Sydney University hosted a series of public lectures in May and June on issues including security, government, work and higher education. The concluding lecture was entitled Biology and the New Communities and it was delivered by Assoc. Prof. Catherine Waldby. As her list of publications indicates, she’s one of the world’s leading authorities on the social implications of biomedical technologies.
Continue reading ‘LP Podcast! Interview with Biopolitics Expert’
Archive for June, 2007
It’s possible, I think, that Federal Ministers will rue the day they orchestrated such a heightened state of interest in their state of emergency. Although media coverage has, for most of the last few days, bordered on the supine, it was heartening to see Kerry O’Brien put Mal Brough under real pressure not just to justify the Federal Government’s blame game of “inaction on the part of the territory” but also to explain what the measures actually involve. Brough appeared barely able to explain what actions would actually be taken, and his retreat into partisan talking points was embarrassing. It’s becoming much more evident that a real attempt to prevent further child abuse (Brough’s stated aim) will involve serious commitment of funds and resources and Howard has promised whatever it takes. It’s also becoming more evident that the claims that there are no successful programs countering child abuse are false, and indeed that’s now being admitted sotte voce by some Ministers. If media attention continues to focus on the on the ground implementation of the plan, and if the pressure for a real not a cosmetic fix is kept up, then perhaps there will be a positive outcome for Indigenous Australians. If Howard has boxed himself into a commitment to working towards ending child sexual abuse, which I think everyone agrees is urgent and desirable, perhaps media and parliamentary scrutiny will successfully hold him to account. In particular, I’d like to see serious questions asked if Parliament is recalled about the alleged necessity of abrogating property rights and compulsory leases. We’ll see. But I suspect that they just won’t get away, now that we’ve moved from debate to scrutiny of the implementation, with a PR strategy sketched out on the back of an envelope.
There is often much use of terms like “strawman� and “ad hominem� in blog debates – and usually for very good reason.
But one that is often overlooked is “charity principle�.
Basically, it says that you should always assume the strongest, most generous reading of your opponent’s words to be true; that you should assume they speak the truth as they know it; and that you should not get bogged down in irrelevant stoushes about logical fallacies and ambiguous meanings of words if they contribute little to the substance of the discussion. Most importantly, if they say that they did not mean what you think they mean, then accept that. Don’t get into a debate about whether their previous words prove that you are right about their intentions.
The reason that this principle exists is not to enforce niceness in debates. It’s for two reasons: firstly, if the debate is about finding the truth, and you think you are right, then you should be able to respond to the most generous interpretation – you shouldn’t have to resort to cheap shots. Secondly, if the person really did intend the most generous meaning, then to assume otherwise achieves nothing except a waste of time, in which the person is forced to rephrase her point.
So, to pick a topic at random, if someone were to argue that she thinks FGM child abuse is terrible problem that we should work to eradicate, what would be the point in arguing with her over whether she really does feel that way?
Now don’t get me wrong: sometimes cheap points and pointless semantics are great fun. But if we are genuinely concerned about problems such as war, terrorism, the abuse of women and children, or the dangers of voting for the Greens, then we should all be more mindful what really matters.
Noel Pearson has described opposition - and constructive criticism - of the Indigenous state of emergency as “a form of madness”. Yet, as pointed out here yesterday, there is in fact no one arguing that there should not be an urgent response to the crisis - just that, as is becoming increasingly evident, what’s being proposed is an ill thought out quick fix (compared to the recommendations of Wild/Anderson which I support), for which the necessary “infrastructure and personnel elements simply don’t exist”, as tigtog says. The coalition of Indigenous and community organisations who’ve written [pdf] to Mal Brough warn that long term and properly resourced measures addressing unemployment, education and housing are essential to removing the causes of child abuse.
There are two other important angles to the response to the “state of emergency”. The first is that those with actual expertise in child protection are being ignored. There are a couple of comments about that here at LP, which I’d urge you to read, and we’d be interested in hearing more from people with frontline experience and expertise. One of the experts who’s been critical is Professor Dorothy Scott from UniSa, a consultant to the NT report authors.
Scott goes on to make another point, which I think is equally important.
Johnathan Holmes’ series of 4 Corners programs on energy issues have consistently been informative summaries of the state of things, and by the looks of the transcript, he’s done it again with his latest piece on household energy efficiency.
One idea I hadn’t heard before is to take advantage of the fact that people are most likely to improve housing energy efficiency either immediately before or after purchase, by placing a big hint and a financial incentive in front of them at that moment:
Continue reading ‘4 Corners on energy efficiency’
One of the aspects of the Howard emergency that most deserves some dispassionate analysis is the way in which it’s been presented as something “above politics”. Aside from the obvious angle of disabling and smearing criticism and critics, which has had the practical effect of completely obscuring the actual recommendations of the NT Wild/Anderson report (whose properly resourced implementation with an appropriate sense of urgency I would continue to support as a rational and effective response to the dire problems which are evident), it begs the question - what are our political institutions actually for?
The classic instance of a “state of emergency” in the Westminster system is Lloyd George’s formation of a Coalition government during the Great War excluding the followers of the party leader who had actually won the 1910 election, H. H. Asquith. This “national government” was followed by a “Khaki election” in 1918, comprehensively won by the effectively non-party PM in large part through the issuing of “coupons” by the Tory whips to preferred candidates from all parliamentary parties. The implication was that the behaviour of MPs who’d continued in opposition was in effect treasonous. A precedent was set which would later be revived in the Great Depression and the Second World War.
Howard’s emergency is, of course, not on the scale of the Great War (though the bizarre comparison with Hurricane Katrina deserves its own analysis). But it’s worth noting that Franklin Delano Roosevelt, during the Second World War, was careful to insist that political opposition to his administration was legitimate, and that the values of democracy the US was fighting for included the right to freedom of political speech and the maturity to conduct election campaigning during a national emergency.
There are two ways I’d like to approach this whole question.
Via Tim Dunlop, Julie Bishop has announced the composition of a panel which will design a national history curriculum. Prominent among the members is Gerard Henderson. Given that there has been a degree of support from across the spectrum for reintroducing the teaching of history throughout secondary schooling, and reframing the way it’s taught in primary schools, Henderson is an odd choice. The history summit, of course, took on something of a life of its own, conceding that it was impossible to design a curriculum which would have taught Australian history as a unitary narrative, something that Howard had previously supported. I can’t tell from Henderson’s bio at the Sydney Institute what his PhD was in, but surely the fact that he’s a weekly columnist with the Sydney Morning Herald taking a very overt partisan view might raise a few eyebrows - given that the government has been suspected of wanting to impose its own ideological framework on school history?
I think a lot of what we’re seeing lately from the Howard government is legacy policy making. It could be argued that the Indigenous “state of emergency” is to some degree about a final swipe at Fraserism (since Fraser was responsible for the NT Land Rights Act, and arguably had more influence on the direction of Indigenous policy than Whitlam). It’s been suggested that Ruddock might push for the implementation of the HREOC report on same sex entitlements because he wants to salvage something of his small l liberal reputation. I suspect that there’s a similar dynamic at work in this announcement - which bears the fingerprints of a PM who knows his time in office is limited (whatever the result of the election) rather than his hapless minister.
Henderson himself has been one of the principle purveyors of the view that Australian institutions have been reshaped through their alleged co-optation by the liberal left. Of course, if you accepted this claim, which is really at the heart of the culture wars, you might form the logical conclusion that reversing this would be about restoring their independence from partisan politics. That appears beyond the partisan warriors of the right.
Update [by Kim]: It looks like there’s already a draft national history syllabus, which the government doesn’t like, and this panel is being called in to revise it.
There’s an informative piece from the President of the History Teachers’ Association on Crikey’s website today.
You’re one of the world’s greatest physicists, a Nobel Prize winner while still in your thirties. You built the first nuclear fission reactor in the squash courts at the University of Chicago in 1942, a key event in the development of the nuclear weapon that’s about to be tested. For better or worse, the world is about to profoundly change forever, and you are as responsible as any single person alive for it. The blast goes off; from your vantage point ten miles away, the remote New Mexico desert glows brighter than day through your welding glasses. Your boss, Robert Oppenheimer, is moved to think of a line in the Bhagavad Gita - “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds”. What do you do?
If you’re Enrico Fermi, you start dropping little bits of paper and noting where they land.
Why?
Update - 26/6: Republished, with permission, in today’s Crikey email.
Nick Evans writes:
The announcement of a ‘broadband fix’ by the Federal Government last week was quickly followed by accusations that the announcement was more about politics than policy, and the leaking of an email from the Minister’s office calling up a list of marginal seats for the Cabinet discussions really only leant weight to the argument.
But, in addition, a quick flick through last week’s Hansard reveals that the Government’s use of the issue to shore up marginal seat holders runs deeper even than that.
Continue reading ‘Guest Post by Nick Evans: The Coonan leaks continue’
In NSW the RTA has started running this ad on that quaint medium called television, thankfully they’ve done a viral as well. What do you think?
Mark at Stoush worries about the psychological implications.
Mingle2 - Blog Rating
This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:
* dead (2x) * gay (1x)
The recent discussions of child sexual abuse seem to have triggered nothing for this rating system, which would be great if that indicated that it had some sensitivity to discussions meant to inform rather than titillate. Yet my own blog, Hoyden About Town, receives an NC-17 rating because of our emphasis on discussing sexuality and sexual violence, breastfeeding, homosexual activism and gendered insults for the purpose of feminist analysis.
Obviously, this is just a little blog-widget, hardly meant as a tool for sophisticated analysis. It reveals something about the limitations of the soundbite and simple solutions to complex problems nonetheless.
Via Ken at Surfdom, here’s Labor’s response to the “state of emergency”:
Meanwhile, Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd says a Labor Government would create a bi-partisan ‘war cabinet’ to deal with the national emergency in indigenous communities.
When the Labor primary vote dips in the next poll, Kevin from Queensland who’s here to help by trying to outfox Howard from the right, it’ll be those who give a stuff about land rights and real solutions not confected militarist rhetoric, who’ll be deserting you. Why was Beazley dumped again? Anyone?
Where’s the courage, Kevin? Was Paul Keating right? Been summoning some emergency focus groups this weekend, have we? Or channelling Lloyd George or something?
The Rudd Labor Party deserves to lose this election.
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