The trial baloon being floated by Sam Dastyari of the “youth” wing of the NSW Labor Party is a quaint relic from the past, it appears that the fogeyfication of the youth of both leading political parties is now complete, what’s next lads? Bow ties for everyone? Short back and sides? Dresses below the knee?
THE youth wing of the party that repeatedly opposed conscription during the Vietnam War wants to bring back national service. NSW Young Labor, Australia’s largest political youth group, is backing compulsory national service for high school students as part of their graduation.
This is timely, because I’ve just been reading John Birminghams contribution in Quarterly Essay #4 where a compelling case for volunteerism of the military kind is made. History proves that conscription of any kind leads to lowered standards of professionalism and an eventual backlash against the institutions that take part in these schemes.
Update: [by MB] Discussion elsewhere at wsacaucus, Mountain Murmurs, Tim Blair and Catallaxy.
More mindless knee-jerk populist nationalism. How about letting the nation breath without forcing all manner of thoughtless statism down its throat.
I am opposed to conscription. The most immoral form of coercion possible is when the state forces a person to take another’s life. The first AIF is probably the most moral military force in recent history, being composed entirely of volunteers. Only the militia of the American independence forces in 1776 come close.
Kind of reminds me of my first Orientation Week as a mature age student at Griffith in 1992, when the entire AWU faction was running the Labor Club stall fully dressed in suits and ties on a very humid February day in Brisbane. Even the Liberals didn’t see the need to go beyond smart casual.
The same people have more recently been seen in suits and ties explaining their involvement in internal ballot fixing and branch stacking at the Shepherdson Inquiry in 2000-2001.
The counterpoint, of course, to the entire Griffith AWU faction turning up to O Week in suits and ties in February 1992 is the entire Griffith Socialist Left faction turning up to a broad left fancy dress party in plain clothes in January 1995.
In this day and age? No way would the masses ever accept it.
I would simply refuse – without the slightest fear of consequence – as I know the rest of Australia would be with me.
Yes, I’m interest in a link as well. Also as to whether Sam Dastyari has spent any time in Reserves etc or has just arrived at this opinion because it sounds good.
If young people want to enter the army good on them, I’ve got a couple of friends who did so and have been to Iraq and Timor. Roping the entire population in is a waste of time for 90% of the population, not to mention money for the tax payers.
The link is here.
Apparently its not necessarily military service they can do compulsory community work instead. Still think it is a crap idea.
Hooolld on. I think the whole “national service” thing is being blown up a bit out of proportion.
I’m no Young Labor fan but I don’t see how getting kids to volunteer for charities (or, if they want, the defence forces) as a part of their education is a bad idea.
They already do work experience. Why not a bit of community or public organisation experience as well?
Then again, perhaps we could dust off my idea for a compulsory sabbatical for young members of the ALP, whereby they are required to engage in substantial community activism as rank and file trade unionists, in a social movement organisation, support/outreach service, overseas aid organisation, etc., before being permitted to hold any position of responsibility in the ALP or to be preselected for elected office in a parliament, local government, trade union or student union.
I’d pay that one as well Paul.
When I first heard this on the radio this morning I thought it was ridiculous, as I’m generally against compulsory things. But then again, school is compulsory, doing a minimum number of subjects is compulsory if you want to finish grade 12/grade 10 – doing sport at school is compulsory (although people get out of it).
Compulsory community service would probably be far less onerous than doing sport. Would it be beneficial? It depends on the community service itself. Contact with other people or outside groups would probably be helpful. If community service was compulsory at my school it might have or might not have helped me – I don’t know.
One thing about it though: if it helps move away from the idea that school is training for work, I’m happy.
My informants tell me that Sam Dastyari is making up the bit about unanimity.
Of course it’s just as well that NSW Young Labor is never listened to and universally regarded as a pathetic joke.
Sacha, school is compulsory, having an income is compulsory because paying tax is compulsory, abiding by the law is compulsory. We are ever compelled! I think there is a bit of a knee-jerk reaction here. For whatever reason and personally I’m blaming a world governed by neo-cons, we live in a society that caters to and fosters the expansion of selfish individualism. This is not over the long term a sustainable situation or one that engenders social capital. Lately in Australia we have witnessed herds of young people, predominantly males venting their anger, boredom and frustration by beating each other up and anyone else who happens to be in the way, its only sensible that in the absence of these ‘kids’ being able to be discilplined by their parents that society as a whole start taking some responsibility for what it has created I think some kind of national service whether it be for environmental, defence or societal benefit might an idea worth giving serious thought to. We are not so educated or intelligent in our society that everybody can just do the first thing that comes into their heads, given that much of today’s offspring are latch-key childrens whose overarching influences have been whatever’s on television. In Thailand for instance youg men are compelled to spend a minimum of time learning how to be good Buddhists and that seems to work for them pretty well, who seem on the whole a happy well adjusted bunch. National Military Service is probably not a good idea, but bootcamp for recalicitrant bogons, might be.
A friend of mine from school now makes his living as a full-time Army officer. The last time I saw him years ago we talked about this, and he said that psychological testing of recruits was the best thing that ever happened to the ADF. The last thing that he wanted to do was supervise disturbed kids’ training in firearms.
From his perspective, compulsory service meant that the Army couldn’t say ‘no’ to people who they thought shouldn’t be given guns.
Liam, I agree that there’s too much knee-jerk reaction on this idea. Perhaps it didn’t come through clearly in what I wrote, but what I meant was that whether compulsory community service is useful or not depends on the activity – while I don’t like compulsory things as they impinge on individuality, it’s neither here nor there as we are compelled to do things every day.
If there was compulsory community service it would just be another thing that kids would have to do at school. Some would like it, some would resent it, some would think it’s just a boring thing they have to do.
I remember seeing a program in which three people visited Cuba, one of them an ex-Premier of a canadian province, one a free marketeer from the US and I don’t remember what the other was. The ex-premier mentioned how uni students in his province held lots of protests when he proposed that they do some sort of non-monetary contribution in light of their being educated. It might have been community service, I don’t remember. He thought that they seemed quite self-indulgent – his story was triggered when they saw cuban uni students doing some sort of community service while studying – effectively the price of studying – the ex-premier thought that this was a good thing. I recall that the US guy was very much against any compulsion.
The majority of commentators here miss the point entirely about the NSW Young ALP proposal.
It’s about volunteerism and civic participation.
Gen-Y are notorious for being poor in this respect.
Guy: for sure, it does seem as though it’s just the same old ‘kids should do something service-ish’ idea knocked off from WA, except with some military stuff slapped on top — which was duly SENSATIONALISED!!!!1` by the media.
Anyways, had this argie before.
Yep, the compulsory type of volunteerism.
I think there is few who would argue that civic participation is a bad thing, but making it compulsory is more likely to make a bunch of people resentful of it.
Long term I’m not sure that having squads of disinterested youth drafted into doing stuff they don’t want to is helpful. Either for the people who have to mind them and instruct them or the youth. Additionally once things become compulsory I think it discourages life long volunteerism as people are likely to think they have done their time helping out already.
Instead of going “oh, it’s compulsory so therefore it’s bad bad bad”, why not look at any evidence about whether it would be useful or not? I don’t know whether it would be useful, but actually looking at it carefully is better than just reacting.
I have to make the point again that people have to go to school and (and at least in Qld in the 80s) had to do English. Compulsory does not mean bad.
Young Labor have actually done the blogosphere a favour: it has revived it from the Christmas doldrums.
In a way this is a retread of a superficially good but ultimately flawed idea from Bob Hawke’s time as PM. He was a big fan of Israeli kibbutzim and cooperative intentional communities, and one of his policies for dealing with youth unemployment was to have the CES encourage the unemployed youth to form cooperatives. Most of these ventures failed fairly rapidly, for the basic reason that to be successful, a cooperative (whether work or residential) must have a membership which is highly motivated, with a high level of voluntary commitment to the cooperative ethos, and with a suite of the necessary skills, all things which were in short supply with the kids who were being enjoined to cooperate.
Naomi and Albert Ross make a good point over at wsacaucus about the strain it could place on the community organisations, or, like Liam says, the Army. If the goal is for kids to give something back, it may be counter-productive.
I also worry about how many activities we keep adding to “education”. Surely at some point we need to leave schools to teaching?
Sacha said:
You would have to look at whether it is more useful than whatever else they would be doing in that time. Like attending uni or working. For the majority of people I doubt it is. My point is that I think encouraging “volunteerism” by making it compulsory is ultimately counter-productive. Yes school is compulsory but not at the ages they are proposing this for.
I’d be quite happy if kids could elect out of school sport afternoon to do community service instead. I also think schools should be encouraged to run extra-curricula activities to get students involved in community activities but it should be on a voluntary basis.
Steve said:
“I’d be quite happy if kids could elect out of school sport afternoon to do community service instead. I also think schools should be encouraged to run extra-curricula activities to get students involved in community activities but it should be on a voluntary basis.”
That sounds pretty good to me – especially as many kids find sport painful – I certainly did!
I agree with Sacha in that a school subject or school trip that involves community service might show students other aspects of society, like environmental issues etc, that they won’t see or understand otherwise. I’m not sure what kids would learn from military service – perhaps self-discipline and respect?? Anyway, wouldn’t it be more likely to promote volunteerism if kids better understand the problems around them? We need to fight the apathy young people can have towards issues that don’t immediately affect them.
Sorry folks, was rushing out to work just after I posted that. All worked out in the end.
I’m always intrigued when people believe it would be a great idea to compel other people to do whatever it is.
Let’s not fart around. If we are to have national service make it compulsory for everybody (including politicians, members of the youth wings of political parties, and particularly the commentariat). I propose one fulltime year out of every ten, and let’s start with the 22 year olds.
Liam: I do not know who your ‘informants’ are however I know for a fact (from those in Young Labor- who actually went to the conference), that the motion was carried unanimously at conference by every faction.
There was no opposition to the idea that community involvement should be incorporated into the curriculum.
Compulsory community service is something I support, and from the sounds of the motion it includes anything from playing sport to volunteering in shelters. The Duke of Ed award is a great example of where community service makes a real difference. Lets expand this to all students (not just those who can afford to pay entry fees/associated costs into these ‘volunteer’ organisations). I believe others would be better off for it. The idea would be to make the scope of choices of volunteering so large that every young person would find some element that they would enjoy.
Last of all, to those people rattling on about conscription: when you read a paper are you one of those mindless numb heads who simply reads the headlines and thus believes that you have a wide understanding of current affairs. So to those in this blog who need a bit more info before criticising from the sidelines I encourage you to read on my friends, read on- you’ll be surprised at what you will ACTUALLY learn from text not in the sensationalised headlines of the SMH.
Very well Rose. I guess your unnamed informants who actually went to conference trump my unnamed informants who actually went to conference.
I can tell you though from the number of NSWYL conferences I’ve been to over the years, ‘unanimous’ votes often consist of around about, oh, 100% of the people voting for the motion and 0% of the ones voting against it.
I’d love to see the minutes.
Rose, why do you support compulsory community service? What are the proposed outcomes and how would compulsory community service achieve these outcomes?
Would this be an extra activity in school or would it replace something that people currently do?
I do not necessarily support or reject the idea, but I’m wondering what processes led to you thinking that it should be adopted as part of the school curriculum; is it just a nice idea or are there more meaty reasons for supporting it?
I wonder to what extent Young Labor uses an evidence-based approach in constructing its policies.
The fact of the matter is that forcing young people to take part in something always spells trouble. It’s not as though the bus will arrive at an old folks home to do a round of sponge baths and out will bound 40 bright eyed and bushy tailed young’uns ready to do their “National Service”. They will be there, bitching and complaining at every moment. If Compulsory National Service is to be insituted then it should at least be in areas where caring is not a pre-requisite. The Salvation Army said themselves that while they would appreciate the extra help, they don’t want unwilling parties as it goes against the spirit of the act. All that young Labor would be doing is breeding contempt for helping people.