In ‘The Good Life’, the prolific social researcher Hugh Mackay usefully focuses our attention on this crucial question. Although in some ways Mackay’s most recent book is familiar territory, he nevertheless creatively explores how incorporating into our lives the Golden Rule (treat others as we would like others to treat us) gives us at least the possibility of enjoying a deeply satisfying existence.

Yet, as Mackay claims, our actual experience of life soon teaches us that the Golden Rule is ”easier to admire as an ideal than to put into practice”. As he says: ”We may aspire to lead a life animated by kindness and based on respect for others, but, for all kinds of reasons to do with our personalities, our temperaments and our circumstances, our life often falls short of that gold standard.”

The most important sections of this crisply written book deal with the ultimate futility of our seemingly relentless pursuit of happiness and of self-regard. Indeed, in a key chapter entitled ”How the pursuit of happiness can make you miserable”, Mackay deals fairly and squarely with the ultimate emptiness of ”pursuing happiness as the main goal of our life”.

The Zurich-born essayist Alain de Botton has previously dealt with this subject in his books of popular philosophy, and with Mackay’s proposition that, as humans, we can often learn a lot more from pain, sadness and loss than from pleasure or happiness – which in the main are transitory emotions.

Still, it is hard to dispute Mackay’s contention that ”the measure of a good life [can] hardly be based on some assessment of how happy we are; it will depend primarily upon how well we treat others, regardless of how that makes us feel”.

Thus, although Mackay does not mention it, the ”felicific calculus” of English philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) is sorely lacking as a measure of how worthwhile our lives are. An advocate of utilitarianism, Bentham maintained that the rightness or wrongness of any human action is a mathematical function of the amount of pleasure or pain that it produces.

In contrast, Mackay puts it thus: ”Happiness is at best a by-product, not the goal, of a well-lived life.”

While Mackay and I may be as one on the above, there is also much to disagree with in his latest offering. For example, his proposition that ”no one is easier to con than a conman” is, to put it mildly, doubtful. Nor do I think that a so-called ”selfless life” necessarily leads to more satisfaction than a life sometimes strongly motivated by self-interest. I have long been sceptical of the life and work of seemingly ”selfless” souls, such as Mother Teresa (1910-1997).

I am also puzzled that in this, his 14th book, Mackay does not pay any attention to hugely successful self-help groups, which also encourage fellowship, community, and a sense of active empathy, help and service to others.

Despite this, it seems to me possible, if not likely, that thinking about this book might enable some of us to engage in a more thoughtful discussion about how best to live our lives. Perhaps more importantly, careful reading of ‘The Good Life’ might enable us to change our attitudes to other people and, in particular, to listen to other people’s needs more attentively.

Finally, even though it may not seem crucial to some readers, I should record that in ‘The Good Life’ Mackay indulges in two of my pet personal hates – calling children ”kids”, and unnecessarily using that annoying phrase ”of course”.

Hugh Mackay is at the Sydney Writers’ Festival, May 20-26.

THE GOOD LIFE

Hugh Mackay

Macmillan, 272pp, $29.99

‘The Sydney Morning Herald’, May 18-19, 2013, Spectrum, pp 28-29

It is with the multifaceted effects on this close-knit community that this deeply moving and insightful book primarily deals.

As a military-social historian, Peter Stanley has long been fascinated by the ways in which bushfires resemble battles. As he explains, “both are chaotic, traumatic events; both are fought against a physical enemy; and both bring fear, suffering, heroism, destruction, and death”.

Although Stanley has never experienced a battle or a bushfire firsthand, after listening to dozens of people from Steels Creek talking in detail about what he calls “their fire”, he has produced a compelling narrative, a work of the first order. This is largely because Stanley has researched and written this important book “as a sympathetic observer, one able to comprehend, translate, and convey a version of the experience – at least to make sense of it.”

Black Saturday at Steels Creek not only magnificently chronicles the dreadful events that occurred that February day and the varied effects thereafter, but – to this reviewer at least – Stanley explains these highly charged, life-changing experiences to the benefit of the citizens of Australia as a whole, be they urban, suburban, regional or rural. This at least in part is because the stark reality is that flood, drought and fire affect us all deeply. Indeed, for as long as humans have lived here, bushfires have been an integral part of the precarious life on this continent.

Stanley conceived this book, written while he was head of the Centre for Historical Research at the National Museum of Australia, as a community-based history. Hence he relies primarily on the memories, however different and diverse, of 50 citizens from Steels Creek. Earlier last year, Stanley sensibly sent his draft manuscript out to all the people to whom he had spoken, to gather their comments, additions and corrections.

It is a sign of the confidence he inspired in the local community that Stanley received overwhelmingly helpful and positive responses, which have been incorporated into the final text.

It is fascinating to discover the varied human responses to this catastrophic fire and the ordeals that inevitably ensued.

The sad reality is that on Saturday, February 7, 2009, Melbourne’s temperature reached 46.4C – the hottest day in the 154 years since records began. The previous highest temperature had been 45.6C on January 13, 1939: Black Friday.

This extreme temperature was coupled with winds that reached 90km/h and fanned the fire. This meant that within minutes the unstoppable conflagration became the most lethal fire in Australia’s post-settlement history.

Not only did the magnitude of the 2009 fire exceed that of 1939, but while the Country Fire Authority had been helpful with previous smaller bushfires, it was unable to respond effectively to such a large-scale, catastrophic blaze. To make matters worse, on Black Saturday when the bushfire thundered towards Steels Creek, the CFA had not issued clear and timely warnings to those in its path. As Stanley poignantly puts it: “In the event, the people of Steels Creek – like almost everyone else in the area that burned on Black Saturday – would face the fire largely on their own.”

This fine book benefits greatly from a number of excellent maps drawn by Jennifer Sheehan. It is touching to record that the names of the people who died at Steels Creek are now stitched into a quilt that is on display at the newly extended local community centre, which opened in April last year. For the record, here are the 10: Charmian Ahern, Leigh Ahern, Jenny Barnett, John Barnett, Jaeson Hermocilla, Melanee Hermocilla, Lynne James, Gail Leonard, Greg Leonard and Greg Lloyd.

Yet despite all the heartache caused by Black Saturday, it is extremely pleasing to know that in 2013 Steels Creek remains a genuinely involved, active and often still hopeful community.

‘Black Saturday at Steels Creek’
By Peter Stanley
Scribe, 240pp, $27.95

Ross Fitzgerald is emeritus professor of history and politics at Griffith University.

The Weekend Australian May 18-19, 2013, Review, Books, pp24-25

In 2013, we should not still be merely discussing this possibility. On Wednesday, a NSW parliamentary committee, chaired by Nationals upper house MP Sarah Mitchell, unanimously recommended that medicinal cannabis be permitted for some people with certain terminal conditions.

At present, 18 states in the US allow medical marijuana and a further 10 are considering it. Apart from providing genuine alternatives to existing medicines, this approach has kick-started a plethora of scientific research on cannabis by an industry that has until recently been cowed from embarking on research projects.

There is strong community support for medicinal cannabis in Australia, but no state or territory permits it. So Tony Bowers, a community activist, has been openly challenging the law by providing cannabis tincture on compassionate grounds to people with distressing conditions. Following a recent current affairs TV show focusing on his work, police arrested Bowers. He is now serving a 12-month jail term. Bowers claims to have had very positive results from his cannabis tinctures, including curing a seven-year-old girl with Dravet syndrome who had been having severe epileptic fits since she was six weeks old.

It is important to separate the very different issues of medicinal and recreational use of cannabis. The recent Nimbin Mardigrass Festival saw a coming together of doctors, patients who had been using medical marijuana and political campaigners advocating drug-law reform. The experienced NSW-based drug-law reformer, Alex Wodak, put the issue in perspective when he addressed one of the seminars: “After all, in 2013, medicine legally uses morphine, cocaine and amphetamine, while the recreational use of these substances is strictly prohibited. We could use cannabis medically and still ban the recreational use of the drug if we wanted to.”

I can’t see how any politician could argue with this position. As the distinguished US biologist Stephen Jay Gould said: “It is beyond my comprehension that any humane person would withhold such a beneficial substance (cannabis) from people in great need simply because others use it for different purposes.”

When NSW premier Bob Carr commissioned a report from a high-level committee in 2000, it was supportive of the use of medicinal cannabis. Although the report was based heavily on reports from the British House of Lords (1997-98) and the US Institute of Medicine (1999), the matter did not progress. Since then, the evidence that cannabis is effective in a number of medical conditions has become stronger.

Australian Sex Party president Fiona Patten, who was on the same panel as Wodak, told the audience that adult shops, tobacconists and herbal shops reported that, over the past two years, they had been inundated by elderly people seeking legal synthetic marijuana preparations. These people were trying to alleviate distressing symptoms from a range of illnesses including Parkinson’s disease, fibromyalgia and insomnia.

Patten claimed that they were only buying the synthetic variety because they did not want to have to engage in an illegal transaction for plant cannabis and that politicians had fostered the growth of the synthetic trade by outlawing cannabis.

The same panel heard from Angela, a young and brave woman with inoperable brain cancer. Her life began a downward spiral where she lost her children and she was on such strong painkillers that she was virtually unconscious most of the day. After a year of treatment with cannabis medications, the cancer has retreated and she is now on the way to a full recovery.

Another member of the panel, a middle-aged man with long-term Crohn’s disease, reported being cured within a few months by cannabis tinctures manufactured by Bowers.

So the answer to the question of whether or not Australia should allow medicinal use of cannabis seems to me abundantly clear.

What is less clear is how this should be achieved. One option is to allow people who have been shown to have one of a range of serious medical conditions, and of sufficient severity, to be exempt from prosecution when purchasing and/or cultivating cannabis. The exemption from prosecution that some taxi drivers and pregnant women are granted for not wearing a seat belt might offer some sort of precedent.

However, many reformers don’t like this approach, mainly because they think people with a serious illness should not have to resort to these measures in order to receive a medication.

Another option might be to allow the use of pharmaceutically prepared products such as Sativex – a cannabis-based oral spray that helps with spasticity in multiple sclerosis sufferers. However, this will probably cost about $500 a month and most people who would want to use cannabis medicinally won’t have that sort of money. And some researchers believe Sativex is not as effective as leaf cannabis.

The third option, favoured by Wodak, is importing cannabis leaf that has been produced under meticulous conditions in The Netherlands, also purchased by Israel and Canada. This is likely to be much less expensive.

US state politicians have embarked on a path of cannabis law reform that is diametrically opposed to the path Australian politicians are taking. Last month in Queensland, the Newman government introduced draconian laws that say if you sell something with the “intention” of selling something “similar” to synthetic cannabis, you are guilty, even if it turns out to be lawn clippings. Patten sought the advice of a chemical expert on the laws and issued a media release claiming the government had inadvertently made a whole range of household substances illegal – including chocolate, echinacea, saffron and tryptophan. The Queensland government has not refuted her claims.

The history of cannabis prohibition is flawed with technical mistakes, ignorance and prejudice. Cannabis was initially banned worldwide (including in Australia) because an Egyptian delegation to a League of Nations meeting in 1925 said it was as dangerous as opium. Yet no research was provided to back the claim. Eighty-eight years on, thousands of people have been jailed and governments and police have spent many millions of dollars maintaining this prohibition. One of the costs of this prohibition has been that people with cancer, AIDS or MS still cannot benefit from the medical use of cannabis.

It’s well and truly time for this nonsense to stop.

Ross Fitzgerald’s memoir, ‘My Name is Ross: An Alcoholic’s Journey’, is now available as an e-book.

‘The Weekend Australian’, May 18 -19 2013, Inquirer p 20.

As matters stand, she is destined to be remembered as the Labor leader who knifed a popular but flawed leader in Kevin Rudd, lost Labor’s majority at the 2010 election and then (if current polls are any indication) led Labor to its worst ever loss at the 2013 election.

The deterioration in the nation’s finances under Gillard’s watch and her failure to balance the budget during a period of record terms of trade will have long-term consequences.

Her failure on border protection and asylum-seeker policy will be regarded as the greatest policy failure for many decades, while a defining moment of her legacy will be the broken promise over the carbon tax and linking the carbon price to the EU carbon scheme.

Under the Gillard government the union movement has enjoyed resurgence in power and influence way beyond the demands or needs of workplaces across Australia. This has occurred because the Prime Minister needs union support to stay in power.

One of Gillard’s more insidious legacies will be her reversal of over 30 years of labour market reform and turning her back on Labor’s previous embrace of a deregulated economy.

When the Prime Minister addressed the AWU conference in February this year, assuring the audience that she was not the leader of a progressive or moderate or social democratic party but the Labor Party, what she was really saying is she views herself as the leader of the union party.

Gillard is allowing Australia to be dragged back to the industrial practices of earlier centuries in terms of the power of the unions, thus ignoring the urgent need for Australia’s labour force to be competitive in a global economy.

Unions have been under pressure for decades, as globalisation and changes in society have made their role less relevant. Ironically, the greatest decline in union membership occurred under the Hawke and Keating Labor governments from 1983 to 1996, when union coverage declined from about 50 per cent of the workforce to about 25 per cent.

At present only 13 per cent of the private sector workforce has union membership.

Former ACTU boss Bob Hawke used a series of accords to limit union wage demands, motivated by the knowledge that a wages breakout would damage the economy and drive up unemployment.

Paul Keating brought in the concept of enterprise bargaining, which further restrained the ability of militant union leaders to make exorbitant demands.

In 1996, John Howard’s government built on this legacy with the introduction of individual Australian Workplace Agreements, which enabled employers to bypass unions altogether and negotiate directly with employees on a one-to-one basis.

The successful union campaign of 2007 that helped propel Kevin Rudd into the Lodge also provided his government with a mandate to reform employment laws, with responsibility for the change being placed in Gillard’s hands. AWAs were duly scrapped and workplaces heavily re-regulated, reversing many of the reforms of the Howard, Keating and Hawke governments. Fair Work Australia was created and stacked with former union officials.

Union bosses then played a key role in the removal of Rudd, with Paul Howes, the brash young head of the AWU, boasting on television in the middle of the ambush of the role he played in bringing down a first-term prime minister.

Through their factional proxies in the Labor caucus, despite consistently poor opinion polls, union leaders remain firmly behind Gillard and are responsible for blocking the return of Rudd to the Labor leadership.

The Prime Minister has repaid that support by backing legislation that unfairly tips the balance of workplace relations in favour of the unions and with fiscally reckless policy announcements, including the use of taxpayer funds to top up salaries of aged-care and childcare workers on the condition that they join a union.

Gillard has denied the link between increased pay and union membership, but the union leaders have let the cat out of the bag with brochures for workers detailing their need to join a union to access pay rises from the federal government.

There are serious implications from Gillard’s strong support for militant union leaders – especially as militancy often leads to fewer employment opportunities for union members. In the past, mines, factories and other businesses have been bankrupted and closed due to the bloody-minded behaviour of some union bosses.

Increased union power can also entrench higher levels of unemployment, as employers are reluctant to take on more staff for fear of disruption to their business.

Unreasonable demands from unions also increase the cost of employing existing staff, thus restricting the ability of business to create further opportunities. This is where some union bosses reveal their apparent lack of interest in those who are unemployed.

Some unions can and do work constructively with employers to streamline workplace practices to boost productivity and increase profitability, thus creating an environment for increased employment.

The Prime Minister’s track record indicates that she is firmly in the camp of the most militant and disruptive unions, and there is significant danger to the economy if she continues to bow to their demands as payback for supporting her leadership.

An end to this government cannot come soon enough for those wanting a modern, flexible workplace environment that focuses equally on the needs of employers and employees.

Ross Fitzgerald’s memoir ‘My Name is Ross: An Alcoholic’s Journey’ is now available as an e-book.

The Weekend Australian, May 11-12, 2013, Inquirer p 17.

ALTHOUGH I very much enjoy writing political satires such as my co-authored ‘Fools’ Paradise: Life In An Altered State’, set in the fictitious University of Mangoland, sadly neither my recent suggestions to cut the number of universities and vice-chancellors in Australia – particularly in the regions – nor the 2008 Bradley Review recommendation that our university sector requires serious structural change, were satires.

As the now publicly declared cuts of $2.4 billion to higher education funding and John Daley’s recent report for the Grattan Institute on the budget pressures on Australian governments make clear, change is long overdue.

In a market-driven economy our universities need to deliver economies of scale in administration and the critical mass of academic staff needed to extend quality standards in teaching and research.

I recently had the opportunity to meet face-to-face with Professor Scott Bowman (vice-chancellor of Central Queensland University) and some of his colleagues, students and regional stakeholders in Rockhampton. I could not fail to be impressed by their dignity and determination in fighting to defend the independence of their regionally important university. Although CQ University is achieving a 13 per cent increase in domestic students, the 32 per cent fall in international students from 2010 to 2012 means it is losing two students for every one gained.

In addition, the increasing staffing costs needed to attract high-quality academics and the recently announced cuts in government funding add to the burden of reduced revenues and operating deficits.

I was reminded of the valiant struggle waged by my now long-out-of-business local grocery shop and delicatessen against the supermarket chains.

Bowman, like the Regional Universities Network chairman, Professor David Battersby from Ballarat University, rejects the need to respond to market drivers by slashing the number of universities in order to keep in operation multiple campuses throughout regional and remote Australia. Like their fiercely independent-minded grocery shop and deli counterparts of yesteryear, they are waging a protracted battle to survive.

As much as my heart goes out to the regional vice-chancellors, my head very much places me on the side of supporting structural change in higher education.

In 2013 there are too many universities in Australia and far too many vice-chancellors. Structural change is necessary so our public sector universities can deliver, at a reasonable price, the increasing range of degree opportunities sought and needed by our students, especially in regional Australia. The opportunity to acquire professional skills by regional Australians of all ages and backgrounds is essential for healthy regions in our nation.

This need must outweigh the grief of parting with some of the much-loved regional universities.

This is where sound government comes in. While the Bradley Review may have implied the introduction of a national university for regional and remote Australia, a more sensible approach would be structural change within each state. This will best meet the needs of regional students and regional economies.

The Grattan Institute report highlighted the need for structural change in the budgets of both state and federal governments. Both levels of government play a role in the governance of our universities and both should be leaders in restructuring the university sector. In so doing, they will need to be attentive to the two key functions that the sector is funded to deliver: providing teaching and research available to all Australians and as an exporter of high-quality educational services for international students. Good government will need to place securing a sustainable framework for these functions ahead of the parish-pump.

While I disagree with regional vice-chancellors about the need for structural change in higher education, which I maintain ought to involve reducing the number of Australian universities, we are as one in regarding the Gillard government’s plan to fund the Gonski reforms by cutting university funding by 2 per cent as a foolhardy and shortsighted robbing of Peter to pay Paul. Financially and symbolically it is the height of stupidity to siphon off money from universities to fund improvements in schools.

Ross Fitzgerald is Emeritus Professor of History and Politics at Griffith University. He is the author of 35 books, most recently ‘Fools’ Paradise’ and his memoir ‘My Name is Ross: An Alcoholic’s Journey’.

The Daily Telegraph April 29, 2013 p 23

With the voting public seemingly not listening to the Prime Minister any more, and the continuing malaise in opinion polls that has Labor wallowing around a 30 per cent primary vote, it suggests our citizenry gave up listening last year. Australians now have to weigh up the risk of placing the federal Labor government back in power.

As American author and statistician Nate Silver recently noted in his bestseller ‘The Signal and the Noise’: “Risk greases the wheels of a free-market economy; uncertainty grinds them to a halt.”

Silver made his name predicting election outcomes; he also made a lot of money playing professional poker. As he states: “Risk is something you can put a price on. In the long run, you’ll make a profit from your opponents making desperate draws with insufficient odds.

“Uncertainty is risk that is hard to measure. You might have some vague awareness of the demons lurking out there. You might be acutely concerned about them. But you have no real idea how many of them there are or when they might strike.”

This is the problem confronting Australia right now. Business and consumers are reluctant to put a price on risk, preferring to avoid making decisions. Yet the taking of risk and reaping the associated rewards lies at the heart of our modern economy.

While the nation’s economic outlook is still in a relatively favourable position, and the metrics are working well in the government’s favour, business and consumers are uncertain, preferring to save and not spend. This is a major component of Labor’s dilemma: Australians not taking calculated business and consumer risks because, instead of the federal government providing certainty and predictability, it has presented a series of broken promises and seemingly out-of-control, ad-hoc decision-making.

Try to name any recent major policy initiative that has not been sent down a path of most resistance, where stakeholders have been alienated, supporters confused and the ultimate outcome is political chaos. From a long list – including the mining tax, superannuation, supposed refugee solutions, media legislation, anti-discrimination laws, even the latest Gonski funding reform, cutbacks to higher education – the outcome is so often the same: inconclusive.

A highly revealing story that Joe Hockey told recently is that of an encounter with a highly successful Australian businessman, and $200 million he has and wants to invest. As the opposition’s Treasury spokesman tells it, this man’s business is multinational, the same operation either side of the Pacific.

In the US, his gross annual labour cost is $85,000 a worker. In Australia, it is $130,000. His US energy bills are about $25m a year. In Australia, they are $40m, even before a carbon tax component of $12m. Where does he place his $200m? While the outcome appears obvious, thankfully, for the sake of Australian infrastructure and employment, that decision has not yet been made.

Consider the politics. What our businessman is doing is calculating risk – or at least he wants to, but calculable risk is fast becoming incalculable uncertainty.

The financial reward for risk-taking has diminished with higher costs and higher taxes on profit and income, which penalise success. After all, our federal government has declared war on individuals because they are billionaires, and on miners because they are profitable.

There is another factor. The global bailout by governments of financial institutions, and of some corporates which were deemed too big or too important to fail, has effectively removed one of the disciplines of the system of risk-taking. It has undermined the risk calculus.

At present, Gillard cannot seem to understand why Australians do not give her government the credit she believes that it deserves.

Economic success is a finely balanced act. The government trumpets the example of the AAA rating our nation enjoys from the three acknowledged ratings companies. We are one of only eight nations in the world with that status.

But the decision to abandon a budget surplus this financial year, and the prospect that surpluses in the forward estimates will become deficits, places an enormous risk on the nation’s credit rating. At least one of the agencies has warned that a genuine return to a surplus path must be evident in next month’s budget to prevent a downgrade.

It is instructive to note that the last time Australia had a perfect AAA score was when there were only two ratings agencies, in June 1975. Anyone who remembers the chaotic latter days of the Whitlam government, then on to its third Treasurer, could scarcely suggest it reflects stable times.

Just like that era, if the federal government believes that increasing Australia’s gross debt to more than a quarter of a trillion dollars, increasing debt every single year they have been in office and delivering four successive deficits (with more to come) totalling $172 billion has helped us obtain a AAA trifecta, then it could be hard to be taken seriously by international investors.

The current situation points to highly uncertain economic and fiscal times ahead. A major political question is, are Australians ready to take the risk?

Emeritus professor of history and politics at Griffith University, Ross Fitzgerald is the author of 35 books, most recently ‘My Name is Ross: An Alcoholic’s Journey’ and the political satire ‘Fools’ Paradise’.

The Weekend Australian April 27-28, 2013, Inquirer p 16

Factional manoeuvring is alive and well in the Labor Party.

The latest prime example occurred on Monday last week, at a meeting of the West Australian state executive. The headline story coming out of the nights proceedings in Perth was the choice of Joe Bullock to head Labor’s Senate ticket for the federal election. His success precipitated the retirement of Senator Mark Bishop, who no longer could get a winnable spot on the ticket.

The West Australian executive also had to fill a casual Senate vacancy. The person chosen is a unionist, Sue Lines. Unlike Bullock, who must wait until July 1 next year before his term actually starts, Lines goes straight into the Senate. She will then serve as a non-elected appointee in the upper house for four long years until June 30, 2017. This is a juicy prospect. Appointment to a Senate casual vacancy is a prize political plum and has certainly has been treated as such in Western Australia. The need for Labor to come up with a replacement senator in the west arose when the governments then leader in the Senate, Chris Evans, announced in February that he was retiring thus precipitating a casual vacancy. Voters have no say at all in the filling of Senate casual vacancies. These are filled by the state executive of the party that holds the seat nominating a replacement. In the ALP, these nominations are usually decided on a strictly factional basis. Western Australia is no exception.

Since the 1990s, one of the winnable Labor Senate seats is always allocated to the so-called Missos sub-faction, which comprises people in the overall Left faction whose connection is a shared link with the former Federated Miscellaneous Workers Union. The departing Evans belonged to this sub-faction. His association with the Missos began back in 1982, when he started working as an industrial officer for the unions West Australian branch. After Evans indicated he was retiring, Labor’s state executive was required to nominate a suitable successor to fill the Missos seat in the Senate. The state executive comprises about 175 delegates. On paper, this seems like a lot of people, but in practice most of the delegates currently orbit around a few big sub-factional blocs, notably the right-wing Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association (the Shoppies) led by Bullock, and its left-wing counterpart, United Voice, which is the rebadged incarnation of the old Federated Miscellaneous Workers Union.

The Maritime Union Of Australia has benefited from a recent recruitment drive in Western Australia, which will ensure it gets a much larger presence on the state executive, but the resulting readjustment in representation on the executive does not take effect until after the end of this month. So the Missos sub-faction still had first call on Evans old seat when the executive members met last week to fill the casual vacancy. As had been widely anticipated, Lines was the Missos person chosen by the executive to succeed Evans. Her factional credentials were impeccable. She was assistant national secretary of United Voice and represented it on the ALP national executive. As a unionist, Lines was
not a non-entity. She was involved in campaigns to secure fair conditions and professional wages for workers in the early childhood education and aged-care sectors. But this record of achievement, while impressive, had nothing directly to do with the Senate appointment. The determining factor was a perception of binding loyalty to a key sub-faction in the Labor Party, the Missos.

The reality is that an impenetrable system of factional loyalties continues to be crucial in determining the composition of the parliamentary Labor Party. Factionalism can be opaque and mystifying to outsiders. When the West Australian state executive met, the right-wing Shoppies sub-faction joined United Voice in endorsing the left-wing Lines. This endorsement was made because United Voice had already agreed
to Joe Bullock being chosen to head the states Labor Senate ticket in September.

Such an elaborate system of recruitment based on factional ties fascinates political junkies but leaves most voters cold. A party so structured finds it even harder to connect with the electorate at large. Whether an unfavourable election outcome on September 14 means a diminished role for Labor’s thicket of sub-factions is one of the big questions in Australian politics. The strength of these various fiefdoms may well be debilitating to the party as a whole. Nonetheless they are continuing to luxuriate even on the eve of an extremely challenging federal election as shown by how Western Australia’s very latest senator was produced.

Ross Fitzgerald is emeritus professor of history and politics at Griffith University. His most recent books are ‘My Name is Ross: An Alcoholic’s Journey’ and the political satire ‘Fool’s Paradise’.

‘The Canberra Times’, 22 April 2013

The election will be potentially devastating for Labor, especially in states like NSW and Queensland where it will lose some of its most talented members and possibly several senior ministers including Deputy Prime Minister and Treasurer Wayne Swan.

In the aftermath Labor will need to use common sense and a strategic approach to rebuild the party. Indeed it needs to start thinking about that now, otherwise a coalition government led by Tony Abbott will be in office for a generation.

The challenge for Labor is to put aside factional considerations and petty jealousies and find a way to effectively use the talent that it has in its ranks. The reality is that much of that potential talent is not in the federal parliament.

Recently there was public speculation that Labor strategists were already preparing for defeat by planning to put ousted federal MPs into state seats to revive the ALP’s parlous political fortunes.

This would follow the precedent of former federal MP John Brumby who became Victoria’s treasurer and premier.

In Queensland, the speculation centred on two federal Labor MPs – Yvette D’Ath and Shayne Neumann – the members for Petrie and Blair.

Although they have both denied state ambitions, this speculation may encourage similar plans in NSW and Victoria.

The problem for Labor is that it is all very well for their strategists to have a focus on introducing new and different talent to the states but this would leave a defeated federal Labor Party fighting for relevance, if not near extinction.

It seems that there are two possible future leaders for federal Labor – Bill Shorten and Greg Combet. Shorten represents a Victorian seat and Combet a seat in NSW. Assuming they form a leadership team, Queensland would be bereft of senior representation. And the crucial fact is that, federally, Labor cannot win without Queensland.

While Kevin Rudd may retain his seat and possibly be the only Queenslander in the next federal parliament, the jury is still out about whether politically his time has come and gone.

In my opinion, the ALP strategy should embrace a twofold approach. There should be a leadership team which takes the ALP through the highly likely two terms that Abbott will get as prime minister, and then hand over to a future possible Labor prime minister in Shorten or Combet.

The ALP desperately needs experienced winners who can rebuild Labor at a federal level. Reliable operators who have the proven political skills to win back community support but who were not part of the disastrous decision-making process of the Gillard government and who would thus not be tainted by the odium of a defeated federal government.

Labor should learn from its own history. In the past, the ALP has successfully parachuted capable state leaders into federal politics who have helped reshape and build the party. For example, former Queensland Premiers T.J. Ryan and E.G (“Red Ted”) Theodore both entered federal politics by virtue of seats in Sydney to assist the party in its time of need. For quite different reasons (Ryan died of influenza in 1921 and Theodore was crippled politically by the Mungana Mines scandal and forced to resign as treasurer in 1930) neither was able to take over the federal leadership.

Nevertheless this crucial piece of Labor Party history is well worth remembering today.

Queensland now boasts only three living Labor premiers – Wayne Goss, Peter Beattie and Anna Bligh. Only Beattie retired undefeated and had the ability to be elected four times as premier.

In contrast, Goss has had mixed health and little political interest, and the negative memories of the Bligh government are too vivid for her to be a political asset for federal Labor.

Beattie currently spends considerable time overseas. But he could be part of a forceful team to lead Labor’s federal revival, especially if partnered with the other undefeated premiers Bob Carr and Victoria’s Steve Bracks. If Beattie and Bracks could be persuaded to enter federal politics they could form the backbone of a Labor revival in partnership with Carr, Shorten and Combet.

Carr, Beattie and Bracks were the most effective modern Labor communicators since Bob Hawke and Paul Keating.

The advantage for Shorten and Combet in this strategy is that Carr, Beattie and Bracks are all ageing so they could be part of Labor’s rebuilding but are unlikely to stand in the way of their ambitions to be prime minister.

Too often in the national debate the importance of the states is ignored in terms of the contribution they make to which party wins the federal election.

The annihilation of the ALP in Queensland and NSW has left a dominating LNP government in Queensland and a coalition government in NSW that will throw resources and human capital behind the likely Abbott landslide.

These states are a political vacuum for Labor and while some may argue it might be better to recruit Beattie to take on Campbell Newman in Queensland that would be a wasted opportunity for Labor.

At the moment, federal Labor is in a state of denial but that will evaporate on election night as seat after seat falls to the Abbott-led coalition.

Then finally the hard-heads of the party will need to make some tough decisions or face another long period in the wilderness similar to the Howard years.

Labor needs a strategy for an effective political fightback.

This year’s election is all but already lost and only the delusional or the blindly loyal can’t see a crushing defeat coming like an avalanche.

Ross Fitzgerald is Emeritus Professor of History and Politics at Griffith University.

‘The Daily Telegraph’, April 22, 2013 p 25

His Labor credentials were impeccable. Born in Adelaide on December 29, 1884, Theodore – who was of Romanian background – left school at 12 to gain work in the mines to help his family financially. Shortly after he arrived in North Queensland in 1907, fresh from Broken Hill, Theodore and his future successor as Labor premier, William McCormack, became leaders of the Amalgamated Workers Association, which later was absorbed by the Australian Workers Union with which Theodore was associated for all his political life.

In 1909, Theodore was elected a state Labor MP for the Chillagoe district that was to remain the union and political base of a brilliant career, which led to Theodore becoming premier of Queensland from 1919 to 1925. Early in his parliamentary life, he benefited from elocution lessons and from his regular practice of using emphasis and cadence in all his speeches. During his premiership, in 1922, Theodore organised for the abolition of the legislative council, which is why to this day Queensland has a one-house parliament.

It was the Queensland Royal Commission into Mungana Mines, near Chillagoe (instituted by the state Nationalist Country Party government of A. E. “Boy” Moore in the hope of discrediting McCormack’s 1925 to 1929 government in Queensland) that forced Theodore to stand down as federal treasurer in July 1930.

But there was a double whammy. Soon after Theodore moved to Sydney to become federal Labor member for Dalley at a byelection in February 1927, he had a huge falling out with the vengeful NSW Labor leader Jack Lang – otherwise known as the “Big Fella”. Lang and his supporters feared Theodore’s intrusion into NSW ALP affairs because of his association with the AWU and because of what they regarded as his intention to become the leading Labor politician in NSW.

This apprehension was not entirely misplaced. In October 1929, Theodore became Jim Scullin’s treasurer as well as deputy leader of the party. Yet the first federal Labor government in 13 years was not four months into office when the seeds of Theodore’s demise were being sown by the NSW branch of the party and by the so-called “Mungana Mines scandal”.

On July 2, 1930, Scullin announced his intention to travel to London for the Imperial Conference of Dominion Prime Ministers. Theodore was nominated as acting prime minister for the several months of his absence.

Two days later, on July 4, 1930, a blow fell that would not only remove Theodore from active politics during the next six months, but also irreparably taint his reputation during his lifetime and beyond: Theodore’s political opponents in Queensland released a judicial report finding fault with his conduct over the state Labor government’s acquisition of the Mungana mines.

Tragically, Red Ted – an early follower of the theories of John Maynard Keynes – was rendered powerless precisely when his economic and fiscal abilities were most required. At that point, when he could most have helped our country to deal with large-scale unemployment, he was forced to stand down as treasurer.

Although Scullin reappointed Theodore as treasurer in January 1931 – on the basis that the Queensland government had not charged him with any offence – by then it was too late. The Australian economy was out of control and the federal Labor government was on the nose.

After the electoral rout of the Scullin government in late 1931, Joseph Lyons became prime minister and leader of the United Australia Party in January 1932.

Theodore could well have become our ablest prime minister. But instead of voting for Theodore’s advanced economic and fiscal policies, the country chose a compromise candidate in the form of Lyons, who believed in reducing expenditure as a means of dealing with Australia’s financial and economic crisis. Theodore, who was thrashed in his seat of Dalley, never stood for parliament again.

After federal politics, Theodore helped redeem himself in the public eye when, for no payment, he took up the post of Director-General of the Allied Works Council during World War II. Ironically, the itinerant mine worker and energetic union official became an owner of the hugely profitable Emperor Gold Mines in Fiji – with the infamous entrepreneur John Wren and the wealthy capitalist Frank Packer. With the latter, Theodore founded the hugely successful ‘Australian Women’s Weekly’.

Even today, apart from being something of a cult figure in the Treasury, Theodore is esteemed by both sides of politics. For example, the ex-Bjelke Petersen minister and now independent federal MP for the vast north Queensland seat of Kennedy, Bob Katter, describes Theodore as “a very great Australian – the person I most admire in Australian politics”. Former Labor PM Paul Keating regards Theodore and Lang as his two great Australian political heroes. Tellingly, the day after Red Ted’s funeral, Lang wrote: “Of all my political opponents E. G. Theodore was the toughest – when he was beaten he didn’t squeal.” If only Julia Gillard could follow Theodore’s example!

Theodore died in Edgecliff, Sydney, on February 9, 1950 – aged 65. Shortly before his death a friend asked, “Was it true about Mungana, Ted?” Theodore reportedly replied: “There is no more beautiful sight than Sydney Harbour on an autumn afternoon.”

Ross Fitzgerald’s book ‘”Red Ted”: The Life of E. G.Theodore’, was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Prize and the National Biography Award.

The Weekend Australian April 13 14, 2013, Inquirer p 16

In what is still Canberra’s worst disaster in terms of loss of life, all 10 aboard died, including the chief of the general staff, Cyril Brudenell White, and three of Robert Gordon Menzies’ closest cabinet supporters: minister for the army Geoffrey Street, minister for air James Fairbairn and information minister Henry Gullett.

Perhaps the luckiest federal parliamentarian at the time was the minister for commerce, George McLeay, who had been offered a seat on the Hudson but turned it down. However, unlike the other three politicians, McLeay was neither a member of Menzies’ inner war cabinet nor one of the prime minister’s trusted friends.

Since turning to writing, Andrew Tink, a former NSW Liberal MP, has produced two well-received biographies: ‘William Charles Wentworth: Australia’ s Greatest Native Son’ and ‘Lord Sydney: The Life and Times of Tommy Townshend’.

In this important new book he explains in detail how the loss of Street, Fairbairn and Gullett destabilised the Menzies wartime government and how, as a direct but delayed consequence, Labor leader John Curtin became prime minister in October 1941.

Following Gullett’s death in the crash, Arthur Coles, a former lord mayor of Melbourne and one of the founders of the Coles retail business, won Gullett’s old seat of Henty as an independent. In the hung parliament that followed, Coles supported Menzies, along with fellow independent Alex Wilson, who held the western Victorian seat of Wimmera.

But when Arthur Fadden from the Country Party replaced Menzies as prime minister, the two independents, who held the balance of power, crossed the floor and brought down the Fadden government.

Tink reveals that five weeks after the crash, on October 28, 1940, Menzies appointed his wife Pattie’s father, John Leckie, as minister without portfolio.

As it happens, Menzies’ father-in-law, who had previously served in the Victorian parliament, was a great admirer of the prime minister’s three most loyal political supporters. But without their commanding presence in cabinet, Leckie could do little to shore up Menzies’ position as prime minister.

Menzies later wrote: “Frankly, I don’t believe that my rejection and, as I felt at the time, my humiliation would have happened if Fairbairn, Gullett and Street had lived.” And so it was, Tink explains, “that in this way, the crash of Hudson A16-97 destroyed a wartime government”.

It is useful to be reminded that, although 416,809 Australians enlisted during World War I – almost 40 per cent of the male population aged 18 to 44 – Menzies was notoriously not among them.

But it is less well known that neither were any of our other World War II prime ministers, including Fadden, who as well as being treasurer served as prime minister for 40 days, and Labor’s Curtin, Ben Chifley and, between them, Queenslander Frank Forde, who served in our highest office for eight days from July 6 to 13, 1945, the shortest term so far for any Australian prime minister.

Following his retirement as the nation’s longest serving prime minister in 1966, Menzies looked back on the dark days of his loss of the prime ministership in 1941: “In a very great crisis in my country’s history, I had been weighed in the balance and found wanting. I had yet to acquire the common touch, to learn that human beings are delightfully illogical but mostly honest, and to realise that all-black and all-white are not the only hues in the spectrum.”

‘Air Disaster Canberra’, a fascinating, well written and thoroughly researched book, provides convincing evidence, at least to this reviewer, that at the time of the crash it was Fairbairn – an accomplished pilot but with no direct experience of Hudson bombers – who was flying the plane. It now seems almost certain Fairbairn was at the controls instead of the designated RAAF pilot RE (Bob) Hitchcock, who also died and whose father, Bobby Hitchcock, had died in an air crash in outback Australia searching for Charles Kingsford Smith – who survived an emergency landing to go on to bigger and better things until his death in 1935.

This is an important tale that needed to be told. Tink has done himself and this crucial slice of Australian history proud.

It is disappointing that in our national capital, adorned as it is with well-kept memorials to the fallen, the one for the victims of Canberra’s worst air disaster is, as Tink explains, “cut off from easy public access by a heavy steel gate, while the track leading to this gate is obscured by a dirt speedway and a paintball range”. Moreover, the plaque commemorating the victims is pitted and dented from periodic acts of vandalism.

Let us hope that Tink’s fine narrative of Australia during wartime prompts ACT authorities to remedy this unfortunate situation.

‘Air Disaster Canberra: The Plane Crash that Destroyed a Government’
By Andrew Tink
NewSouth, 309pp, $45 (HB)

Ross Fitzgerald is emeritus professor of history and politics at Griffith University.

‘The Weekend Australian’, April 6-7, 2013, REVIEW, Books p 25