly three weeks ago (12th Feb.), towards early evening, a big dark grey
cloud appeared and moved eastward toward Mount Barrow, covering most of the
sky. Before long, there was indeed a very welcome splash of rain, with
enough sunlight getting through a break in the cloud to give rise to an
impressive rainbow. There was even a quite clearly visible secondary rainbow
- what a treat!
You have to be quick! Rainbows don't last long, usually; so I immediately
grabbed my Mavica camera, opened the kitchen window, and started snapping.
The picture you see above is probably the best shot I was able to get. (The
hydroelectric pole you see near bottom centre is by now becoming an old
friend - it's the same one which features in the first two pictures in my
moon page.)
To be sure, there are signs that the drought may be about to break over the
coming months; the much-heralded la niña event, which was supposed to
give our long-suffering farmers some welcome relief last year, appears set
to "kick in" after all. (Of course, as is so often the case, there's a
downside: in the northern parts of the country, up Queensland way, they've
had torrential downpours in recent times, with accompanying floods. One
extreme to the other! But that's often the way of things "down under".)
Perhaps the most dramatic aspect of rainbows like the one pictured above is
how they divide the sky into two distinct regions - light (inside the
rainbow) and dark (outside).
The physics of rainbows is quite interesting. If you'd like to read more, I
recommend
this web-page
which presents it rather well.
Rainbows have their symbolic aspects, too, of course - none more so than the
biblical account in the book of Genesis. (I don't want to get into the
debate about whether the post-Flood rainbow was the first rainbow; if
you'd like to read a few thoughts about that, you may like to visit
this
page! On the other hand, if you'd like to read some of my not-quite-serious
thoughts about the Flood story in poetic form, click
here.)
- But I digress. (I'm rather good at digressing, in case you haven't
noticed.
A hundred and one days ago, Australia voted for a new beginning. On
Saturday, 24th November 2007, the Aussie people went to the polls and
threw the Howard Federal Government out.
From where I'm standing, it's an enormous relief. During those eleven years,
a whole crop of young people have grown into their teens or even early
adulthood, never having had the experience of any other kind of government -
so that they may well think that what has been happening is in some way
normal - whereas we oldies, who remember years of vision, creative
drive, and life actually being exciting (even fun, at least some of
the time!) have been alarmed to see how our country has begun to lose its
very soul. Now, perhaps, the damage can begin to be repaired, while there is
still that pool of first-hand experience available so that we don't have to
completely "re-invent the wheel", as it were.
Of course, it unashamedly plays on the working person's fears of losing his
or her job. But that's fine - the Howard government had introduced the
euphemistically-entitled (even
Newspeak
is an appropriate term here!) "Work Choices" legislation which made it
easier for employers to sack workers, who had previously been protected
under "unfair dismissal" laws - which meant, bluntly, that it was now legal
to fire someone unfairly!
So, yes - the poster goes to the heart of the matter. It was part of a
campaign which also included a TV advertisement in which (if I recall
correctly) a woman gets a phone call from her boss, telling her that she is
required to do some overtime at short notice - which means that her family
routine is disrupted - with the warning that failure to comply will mean
dismissal. In distress, she then phones someone she knows, imploring them to
come and look after her children while she is indisposed. Emotive stuff?
Scare tactics, even? Well, that kind of scenario was exactly what the
Australian public were actually facing! So you can bet we were glad to help.
(If you'd like to read more about the issue, click
here.)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
UPDATE, Tuesday, 15th February 2011
I can't think why I haven't thought of this before. It's just occurred to
me, a little over three years after the event, that the "your rights at
work" TV ad. just mentioned might still be out there on the web somewhere.
Sure enough, it is - in two very short YouTube videos. So, as a public
service, I'm presenting the links here:
"Your rights at work" TV advertisement, late 2007
Part 1
Part 2
Why am I doing this, since we've only just had a federal election here in
Oz about six months ago (with a Labor government returned, albeit by the
skin of its teeth) with another election not due for two and a half years?
Simply because, as long as there is anything like the "profit first,
people last" brand of politics we endured from our country's government
between 1996 and late 2007, this could very easily happen again. So I'm
doing whatever I can, without apology, to keep the issue alive, for as long
as necessary - which almost certainly means for as long as this website
continues to exist.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
John Howard was only the second Prime Minister in Australian history to lose
his seat at an election, the first being
Stanley Bruce.
It's well worth noting that one of the major issues in each case was the
then Prime Minister's confrontational approach to industrial relations. When
will they ever learn...
As a means of helping further, albeit in a small way, on election day
itself, I and a member of my family assisted the Australian Labor Party
cause by offering Labor Party "how to vote" flyers to voters at two of the
Launceston polling stations. (Note: I'm not a member of the
ALP - or any other political party either for that matter - and I have no
intention of ever becoming one, believing that my talents are better suited
to such activities as producing this website in an attempt to bring issues
which I consider important to people's attention. If you become a member of
a political party, you have to toe the party line, even on issues with which
you strongly disagree - and I can't see myself ever doing that. On this
occasion, however, I was glad to offer some assistance, simply because it
was so crucially important to get Howard and Co. out by whatever means
possible.)
This time, there was a mood abroad like nothing that had been seen in years.
Immediately prior to every election since Howard became Prime Minister
(1996), he and his party machine have managed to pull some kind of rabbit
out of the hat. We've had
"weapons of mass destruction",
"children overboard",
and
the "Tampa crisis"
- all designed to
wedge
the Labor opposition and scare the public into re-electing the
Liberal/National Party government. Indeed, in 2007, the government had
concocted an issue about a certain
Indian doctor
working in Australia, trying - unsuccessfully - to link him to a group of
terrorists in England. The government's very public failure to pull this
stunt off elicited considerable scorn around the country. By late 2007, the
public had had enough of their nonsense, and there was a grim determination
to get rid of them at long last.
One of the most intriguing aspects of the whole campaign was the decision by
high-profile ABC journalist
Maxine McKew
to stand for the ALP in John Howard's own seat of Bennelong. The effect of
this was to keep Mr. Howard pinned down in his own electorate, fighting to
hang on to his own seat rather than running around the country and
orchestrating his party's campaign far and wide.
I'll be honest: during the later stages of the election campaign, when the
opinion polls consistently showed the Howard government in serious trouble,
it occurred to me that they might manufacture a "terrorist threat" or
something similar, to use as an excuse to declare a state of emergency and
thus postpone the election indefinitely. (Paranoid? Moi?? Well, after
over a decade of BS, half-truths, and outright lies, I wouldn't have put
anything past them!) But, fortunately, my fears were unfounded - we hadn't
yet quite sunk to that depth.
At 6:00 p.m. on election day, when the polls closed, I removed the sign from
our front lawn; and we settled down to watch ABC-TV's coverage of the day's
events.
It didn't take very long before the result was clear: the government had
taken a hiding, and the ALP's Kevin Rudd was to be our new Prime Minister.
But the best part of the story for me was Maxine McKew's sweet victory in
Bennelong, finally consigning John Howard's nightmare vision of Australia to
political history!
Early in the week after the election, I had occasion to be in Launceston's
city centre. Now, it may be my imagination; but I felt I could sense a
distinct mood change. In the streets and shops, it seemed as though people
and organizations had slowed down just a bit, and were drawing their
collective breath. I could visualize a huge thought-balloon hovering over
the town, containing the words "AT LAST..."
As promised, the new government got down to business straight away. New
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced that there wouldn't be much of a
Christmas break for himself and his team; there was much to do in a hurry:
ratifying the
Kyoto protocol
on climate change (which the Howard government had stubbornly and
consistently refused to do); issuing an official, federal parliamentary
apology to Australia's indiginous people for the
stolen generations
(ditto); and beginning the process of dismantling the previous government's
so-called
"Work Choices"
legislation.
In the last few days, the new government has also begun to address the issue
of immigration. This had become a running sore under the previous
administration, with refugees (always referred to as "asylum seekers", to
mask the horrors many of these people had faced on their way here) being
kept for years in dehumanizing conditions in
"detention centres",
which many Australians have come to regard as nothing more than
concentration camps - not to mention the ignominy of some Australian
citizens also being "mistakenly" locked up in these ghastly places for
extended periods.
Maybe I'm a simpleton, but I can't fathom how such "mistakes" can possibly
occur in this era of intensive record-keeping and near-instantaneous
communications. I just don't believe a word of it! Australia is supposed to
be a civilized, modern, "first-world" country! How could we possibly have
sunk so low? How did we become so desensitized that we came to accept the
truly degrading as normal, and the horrendous as commonplace, for so long?
Anyway - we have finally elected a government which has begun to deal with
such matters, and have thus given ourselves some kind of "permission" to
move on. I really hope I never again in my lifetime see anything like what
has been perpetrated in the name of the Australian people, these past
several years. Surely, as a nation we can do better than that?!
Furthermore, the Rudd Labor government has promised to address the issues of
health (the services for which have been allowed to run down in recent
years) and education (which is also in urgent need of attention).
So, on the face of it, things are looking up! Can we therefore rest assured
that our country will forge ahead in these next three years, with dignity
and honour for all its citizens? Is everything in the garden really quite as lovely as
it seems?
I hope so, but - I just wonder...
Among my quite extensive collection of science fiction books is "The Black
Cloud" by English astronomer
Fred Hoyle
(Penguin, 1960; my copy is a 1975
reprint).
It's fun to read. Without giving too much away, it tells - with
characteristic British humour - the story of an interstellar cloud of gas
which Earthbound astronomers realize is headed towards the Solar System.
Its diameter is approximately equal to the radius of Earth's solar orbit,
which means that it could conceivably have a major impact on our planet if
it happened to get between us and the sun.
The scientists inform the government of the impending crisis, and are
granted funding to attempt to come up with a solution. Over time, they
determine that the cloud has a complex internal structure, and is in fact an
intelligent living entity; eventually, they are able to communicate with it.
The fun part of the story is that the scientists don't bother to give more
than a "bare-bones" account of what is going on to the politicians, who are
considerably less than impressed when they find out!
The blurb on the back cover contains the following quote from Daily
Telegraph reviewer Peter Green:
The Black Cloud is an exciting narrative, but,
(If you'd like to read more about the book, click
here
or
here.)
It was that same "scientific power dream" which made it possible for
"boffins" like Alan Turing and his colleagues at
Bletchley Park
to construct and use one of the earliest electronic computers to crack the
German "Enigma Code", thus hastening the end of World War 2; and also for
the Apollo project to succeed with the moon programme a quarter of a century
later.
Of course, in both those instances, there was careful collaboration between
the scientists and engineers on the one hand, and the authorities on the
other, which made everything happen as it should. But there have been
instances in which the borders are less clear-cut.
In recent years, advances in genetic engineering have led to
genetically-modified crops, stem cell research, even the possibility of a
human clone being produced at some stage - all of which is viewed by many as
scary stuff. Should scientists be allowed to pursue a "scientific power
dream" unchecked? Can they be relied upon to have humanity's best interests
at heart? - or is there at least the potential for greed and hubris to enter
into the equation, so that regulation is needed?
It's a thorny issue, and I don't intend to pursue it further here. The point
I do wish to raise, however, is that there can be "power dreams"
other than the scientific - and that the issues arising can be just as
thorny, if not even more so.
UPDATE, Saturday, 29th November 2008
In the 1950's, Isaac Asimov wrote a series of six novels under the
pseudonym "Paul French". (They didn't sell very well, as no-one knew who
Paul French was; when they were later republished under Asimov's own name,
they did take off, because Asimov's reputation as an SF writer had
by then been firmly established. Very sensibly, he never made that
mistake again!)
These novels were intended for a young audience (the unfortunate word
"juvenile" is often used in this connection). The hero of the stories is a
young biophysicist named David ("Lucky") Starr, who is employed by the
Council of Science, a powerful organisation which has the ear of the Solar
System's main governing bodies.
In the first story - which takes place on Mars - Starr's mission is to find
out who is behind a world-wide spate of food-poisonings on Earth (which
imports much of its food from Mars). While there, he meets and befriends a
short, pugnacious Mars-born farm-worker named John Bigman Jones (who insists
on being called by his middle name). In the next four stories, Starr and
Bigman, under the auspices of the Council of Science, set out to deal with
threats to the Solar System posed by "the Sirians", inhabitants of former
colony worlds in the Sirius star-system, who have become hostile to Earth
and the Solar System. In the sixth and final novel, which opens with the
news that the Sirians have invaded the Saturn system and established a
beachhead, our two heroes and another Council member head for Saturn -
with the Council's unofficial blessing, and very much on their own
- on a secret mission which, it is hoped, will avert an interstellar war.
I started to read these books only a couple of months ago; I'm currently
about halfway through the last one. (Their titles are "Space Ranger",
"Pirates of the Asteroids", "Oceans of Venus", "The Big Sun of Mercury",
"The Moons of Jupiter", and "The Rings of Saturn".)
More so than in many Asimov novels, there's action aplenty, pretty much from
the word go. The reader barely has time to draw breath before the chase is
on. I'm finding them great fun to read. (Does that make me "juvenile"? I'd
prefer to think of myself as "young at heart"!
The reason for mentioning them here is that, in the future they depict (the
22nd Century), it's not the economists who have the main "ear of
government" so much as the scientists, as represented by the Council of
Science! Something deep down inside me finds itself singing, along with
"My Fair Lady"'s Eliza Doolittle: "Wouldn't it be loverly...?"
(If you'd like to read more about the "Space Ranger" novels, click
here.
Warning: that Wikipedia link - and others within it - contain
"spoilers", i.e. fairly detailed descriptions of the stories' plots, which might detract
from the fun of reading the novels themselves should you choose to do so.)
Toward the end of 1983, there was a federal election in Australia. At the
time, there was a Liberal/National Party government headed by Prime Minister
Malcolm Fraser; the Labor opposition was led by Bob Hawke.
One of the main issues of the day was the Franklin Dam. (Visit my
It's still not easy being green
page, about halfway down, to read more. Look for the pale green text
following the photo of the UTG banner on the Tas. Uni. Union Building.)
I voted Labor (just as I did on 24th November last year), specifically
because I wanted to get the dam stopped - which did indeed happen. However,
in the following months and years, I began to grow uneasy about the
direction the Hawke government was taking on other matters.
Four years earlier, in 1979,
Margaret Thatcher
had become Britain's first female Prime Minister. Then, in 1981,
Ronald Reagan
became the President of the United States of America. Between them, they
revolutionized the economic climates of their respective countries.
(Reagan's version became known as
"Reaganomics".)
The right-wing ideologies of the two leaders were virtually
indistinguishable in most major respects. Surely, this sort of thing
couldn't happen in Australia, could it...?
However - to the consternation of many, myself included - when Bob Hawke's
government was elected in 1983, some of the changes it initiated were
very un-Labor-like indeed; click
here
to read a brief history of the period. One change not specifically
mentioned in that page is the
deregulation of the banks
beginning under Hawke (click
here
for a bit more background, on that issue in particular).
The Treasurer in Hawke's government was one Paul Keating. Click
here
to read how Keating eventually challenged for the leadership and knocked
Hawke off his perch, becoming Australia's Prime Minister in 1991.
I well remember the upheaval that began to occur in the "Keating era" of the
early 1990's. Things had changed, we were told. "Economic rationalism" was
now the order of the day. The new religion was all about "free trade" and
"market forces". "Enterprise bargaining" was mandatory; "productivity" and
"profitability" were its cornerstones - even within education, for heaven's
sake. We had to endure what Keating patronizingly referred to as "the
recession we had to have", along with 17% interest rates. Worst of all:
suddenly, out of nowhere, we were all expected to accept and embrace the new
"global economy". (Please visit my
"The Loan Sharks"
page for more thoughts - and a song - on the matter.)
I, for one, was confused and disillusioned. How could the "working people's
party" be doing this to the Australian people? What could a disenfranchised
electorate do? Where could we go?
For the record: I didn't vote for John Howard's Liberal/National Party at
the 1996 federal election. (I was angry, but I wasn't stupid.) However, like
a lot of other disillusioned Australians, I didn't vote Labor, either. I
voted for whom I saw as (possibly) worthy independents at the time.
- And so, we got Howard - eleven years of him!
From my perspective, all Howard and Co. had to do, in order to impose their
particular ideological agenda, was to entrench and exacerbate the very worst
that Labor had put in place since 1983 - and that's exactly what they did.
There was a federal election at the end of 2004. The Labor leader at the
time was
Mark Latham,
whom many - myself included - saw as a way out of the wilderness for Labor.
However, he committed the unpardonable error of losing his temper at the
eleventh hour, thus playing right into the hands of the Liberal/National
Party government.
I was devastated. It was around that time that I determined that I would
create this website and thus try, in my own way, to make a difference before
the 2007 election.
So now here we are, with a new Labor government - at long last. What can we
now say about the present and immediate future of our country?
Quite clearly, the developed world is in an economic shambles. The latest
disaster is the "subprime mortgage crisis", which has originated in the US.
(Click
here
to read the Wikipedia article on the subject. It's a longish article,
precisely because it's a complicated, messy issue.)
So what has that do with Australia - or anywhere else, for that matter?
Well, as we are reminded ad nauseum, we live in a global
economy, so that's just the way it is - in Australia just as much as
anywhere else!
“...If America sneezes, so that the rest of the world catches pneumonia -
that's just reality, mate; deal with it! If Americans can't afford to put a
roof over their heads, why should we in Australia (or wherever) expect any
better? What makes us think we are so special...?”
It has to do with
monetary policy,
of course - a hallmark of Thatcher and Reagan's grand vision. The idea is
that by raising interest rates, people will be less inclined to borrow more
than they can afford to, thus "cooling" an "overheated economy" and bringing
inflation down. The reality, of course, is that everybody suffers - even
those who don't borrow unwisely - because the effect is to reduce the amount
of money people have to spend on life's necessities, so that they are poorer
in real terms. (I've discussed the issue previously in my
Enough!!!
page.)
- Except that it's clearly not working. This time, it seems, the nut is too
tough for even the sledgehammer of monetary policy to crack. Inflation is
continuing to rise regardless. The ugly term
"stagflation",
which was first coined in the mid-1960s and became a buzzword in the 1970s,
is back in parlance again. Clearly, something is very, very wrong. I venture
to suggest that the Thatcher/Reaganomics which has been so enthusiastically
adopted by the developed world is fatally flawed, and we are quite simply
going to have to find a better way.
(Perhaps a quick look at the article at the top of
this page
is worthwhile. It seems I'm not the only person who has grave reservations
about the Reserve Bank and its activities.)
I'm not an economist, so I can't offer any solutions. I'm just a citizen who
is adversely affected by the madness along with everyone else. However, it
is that very fact of being a citizen in what is at least supposed to
be a democracy which entitles me to have a viewpoint, and to express it -
right here:
Just as the "scientific power dream", satirized by Fred Hoyle in "The Black
Cloud", can't be trusted to result in acceptable decisions affecting whole
countries, or even the entire world - so what I consider to be the "economic
power nightmare" of Thatcher, Reagan et al is not to be trusted for
our financial security.
Economic globalization is anti-democratic. When I voted for Kevin
Rudd's new Labor government in late November last year, my intention was to
vote for a team who would represent me as an Australian citizen - not
as a mere speck in a world-wide money machine. You can have a global
economy, or you can have a democratically-elected government, at the helm of
your country's affairs - but you can't have both. They are
mutually exclusive.
Each country has the right to be an entity in its own right within a
community of nations. Nothing - and especially not anything to do
with economics! - should be allowed to trample on that right.
If we absolutely must have monetary policy to control inflation - if
there really is no better, more creative way than the "blunt
instrument" approach of cruel interest rate hikes - then let the government
of the day, as a mark of good faith toward the electorate, itself
take on the responsibility of administering it, not some unelected,
unaccountable, "independent" bureaucrat with nothing short of the very
undemocratic power of a
Sir Humphrey Appleby.
(When I voted last year, I didn't see a "Reserve Bank Party" column on my
voting ticket. What right has the Governor of the Reserve Bank - or any
other unelected official - to have any say over the effective value of the
money in my pocket?!)
(In recent months, some of the private banks have been raising their
interest rates even higher than the Reserve Bank's rates. This can be
nothing other than pure greed. Surely, this is a clarion call for the
government to re-regulate the banks? A look at
this page,
by an American writer, is worthwhile in this connection.)
STOP PRESS:
On tonight's news, after the Reserve Bank has increased interest rates
again - for the second time in a month - Kevin Rudd has promised, as
Prime Minister, to take responsibility for the economy. I'm very glad to
hear it! (Click
here
to read more.)
Let's work toward an economy which benefits Australians, regardless of what
may be going on elsewhere in the world - and let other countries adopt a
similar approach! By all means, let there be a community of nations willing
and able to help each other through tough times - but let's not allow the
economic problems of any one of them to undermine the security of any other
nation or nations.
Let's have an Australian government which has the vision and courage to
govern for Australians, and - if necessary - to step on a few
offshore toes to do so, come what may.
The flawed vision of economic globalization has passed its use-by date. In
the
words
of Jimi Hendrix:
...castles made of sand
It seems that the times really are "a-changing again" (to quote the
last line of my own song
"The Loan Sharks"),
and that dreams really can still come true after all, even in our
tired, jaded old world. Just short of a year ago, we Aussies voted for a
chance to have a clean start, and retake our place among the community of
civilized nations; now, the US has done the same. The collective sigh of
relief we experienced "down under" last November is now heard around the
entire planet.
AND WELCOME BACK!!!
In closing, another
quote
from Jimi Hendrix seems appropriate here:
...Can the new millenium really begin, finally?
) The point is that, if rainbows stood for
some kind of "new beginning" thousands of years ago, perhaps they still
do...
>>>
FINALLY
<<<
It's been a long wait. After eleven and a half dreary, stifling, frustrating
years, at long last our country has a chance to rejoin the civilized world.
I, and members of my family, were proud to do our bit to help bring about a
change of government. A union representative from my wife's workplace asked
if we would mind if they put up a "your rights at work" poster on our front
lawn - which was OK with us! Here's a photo I took of it.
far more important, it offers a fascinating
glimpse into the scientific power dream...
)
fall in the sea
eventually...
(A YouTube video of this song is
here.)
UPDATE, Friday, 7th November 2008
We are definitely living in interesting times. Just three days ago, on
Tuesday 4th November, the 2008 US presidential election was held,
resulting in an emphatic win for Democrat Senator Barack Obama.
WELL DONE, AMERICA -
Now, at last, perhaps we can all work toward the kind of "globalization"
we really do need: not the kind where the mighty dollar reigns
supreme, or any one nation thinks it can own and control the entire world,
but the kind where all right-minded people can begin to work together to
tackle the enormous problems we all face - in particular, the horrific
environmental and economic threats which have arisen in recent times - and
strive to make our world a safe, livable place for everyone.
“When the power of love overcomes the love of power,
the world will know peace.”
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