Courageousness

Posted on 6 May, 2010 by admin

Plenty has been written over the past week or so about the clearing of the decks by the Prime Minister that appears to have taken place in advance of the budget and the highly anticipated election campaign to come. In particular, critics have been scathing over the government’s decision to defer reconsideration of an emissions trading scheme until sometime in the next term when parliamentary conditions are expected to be somewhat more favourable. The argument goes that the Prime Minister has shown that he doesn’t have the courage of his convictions.

Enter the Resource Super Profits Tax, and a battle with big business that the government did not have to have.

That is, the battle a less courageous government would have avoided entirely.

Lined up against the government now are virtually all of the forces of capital in Australia (is it old fashioned to refer to them collectively as ‘capital’? And if so, how do we talk about a capitalist system?).

Businesses, both large and small, are anxious, amongst other things,  about the changes to superannuation.

Mining companies are outraged by the notion that the government should address a contribution to government revenue that appears to decline in inverse proportion to the size of their profits.

The media appears almost uniformly against the government.

There are two interesting things about this last point, I think. Firstly, I’ve got the impression that part of the reason a section of the Australian media are against Kevin Rudd is because he is perceived as being no more than ‘Howard Lite’. These journalists have contributed to an ongoing mockery – if not more – of the Prime Minister which has led to diminishing support for the government. If these journalists wake up the day after the election with Tony Abbott as Prime Minister, I’m almost certain they will take no responsibility for it whatsoever.

Secondly, the Resources Super Profits Tax is the kind of measure that should appeal to the same readership to whom the Daily Telegraph recently touted its line about increases on taxes on tobacco being a hit to the workers of Australia. That is, this policy can be characterized (whether or not it should) as exactly the kind of nationalist economic policy that should find ardent support from tabloid media outlets, if they’re being honest with the constituency readership they purport to cater to.

The forces now arraigned against the government over these economic measures are about as strong a cross-section of traditional anti-Labor economic and social players as we’ve ever seen, which is funny because ‘traditional Labor values’ and ‘Rudd government’ aren’t terms I can attest to having read in the same sentence too often, at least not in any way that suggested they were synonymous. Perhaps most potentially devastating is the evaporation of virtually all media support for the government. It’s a funny old world where Labor supporters are left crying out for objectivity in the ABC instead of defending it against allegations of left wing bias. I hope that self-aggrandizement by MPs and staffers believing the hype didn’t contribute to this antipathy.

It’s this unity of business and media forces which, for me, points to a parallel with the anti-native title campaign fought in Western Australia in 1996. Relevantly, one of the key campaigners against Labor was big mining companies.

Ultimately this Resource Super Profits Tax could be the issue that finally resolves the question that has been asked – appropriately or not – about the Prime Minister’s commitment to battling out the tough fights. Clearly his opponents aren’t backing down in a hurry. If this is going to be the ground on which we fight the next election, let’s make sure we’re fighting all the way.

Posted in Australia, Politics | 2 Comments

Indonesian parliament claims a scalp

Posted on 5 May, 2010 by admin

The real test of the maturity of Indonesian democracy might turn out to be nothing to do with how it handles an election, but what the parties do with the legislative power they received after that election. Those that provide critique of liberal democratic approaches to transitional constitutionalism – that is that merely instituting democratic elections without more doesn’t quite cut it as far as attaining ‘democratic’ status goes – may now be adjusting their arguments on the basis of ongoing developments in Indonesia.

Whether or not the resignation today of Indonesian Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawatti will be sufficient to overcome disaffection with the SBY government is a matter only time can tell. The announcement of her appointment to a position as Managing Director of the World Bank came just one day after she had completed her testimony to the Corruption Eradication Commission concerning the Bank Century bailout. What is certain is that this is a blow of the kind that, if repeated, may see the SBY government fail to see out a five-year term to which it has only just begun.

The Bank Century bailout scandal, in which the national government did what just about any other government in the world would do in similar circumstances, i.e. bailout a nationally significant financial institution on the brink of collapse despite the fact that banking executives would most likely get off scot free, has claimed the first of three major targets which include both the President himself and his Vice President and former Reserve Bank Governor Boediono.

Before I left Yogyakarta I had a fascinating discussion with an Australian whose identity I’ll keep to myself because I didn’t disclose that I’m a blogger, or ask if I could attribute any of the things he said. Also, I have no evidence to prove that he is who he said he was, or that he works where he said he did. So you can take all this with as much salt as you like.

In a nutshell, he expressed a fear, which he purported to be one held within diplomatic circles, that a combination of parties including Golkar, the PDI-P and Gerindra (and it now seems that Hanura’s in on it as well, but I’m not sure if he mentioned them at the time) could be working very hard to impeach the President over the Bank Century affair. Such a campaign, he suggested, might include widespread popular protests of a scale not seen since the end of the New Order era.

Now it is the case that many in the left are disaffected as a result of the rise of SBY and the persistent strength of the influence of the military and technocrats in government in Indonesia, and the way in which those forces operate to prop up a significant disparity between the rich and poor of the archipelago. Some mention should also be made of the environmental problems which are attendant on the manner in which Indonesian natural resources are exploited, problems which are exacerbated by the corrupt erosion of already light environmental protection laws.

So the ignominious departure of SBY and the system which he represents might be cheered in some circles. Such critics of the current government would need to ask themselves, though, what kind of outcome might result from this process?

Would the likely instability caused by such a transition be superior to the status quo? If a new strong leader is believed to be needed, and the choices are Kalla, Sukarnoputri and Prabowo, which of these three is most likely to get up, and what would the implications of that choice be? Or could such instability even give comfort and rise to other, more radical movements?

Posted in Indonesia, International relations, Politics | Leave a comment

A small victory for ugliness

Posted on 4 May, 2010 by admin

There is a great deal about illegal street art that I like. Some of the more complex works that are sometimes undertaken can be stunning and inspiring. They can transform otherwise tediously sterile public spaces. Graffiti can be intelligent and thought provoking. Some of the best work in this vein is provided by stencil artists.

The illegality of the process is central. Illegality demands of the artist speed and proficiency that is less necessary in other forms of praxis. It was this restriction on time, in part, that saw the development of stencil art as a means by which to quickly render complex imagery.

Graffiti can do these things, but it doesn’t always.

One of the things I find unattractive about graffiti is tagging. In fairness, it’s the very same demand for speed that drives this aspect of graffiti. In tagging is found the bravado that is necessary if graffiti artists are to progress onto more complex work, even if in Australia that complexity doesn’t seem to extend much beyond bigger, more colourful tags. This is a bit of a quandary for me, because I’m almost forced to concede the necessity of tagging for the development of street art.

But there’s something far more base and territorial about tagging that grates. I’m just not that interested in pissing contests.

I also think tagging is ugly. Now, I know that this is a matter of taste, and will concede on occasion that things I think ugly may still be important or significant or any other of those ‘ant’ words. But for me the cultural significance of tagging was probably established with any originality a couple of millennia ago. Now, all that’s left is ugliness.

It’s this ugliness, if not the disorderliness, of tagging that I think has driven a community response to preventing graffiti. If all graffiti was complex, mural style designs, I’d suggest, we’d see far less vitriol, far less discussion about the destruction of property values. And I for one can’t really blame people for complaining about the ugliness of tagging.

The complaints about this ugliness make the decision that Sydney Buses have made about the upholstery for their bus seats all the more unfortunate, albeit fathomable. If you’re in Sydney, and you haven’t paid attention, take a look.

The fabric they’ve gone with (and I don’t know how long ago this happened so sorry if I’m way, way, way behind the news) features a kind of blue and purple background with black and yellow scrawling all over it. This black and yellow scrawl is a copy of the effect resulting from thorough tagging and vandalism.

So the solution to graffiti, if Sydney Buses is the example, is to pre-empt it with manufactured ugliness that not only replicates the very problem you’re trying to combat, it applies that ugliness uniformly in a way that had previously only been achieved in an ad hoc way.

That, my friends, is how Sydney Buses has surrendered the field in a small victory for ugliness. Perhaps you have examples of similar small victories. Please feel free to share them.

Posted in Arts and music, Australia, New South Wales | Leave a comment

Australian realism and the Anglosphere

Posted on 2 May, 2010 by admin

The keyboards got a solid workover this weekend as News Corporation journalists and columnists found themselves receiving a concerted scolding from online commentators across the country. Yes, yes, these bloggers are people generally poorly disposed to News Corporation at the best of times, blah, blah, blah, bias, blah.

The point is, they’re giving the Australian in particular a serve because that newspaper has clearly upped the ante on the election campaign that starts today. Well, I can’t be the only one that thinks that’s the latest date on which we could say it’s starting. Possibly it started with the hospitals and health stuff.

A couple of writers who go by the names of Ad Astra and Bushfire Bill, who I find altogether enjoyable to read, have very good lines going in critical analysis of the editorial slant of the Australian pertaining to the domestic political scene. Often I don’t much feel like writing about current Australian political issues simply because there’s such a lot of commentary about that I think’s pretty good. Check out these guys in particular on The Political Sword.

But a couple of articles in the last Weekend Australian caught my eye, and they’re vaguely related to domestic politics and this analysis of the Australian, so I thought today I might bring the issue involved to your attention.

If you’ve been studying international relations at all (as a discipline, that is) you’ll be familiar with the notion of realism in the analysis of such relations. Henry Kissinger was quite a famous realist, although his realism would probably go so far as to say ‘Don’t bother me with your theoretical framework for my approach, I’m far too busy fixing the world.’

I reckon Greg Sheridan would probably consider himself a bit of a realist. Maybe he’ll correct me. I reckon if pushed, Tony Abbott would like to describe himself as a realist, with respect to international relations at least. And the recent Four Corners program about Tony Abbott described Greg Sheridan as a long term friend or something similar.

Last weekend, Greg Sheridan wrote a column about a speech delivered by Tony Abbott on foreign affairs. He was pretty glowing it has to be said, which probably surprises precisely no one. But there was one point that Sheridan picked Abbott up on.

Abbott had referred to the ‘Anglosphere’ of which, he says, possibly accurately, Australia is a part.

Sheridan’s criticism wasn’t that either this construction or reference to it is anachronistic. He just said that, accurate a portrayal as it might be, we really shouldn’t use that term because it might offend the Indians, the Chinese (or, conceivably, any countries outside the Anglosphere. Like France, I guess).

That’s Australian Realism for you. Act on the basis that we’re part of an English speaking coalition against, or at least vis-à-vis, the rest of the world, but don’t fess up that that’s what’s going on for fear of losing customers and influence. And this isn’t for one second an IR alliance restricted to the relationships between states, it’s an alliance of corporations as well. Like News Corporation.

The thing about realism is that its adherents like to pretend that they’re simply acknowledging objective truths about relationships without becoming advocates for any particular courses of action, other than the most realistic in any given set of circumstances of course. That’s why it’s possible that these two might say they’re not realists at all, but openly confess to being neoconservative on international relations. That is, they may actually have an ideological framework for their belief in and support for the Anglosphere as a discrete – and I mean that in every sense – unit of international governance.

The thing is, the best way to keep secrets like this, if they must be kept, isn’t by broadcasting your disagreement about publicizing its existence through the pages of the national broadsheet. If Sheridan and Abbott are really long-term friends, and if they really cared about the potential impact of this attitude on our international relations, surely the former would have simply had a quiet word in the latter’s shell-like? Or should that be sow’s?

Note to Greg Sheridan: Have a word with your colleagues, will you? An article in the very same edition of the Weekend Australian on escalating rates of violence in Australia made a variety of points by reference to trends in the Anglosphere. Probably advisable to get your own house in order before dishing out gratuitous advice to others.

Posted in Australia, International relations | 1 Comment

Secession from the Commonwealth: a simple plan

Posted on 1 May, 2010 by admin

Those of us who have studied Australian politics at all learn a fairly important point about referendums under the Commonwealth Constitution, i.e. that they’re pretty hard to win. That’s why if there’s another, simpler way to achieve an objective Federal governments attempt it first. Like getting all the State and Territory governments to agree, which, flawed though it might be, still has a stronger track record of success.

If you’ve studied the history of the Federation at all, you’ll probably also know that at various stages Western Australia has been less enthusiastic about the whole ‘national unity’ endeavour than other states. It started when it was late to join the Commonwealth at all, with a State referendum only tipped over the line in favour by a bunch of t’othersiders residing in Kalgoorlie.

Then secession got ramped up again in the 1930s.

As an aside, I was once told that my grandfather was investigated by ASIO or some such organization as a result of his membership of the Western Australian Secessionary Air Force, but that may have been just a flight of fancy of the storyteller.

Then Sir Charles Court sparked the whole debate again in the 1970s (or was it the 1960s?) funnily enough about the same issue which has seen Norman Moore, a stiff-lipped Minister for Resources in the Western Australian government, arcing up about it this week: Commonwealth meddling in mining.

Every time it’s fallen over before it’s got anywhere because of section 128 of the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia. The States, you see, formed an indissoluble Federation and if any one of them wanted to leave it we’d have to have a referendum of the nation in which a majority of people in four of the six states would have to say, ‘Yep, no problem Western Australians, you take all those resources and keep them for yourselves. We don’t need the money.’

But what if WA didn’t need to call for a referendum at all?

What if there was a simpler way?

Would Norman Moore still want to pursue it?

The Commonwealth is an indissoluble union, it is true, of the Six Original States, including Western Australia.

What if the State of Western Australia no longer existed?

Or what if the majority of Western Australia was reconstituted as a different entity, leaving only a shell around about the size of, say, the Hutt River Province?

The Constitution of Western Australia is an Act of the Western Australian parliament. It grants the power to amend the Constitution to the Western Australian parliament. There is no requirement, under the Western Australian Constitution, for a referendum.

If Western Australians really wanted to get out of the Commonwealth it is open for them to pursue a range of options that are arguably easier than seeking to pass a referendum of the States. Like repealing the Constitution Act, and/or creating a new Confederacy of smaller states, like Kimberley, Pilbara, Murchison and so forth, or any number of variations on the theme.

Certainly, to engage in any of these radical proposals requires the accession of the Queen, but given that the Constitution was drafted to give life to self-government for the people of Western Australia, it would certainly be arguable that acting in accordance with the wishes of the people as expressed by a majority of both the Legislative Assembly and the Legislative Council was consistent with that principle of self-government.

The point is this: Mr Moore and anyone else who wants to make these spurious arguments about secession should put up or shut up. You have the capacity to make the case in a far more serious way than you do, so get on with it already. Simply shrugging and saying the rest of the Commonwealth wouldn’t go for it is the coward’s way out.

Introduce a Bill either to repeal or to amend the Constitution and for related purposes and see how far you get with the people of Western Australia on the matter.

Posted in Australia, Politics, Western Australia | Leave a comment

On innocence… lost?

Posted on 5 April, 2010 by admin

By Rewi Lyall

Firstly, I was relatively pleased to see Joe Hockey on Lateline a few days ago talking, amongst other things, about CCTV. He’d given a speech earlier in the evening where he had apparently expressed some disquiet about the spread of cameras, but offered as an exception to this general position support for their use in crime ‘hotspots’. This ensured that he wasn’t out of line with his Party’s policy, and the attention seeking behaviour of his boss that very day.

It means that he shares the Opposition Leader’s belief that ‘you turn the cameras on, you turn the crime off’. I was going to give a link to this, but decided against boosting some conservative’s site.

Unfortunately, the assumption (flawed, in many people’s opinion) that cameras are an effective deterrent, as opposed to an effective tool for catching people after the event (and even then their effectiveness is questionable), actually undermines Mr. Hockey’s position.

He argues that there are limits to where cameras should be used: that is, to where crime exists. However, if we accept for the sake of argument alone that cameras have any efficacy it isn’t in ‘turning crime off’, it would be in turning it away, turning it to other areas where once established the demand for cameras will increase. The proliferation of CCTV would become a self-perpetuating widening of demand. Other than expressing a general discomfort, though, I suspect Mr. Hockey doesn’t actually intend to do anything about this principle.

Now, why does that fit in here to a discussion about innocence? Glad I asked.

It strikes me that the use of CCTV is part of the evidence that the presumption of innocence that we are all supposed to enjoy in this country and many others has been lost, if it ever actually existed. But there is other evidence.

The basic premise here, at least as far as I’m concerned, is that people who are going about their lawful business should not be subject to a fear of suspicion of wrongdoing, of being monitored. People who express some variation of ‘if you’ve done nothing wrong you’ve nothing to fear’ miss the point.

By using cameras and other techniques to watch the movements of law-abiding citizens the state effectively says that we are all of us suspect. Because some of us may engage in wrongdoing, we must accept the state’s intrusions on the basis of the potential that any of us could be wrongdoers, and by extension that none of us can be trusted to do the right thing.

But it goes further than this. Not only can we not be trusted to do the right thing, we can’t be trusted to speak the truth.

There can be no better example of this than the proliferation of instances where we are required to provide at least one, and often many, types of identification, primarily photographic identification. This can be from such complex arrangements as opening a bank account to becoming a member of a gym or video store. Indeed, the other day I was refused membership of a video store despite having the very same level of identification available which I had used to undertake certain banking arrangements in the past week.

What this requirement says is that we cannot be trusted to be the person we represent ourselves to be. We are presumed to be lying, to be guilty, until we can prove otherwise.

This makes me wonder if the presumption of innocence has ever really existed as a social norm, or if in fact we’re such a suspicious lot that we assume a default position of presumed wrongdoing. When you think about it, we really only ever hear about the presumption in the context of a formal legal proceeding – that is, after someone’s already been accused. How many of us ever think someone acquitted at trial is truly ‘innocent’? That horse has already bolted, hasn’t it, once you’ve been charged with something? Smoke and fire and all that?

Should we be worried, if, as I suspect, this presumed innocence is merely an aspiration, a formality to be observed absent any real conviction? Perhaps ‘worried’ isn’t quite right here, as I don’t really object to all of the occasions in which I’m required to present identification. It’s simply a matter of interest to me that a formal presumption of innocence appears to run counter to a substantive suspiciousness.

Posted in Australia, Law, Politics | Leave a comment

Fixing what ain’t broke

Posted on 27 March, 2010 by admin

By Rewi Lyall

For a while I’d been trying to convince myself that I could write about this in a general sense and move on to specific arguments later. But then Tony Abbott reminded me of the time that the phrase ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ really started to get my goat.

You see, this is a nonsense axiom.

The notion that humans should only fix what is broken stands in the face of some of the most wonderful of inventive leaps our species has made. I’ll illustrate with what seem to me to be a couple of stand out examples.

What was it about the way homo sapiens lived that was ‘broken’ and which led to the invention of the wheel? Sure, it’s easy in hindsight to say that the wheel clearly made life better, but that’s not the point in this argument. Making life easier, or better, isn’t the criteria, it’s fixing something that’s broken.

Was candle-power a ‘broken’ way of providing light? In order to really come to terms with this we have to try and conceive of how people felt about those prior ways of life in which only a handful of people conceived of the possibility of change. Did our great-grandparents think that the horse and carriage was a ‘broken’ mode of transport?

What about how humanity conducted its affairs was ‘broken’ that was later ‘fixed’ by space flight?

We’re often told that some of the great inventive leaps have resulted from defence industries, which leads to the question – particularly since World War Two – what was ‘broken’ about the way we kill each other? What’s broken about that now? Isn’t it the case that defence industries are still working at better ways to kill people?

Tony Abbott forms part of this argument because he used the axiom to devastating effect in the constitutional debates of the 1990s. It was one of those clichéd phrases which form part of his apparently superhuman power to ‘cut through’.

The problem (or at least one of a few problems) faced by the republicans at that time was that they denied themselves the obvious and critical repost: the Australian Constitution is broken. They could have made the argument, implicit from the above examples, that we as a species don’t and have never only fixed things that were broken. We’ve sought to improve our lives for the sake of the improvement. We’ve made inventive and creative leaps because we can, not just because we must.

But republicans didn’t even get that argument going particularly well, and in any case it’s a little hard to see how the minimalist approach could be perceived as ‘improving’ our lives in any meaningful way.

Even worse, by pursuing a minimalist agenda which merely changed the names on the letterhead and redirected the mail, the Australian Republican Movement gave us no reason to change. Constitutions are, after all, pretty important things. Symbolism doesn’t really get us there in terms of a need for change.

The glaring, slap you in the face and steal your lunch money problems which come with a nineteenth century constitutional model that was out of date 50 years ago are real and have daily repercussions.

Like the complete absence of the language of rights.

Or the… messed up division of responsibilities between the Commonwealth and State governments.

Health reform, anyone?

Political radicalism in Australia is so hamstrung by some weird combination of a belief in incremental change and an inability to forcefully argue the need for radical change that we’re left in a limbo land where it’s apparently OK to concede that a constitutional bill of rights is unlikely to be successful at a referendum and to, from there, rationalize that we don’t really want constitutional rights anyway.

As if the suspension of legislative rights flowing from the Racial Discrimination Act didn’t actually happen. Wasn’t it a good thing that the Commonwealth stepped in to ‘fix’ that?

But I guess the existence of those rights, and the ability of people to rely on them to ensure that they were not subject to discrimination, must have been at the heart of what was ‘broken’ about the broken lives of Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory.

Good thing our parliamentarians are able to tell us what’s broken about our houses, even if they refuse to do anything to fix their own.

Posted in Australia, Politics | Leave a comment

Wrapping up in Yogyakarta

Posted on 10 February, 2010 by admin

By Rewi Lyall

On Sunday I return to Australia, having completed my thirteen month placement through Australian Volunteers International with local NGO the SATUNAMA Foundation.

It’s been an incredible year, packed with work and travel and good times. I’ve got more new friends than I care to count, and, especially in the past six months, feel like I’m part of a community here. It’s pretty hard to leave.

I’m satisfied that, as far as work is concerned, I’ve achieved the objectives that were set out for me by SATUNAMA. In addition, thanks to their generosity, I was able to assist some friends of mine in Taring Padi to set up a new blog, and to show them how to maintain it. Hopefully this means that their friends in Indonesia and around the world will be able to keep up-to-date with what they’re up to. There’s still some work to do on the blog (so I’ll be working right up until Friday), but it’s up and running.

This year has been chock-a-block. I’ve been to Anak Krakatau and Flores, and a fortnight ago fulfilled an objective to get up to the Dieng Plateau. I’ve DJ’d many times over the past few months, and been a collaborator in an exhibition. I helped out with the Festival Mata Air, and photographed subject matter from temples to Vespas (and, on one lucky occasion, both).

There’s a phrase that gets used by way of thanks for international volunteers that I’m not too fond of: ‘taking a year out from your life’. I don’t like it much because, as far as I’m concerned, this is my life. I hope that makes sense.

Yogyakarta is now like another home town for me, and I had to think about whether or not I’d stay for quite a while. Ultimately, I’m glad to be returning to Australia (not without some trepidation), but I know that when I come back it will be to a community of friends.

So, what’s next? I’m going to Perth for a week of catching up with family and friends, and then on to Sydney where, with any luck, I’ll get a bit of work as a lawyer again while completing a Master of International Law degree at the University of Sydney. That’ll take me up to July. Beyond that, who knows?

Posted in Indonesia, Volunteering, Yogyakarta | Leave a comment

Back2Back: Love Hate Love vs Rewi

Posted on 8 February, 2010 by admin

By Rewi Lyall

I was pretty pleased with the turnout to this new exhibition last night, at Survive Garage in Yogyakarta. I’d guess that over the night about 100 people passed through, at it’s peak there was probably about 60, spilling out into the streets. I do have some photos from the night, but for some reason I’m having trouble saving them to the blog, so if I get that fixed later I’ll add them.

I contributed a few photographs to this collaboration, which featured street artists from the Yogyakarta Art Crime (YORC) crew. Love Hate Love has been painting the streets since 2000, and he’s got a great crew, including Here and OYS. Their work for the exhibition included customizing a bunch of found objects as well as a few more formal pieces. The photos I contributed are from around Jogja, concentrating on Love Hate Love, and show the change in his style over that period.

Love Hate Love’s hiphop outfit Tawazun also played, along with a bunch of other collectives such as Noise of Terror. It turned out that I was their DJ for the set, which was… chaotic. One of the standout performances for mine was a MC who can’t have been more than about 10 years old. He only jumped up for one track, but he was right into it.

The cops were called in at about 9.30, and we were told to shut it down at 10.

Thanks heaps to Love Hate Love for suggesting we do this exhibition, to all the guys from the Yogyakarta Art Crime crew and to Bayu and all my friends from Survive Garage for hosting the event and helping out with all sorts of logistical things. Thanks also to Reza and Principle of South for the sound gear, and to all my friends who came down.

Those of you in Jogja can visit the exhibition until the 14th, at Survive Garage, Jalan Bugisan 11.

Posted in Arts and music, Indonesia, Yogyakarta | Leave a comment

Reflections on conversations in Perth: part 2

Posted on 18 January, 2010 by admin

By Rewi Lyall

The other big conversation point in my visit to Perth last Christmas concerned variations about nationalism in Australia.

One of my friends was decrying the lack of a national identity in Australia, or at least an identity with which he could identify. Comparing it to many, if not all, of the nations from which migrant families come to Australia, he considered the cultural identity of Australians to be impoverished. With no really identifiable national dress, or music, or even community cohesion, he considered Australia to be in a state of quiet yet sustained anxiety.

This, he thought, might explain why there is an increasingly yobbish aspect to nationalism in Australia: insecurity. (As an aside, a couple of my friends were speculating this week as to how it is that ‘Aussie larrikin’ has become ‘Aussie yobbo’. No firm answers have yet been forthcoming).

However, other friends think that, to the extent that nationalism was promoted and advanced over the previous decade, increasingly Australians are suspicious of and repulsed by overt nationalism. Compare this with the observations of another friend, who recalled Australia Day last year, at which a group of young men stood-over passers by and required them to kiss their copy of the Australian flag.

I confess to being slightly puzzled by the notion of ‘national pride’. I’m not sure how or if a ‘nation’ ever achieves anything. Certainly, people residing within the borders of a nation achieve things, either individually or collectively, but what does a nation coherently and collectively achieve?

In addition, it strikes me that nationalism is as much about exclusion as it is about coherence, perhaps even more so. The idea of a ‘nation’ isn’t so different from any other form of exclusivity, it’s just a matter of scale and the nature of the exclusion/inclusion that occurs. Arguably, ‘patriotism’, a word used by some to distinguish their national pride from the more pejorative ‘nationalism’, sustains this exclusivity: ‘patriotism’ is still to a nation, which must still be exclusive.

Is it nationalism or patriotism that leads people to get tattoos of the Southern Cross on various parts of their bodies? What do these tattoos represent to the people who get them? There is no question that there is an increasing prevalence of such tattoos across Australia.

I, for one, am not particularly concerned if (and I think this is a matter of some dispute in any case) there is a paucity of national identity in Australia. I’m not convinced that nationalism is something worth advancing, and surely ‘national identity’ and ‘nationalism’ must go hand in hand.

Even if the only options are a choice between aggressive nationalism and cultural anxiety, I’ll take the latter. Surely, though, there are other options. I know plenty of people who are quite content in Australia without missing any specific national cultural identifiers. Indeed, many openly reject those identifiers that have been given increased attention over the past ten years. They feel no inferiority for a lack of these symbols, nor are they intimidated by the strength of the cultural reference points of Australia’s migrant communities. Indeed, they celebrate this diversity.

If Australia were to remain or become less than a cohesive hybrid community and more a peacefully coexisting collection of communities, would this really detract from our status as a ‘nation’?

Posted in Australia, Politics, Western Australia | Leave a comment