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What happened to the fair go?

In Social justice, The Age on July 28, 2014

THE room was already full at Trades Hall in Carlton on a cold Wednesday night in July, but the floors creaked with people still walking in. “I’m not Thomas Piketty,” said Mike Berry, emeritus professor at RMIT, with a wry smile. “I understand some of you were expecting him.”

Piketty, the French economist and author of the best-selling tome, ‘Capital in the Twenty-First Century’, is in great demand – and short supply.

Translated from French this year, his 685-page book sold out all over the English-speaking world. It is already the all-time best selling book for its publisher, Harvard University Press, which ran 24-hour shifts at its warehouse to keep up with orders.

In Melbourne, the independent bookstore chain Readings ordered just ten copies at first; since then, they’ve been selling it hand over fist, re-ordering a hundred at a time. For several weeks, incoming shipments sold out well before they arrived.

So, at the Trades Hall meeting to discuss the book – notwithstanding the absence of the author himself – the audience was particularly attentive. “Every so often a book just catches interest,” said Berry, a professor of public policy. “It’s broken out of the scrum, partly by sheer weight of evidence.

“Piketty shows that capitalism inevitably and remorselessly leads to increasing inequality. In short, unless we do something about it, we’re headed back to the 18th century world of haves and have-nots.”

For his efforts, Piketty has joined the exclusive, counter-intuitive class known as “rockstar economists”. In May the ‘New Yorker’ described the backstage clamour of Nobel Laureates eager to meet him before a public lecture.

But more importantly, inequality is now a global, mainstream concern. Earlier this year, the World Economic Forum – a coterie of large corporations – listed income inequality as chief among 31 risks “threatening social and political stability as well as economic development” in the next decade.

In Australia, too, as debate continues over budget cuts to welfare, health and education, commentators across the political spectrum are warning that our society has become dangerously unfair.

The top decile income share in Anglo-Saxon countries, 1910–2010. http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/en/capital21c2

‘Capital’ is based on fifteen years of Piketty’s research, in collaboration with scholars around the world. He has collected and analysed wealth and income data as far back as he can find it. In France and Britain the records stretch beyond two centuries.

Unusually, he spends little effort analysing the bottom end of the scale, and instead, takes aims at the dynamics of the top. Since the global financial crisis, it has been this research that has turned the world’s glare upon “the 1 per cent”.

This is what his data shows: over the long term, the wealth tied up in capital – assets such as property and finance – accumulates more rapidly than economies grow. In broad terms, that means inheritance trumps merit, and wealth concentrates.

“The past tends to devour the future: wealth originating in the past automatically grows more rapidly… than wealth stemming from work,” Piketty writes.

His research upends an article of faith of neoclassical economics: that inequality will decrease as nations’ incomes continue to rise.

That theory was developed in the mid-20th century, at time when the gap in wealth and incomes had narrowed considerably. Piketty argues this period was an aberration, caused by the century’s great shocks – two world wars and the Great Depression – together with the resulting government policies: tight regulation of financial markets and steeply progressive taxes.

In recent decades those policies have been unwound and economic growth has slowed. Inequality has risen again. We are witnessing “the emergence of a new patrimonial capitalism”, he writes.

Piketty’s data debunks any notion of trickle-down economics. Really, we live in a suck-it-up system : the wealthiest swill the surplus, and leave the poor to take whatever they can get.

On this matter, the Parisian academic is not a lone voice.

Nobel laureate and former chief economist of the World Bank, Professor Joseph Stiglitz recently visited Australia on speaking tour. The ‘Capital’ phenomenon, he says, is no surprise to him. In 2012, Stiglitz’s own book on the subject, ‘The Price of Inequality’, hit the bestseller lists in the United States.

“Inequality has risen to the top of the concerns facing America and most other countries – not that we’ve actually been able to introduce policies that deal with it, so far,” he says.

This April, Stiglitz told a US Senate committee that the American dream was “a myth”. For the last 25 years, median wages have stagnated and lowest wages have fallen, in real terms. Since the global financial crisis, nearly all the gains of the “so-called recovery” have accrued to the top 1 per cent, he said.

His message that day in Washington was scarcely contested by conservatives, he says.

“The International Monetary Fund has now stressed the role of inequality. The IMF is not a radical organisation, so nobody should think of this anymore as a left-wing agenda. You almost have to be radical not to take it onboard.

“Inequality used to be a question about how we were treating the most disadvantaged in our society. Now we’re debating how our whole society is functioning.”

Among the ill effects of inequality, Stiglitz argues, is “worse economic performance, no matter how you measure it”, whether by GDP or more holistic benchmarks of wellbeing and sustainability. In the US, the vast numbers of citizens with diminished incomes and poorer levels of health and education constitute a waste of the country’s “most valuable resource”.

It also feeds a further vicious cycle: a failing political system, which represents the affluent at the expense of the rest. “We have a democracy where most of the citizens think the system is corrupt,” Stiglitz says. “Not corrupt in the sense of stuffed paper envelopes, but in the sense that money has found legal ways influencing the process to get what it wants.”

Yet he is not without hope. Neither he, nor Piketty, accept that rising inequality must be so. It’s a product of public policy – the combined outcome of our schools, healthcare, financial systems, tax laws and corporate regulations.

In ‘Capital’, Piketty advocates for highly progressive income tax (with a top marginal rate set at more than 80 per cent) to prevent accumulation of wealth through soaring salaries, and a progressive global wealth tax, to prevent its further concentration.

“Inequality is not a fact of nature,” Stiglitz says. “It’s a consequence of the policies we put in place.”

*

In Australia, inequality is not so vast as in the United States, or Europe at the turn of the 20th century. But it is rising.

A new report from The Australia Institute, drawing on ABS data, reveals that the top fifth of households earn five times the income of the bottom fifth, but they hold 71 times the wealth.

It says the richest 7 individuals in Australia – including Gina Rinehart, Frank Lowy and James Packer – hold more wealth than the bottom 1.73 million households.

Meanwhile, the dole continues to fall well below the poverty line. The Australian Council of Social Services estimates that one child in six is living in poverty. Over 100,000 households – the bottom 1 per cent – are living in the red, with negative net wealth.

Yet, like the US and other immigrant societies, Australia has not been shaped by inherited wealth as much as Europe. Inequality has risen significantly since the 1980s, but for other reasons. In his book, ‘Battlers and Billionaires’, ANU economics professor turned federal Labor MP Andrew Leigh attributes the rise in inequality to three forces, in equal measure: higher earnings at the very top, inflated by technology and globalisation; the decline of unions; and less progressive taxation.

Leigh believes that Piketty’s theory is more relevant for our future than our past. Given high savings among the wealthy and a slower growing economy, inequality will worsen, he says.

So what is to be done?

Last year, Richard Denniss, director of The Australia Institute, took part in a televised debate, coordinated by the St James Ethics Centre, on the question: “Should the wealthy pay more tax?”

Income tax cuts introduced since 2006, by both the Howard and Rudd governments, have overwhelmingly favoured high earners, he says. The Institute estimates those cuts have cost the government about $170 billion, of which the top ten percent of earners have received significantly more than the bottom 80 per cent combined.

It hasn’t always been this way. At its peak between 1942-44, the top marginal tax rate in Australia was 93 per cent. Throughout the Menzies prime ministership, the top rate was never lower than 67 per cent. Now, even with the government’s proposed deficit levy, it will temporarily rise to just 49 per cent.

Likewise, tax breaks on capital gains and superannuation overwhelmingly advantage the wealthy.

Super concessions amount to $35 billion in forgone government revenue, Denniss says, most of which goes to the top five percent and none to the bottom fifth. And because women tend to work fewer hours and years in the formal economy, and are under-represented at the upper end of earnings, the super tax breaks also systemically favour men.

“You could only say that increased inequality has been the objective of subsequent governments in Australia, because everything they’ve done has exacerbated it,” Denniss says.

Alongside him in the St James Ethics Centre debate, also for the affirmative – surprisingly – was Geoffrey Cousins: former advisor to Prime Minister John Howard, current member of the Telstra board, and latterly, a high-profile campaigner against the James Price Point gas hub in the Kimberley.

Cousins sits on Telstra’s remuneration committee. In the 2012-13 financial year, the company had eight senior executives whose pay packages topped $1.5 million per year.

Yet, for the audience, Cousins joked that he wanted to wear a t-shirt saying: “I’m rich, tax me”. Afterwards, Denniss had one printed and sent to him, and Cousins swears he wears it – even outside the house. (“I wore it kayaking on Sydney Harbour,” he says.)

He has received a mixed response from well-heeled acquaintances, but if anything, his position has firmed. “I did a lot of research. The information was completely compelling regarding growing inequality around the world, and the fact that wealthy people generally pay a much lower percentage of their income in tax, one way or another,” he says. “It’s not just me: all sorts of wealthy people have said it’s a ridiculous situation.”

He believes the Abbott government’s budget has sharpened the debate in Australia. “There’s a great lack of fairness in what the government is doing and I think most people believe that.”

At the Ethics Centre debate, but on the negative side, was economist and former Liberal Party leader John Hewson. He argued the proposition was too simplistic; comprehensive tax reform is necessary.

But Hewson, too, is deeply concerned about inequality. Last month, he launched a report entitled ‘Advance Australia Fair? What to do about growing inequality in Australia’, which documented the deliberations of a conference held at Parliament House in January.

The participants included a range of civil leaders and academics, from economists to epidemiologists, invited by the non-profit group Australia21. Their report argues the case that more equal societies do better, with higher rates of social cohesion, mental and physical health, and even economic productivity.

Among its many policy recommendations were lifting pensions and benefits to the poverty line, directing more school funding and early childhood education to disadvantaged kids, and implementing significant tax reforms – such as ending tax breaks for superannuation, capital gains and negative gearing.

To the report’s suggestions, Hewson added one of his own: all major policy proposals should be subject to an “inequality impact statement”.

“Our land of ‘the fair go’ is disappearing,” he said.

“There is an urgent need for a mature community debate about how inequality is impacting on our lives, our culture, our economy and our society.”

For now, it seems Australians want to be more egalitarian, even though we may be unaware just how unequal we are. The Australia Institute’s recent survey showed that no matter what people earn, they tend to assume their incomes are about average.

Similarly, research conducted for the Australian Council of Trade Unions in 2011 found that most people vastly underestimate the real level of wealth inequality in society. When asked to describe their ideal distribution, they chose a division of wealth even more egalitarian again, regardless of their own position in the hierarchy.

But arrayed against these preferences, Denniss says, is the force of the business lobby, which describes welfare cuts as fiscal consolidation and derides new taxes as class warfare. So long as unemployment remains low, it’s easy for politicians to ignore entrenched poverty.

“I think inequality is an idea whose time has come,” Denniss says. “But what hasn’t arrived yet is a political party that will do something about it.”

*

At Trades Hall, the audience was comprised mainly of baby boomers. During the questions, one man stood and commented that Piketty’s book could benefit the rich, if rising inequality is understood as inevitable. “How can we make it help us?” he asked.

“Firstly, you’ve got to read it,” Professor Berry replied (understandably; it is a hefty volume). “And secondly: politics matters.”

To stimulate change, the buzz about ‘Capital’ would have to go beyond the media, he said, and suggested that people could form discussion groups to debate its themes.

Berry is author of ‘The Affluent Society Revisited’, which re-examines the work of economist John Kenneth Galbraith in the context of the global financial crisis.

‘Capital’ is the perfect book for the swirling discontent since the crisis, he says. Then, we found out that financial markets don’t function according to the textbooks. But so far, our approach to governing them hasn’t changed.

“There’s a sense of crisis in popular ideology about what the hell is happening out there in the real economy.

“But the critical thing is that although Piketty identifies remorseless tendencies towards inequality in free-market, freebooting capitalism, they are not laws. There are ways of countering them through political means.

“Policy is not dead, it’s just sleeping.”

 

Read an edited version of this article at The Age online

Is this the end of Medicare?

In Social justice, The Age on June 9, 2014

A national institution, Medicare turns 40 this year. But are budgetary changes such as the doctor co-payment the beginning of the end for universal healthcare?

MEDICARE was always a shit-fight. It became law in the most extraordinary circumstances: one of a handful of bills passed during the only joint sitting of federal parliament in the nation’s history, after the double dissolution election in 1974.

As the Whitlam government prepared to introduce the system – then known as Medibank – its opponents rallied.

The Australian Medical Association marshalled a million-dollar “Freedom Fund”, donated by members. Determined to stop bureaucrats interfering with patients, it hired a former Miss Australia to front its publicity campaign. The General Practitioners’ Society of Australia circulated a poster depicting social security minister Bill Hayden dressed in Nazi uniform.

And that’s just the opposition from outside. Dr Anne-marie Boxall, co-author of Making Medicare, says Whitlam had little support, even from within the Labor Party. The party platform advocated a fully nationalised model, along the lines of the British National Health System (even though it may have required a referendum).

By contrast, Whitlam’s plan was for a public insurance scheme. Health services would be delivered by a mix of public and private providers, but paid for by taxpayers and guaranteed for everyone.

“The crucial members of his caucus didn’t agree with him, but he was adamant,” Boxall says. “He’d done a lot of thinking about it. So he waged the war of public opinion and he won.

“It’s an amazing political story.”

Medibank began full operation on October 1, 1975, just six weeks before the dismissal of the Whitlam government. The Fraser government tinkered with the system several times before abolishing it – only for it to be revived by the Hawke government in 1984 in almost exactly the same form.

Thirty years later, Medicare enjoys overwhelming public support. Politicians will swear to defend its honour, no matter their stripes or the system’s shortcomings.

And yet, in the wake of the federal budget, many people believe Medicare is under threat. The target of most ire is the proposed copayment for doctor’s visits, under which even the poorest will have to pay for up to ten appointments each year.

But are these changes the beginning of the end of universal coverage, or another nail in its coffin? Or are they in fact a distraction from the deeper afflictions at the heart of Australia’s health care system?

Health minister Peter Dutton describes the Coalition as “the greatest friend Medicare ever had”, echoing a line Tony Abbott employed during his days as health minister.

The coalition has demonstrated its amity with a host of surprise announcements, including the copayment, which also affects diagnostic tests, such as x-rays, blood tests and prescription drugs. (These charges will be capped for children, low-income earners and the chronically ill.)

More people will pay the Medicare levy surcharge, and fewer will qualify for the private health insurance rebate. Billions of dollars have been cut from public hospitals, and the preventative health agency and other health promotion programs have been shut down. The savings will be directed to a $20 medical research fund.

Dutton says that without these reforms, spiralling costs will jeopardise Medicare’s viability. “The government is very keen to keep Medicare and strengthen it. To keep it universal, we have to make sure it’s affordable. In my view Medicare is only sustainable if those people who have a capacity to pay contribute to the system.

Professor John Deeble, now 82, was one of the original scheme’s architects. He says that although costs have been rising, they’re manageable. Health spending by our governments is low compared with other wealthy countries.

“This is not really about the sustainability of Medicare or anything like it,” he says. “They just want to spend the money on something else, simple as that.”

The Medicare levy – currently 1.5 per cent of taxable income – was established as a premium for public health cover. If the nation’s health costs rise, the government can raise the levy, Deeble says. In that way, people’s contributions are determined by their capacity to pay – their income – not by how often they need treatment.

By introducing copayments instead, the government is embracing something fundamentally different: a ‘user-pays’ notion of fairness in health funding.

In Medicare’s first incarnation, when social security minister Bill Hayden introduced the bill to parliament, he declared that the new health system’s three motivating principles were “social equity, universal coverage and cost efficiency”.

Although the full details of the Coalition’s reforms haven’t been released, public health experts have been unanimous in their critique: as a package, it’s simply bad policy.

“We’ve actually tried all these solutions before, which is why we know they don’t work,” says Boxall, who is the director of the Deeble Institute for Health Policy Research.

“We need to step back and look at the structural problems with our health system.”

Among these are two key vulnerabilities, unforeseen at the time of Medicare’s design: the rise of private health care, and the growing burden of chronic illnesses.

“What we like about Medicare are the principles it was founded on,” Boxall says. “Things have changed. So what are we doing to improve universality, equity and efficiency?

*

For most of the 20th century, Australia had a two-tier medical system : a very basic insurance system for the working class and a fee-paying model for those who could afford it.

“Doctors offered quite different services, and in many cases different waiting rooms for each group,” says Associate Professor James Gillespie, from University of Sydney’s school of public health, and co-author of Making Medicare.

The World Health Organisation says “universal coverage” means “all people have access to services and do not suffer financial hardship paying for them”.

But under Medicare, we’re already failing the test on equity. More than one-in-six Australians say they don’t see a doctor or fill prescriptions because of the cost, according to an international study published last year by the journal Health Affairs. Other research has shown that people who live in poorer neighbourhoods are much more likely to delay medical care than those in the wealthiest suburbs.

Even without the new copayments, Australian patients fork out a lot for treatment from their own pockets, compared with other developed countries.

The two-tier system has re-emerged. One reason, says Gillespie, is that “both sides of politics have refused to think seriously about the role of the private system”. Major reviews commissioned by both the Howard and Rudd governments specifically excluded an examination of its role.

When Medicare began, private hospitals were a small industry, run by churches and charities. But in the last two decades, they’ve become big business, where doctors earn much more for their work.

Until the 1990s, private health insurance was in terminal decline. But spurred on by the Howard government’s incentives – the Medicare levy surcharge and lifetime cover discount – just under half the population now has private cover.

“We’ve ended up with a private system that shifts services away from the public and creates more privileged ways of doing things,” Gillespie says.

He says private funding can contribute to universal care, so long as core services are delivered the same way to everyone. Canada has a similar system to ours, but private insurance isn’t allowed to cover the services offered by its public system.

“If there’s a different system for those who can afford better, you end up with a residual service, which gets squeezed and becomes second best,” Gillespie says.

*

The coalition argues the copayment is a “price signal” to alert people to the real cost of treatment. But there’s something unusual about healthcare – even economists say so. In simple terms: you can judge how you’ll feel if you forgo buying a hamburger, but not if you forgo visiting the doctor.

“In the case of healthcare, part of the product itself is giving you that information,” explains Professor Jeff Richardson, from Monash University’s centre for health economics. “You’re not in a position to judge what life would be like with and without it.” All of which means that promoting efficiency is more complex than imposing a price signal.

Likewise, the relationship between health expenditure and outcomes is not straightforward. The nation’s health costs have been rising, but compared with other OECD countries, our total health spending – both private and public – is just below average. It’s half that of the United States, as a percentage of GDP.

“When the government says Medicare is unsustainable, it’s lying,” Richardson says. “The Australian government could spend much more on health if it wished. It’s simply a political and social judgement that it doesn’t want to.”

Curiously, despite Minister Dutton’s warnings about unsustainable health spending, his reforms – which aim to push more people into the private system – will end up costing more overall.

When the government acts as our single-insurer under Medicare, it has the power and incentive to bargain hard: as a result of bulk billing, GPs incomes are low by international standards. But with many different payers – like in the US system – it’s easier to for private insurers increase fees than control costs.

And for now, GPs and pharmaceuticals are the most cost-effective parts of the health system. Increasing their price will push more patients into hospitals, which are much more costly.

The measures are not a question of efficiency, Richardson says, but rather, an ideological choice that health is an individual responsibility, not a shared one, like defence or policing.

“If we swing over to the private sector and push it back on individuals, the health of poorer people will suffer and overall costs will almost certainly rise,” he says.

Dutton, however, maintains the measures aren’t about ideology, citing the Hawke government’s plans to introduce a $2.50 copayment for GP visits in 1991. (Paul Keating scrapped the idea when he took over as prime minister.) “I strongly believe that the changes we’ve put forward will improve access and the standard of care provided by GPs,” he says.

But the biggest challenge to the standard of care now comes from an entirely different source, one his reforms do nothing to address.

In Australia, the greatest healthcare inefficiency is found in a disconnect between the system – the fragmented network of hospitals, specialists and GPs, and their mishmash of state, federal and private funding – and the kinds of illnesses we have.

Where once we suffered acute ailments, we now need ongoing support with chronic conditions, says Dr Steve Hambleton, the outgoing president of the Australian Medical Association.

This change is partly a measure of success. The number of deaths from heart attacks, for example, peaked in the 1970s. But living with heart disease requires continual treatment and adjustment, especially as you develop other conditions. “The system doesn’t treat those people all that well,” Hambleton says.

Patients with chronic diseases need to see a broad range of health professionals and have frequent tests – but they are often seeing them in a piecemeal way with little continuity or communication between experts. Many of these, such as physiotherapists, psychologists or dieticians, are excluded or receive only limited funding under Medicare.

Both parties have attempted limited reforms to address the rise of chronic illnesses and the needs of our aging population. The Coalition brought in chronic disease management plans, which extend benefits to other kinds of treatment, beyond doctors. Labor’s super clinics and Medicare Locals aimed to bring together and coordinate different health services for patients. But the changes have been piecemeal.

“We need a proactive, long-term approach to care, supporting primary healthcare to keep patients out of hospitals, and make sure people don’t fall through the cracks when they move between community and hospital care,” Hambleton says.

*

THE wide, bright, hallway of the Victorian Aboriginal Health Service in Fitzroy is humming: people young and old are waiting and chatting; some are on the go, others hovering around a wood heater.

Today, a specialist is visiting today to conduct an ear, nose and throat clinic.

Jason King, the centre’s CEO, says they offer an holistic service. There are GPs, dentists, allied health professionals, visiting specialists, social workers and financial counsellors, all supported by Aboriginal health workers from within the community. “It’s not pumping them out every ten minutes. It’s ‘How’s mum and dad going? How’s uncle going who lives with you?’

“We’re the central hub, this is where people come and see family,” he says.

Last year, the health service celebrated its 40th anniversary, a history that has coincided with that of Medicare. Each year, about a third of the state’s Aboriginal population pass through its doors.

The centre’s model of integrated care, embedded in the values of its community, is exactly what doctors and experts have ordered – along with the World Health Organisation, the OECD and several Australian inquires going back decades.

But King says the co-payment and cuts to preventative health will either cost the centre patients or take a chunk out of its budget. Either way, that means fewer services.

There are 28 Aboriginal community-controlled health centres around the state. Jill Gallagher, CEO of their peak body, says Aboriginal health remains worse than the rest of the nation, and Victoria is no different.

“The life expectancy in Fitzroy is the same as the life expectancy in Fitzroy Crossing,” she says. “For every dollar spent on Medicare for a non-Aboriginal person, about 60 cents is spent on Aboriginal people. Access to primary healthcare is still not equitable, in spite of the fact there’s four times the burden of illness in the Aboriginal community.”

Dr Mary Belfrage, the Fitzroy service’s medical director, says any barriers to accessing health care cause people show up later, with advanced conditions, which are more expensive to treat. “It all translates to worse health outcomes, but it’s also inefficient,” she says.

“This isn’t about party politics or a particular budget. It’s about the principle of equity and how it impacts on health.”

Read this article at The Age online

 

Real change or just more talk?

In Social justice, The Age on April 30, 2014

Victoria Police is commencing its most significant reform in two decades. But can it tackle a problem it won’t name?

IT could be any city office. But on the fifth floor at Victoria Police headquarters, something particularly uncommon is going on. A brand new division is beginning its work.

The 20-odd staff members in the Priority Communities Division – a mix of uniformed and unsworn members – are tasked with transforming the way the force deals with the most vulnerable members of society, including recent migrants, Aborigines, the disabled and others who too often find themselves the target of police attention.

“It is a watershed moment for the organisation in terms of how we create better engagement across the community,” says the unit’s boss, Commander Sue Clark. “It hits all parts of the organisation.”

In scope, she likens the changes to Project Beacon, which began in 1994, in a bid to reduce the number of police shootings. Then, all officers were trained in conflict resolution techniques that didn’t involve their guns.

Police reform is always hard won. This time, it began with a group of teenagers in Flemington. In 2008, sixteen young men lodged a complaint with the Australian Human Rights Commission, saying they were repeatedly stopped, harassed and abused by members of the Victoria Police, sometimes violently, and that it was a breach of the Racial Discrimination Act.

One of the young men, Maki Issa, estimates that police asked for his name and ID at least 100 times in the two years from 2006. One day he was stopped five times, he says. One officer in particular would greet him by name and then insist on asking for his ID. “I was thinking: ‘Is this guy sick, or is it me?’” Issa says.

At the time, he was 15. Besides schoolwork, Issa was training hard for a high-level soccer team, and volunteering as a coach for younger kids from the flats. He’d never been charged with any crime. When the case finally settled in the Federal Court, in February 2013, he was 22.

Maki Issa at a forum in North Melbourne. Photo by Aaron Claringbold. 

Victoria Police still denies the allegations, but as part of the settlement, it agreed to review its practices.

Last year, Chief Commissioner Ken Lay described the case as “a waypoint”. “We were going along and we hit this point, and now we’re going in a different direction,” he said.

The force sought public submissions and commissioned expert reviews. On December 30, it released a report, entitled ‘Equality is not the same’, which included a three-year timetable for change.

Among the reforms is human rights training to help members understand and undercut their own unconscious biases and stereotypes. Officers will also receive clearer guidance on when they can legitimately stop people, with definitions of what is meant by the grounds of “reasonable suspicion” and “high crime locations”.

The force will revise its data collection so it can analyse disparities among the ethnicities of people being stopped. And, in a major reversal, it has agreed to hold a trial in which citizens will be given receipts explaining why they’ve been stopped.

*

For the police force, the Priority Communities Division has an unusually flat structure. But at the top, Commander Sue Clark is its star recruit.

She is renowned for her work on cultural change, both in her earlier stint at Victoria Police and then at the AFL, where she was responsible for reshaping the code’s attitude to women. Her role with the league expanded to dealing with vilification and racism, and social inclusion in general.

It was a rewarding role. The AFL has “led the conversation with the community about really difficult issues,” Clark says. “Footy enabled people to talk about violence against women.”

She began her career with two decades “on the front line” as a police officer at Frankston and Dandenong, working with victims of sexual assault and child abuse. “You could see the problem: the limitations on policing and also on social services,” she says.

Under former chief commissioner Christine Nixon, she helped connect policing with a range of agencies and counselling services for domestic violence, sexual assault and men’s behaviour change. For the first time, they established referrals and confidential information exchanges so people wouldn’t get lost in the system. “When I think back, it was amazing,” she says.

Reports of family violence to police have tripled since the early 2000s – a sign that people have more faith in the system as a whole, she says.

That experience forged her approach to reform: a strong trust in collaboration with “critical friends” outside the force. Her new division is in the process of forming a number of advisory committees, which will represent multicultural, Aboriginal, youth and aged, disabled, and gay and lesbian communities.

“This is a long term journey,” Clark says. “This is not a short sprint. It’s not even a couple of kilometres. This is about changing the way we think, the way we operate and the way we draw on our community to help solve broader community problems. We’re in it for the long haul.”

*

When the police announced its reforms, the immediate response from advocates was positive, even from those most critical of the force in the past, such as the Flemington and Kensington Community Legal Centre.

Recently, the centre held public forums together with senior police to explain the proposed changes. Anthony Kelly, the centre’s CEO, is cautiously optimistic. “We see this as a crucial first step in a long-term shift to more impartial and democratic form of policing,” he says.

“One of the things we’re facing is that historically Victoria Police have always acted upon the social and political prejudices of the day. We’ve seen that with the policing of Indigenous people, the Irish, and then the Greeks, Italians and Vietnamese.

“The policing of the African community was heavily influenced by the statements of politicians and reflected through intense media stereotyping of African people as ‘problems’.

“Our clients say they were continually trying to explain to police they weren’t part of a gang, they were just hanging out.”

Finally, their complaints have been acknowledged. But the tension between African communities and Victoria Police remains. It can be traced back through many years of warnings and reports issued by advocates, youth workers and the Victorian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. After so long, police have much ground to regain.

Near the high-rise flats in North Melbourne, a small audience gathered for one of the joint forums. After presentations from assistant police commissioner Andrew Crisp and others, the panel took questions.

Assistent commissioner Andrew Crisp addresses the forum in North Melbourne. Photo by Aaron Claringbold. 

Khadija Alihashi, from Flemington, described herself as “one of the mothers” from the Somali and broader African community. She said there had been ten years of meetings and no change. “You guys bring the big bosses, but where are the local police? They never come,” she said. “We talk and we talk, but where’s the action?”

Maki Issa also attended the meeting. He said that when he joined the racial discrimination complaint, he wanted a receipting policy and better training. But he also wanted an apology – and he still hadn’t received one.

He said the police’s report didn’t acknowledge racism and shied away from using the r-word. “We cannot be scared of the word anymore. As long as we keep the word away from the public arena, it can be okay for people to behave that way.”

When Victoria Police does discuss racial profiling, it chooses its language carefully. Its report reiterates its “critical concern” about the community’s “strong perception of racial profiling by police”.

Likewise, in an hour-long interview about their work, Commander Clark and two senior members of the new division – Superintendent Charlie Allen and Leanne Sargent – managed not to say the words “racism”, “racial profiling”, or even the less-contentious “unconscious bias”.

Clark offered this construction: “the feedback from the community indicated there were instances of behaviour that has caused concern”.

Asked about how it is possible to enact cultural change without naming the problem directly, Clark said Chief Commissioner Lay had “acknowledged that there had been instances and behaviours that we deeply regret”.

Yet, it was clear that all three are enthusiastic about the task confronting them. “There is absolutely a fundamental acknowledgement that we need to change,” Clark said. “We can do things better.”

Such self-censorship may be a nod to the rank-and-file, which has often resisted reforms from high command. There are more than 12,000 uniformed members around the state, many of whom come from a very different era of law enforcement.

When these reforms were announced, the then police union boss, Greg Davies, said a receipting system would be a “rod for the backs of police… already cowed with the responsibility and oversight as it is”.

His replacement, Ron Iddles, says he wants to talk with Clark before passing judgment, and he’s looking forward to Victoria Police consulting with the association on the issue.

One of the independent reports feeding into the reforms, prepared by Professor Michele Grossman and colleagues from Victoria University, included interviews with 20 serving members.

A long-term, mid-ranking officer said many friends of his vintage “are still struggling with the shift in the organisation in the last five years” away from “an us-and-them scenario”.

Nevertheless, the academics found that the members they interviewed overwhelmingly wanted better cross-cultural training, not only in the academy, but also throughout their careers.

One officer described attending an incident between groups of African- and Anglo-Australian teenagers, where they immediately told the white youths to leave. It turned out, with video footage as proof, that they’d held the wrong group.

He reflected that he’d been “programmed” to make those assumptions: “we’ve heard about how much trouble [African-Australians] cause… therefore they must have been the ones that caused the trouble,” he said.

Melbourne University academic Tallace Bissett is completing her PhD research on the experience of young African-Australians with police.

In general, the young men she has interviewed would like less police presence in their lives. Strangely enough, their request may match the wishes of front line officers.

“It is clear that a lot of police officers feel overwhelmed and under-qualified to deal with many of the situations they face. They’ve had all these new expectations heaped on them but their training hasn’t developed at the same pace,” she says.

“Victoria Police is investing a lot of money into Priority Communities. An alternative would be to stop leaving it all to police, and invest in community infrastructure instead – to create places where young people can meet without being criminalised. Maybe what we want is a smaller police force, not a bigger one.”

*

Abraham Nouk is sitting in his makeshift recording studio in Collingwood, the walls lined with egg-carton soundproofing. Nouk runs an unfunded, informal youth centre and arts space called Creative Rebellion Youth. This afternoon, a young man is travelling in from Narre Warren for help to record a demo.

Nouk’s story demonstrates the personal and societal cost of policing gone wrong.

As a teenager, he lived with his family in Lilydale and Ringwood, and hung out around Dandenong with other friends who’d come from Sudan. He says they attracted constant, unwarranted police attention.

“When it comes down to African youth, we’re perceived as people who are involved in gang activities,” he explains. “That already fuels police hostility towards us. That’s where the boundaries are created.”

He has been held in custody and fronted court. It was getting worse, until four years ago, when he made what he calls his “concession”.

To avoid the police, he avoids the public. He no longer drives, because he was stopped so frequently. When possible, he doesn’t go out after dark.

He believes it is his only choice. “You have to adjust,” he says. “It’s not an easy process – it’s almost like exempting yourself from living fully. That’s just the way it is.”

Recently, Nouk has found acclaim as a performance poet, under the name Abe Ape. He’s been invited to perform at the Glastonbury festival in England in June. “I thought I logged into the wrong email when I received that one,” he smiles. “I logged out and back in again.”

In other ways, he has checked out completely. His lack of faith has bled beyond policing. He is skeptical, too, of social workers paid to pick up the pieces; of businesses that won’t employ African kids; and of people who clutch their bags at the sight of him.

The lesson, Nouk says, is to “acknowledge the fact that nothing is going to change”.

“That’s what I do, that’s what most of us do.”

He has little hope for the proposed reforms, and says the consultation hasn’t found its mark.

“Bottom line, if Victoria Police doesn’t want to admit the problem, it’s going to be a long time before these reforms have an impact. The people affected by it aren’t even speaking about it.”

Read this article at The Age online

For more on this issue, see this article about the police inquiries and cross-cultural training, and this account of the Racial Discrimination case brought by the young men from Flemington. 

In the line of fire

In Social justice, The Age on March 4, 2014

Jailed Australian journalist Peter Greste goes to trial in a Cairo court today. His arrest underlines the growing dangers faced by reporters just trying to do their job.

PETER Greste made his last live cross on Al Jazeera’s English network on Saturday December 28. “Egypt is still functioning pretty much as normal,” he said. “But what we’re seeing is a growing sense of unease, of disorder, of insecurity.”

Greste is normally based in Nairobi, Kenya; he had been in Egypt for two weeks of a three-week stint, filling in for a colleague over Christmas.

With the smoggy Cairo skyline behind him, he spoke of the hundreds of people arrested in recent days as police swept through the streets looking for protesters.

On December 24, the military-backed government had declared the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organisation. Only six months earlier, it had formed the country’s ruling party under elected president Mohamed Morsi.

On screen, Greste said it wasn’t clear who had been taken into custody – whether they were Muslim Brotherhood members, sympathisers or simply bystanders – but all faced a maximum of five years in jail.

Their fate would now depend on the judges, he said: “It does look pretty draconian.”

He was broadcasting from the balcony of the Marriott Hotel, on the Nile, where the network had established a makeshift office. The next night, authorities raided the hotel.

They arrested Greste, along with the Cairo bureau chief Mohamed Fahmy and producer Baher Mohamed. The three have been imprisoned for 66 days. Their fate, too, now rests with the judges.

The journalists have been accused of conspiring with the Muslim Brotherhood, broadcasting false news to undermine state security, and working without accreditation. Fahmy – who is a Canadian-Egyptian dual citizen – and Mohamed are also accused of being members of the Brotherhood.

The managing director of Al Jazeera English, Al Anstey, describes the charges as “baseless, unacceptable, and wholly unjustified”.

“What is going on in Egypt right now is a trial of journalism itself, so it is critical that we remain resolute in calling for freedom of speech… and for the immediate release of all of Al Jazeera’s journalists,” he says.

The jailing of his employees has been reported all over the world, but in Egypt, it is only one incident among many. The Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York–based advocacy group, says press freedom has declined there more rapidly than in any other country.

Attacks on reporters had risen under Morsi’s presidency, and continued after the military-backed government took power in July. In 2013, half a dozen journalists were killed, dozens detained and scores assaulted. Al Jazeera was one of eleven news outlets raided.

Robert Mahoney, the committee’s deputy director, says a climate of state- and self-censorship has taken hold.

In that, Egypt is far from alone. The committee recently released its annual risk list, which highlighted increasing violence against journalists in Bangladesh and Russia, and new legislation stifling free speech in Ecuador, Liberia, Russia, Vietnam and Zambia.

In Hong Kong too, the committee says “media freedom is at a low point”. Last week, Kevin Lau Chun-to, former editor of the Ming Pao newspaper, was attacked and slashed with a meat cleaver, only days after thousands of people rallied against increasing censorship. His sacking as editor was one of the sparks for the protest.

In 1992, the committee began closely tracking the number of journalists killed around the world. Its tally has risen to 1044. Other advocates, such as the International News Safety Institute and the International Federation of Journalists, put the number significantly higher.

Until World War II, such fatalities were almost unheard of. Decade on decade, from the 1960s the number of journalists killed in conflict has risen steeply.

Imprisonment and kidnapping are also at record levels. Over 200 journalists spent the new year languishing in jail – that’s the second highest in the Committee’s records, behind 2012.

Mahoney says 80 journalists were kidnapped in Syria alone last year. About 30 of them are still being held there. “We’ve seen kidnappings in conflicts before – in certain parts of Somalia, in Afghanistan and Pakistan – but we haven’t seen anything on this scale.”

*

Robert Capa’s most famous photo, Falling Soldier, shows a Spanish republican soldier with one arm flung back, gun in hand, collapsing at the moment of his death. It was shot in 1936.

The Hungarian photojournalist would cover five wars before a landmine killed him in 1954 during the French Indochina war. By then, he had redefined conflict reporting.

“Capa put himself into a new position: between troops and incoming fire, often shooting fear’s effect on faces, or the fire’s effect on bodies,” says American journalist Frank Greve, who has written about the history of reporters’ deaths in combat. “After Capa, anything less was kind of boring.”

Capa was one of the first journalists to sidestep tight military control and censorship. Given that freedom, he took risks that few had taken before.

But since then, those risks have multiplied. While communications technology and travel have become drastically cheaper and faster, newsrooms and the public have required the stories to match.

Warfare too has changed, he argues. Reporters can find it hard to predict where bullets will come from, and can’t rely on combatants viewing them as impartial observers.

The reporters, photographers and citizen journalists in Syria today still produce work with Capa’s “hot immediacy”, Greve says. “But I suspect they spend more time risking their lives than he did.”

Dr Colleen Murrell is a former international news editor – she worked with Peter Greste at the BBC in the early 1990s. Now a journalism academic at Deakin University, Murrell researches the way foreign correspondents operate.

She says postings with a foreign bureau are the most coveted in the industry. Travelling to a danger zone has always been a way for young reporters to get a break. More people are trying their luck than ever before, but at the same time, those jobs are vanishing.

On-staff reporters always had the benefit of insurance, safety training and gear, and a support network if things went wrong. “Now it’s a lot more dangerous for a larger number of people,” Murrell says.

In the last two decades, a growing proportion of journalists’ fatalities have been among freelancers.

But Murrell says they’re beginning to organise. There are more than 4000 members of The Vulture Club, a hidden Facebook group where people exchange tips on safe border crossings, reliable interpreters and local conditions.

Likewise, the Frontline Club, a London-based network of foreign correspondents, recently established a freelance register and support collective.

Murrell says these two groups have also been pushing international media companies to take greater responsibility – either by not encouraging freelance contributors to go to dangerous places, or if they do go, ensuring they’re equipped to deal with the risks.

One way journalists can prepare is by undertaking hostile environment training. In mid-March, 20 reporters – of varying experience – will attend a seven-day intensive program in the Kanchanaburi region of Thailand, on the River Kwai. It’s coordinated by a company called Dynamiq, which works with Reuters and the ABC.

Shaun Filer has been running these courses for six years. Formerly a medic in the US Marines, and then a journalist, Filer leads his charges through sessions on emergency first aid and personal security.

The course culminates in a 24-hour disaster scenario on a Thai military base, in which participants must negotiate a border crossing, meet and vet interpreters, organise convoys, and make sure their kit and accommodation is safe, among other things.

They might need to sleep rough or deal with aggressive people at checkpoints. All the while, they must regularly file video, photos and text. “It’s a really fun week,” Filer says, wryly.

For now, however, few of the attendees are freelancers, and even fewer are local country journalists – yet they’re the ones who bear the most risk.

“Our local colleagues are the majority of the people imprisoned, assaulted and murdered,” Filer says. “But it takes an Australian journalist to be on trial for us to even have the conversation.”

In the past decade, foreign journalists have increasingly become targets. Even so, nine out of 10 reporters killed die in their own country. Most of the deaths are murders, not casualties of war.

“Local journalists are murdered because they’re rummaging around in stories people don’t want aired,” explains Robert Mahoney, from the Committee to Protect Journalists.

“That’s always been the case. What’s even worse is that nine out of 10 of those murders go unpunished. When you don’t address the problem of impunity, journalists stop writing stories, because they think they’re going to get killed for it.”

Last year, the United Nations General Assembly voted to establish an annual “International Day to End Impunity” for crimes against journalists, on November 2.

Mahoney acknowledges that drug cartels, corrupt officials and authoritarian regimes are oblivious to such measures. But he says they’re worth pursuing. Some countries with many unsolved murders of journalists – such as Mexico, Brazil and India – are sensitive to international pressure.

“This is human rights work,” he says. “It’s long, it’s slow and it’s a hard slog.”

*

Last Thursday, protestors gathered in over 30 cities to rally in support of the Al Jazeera journalists.

The event was part of a huge campaign for their release, which has played out most publicly on Twitter, where it has attracted hundreds of thousands of hits. Thousands of people, including many prominent journalists all around the world, have posed for photos with their mouths taped shut.

In Sydney’s Martin Place, the federal secretary of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, Chris Warren, called on Prime Minister Tony Abbott to appeal directly to the Egyptian president.

Foreign minister Julie Bishop says she doesn’t believe that would help secure his release. “The advice I have received from other governments in the region is that we should not seek to humiliate the Egyptian authorities. We should seek to work as assiduously as possible behind the scenes,” she says.

“There’s a whole other issue about journalists facing significant risks in places of conflict and tension. I understand all of that, but my focus right now is to get Mr Greste home as soon as possible.”

Bishop says consular officials have met several times with the 48-year-old and his family, and also with Egyptian prosecutors. She had spoken directly with the foreign minister, Nabil Fahmy, but last week the entire Egyptian cabinet resigned.

The Greste family is keenly aware of the fragility of the Egyptian state – after all, that’s why Peter was called in to report from Cairo.

His parents, Lois and Juris, live in the Brisbane suburb of Sherwood. They spoke to him on Christmas day. “He was pretty cautious about going out on the streets, even at that time,” Lois says.

Greste has covered conflicts in the Middle East and worked as a correspondent in Latin America and, for many years, Africa.

“He’s no cowboy journalist,” Juris says. “He’s got a background of dealing with really tough situations.”

In 2005, Greste’s producer Kate Peyton was shot and killed in Somalia while the pair were standing outside a hotel. He returned six years later and his report for BBC from the streets of Mogadishu won a prestigious Peabody Award.

Al Jazeera has published two letters Greste wrote from prison in January. He described his broadcasts from Cairo as “some pretty mundane reporting”.

At first, after he was arrested, he hoped the authorities would understand he was caught up in a political struggle that was not his own.

The Egyptian government believes the Qatari broadcaster – especially its Arabic channel – promotes the Muslim Brotherhood.

But as the days passed, Greste realised that, amidst the broader crackdown on dissent, his arrest was not a mistake. One part of the struggle was his: “As a journalist, I am committed to defending a fundamental freedom of the press that no one in my profession can credibly work without,” he wrote.

“How do you accurately and fairly report on Egypt’s ongoing political struggle without talking to everyone involved?”

His brother Andrew has travelled to Cairo to support him, but despite several visits to Tora prison, his family remains unsure about what will happen when their son returns to court today. The processes of the Egyptian legal system, and even the charges he faces, seem hazy.

“You try to not build up too much hope,” Lois says, “but you can’t help but build a little bit.”

Read this article at The Age online

Lest we remember

In Social justice on February 25, 2014

The Australian War Memorial was first advised internally to acknowledge the frontier wars way back in 1979. Our military historians accept that colonial conflict is part of our military history, but the Memorial still holds out. Why?

NEAR the end of his new book, Forgotten War, Henry Reynolds makes a demand: the Australian War Memorial must commemorate the frontier wars.

The book examines Australia’s violent colonial history, and reaches into some of our most challenging public debates – about land rights, sovereignty, and reconciliation. But here, Reynolds chooses one simple theme:

“A critical question is whether the Aboriginal dead will ever be admitted to the sacred centre of white Australian nationalism, the Australian War Memorial. If they are excluded in death from the pantheon they are excluded from the nation. That is surely axiomatic. We will know that we are all members of the same nation when a shrine in memory of the fallen warriors is placed side by side with the tomb of the unknown soldier.”

In September last year, Brendan Nelson, former Liberal Party leader and now the director of the Memorial, addressed the national press club. Reynolds’ book had just come out, and ABC journalist Michael Brissenden asked if the Memorial would acknowledge the frontier wars.

Nelson said the story should be told, but by the National Museum, perhaps. “The Australian War Memorial is not, in my very strong view, the institution to tell that story.”

I interviewed Nelson recently, and he maintained that position. Let’s consider his arguments.

“The origins of the war memorial are in the depths of World War I, in 1916, envisioned by Charles Bean our official historian who was with the troops at the front through the entire war. The Australian War Memorial’s purpose and function is to tell the story of Australia’s engagement in, and experience of, war and other operations on behalf of Australia. It is not the Memorial’s function to tell the story of disputes and armed conflicts where they have occurred within Australia,” Nelson says.

The memorial’s function is defined by its legislation: the Australian War Memorial Act 1980.

It says that, among other things, the institution must maintain a national memorial of Australians who have died “as a result of any war or warlike operations in which Australians have been on active service”. It must also disseminate information relating to Australian military history, including that of forces raised in Australia before Federation.

In a public statement late last year, the Memorial argued that under the Act, the definition of its role “does not include internal conflicts between the Indigenous populations and the colonial powers of the day”.

This is technically true: those battles aren’t expressly included. But neither are they excluded. The Act doesn’t specify whether the conflicts must be on home soil or overseas. The Memorial’s position appears to be a matter of politics and extraordinary inertia, not history.

Peter Stanley began working at the Australian War Memorial in 1980, and from 1987 until 2007 he was its Principal Historian. He’s written 25 books, and is now a professor at the University of New South Wales, at the Defence Force Academy in Canberra.

Stanley says the question of whether the Memorial should recognise frontier conflict was first raised by Geoffrey Blainey in an internal report in 1979, and Stanley himself presented a paper on it in 1981.

He argues that the institution’s public position is based a narrow reading of its legislation and a flawed view of history.

“The Act does allow the Memorial to deal with ‘warlike’ actions – and frontier conflict looks warlike to me: as I asked in 1981, ‘If it’s not war, what is it?’” he says.

“I gave the same advice as principal historian, but it was declined. It has come up repeatedly during the terms of successive directors and governments, but has been either outright rejected or avoided as too hard.”

This is what Nelson says:

“It’s questionable whether there was a declared war in Australia, a war declared by the colonies against Indigenous people. After the British garrisons left, the violence where it did occur was from police militia, colonial militia and Indigenous militia.”

This position is decades out of step with historical scholarship, Stanley says. “Australia’s military historians have long accepted that frontier conflict was a part of Australia’s military history. No military historians I know take the opposite view.”

In its public statement, the Memorial said it had “found no substantial evidence that home-grown military units, whether state colonial forces or post-Federation Australian military units, ever fought against the Indigenous population of this country.”

This, Stanley says, is “historically simply wrong”.

“Military forces raised in Australia did prosecute war against the Aborigines: the (Military) Mounted Police – which perpetrated the Slaughterhouse Creek massacre of 1838, for example – was raised in Sydney in 1825, so the Memorial is plain wrong to argue that there weren’t any soldiers raised in Australia which conducted the frontier war.

“But this is just legalism. An armed conflict occurred across the pastoral frontier for about a century: don’t tell me that that’s not an actual military conflict. It resulted in more than 30,000 deaths and involved the British army. To try to find legal reasons why it isn’t recognised is just logic-chopping and pedantry.”

Nelson, who began his directorship in late 2012, says he won’t discuss the Memorial’s internal deliberations. But the circumstances are exceptional: a publicly funded institution appears to have rejected expert advice for more than three decades. In the name of transparency, it should open its archive.

“Charles Bean was determined it should be a place of commemoration, of national unity. He wanted it to be a place that had a spiritual ambiance for the men of the 1st AIF and the women as nurses, as they were then,” Nelson says. “It’s simply inappropriate for the Australian War Memorial to be telling the story of violent armed conflict between Indigenous and non-indigenous people.”

Here, Nelson seems to make two arguments: that commemorating the frontier wars would upset the atmosphere of the Memorial; and that it must remain true to Bean’s original vision.

The history of the frontier wars has certainly been divisive – in part, because our history remains little known among the community. But it need not always be so. Indeed, Reynolds argues his case in the name of national unity.

Bean was adamant the Memorial must not glorify war. Given the significance of their fight for the land and the ongoing repercussions of colonisation, a shrine to the fallen warriors would surely pass that test.

What’s more, David Stephens, secretary of the Honest History website (Peter Stanley is the president), points out that we already recognise the Turkish resistance to the Diggers. On Anzac Parade, opposite the Memorial, is the Ataturk Memorial Garden, featuring a bust of Kemal Ataturk, commander of Turkish infantry at Gallipoli and, later, the first president of the Republic of Turkey.

Bean first spoke of his notion for a memorial while on the battlefield at Pozières in the Somme valley. But we can’t hold time still on his vision: the horse has bolted, and turned into a light armoured vehicle. Bean wanted a memorial to commemorate the forces in World War I. Then World War II happened. His vision had to change even before the Memorial opened in 1941.

The Memorial has changed as the years and decades have passed, and now commemorates several wars both before and after World War I, as well as our peacekeeping missions.

“I think the War Memorial’s council fears that acknowledging the truth of frontier war will somehow bring Anzac into disrepute,” Stanley says. “But the two are completely separate.

“It is not an aspect of Australia’s military history that Australians take pride in, but you can’t always cheer your history – sometimes you just have to accept it.”

*

In September last year, during his address at the press club, Nelson said that the Australian War Memorial “represents the soul of our nation”.

“It is about our past, it is about our history, but more importantly it’s actually about our future. A people that neither knows and nor, more importantly, understands its history, in my view, is dangerous,” he said.

Nelson was thinking about World War I, and all those cemeteries and battlefields he visited while he was the ambassador to the European Union and NATO.

But he has returned to the wide brown land. There is a military history here that must be known and understood too, and the Memorial’s council has a unique responsibility to help us remember and interpret it. If one day it comes to pass, the shrine to the fallen warriors may primarily serve non-Indigenous Australia, for its understanding and education.

The Australian War Memorial is on Ngunnawal land. I asked the United Ngunnawal Elders Council what they thought of Reynolds’ proposition, but they have not yet considered the issue. It need not be the only place.

I also spoke to playwright Jim Everett, a Plangerrmairreenner man, of the Ben Lomond people in northern Tasmania. “If they asked me, I’d say ‘no we don’t want to be stuck alongside you mob – we had to fight you’. If we want to remember our heroes, then we should be doing it ourselves,” he says.

“We should be dedicating a part of country to our fallen heroes – perhaps we could mark it with a rock. I don’t like the idea of statues.”

Wurundjeri elder Bill Nicholson is adamant that Australia should recognise that Aboriginal people fought for their lands. “It would be great to commemorate Aboriginal warriors – I’m just not sure yet if the War Memorial is the appropriate spot,” he says.

Reynolds has also suggested Aboriginal land councils throughout the country consider if they’d like to establish memorials, and if so, receive the funding to do it.

Nicholson approves. “I would love to see our freedom fighters commemorated everywhere over Wurundjeri country,” he says. “We’re still fighting for the same country today. The battle goes on. It hasn’t ended.

Read this article on the Wheeler Centre website

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