Red Flag

Peter Hartcher, political and international editor of The Sydney Morning Herald has produced for Quarterly Essay, Issue 76 2019, a thorough and compelling examination of China and its intentions. He opens with a question about the rise of China: 'what does the supreme ruler of China want to do with all this power?'

There is an enormous difference between a desire to influence for mutual benefit and an intention to dominate. 

After 25,000 words of reportage and analysis that covers the ways in which China has changed in recent years and where those new directions might be taking us, because we are irrevocably closely linked with China, Hartcher states that more than ever we must choose Australia, the best interests of Australia, as a democracy, flawed as it may be. In the chapter titled A Watchdog With Teeth Hartcher warns that 'an ideology of authoritarianism animated by a psychology of totalitarianism' means that China will keep on pressing for total control, and it must be resisted.

It requires being clear-eyed, clear-headed. Australia needs to develop a consistently strong stance through legislation, policy and vigilance to resist unwanted intrusion and at the same time embracing the many admirable qualities of the Chinese people who have contributed so much to this country and continue to do so. 

 

  

The Landlord's Game

Influenced by the ideas and work of American economic philosopher Henry George, Elizabeth Magie, born in Illinois, created a board game in 1904 which she called 'The Landlord's Game'.

Because she had devised it as a teaching tool, there were two sets of rules. Using the anti-monopolist set all would be rewarded when wealth was created. The monopolist set of rules resulted in opponents being crushed.

A game designed by a woman in protest against the monopolists of her time, such as Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, became in other hands transformed to its opposite. 

Derk Solko, former Wall Streeter, who cofounded boardgamegeek.com states it thus:
  
'Monopoly has you grinding your opponents into dust. It's a very negative experience. It's all about cackling when your opponent lands on your space and you get to take all their money.'

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/business/behind-monopoly-an-inventor-who-didnt-pass-go.html 

http://marypilon.com/monopoly 

https://www.prosper.org.au/about/henry-george/ 

Economist Jessica Irvine wrote in The Age on 31 October, 2019, Pity the first home buyer, p20:

'The way Australians have managed to turn what should be a simple market for the exchange of that most basic of human needs - shelter - into a casino of wealth speculation, driven by investor tax breaks and greed, is a national disgrace.'


https://www.allenandunwin.com/authors/i/jessica-irvine 

https://www.accc.gov.au/about-us/conferences-events/ruby-hutchison-memorial-lecture/ruby-hutchison-memorial-lecture-2017 
 

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-10-30/byron-bay-homeless-going-bush-to-find-a-better-life/11650904

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-10-27/inside-perth-most-unique-home-addresses/11442196 

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-04/11667888 (What happens when the government ignores advice of Reserve Bank and the banking royal commission.)

Bruce Pascoe

"People got together and looked at the conundrum of humanity. What it is like to be human and what it is like to be human in company with other humans, and sought to solve the problem of what you do with an animal that can be violent and cruel and selfish and at the same time can be kind, loving and honourable and selfless. How do you manage an animal like that?

Those old people, over what length of time I don't know,  decided that in order to manage those humans that everybody would have a house, everybody would be fed, and everybody would take part in the culture. 

It is an enormously powerful philosophical statement, it is an enormously profound cultural development unmatched in the world. And that is not a bragging right. Perhaps it was the isolation, who knows? But over a very long period of time people came up with the concepts. The idea that everybody is involved in the culture I think is a mighty one. That's what binds people together and I think that's what meant that young aboriginal people generation after generation after generation re-adopted the same old democratic, egalitarian principles." 

transcribed from https://abcmedia.akamaized.net/rn/podcast/2019/09/bia_20190902.mp3

https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/bigideas/
Diversity in arts, culture and the creative sector. Monday 2 September 2019 

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/weekend-australian-magazine/bruce-pascoe-the-man-behind-dark-emu/news-story/231cefabce2f0103de26b6402fef0e3f

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/postcolonial-blog/2019/mar/11/a-big-jump-people-might-have-lived-in-australia-twice-as-long-as-we-thought

Bruce Pascoe, Dark Emu
Magabala Books Aboriginal Corporation, Broome, Western Australia
www.magabala.com 

A new flag

Portraits from an Uninhabited Land

Photo by Rashaad Jordan, Flickr Creative Commons

'A Crew of Pyrates are driven by a Storm they know not whither; at length a Boy discovers Land from the Top-mast; they go on Shore to rob and plunder; they see an harmless People, are entertained with Kindness, they give the Country a new Name, they take formal Possession of it for the King, they set up a rotten Plank or a Stone for a Memorial, they murder two or three Dozen of the Natives, bring away a Couple more by Force for a Sample, return home, and get their Pardon. Here commences a new Dominion acquired with a Title by Divine Right. Ships are sent with the first Opportunity; the Natives driven out or destroyed, their Princes tortured to discover their Gold; a free Licence given to all Acts of Inhumanity and Lust; the Earth reeking with the Blood of its Inhabitants; And this execrable Crew of Butchers employed in so pious an Expedition, is a modern Colony sent to convert and civilize an idolatrous and barbarous People.'

from 'Gulliver's Travels' by Jonathan Swift (1726)

'This immense tract of Land, the largest known which does not bear the name of a continent, as it is considerably larger than all Europe, is thinly inhabited even to admiration, at least that part of it that we saw; we never but once saw so many as thirty Indians together and that was a family ... We saw indeed only the sea coast; what the immense tract of inland country may produce is to us totally unknown: we have liberty to conjecture however that they are totally uninhabited ..." 

from 'The Endeavour Journal of Joseph Banks' 1768-1771

'Since (the) colony was acquired neither by conquest nor cession, but by the mere occupation of a desert or uninhabited land. It is insisted that His Majesty's subjects settling in a country thus acquired, carry with them the Law of England ...'

from VALIDITY OF STATUTE, 20 George IIc. 19 IN THE COLONY 1822 'HISTORIC RECORDS OF AUSTRALIA' 1922

These are the fictions, the cultural blindness, upon which the colony was founded. A people clearly living, thriving, in an inhabited land were deemed not to be there and when they fought to keep that which they were the custodians of, that was not a war.

These non-existent people, even now can only be seen when they do something exceptional; and something that can be recognised as achievement according to white values.

Charles Perkins was good at playing soccer, which allowed him to earn enough money to pay his way through university, becoming the first aboriginal man to do so, graduating in 1966. 

While a student in 1965 he organised the Freedom Ride travelling through towns in New South Wales to raise awareness of the racial discrimination and segregation that was rife in country towns. 

In 1967 Aboriginal Australians won the right to vote in a national referendum.

Charles Perkins through all his roles in life never ceased to speak out for recognition of his people. He grew up on a reserve and could not forget. He felt he had to push for justice always, something that is so hard to win in a stolen land. 

Photographer and film maker Nicholas Adler took his studio into north-western Australia. He asked permission of the communities to do this and his camera was passive, waiting for people to decide for themselves that they wanted to stand before it and be seen by the world which denies their existence. Looking into the lens their eyes tell their story in a way that nothing else could. They speak for themselves of the truth that has passed. 

Nicholas Adler, 1988,'Portraits from an Uninhabited Land', Bantam Press, Sydney.

  

Getting ahead

In Republica australis, this is what we mean by getting ahead:

becoming the best we can be, refining our intelligence, emotional capacities and physical capacities so that we can be of service to the good that benefits all; so that we can be useful, enduring and happy.

In this place getting ahead does not mean stealing an advantage over others, working to assert one's superiority over others, or trying to unduly influence others.

It is Reconciliation Week in Australia.

In Western Australia for the first time WA Police has developed a reconciliation action plan.

Indigenous staffing levels will be increased, and other measures implemented to improve understanding and relations between police and Aboriginal people. 

The Aboriginal flag will fly permanently at all police stations in WA. This is a powerfully symbolic act of recognising the true history of Australia and honouring our First Peoples.

Any genuine and productive reconciliation has to examine the past and has to come to terms with it fully. What has been lost cannot be fully recovered, what has been destroyed cannot be fully reclaimed, but the memory can be honoured and there can be restoration of the possible.

Law that is deeply embedded in Country is an aching imperative now.

This week the ministers for the new government were sworn in. The 46^th Parliament will begin in July.

Of particular significance is that WA Liberal MP Ken Wyatt became the first Aboriginal cabinet minister.

For the ceremony Mr Wyatt wore a booka (traditional kangaroo skin) which had been given to him by the Noongar people.

Tokens and symbols are reminders, but let them be more, let them be living and dynamic enactments of values that run much deeper than the white colonial impositions.

“... to bring the dispossessed out of the shadows, to recognise that they are part of us, and that we cannot give indigenous Australians up without giving up many of our own most deeply held values, much of our own identity - and our own humanity.” 1992 speech by former Prime Minister Paul Keating at Redfern.

Redfern in Sydney is not far from where the miserable contents of the First Fleet were first disgorged onto the pristine land of the South; Georgian Britain's unwanted transported to establish a penal colony.

Yesterday Prime Minister Scott Morrison told his cabinet that they should focus on the “aspirations of all Australians”.

But what does he mean? Those on the streets, their aspirations to have a home, which is the most basic human need? The children who do not have enough to eat and go to school hungry, who aspire to live in a warm home, is he talking of the need to address their aspirations? Then he talks of the “curse” of youth suicide. People don't choose to die when they feel their life is worth living. What is the “curse” that makes them turn from life? Perhaps it is when aspirations are only about acquisitions and money being of more value than anything else; when homes become property in a greed-fuelled market. What will he and his cabinet do about busting that curse?


 

Our time of waste and abandon

In Republica australis we are all equal. 

But we are not the same. We have different capacities, whether it be through genetic inheritance, or the unique character that has developed through experience.

We acknowledge our interdependence and therefore no one can be more important than another. Our worth is equal and the potential of each is unknown. All are afforded equal respect. Each contains a mystery that is sacred.

             *  *  *  *  *

A week ago Australians elected their federal representatives for the new term of governance. I was looking forward to watching the results that evening, believing that a Labor victory would herald a new era for Australia in which climate change would be addressed seriously, boldly, imaginatively and adventurously, as well as some honesty and realism regarding housing affordability, low-paid workers given back the penalty rates that were taken from them and universal health care strengthened. 

Alas, when people cast their votes they were not thinking long-term and could not see, feel, or think beyond their immediate self-interest.

So we now have a government that will release greater devastation on the environment and cause those who are not wealthy to fade further from view and lose more ground. 

The 'haves' nearly always win. They have more power so how could they not win? A significant momentum of dissatisfaction has to gather before change becomes possible.

              *  *  *  *  *  

Long ago in Athens, in 594 BCE, Solon, a poet and a man of modest wealth and moderate views became the chief ruler. He repealed the harsh laws of Draco which issued the death penalty for both serious and trivial offences. His aim was to promote justice and reduce poverty. He removed much of the favourable bias that had been enjoyed by the aristocracy to the detriment of others, particularly farmers, who had often been reduced to serfdom. His reforms were moderate and set Athens on the path to democracy. He is reputed to have averted unrest and the rise of tyranny. He introduced a new idea, that neither a god, nor a king, nor a tyrant, nor a single class could maintain peace and prosperity, but that all citizens working together for a common good could achieve it. Solon has been consistently recognised as one of Athen's Seven Wise Men. 


             *  *  *  *  *

A high priority task for this newly elected government, apparently, is to repeal the Medevac bill that was passed by Labor, the Greens and some independents in February this year. The Medevac bill enables asylum seekers detained on Manus Island and Nauru to receive medical treatment in Australia when deemed necessary. 

How does a government that does not represent the interests of the majority, the ordinary working people, get elected? It whips up fear and ignorance. Then it promotes itself as the strong man who will deal with the threat. When the Medevac bill was passed the government claimed that it would put the people smugglers back in business and that Australian citizens would be pushed out of the queue for medical treatment. 

Meanwhile, in Melbourne yesterday more than a thousand people staged a mock die-in on the intersection of Bourke and Swanston Streets. In a democracy the people don't always get it right when they vote. They can be swayed by the wrong messages. The planet can't lodge a protest so it is up to the people to create a public spectacle. Ultimately the planet will protest in the only way possible and that will be a very real die-in, which has already begun.                  

This election was a wasted opportunity for Australia. It wasn't the will of the people, but a subversion of will.

             *  *  *  *  *

In Republica australis we are not consumers. We are citizens of a democracy and guardians for truth, justice and honour. 

Republica australis will become a courageous world leader in sustainable practice and fairness.




https://www.britannica.com/biography/Solon/media/553609/129290