There’s an interesting article in The Australian today by Gabrielle Chan, looking at the rural discontent embodied in the rhetoric of the country Independents:
The 2010 episode of “bush leverage” is a result of a backlash by conservatives against a conservative government because rural voters feel that John Howard failed to protect them from the disruptive changes of a deregulated economy.
Picking up on Chan’s article, Gary Sauer-Thompson extracts a number of salient paragraphs from Tony Windsor’s first speech to the federal parliament in 2002:
Some of the rules applying to competition policy, with its economic rationalist approach on many of these issues, have no flexibility in regard to smallness, distance and remoteness. The very policies that are emanating from this place, whether they be fuel policy or aged care policy—even policies relating to country doctors, or the lack thereof—are emanating from that basic policy framework, which has not delivered equity to country constituents in particular…If that policy is not changed to recognise distance, smallness, remoteness and some degree of social equity, you will continue to see a shrinkage of regional Australia, something which should be abhorred.
Sauer-Thompson comments:
He says that the message a neo-liberal mode of governance sends to country communities is to proceed to your nearest major regional centre, go to the coast, go to Sydney or go to buggery.
I think Bob Katter’s wishlist has to be seen in this context as well. Katter’s politics are a blend of agrarian socialism, rural protectionism and regional developmentalism. From being mainstream once (and it’s significant that Katter claims as one of his political heroes Queensland Labor Premier ‘Red Ted’ Theodore), these views now seem radical.
One of the paradoxes of Australia’s turn towards global economic integration is that over time – and particularly since the rejection of Labor reformism with Paul Keating’s defeat in 1996 and the associated rise of Pauline Hanson – the political tendency has been to focus in on some of the losers of globalism in the outer suburbs.
From ‘white flight’ to Lindsay through the rise of casual and insecure work and the decline of manufacturing and blue collar jobs, the outer burbs have been the lodestone of the political class. John Howard’s approach was basically to shovel public money at these voters, mixed with a dollop of rhetoric encouraging them to see themselves as the aspirational entrepreneurs of the service economy.
WorkChoices and the end of easy credit negated this politics.
Barely noticed, probably, by the politicians and journos who were happy to intone mantras about the virtues of small business was the homogenisation of the retail economy. Those businesses not already organised as cartels – as with pharmacy and newsagencies and hotels – were prone to succumb: the corner store, butcher and grocery give way to Coles, the independent bakery to a franchised chain, the hamburger joint to Subway or Maccas. There might be a thriving diversity of retail and food options on inner city main streets, but it’s multinational and franchise central elsewhere – including in regional areas.
Then we have the rise and rise of agribusiness, and the vacuum cleaner effect of the mining industry on regional and rural workforces.
This is just a snapshot of part of a wide ranging economic transformation in rural and regional Australia, which entails a decay in cultural folkways and traditional social patterns too. So Bob Katter’s wishlist is an attempt at an answer to that, and the questions implicit in it have merit, and should be posed, even if opinion legitimately differs on the practicality and desirability of his policy responses.
The Nationals only know how to shovel money in the general direction of their constituents, and how to stir them up with the clownish carry-on of Barnaby Joyce. The prominence now given to figures like Windsor shows them up as yesterday’s men and women.
A bunch of mainstream media commentators might find a policy focus on rural and regional Australia “unedifying”. I don’t agree. I think that we effectively have a three-speed economy in Australia, and we need to start talking about what we can do to change that, and to do so in such a way that fosters equity and sustainability.
The Greens will be an important part of that conversation.
Finally, someone gets it.
Glad I moved to New England when I did. A lotta people around here seem to have their head screwed on the right way round, and they’ve repeatedly sent a representative bloke to Canberra to represent them.
Kim: spot on.
Sounds good!
Top post, Kim, thanks. I’m really enjoying the way the Independents seem to be making a lot of people rethink the value (and values) of rural and regional Australia, rather than the usual ignorant and dismissive hayseed stereotypes.
And I’m particularly enjoying the way that they — even Katter — look and sound rational, grown up and honest compared to most of the pollies we’re usually exposed to. Anyone hear Christopher Pyne on ABC radio this morning trying to bluster his way out of answering questions about the missing eleven billion? It was excruciating.
Nonsense. If the people of New England had their heads screwed on right they’d have returned a Socialist Alliance candidate from Armidale who’d tell the Parliament a thing or two about early European settlement at Port Jackson and would have shared a few interesting recipes with them.
Interesting piece, Kim.
For what it’s worth, I’d go back to some points that came up in this discussion in the prelude to the Victorian state election of 2006.
As you correctly point out, the National Party’s solution to rural woes is to a) extract pork from the city, and b) if it grows up, chop it down.
More broadly, it seems to me that “Regional and rural” actually covers a multitude of sins, and the interaction of “regional” Australia with agriculture is more tenuous than is sometimes supposed.
Have a look at the Possum’s electorate demographic tool. Take my old stomping ground of Indi, for instance. Less than 10% of the population work in agriculture and forestry.
Yes, if you live in a small town, even if you’re not a farmer yourself, the land is part of your life and work. But if you’re living in Wodonga, you can go about your daily existence and be almost as oblivious to agriculture as you can in the outer suburbs of a state capital.
And if you look at what’s happening demographically, the regional centres like Wodonga are growing, while the small towns are shrinking.
The problems faced by larger regional centres – which you’ve articulated very well in your piece – do, as you’ve identified, have much in common with the issues facing the battlers/aspirationals/whatever you want to call them in the outer suburbs of the state capitals.
But I think it’s a mistake to conflate them with the continued depletion of very small communities and family farms.
I dream of a country where the economy is made for man, not man for the economy. To some extent, this is what Katter is on about. He talks about it in terms of how our move to a “man made for the economy” mindset is effecting people who live in the bush – but a lot of it applies equally to the cities.
I particularly liked how Katter linked workchoices to what is happening to farmers who depend on the big two for their sales.
When I started work in 1960 protection was in full swing, it was difficult to sack anyone and 2% unemployment would put a government at risk. people had the confidence to build houses, have children and be involved in communities.
Some things have improved but somehow free markets and all the other things that were going to make our lives better have failed. The Indies’s wish lists are worth thinking about.
Once upon a time we used to get rates notices that showed the breakdown of federal and state funding for local councils.
They showed that rural councils were heavily subsidised at the expense of urban councils.
That, of course, reflects the reality that the provision of services in a region where population is low density generally costs relatively more than provision of services in densely populated urban areas.
So the former is subsided.
Fair enough.
But government is not the only social/political/economic force that does or does not provide rural services.
There is the ‘free market’.
And that has cut service in rural regions for the past several decades particularly since govt depts have been captured by the ‘bottom line’ agenda of economic rationalism.
Go to almost any rural centre and you will find the shell of buildings that once provided services to the local communities.
Banks, post offices, schools [public not private], govt services eg Dept of Ag and so on.
All ‘rationalised’.
Empty, or coopted for other purposes and then usually emptied and run down, these buildings and the employment they used to provide are victims of bottom line economics.
In my rural centre of about 5,000 people we have only 1 bank open in normal working hours.
For choice of banks I have to travel 75 kms.
The problem that rural populists like Katter et al have is that their political ideology supports such.
Govts must be efficient, never go into debt and companies must pursue the god of profit maximisation and if a few employees bite the dust well such is [economic] life.
Except when it affects their communities.
But the paradox is never presented as such.
Recently my local rural rag had an pre-election article, an op-ed written by the COALition memeber, about the ‘waste’ of the BER, horrible govt deficit, govt debt and so on. The usual ideology.
And in the next issue the rag had several pages about how terrible it was that the region had missed out on a multi-million dollar grant for a particular project.
It ignored the fact that 100′s of millions had been allocated to over a hundred other projects in other regions, it ignored the fact that the sums requested by the regions were vastly more than the amount available, it was all about the greedy selfish individuals missing out in their particular region.
Then back to the debt/waste theme for the election.
At the last election the National Farmers’ Federation admitted that the ALP climate change policies were far more postive for farmers than the COALition lack of an alternative.
Similarly many farmers, rural pople and even National Party officials I spoke to fully realised the benefits of the ALP broadband scheme and regarded the COALition alternative as a joke.
Yet when push came to shove they opted for a million dollar anti-ALP TV campaign in my region and I presume elsewhere also.
For the regions to be revitalised in Australia many rural conservatives are going to have to question their own political values and loyalties.
Old habits die hard.
Many of us regional and rural folk recognise this, hence the election of the broad-based Independents whom also seem to recognise this.
Given I could probably be called a “rural populist” I would just like to add I disagree with most, perhaps all of this:
“Govts must be efficient, never go into debt and companies must pursue the god of profit maximisation and if a few employees bite the dust well such is [economic] life”
Kim
I think you’ve captured one of two trends, and the second one would perhaps generate less enthusiasm on this list, which is the regional impact of the mining boom.
WA has become something of an electoral disaster zone Federally for Labor, and all accounts were that the original version of the RSPT (mining tax) would have seen all but one Labor seat in WA lost. Swings to the Greens were also the lowest in WA of any Australian state.
In QLD, a 5% swing to the Coalition means that its 2PP vote is now closer to that of WA than to the rest of Australia, and also fits the pattern of a mining state. While this may not have been much of a factor in SE QLD, mining tax certainly seems to have been an issue in seats like Flynn and Dawson, as well as presumably Herbert and Leichhardt.
Katter is interesting in this regard as he represents both the rural poor and the beneficiaries of the mining boom. His own account of Rudd is interesting – he likes him personally, and thought the government was doing a very good job, but that the mining tax was a killer in regional QLD.
Thoughts on this would be welcome.
#8: “I dream of a country where the economy is made for man, not man for the economy.”
Yeah, and I dream of a country where gravity is made for falling objects, not falling objects for gravity.
In other words, it’s the wish of a fool. You might wish that the economy is made for men, but then I’ll have to ask you “Well, but WHICH men?”. At which point you’ll have some ‘splaining ta do. Doubtless you’ll fudge it, as the one thing leftists excel at is being both delusional and full of ripe shit.
j_p_z, I don’t think Ralph Waldo Emerson differentiated between men (sic) in similar contexts, but then lesser men typically do.
HD, the question I’d pose for you is what happened first – did people start leaving (either permanently or to do business in larger centers), or did the governments go first?
Australian governments are not responsible for the agricultural technology that made it possible to run ever-larger farms with ever-fewer people. Nor are they responsible for the fact that you simply can’t do high-end medicine in small country hospitals. Nor are they responsible for the fact that Coles is cheaper than the little IGA franchise supermarkets you typically find in small towns.
And nor are they responsible for the mining boom ensuring that anybody with a trade, or even the ability to operate heavy machinery effectively, can make a bloody good living in the mines if they’re prepared to move.
I just love it when really strange people try to equate economic laws with gravity. Gimme a break. Humankind creates economic systems it does not create gravity. Gravity is created by this infinite pile of green space-going turtles and is totally beyond our control. The economy is not created by turtles, it is created by men (mostly) and we can control it, change it do with it what we will. No need for turtlecide, we just do it. Show me the economic equivalent to a green gravity turtle and I will agree with you.
Huggy
“Some things have improved but somehow free markets and all the other things that were going to make our lives better have failed.”
Not quite. But the whole Washington Consensus thing was adopted as some kind of policy purity nirvana by both major parties without regard to Australia’s circumstances including population size, geographic dispersion and so on. I used to see a lot of trade policy stuff when this pursuit of policy purity was really gaining momentum (“the Uruguay Round will deliver every Australian sixty squillion dollars and a pony”. Each piece would have a coda, “there will be some adjustment costs.” Outside of the policy paper, “adjustment costs” meant industries closing down and people losing their jobs. Now industries need to change and grow and some have to close down, but it was easier to recite the mantra than to actually do something about the people who lost their jobs. And when “workforce flexibility” is part of the policy prescription, then the jobs that sprang up were part-time, temporary, etc etc. And let’s not start on the outcomes of deregulating the finance industry.
Bad enough in and around the cities, in the bush where the economic base is narrower, often a single industry, the effects were cataclysmic. Talk to any ex-dairy farmer. They haven’t forgotten.
# 13: I can’t find the quote in Emerson if that’s what you’re getting at, despite having wasted a fair bit of my youth reading the bloody scoundrel; in any event an argument from authority is I think pointless, esp. if the authority at hand is the very questionable and ludicrously lapidary Mr. Emerson, whom I could quote saying some very peculiar things indeed. Man, I wish I had those years back, maybe I coulda spent them trying to get laid more often — which would have improved both the world, and also the repute of Mr. R.W. Emerson whose thoughts I find of continuing interest, but certainly do not take on faith.
Huggy, no need for turtles.
A black hole is a black hole in budget/economy and in gravitational terms.
Huggybunny: “I just love it when really strange people try to equate economic laws with gravity. Gimme a break. Humankind creates economic systems it does not create gravity.”
You know, I’m not even gonna comment; I’m just gonna let your stupidity kind of lay there, and stink in the morning sun.
@17 Then I suggest you read “Emerson: The Mind on Fire” by Robert D. Richardson.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0520206894/rpcman
JPZ, you are disappointing me. I’ve always thought that one way at least in which Americans are superior to Australians is that you-all are more polite than we, but your comments at #12 and #19 are ruder in several different ways than anything I’ve seen here for a while. Any chance of actually making a case and explaining yourself, instead of just slinging shit?
19, Thanks for that. But I would rather have a turtle.
Huggy
Political economies certainly are already made for men, or at least those men who represent dominant politico-economic interests.
The question is: which (wo)men are to be represented. Or, as Lenin asked “Who–whom?”
Emerson became very interested in Islamic religion, culture and literature, particularly that of Persia, comparing
Saadi with Shakespeare and Firdusi with Homer. He was
also interested in the great old cities of Persia,
such as Shiraz, which once had 40 colleges and where both Saadi and Hafez were buried,
Emerson argued that great artists, such as Shakespeare, or Tolstoy, are not superior in their intellect or insights to others, but are exemplary, symbolic or representative of us all.
“What can Shakespeare tell in any way, but to the Shakespeare in us?” “The possibility of interpretation” he says “lies in the identity of the observer with the observed”. And he used this insight to highlight the
commonalities between Islam and the West.
#20: Why should I read more scholarship about Emerson? Ever? I don’t find his thought enormously useful for contemporary issues, and plus I find some questionable assumptions at the heart of his thought, which I explored in my undergrad and high-school days back when such things were a lot more appropriate. He’s an undergrad kind of writer, I think.
Your recommending materials out of the blue about Emerson reads only to me like you’d want to be considered an academic authority on this ancien New England creature who I really don’t care all that much about any more. I’ve read his essays and they mostly bore me. I’m not really interested in crossing swords with you about 19th-cent. American philosophy, which to be honest was never all that impressive anyway. Emerson it’s true had a certain amount of influence on Nietzsche, but Nietzsche was the much more impressive thinker. (Although I’m not a Nietzschean either, I just think he deserves some credit. Ask me some time what I think of Freud!)
What is happening these days in Australian philosophy (or political philosophy)? That I think would be more interesting.
In answer to Robert
Who wenty first -govt or people?
Well once upon a time, bankies, chalkies, the Dept of Ag fellas [always fellas I'm afraid in my experience], Telecom [remember them?], Post office, state and federal government services of all kinds, formed a major part of the employment profile of many small rural towns.
Then each started closing, ‘rationalising’ and ‘efficiencies’ were the words used, and jobs were lost or outsourced or contracted and the multiplier came into effect.
Shops went under the razor edge of viability and people moved out, the young in particular.
Of course motor transport cf rail, new highways cutting off towns, ATMs, the splintering of farms as primogeniture came into play, all sorts of factors were involved.
Nothing to do with mining whose nationwide regional employment takeup is bugger all.
My point was the self contradictory attitudes of the conservative powers that be, the community leaders, the local media, the conservative MPs.
At the last election in the two rural electorates I was involved in, the contradictions were stark.
The ALP as the party of debt and defict and waste , the economically incompetent was a dominant theme.
But simultaneously the local rags, about half a dozen of them, were runing an anti state ALP government campaign because the state govt was cutting back on govt employment in the region cos of their tight budget.
Every issue had a front page item about the impact on the local economies of the loss of government service jobs.
Yet, again paradocically and contra that line, they were running against taxation as an anti -ALP ploy.
Govt services ‘good’, taxes to pay for them ‘bad’.
‘Efficiencies’ good, but cuts to govt services ‘bad’.
You’re right, governments aren’t responsible for the cost of medicine nor the duopoly of Coles/Woolies, but they get the blame.
Despite spending more per capita [or so I understand] in rural regions govts, which at the state level have been ALP for some time, get the blame for the cut backs.
Its a paradox which the conservatives need to face.
Emerson speaks to people at all ages. I would have loved to have read him when I was 17 but now is better than never. In his book Richardson summarises what he thinks Emerson’s philosophy was as follows:
“The days are gods.
Creation is continuous. There is no other world; this
one is all there is.
Every day is the day of judgment.
The purpose of life is individual self-cultivation,
self-expression, and fulfilment.
Poetry liberates. Thought is also free.
The powers of the soul are commensurate with its
needs; each new day challenges us with its adequacy
and our own.
Fundamental perceptions are intuitive and inarguable;
all important truths, whether of physics or ethics,
must at last be self-evident.
Nothing great is ever accomplished without enthusiasm.
Life is an ecstasy; Thoreau has it right when he says,
‘Surely joy is the condition of life.’
Criticism and commentary, if they are not in the
service of enthusiasm and ecstasy, are idle at best,
destructive at worst. Your work, as Ruskin says,
should be the praise of what you love.”
…. and I thought I was being a tad too random with a dingo derail. over here it’s bloody emerson!
Oh, agreed.
For what it’s worth, I think it’d be a worthwhile project to look seriously at “rural and remote Australia” – as distinct from the bigger regional centres, and help those communities make an honest assessment of where they’re going. Some small towns are thriving. Others are not, and there’s no obvious reason to think they might recover.
Dr. Cat @ #21: Well despite your considerable graciousness, I reckon you’re kinda-sorta mistaken on a few points…
a) It’s probably not true that Americans are ‘superior’ to Australians in any ‘categorical’ venue. (Yes, I know you were sort of joking just about manners, but I’m gonna keep going for the helluvit.) Sometimes they are, sometimes not. It’s objectively the case that Americans have a superior ‘recent’ history in certain ‘modern’ fields of poetic endeavor (viz. there is nothing in Australian literature which rivals Pound, Stevens, WC Williams, Lowell, Plath, or O’Hara — but that’s a mere accident of history, which may be remedied any day now!)
b) I’m not sure which things I said qualified as “slinging shit”. Granted, my replies to 12 and 19 were sort of street-ish, but I think they deserved it, and also you maybe should make allowances that the Stones’ “Street Fighting Man” was a song I used to hear in my crib, and cut my jib accordingly. If that’s a proper sentence, which I’m not sure. I’m a Brooklyn boy after all, and have the weird scars to prove it. Sorry for the mess.
I’m not sure Emerson is on topic!
Saturday Salon’s open for those who want to continue that discussion.
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2010/09/04/saturday-salon-hung-parliament-free-edition-2/
Also, j_p_z, please abide by the comments policy and treat other commenters with respect.
Yet another response to Robert.
” I think it’d be a worthwhile project to look seriously at “rural and remote Australia”
Well that has been done.
Its a while since I’ve read some of the lit but from what I recall its pretty much fallacy busting
[or else it keeps to the existing fallacies and becomes empty].
One study, done by Flinders Uni about 20 years ago looked at the impact of wheat quotas [gong back yonks] and drought on a rural regional mixed farming district [ a cluster of towns about 1000 popn each] and found that underlying factors eg the primogeniture thingy [you can only subdivide the family farm so many times before it splinters irretrievably], sending the affluent kiddies off to city boarding schools, the closure of services, private and public as I mention above, had/has a far greater impact on local employment and social culture than believed.
Most farmers were barely effected by drought, the main impact is an the hangers on, shop assistants, farm labourers, vehicles salespersons etc.
The farmers pull their belts in, spend less for a year or two or three and the locals feel the impact in that some lose their jobs immediately and have to actually physically move out of the region.
That has a permanent impact.
Young people have to move, education availability is a major issue, some very old people move for medical reasons but generally the popn ages.
What concerns me is that when studies of such are made, and two friends of mine did such a study in my local govt region, the trends, problems and answers they find are so out of left field, so to speak, that the local powers to be refuse to acknowledge such and shelve the report.
And state govts are unaware.
Social and cultural power structures are lagging behind economic processes.
A good example is the current state of the MDB irrigation industry.
Ostriches abound.
Kim — how am I not treating others with respect? I’m just disagreeing in various degrees, and making the odd situational joke or two. Surely they’re free to mock me back? Wouldn’t I think it was funny if they did? How else would I learn where superior jokes come from?
Now, enough of this please. And no more Emerson on this thread.
I suspect we now have a multiplicity of provincial groupings, unidentifiable by regional location but the conglomerating specificity of habitus as described by Max Weber.
Oops, sorry Kim, you’re totally right. The annoying thing about being a little drunk is that of course, at the time, you don’t think you are. Remember, kids: don’t drink and blog! Or else you look like an idiot, preserved in Google amber…
Apologies to Huggy, Dr. Cat, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Plus, the stuff about the turtles is pretty good, H.!
Now going into auto-moderation mode. Enjoy the rest of the thread…
Robert Merkel @14, regarding your chicken and egg question
“what happened first – did people start leaving (either permanently or to do business in larger centers), or did the governments go first?”. Not sure if this sort of questioning is very helpful in teasing out the underlying problems and in understanding the predicament of rural people. You make gross statements about the ‘responsibility’ of Australian Governments in relation to the economic fortune of the regional and rural areas.
Agricultural technology is just the tool that made it possible to run ever-larger farms with ever-fewer people. Vertical integrated agribusiness would not have colonised most of the productive land without the self serving political interests and sweetheart deals.
Neither are we asking for high-end medicine in small country hospitals. Just access to a GP, that is not over worked or on work experience, within reasonable time and distance. Let’s for a second go to the sharp end of the stick. There is ample evidence that suicide rates for males are higher in rural areas than the national average. As Professor Ian Hickie says: “”It’s the lack of access to health services in the country to treat it (mental illness). That’s what we need to be urgently addressing but we’re not.”
In relation to the mining boom, yes it is ensuring that anybody with a trade, or even the ability to operate heavy machinery effectively, can make a bloody good living in the mines. Hence, it is difficult to find a good tradesperson or machinery operator to do local work and for a reasonable price too. Further, it does not help that all the local ag colleges and TAFE are just hollow shells of their former and needless to say mining industry is not conducive to training new trades and skills much needed in the rural areas. FYI most trades people around here working in the mines are either living away from ther families for extended periods or FIFO. It probably has to do with the recognition and previous experience of the ‘boom and bust’ nature of mining.
32 Hannah’s Dad,
Thanks for describing that work. This type of assessment you describe is far more relevant to rural futures than conventional analysis that concentrates on economic productivity (the latter has a “just so” feel to it – if a town dries up, it had to be that way because it was economically unviable). More recent work by people involved in the Resilience Alliance has pointed to banks and doctors as being two critical factors. Local champions are also important. You can have two towns of c. 1000 people each and their paths are completely different because of these factors. Rural people are recognising this – faster than their politicians in most cases.
Productivity is important – pull the water out of an irrigation area and it will whither significantly, but engaging in bottom-up rural futures can shape the ultimate outcome. Newer breeds of politicians recognise this – they tend to be independent because party politics does not reward this type of thinking. But it’s also the bread and butter of green politics, so there are long term gains to be made in strengthening their reach into the regions.
Personally I don’t mind the colour of anyone’s politics if they recognise these key factors in rural social sustainability and are willing to work for it. I think those people are gold.