You’ve got to be joking

Nostradamus with apologies

I am extremely grateful for the feedback and encouragement I have received about my previous musings (HERE) and I am determined to present further offerings as cogently and coherently as I can manage but I won’t substitute quantity for quality. Shades of: “don’t look at the quality, feel the width.”

I have been diabolically ill and yet there is much to be said. The whole mood across Tasmania appears to be one of despair and friends interstate appear to think that they are in the same boat. As a fairly well-qualified academic, I have always been interested in the ways society has developed and in particular, interpersonal relationships. As I said in the first two articles of my renaissance, or perhaps resurrection, I believe we are in a mess and it’s very easy to find people to blame and indeed, at the moment there appears to be a culture of blame and finger-pointing for many happenings that are beyond our control. This particular article is slightly out of sequence with what I had planned but you can’t live in Tasmania and listen to the current government talking about spending cuts; the opposition responses and the cries of anguish from individuals and interest groups. As my grandmother used to say, you never know how well off you are until you see the next person. In my travels I’ve seen some sights that have been appalling and offensive especially in rich countries.

We don’t have to travel to the Third World to see primitive people suffering because we have our own problems with tribal aboriginals and I refuse to join the bleeding heart club. The aboriginal peoples are the original inhabitants of this land and have been dispossessed. I can remember the referendum which actually recognized them as being Australian, which would be a joke if it were not so serious. I remember with a great deal of pride being associated with a program instituted by a former government to ensure that all outback settlements had access to clean drinking water and the Army engineers drilled the wells. Unfortunately I did not keep up with developments but I was told that the Howard government discontinued this project. From a purely personal point of view I find it a slight on our society that we can allow our original inhabitants to live in Third World conditions and see their kids suffering from the same diseases seen on our TV screens from Africa or Asia and yet billions of dollars have been put into the Aboriginal Affairs portfolio to such little effect. I could spend a great deal of time writing about the subject but instead, I want to turn to some of the more immediate problems in Tasmania connected with budget issues and cuts in spending which follows on from the last piece. And before I hear howls of concern, there is no intention on my part to denigrate Tasmanian aboriginals or their spokespeople. It is a serious issue and my knowledge is secondhand and I refuse to write about things when my understanding is deficient. So this article follows on with what might be called the trials and tribulations of government. The question still remains: “Where does the buck stop?” and in due course I hope to provide some answers.

Firstly, I want to indulge myself in a little nostalgia and share it with you. Australia and Tasmania constitutes an ageing society and this has ramifications for government policy especially in the area of health and aged care, which will soak up services and require a radical rethink about access especially in urban areas. It also impinges on education and some people will share my memories, especially in relation to education and the behavior of students. I have looked at changes in education at all levels with a great degree of alarm – no pun intended. A friend of mine is a mathematician of good repute and we were discussing the study of mathematics during our days at school. At primary school, the “times table” was drummed into us and some of the more masochistic went on to the number 13, what with it being a prime number. I remember quite clearly long pages of logarithms and tables and for calculation; a slide rule which preceded the calculator by many years and the capacity for what was called mental arithmetic. I knew one engineer whose accuracy with a slide rule was absolutely astonishing and yet, in a few years, they will turn up on TV shows as antiques and people will not know what function they served. I wonder whether our resident academic on TV, Dr. Adrian, will find a collector for these wonderful instruments. By contrast, I see kids today going to school with mobile phones and laptop computers at a very young age and the big push to computerization means that manual methods of calculation including some complex statistical functions can be handled by a fairly basic program. The amount of effort that my generation had to put into handling large data sets is something that can be done in a mere fraction of the time by someone who knows how to operate a computer but the problem lies with interpreting the results. I can say with absolute authority that the devil is in the detail.

As I commenced writing this piece, I heard that Baroness Susan Greenfield was in Australia. I haven’t heard much about what she was doing or where but she is a neurologist at the John Radford Hospital in Oxford. Despite her title she doesn’t sit in the House of Lords. She has been concerned for some time about the effects of high technology on brain development, especially among the young. A couple of years ago, there was a brief flurry of interest in the UK when a newspaper declared that most school leavers were unemployable and had a very small vocabulary. Those that complained the loudest were naturally enough employers and to a certain extent, they have grounds for criticizing the education system, which has gone through several convulsions over the past 40 years or so and there is little doubt that Western education lags behind Japan and China when it comes to systematic learning and discipline. (I intend to write a specific article on the work of Baroness Greenfield regarding the use and abuse of high-technology but not in this series). Another friend is a teacher who spends time in China and finds that kids are extremely enthusiastic about Mathematics Olympics and practical science. Kids in China are no longer required to conform to what we became accustomed to seeing on TV, wearing uniforms with red scarves and singing the praises of Chairman Mao. However, while the students wear clothing that would not distinguish them from some in our streets, the discipline remains and parents are extremely conscious of the need for their children to be educated in order to obtain good employment and everything that goes with it such as housing, lifestyle and the extras in the West that we take for granted.

From several people who visit China and Japan on a regular basis and speak the language(s) children are encouraged to respect their elders and in some cases, what might be termed the wisdom of the elders. Being an old codger and I’m quite happy to be described as such, I am convinced that this country has lost a great deal of experience and knowledge through the treatment of older workers and it is really only the privileged few that can hang on and work beyond retirement age. The perverse side says that if our former glorious Prime Minister John Howard had his way, people would work till the age of 70 (the biblical threescore years and 10) paying tax and then after retirement, drop dead in order not to be a burden on the government. Naturally enough, politicians would be excluded by licenses of longevity, otherwise known as gold passes.

When I was in a position to have a large staff engaged in research, I was quite impressed by the number who were prepared to think outside the square but then quite depressed by their inability to mount a logical argument, complete with references and to present work on time. Yet another friend who is an editor by training sent me a reference for a computer package that will produce gobbledygook which looks impressive but means absolutely nothing. When I write, I usually check my work with the so-called fog index and related tools which provide an idea of readability and comprehension. It comes as no surprise to find that very few people bother with the latter and rely on the Internet for references and resources without bothering to check primary sources. In days gone by, we would’ve called that a hanging offence, especially when you realize that Wikipedia, which is very useful as a general tool for basic research, needs to be quite literally stripped down and primary sources located and evaluated. Reasoning and debate in schools is apparently not what it used to be and the students are only as proficient as allowed by teaching and parental influence. In the 1970s there was a great body of literature that showed a direct correlation between parental encouragement and academic outcomes. Times appear to have changed and not necessarily for the better. Today’s teachers are themselves products of generations of previous educators who threw away the textbooks and fiddled with the experimental methods which have been shown to be deficient.

When it comes to expressing themselves, today’s generation usually has all the answers or at least that’s what they believe. They have all the confidence in the world and yet how many times have you seen people struggle with quite basic calculations for attempt to articulate a decent viewpoint and by decent I mean reasoned and coherent. What I refer to as the “um, err, aarr, y’know” quotient in speaking is quite alarming even among politicians. I once did an “err” count on a former Prime Minister with a prepared speech in the House of Representatives and there were 14 errs to the minute. It so happens that he was not lacking confidence as his actions showed but no one had seen fit to coach him in public speaking. And this brings me round to the ongoing comment on the state we are in and why.

A few weeks ago in the pages of the Sunday Tasmanian of June 26, a former rather undistinguished politician, Mr. Feldmaus who happened to be Premier for a while and is unreasonably revered by people who should know better, stated that spending cuts in education, health and police were justified on the grounds that they were high-cost areas. the rather absurd headline was: “Lara’s got it right.” I was rather mystified by the reported comments and they attracted some responses to the Mercury and only a couple of letters to the Sunday Tasmanian a week later.

This is a rag, which is barely readable and filled with so much ballast that it reminds me of the little ship – the Anson from memory – that once took tailings from the smelter on the Derwent out to sea to dump them until the tide of public opinion finished that exercise. The comments of Mr. Feldmaus really make me wonder why he bothered to spend so much time justifying education expenditure and the value of learning during his time as Premier. Surely, the need for spending on education continues to be justified if we are to produce a literate and numerate generation of school leavers. We are often told that far too many students do not proceed beyond Year 10 and this is a disgrace. Furthermore, all children should be encouraged to remain at school until Year 12 and demonstrate the basic competences needed to get by in life and that does not mean an education in welfare dependence as the Murdoch press would have it. A great number of friends who are and have been teachers over the past 20 years have expressed a great frustration with the “experiments in learning” as they are often called. Most of them criticize a lack of self-discipline and respect for others by students and inevitably, some dread having to deal with hell raisers. Not that I’m surprised but my teaching experience is limited to the mature students who want to learn and in some cases are quite desperate. I have helped as many people as I can with the basics and more advanced aspects of learning especially conducting research and writing clearly, logically and consistently. I have been the unofficial supervisor of a number of students who have successfully completed Masters and PhD courses. I’ve never charged for my time because the reward is their success.

To dispel any claims that there is a personal animus between myself and the former Premier, I can only state that I met him twice and the conversations were amiable and limited. The criticism I direct against him concern policies more than people although it must be accepted that as Premier the buck stopped with him. In the Sunday Tasmanian article, he went on to say that 1700 jobs being slashed from the public sector would be unlikely to affect Premier Giddings at the polls. Either this reveals a sense of humor which I have missed, or he is too far out of touch. Since his premiership, the emphasis placed on education has been constant and accompanied by various schemes of organizational change. One of these cost the job of a previous minister, Paula Wriedt and if Mr Feldmaus believes people will see long-term financial benefits from government cutbacks when we are regaled with the tales of increased remuneration for public officials and many lurks and perks for the unelected, unrepresentative ancillary staff employed to make up the numbers when the size of state parliament was slashed, he is in cloud cuckoo land.

For those of you who did not read the words, Mr. Feldmaus apparently stated that educational experts would support the closure of 20 schools because bigger schools would lead to better outcomes. I’m not sure which experts he had in mind but I could make a case for a number of schools being retained and was delighted to see Nick McKim rather graciously accede to the demands that at least one school be kept open. This is a great deal for the students and parents who made the campaign work but I can’t see every school being spared and it may mean the usual problem will arise. Those who can least afford it will be forced to send their kids to more distant schools with associated costs. It happens that I have a number of acquaintances who live in the Collinsvale area by choice, not just economic circumstances. They actually like snow on the ground in winter and the local school is very much part of the community. Once again, it would appear that the need for consolidation of schools should be made the subject of a wide-ranging and professional inquiry. This rules out the dinosaurs and time servers in the education department, who are more interested in protecting their own turf than worrying about kids.

It would have been interesting had Mr. Feldmaus commented on the health system. Running the risk of a terrible pun, the health system in Tasmania has been a running sore on the body politic but it’s little different now than in days gone by. Perhaps the fact that he is getting old, like many of us, means that he is in favour of a robust and dynamic health system. Problems in this area remain the same as when I first started writing for Tasmanian Times and that is parochialism. If we’ve got it in Hobart, they want it in Launceston, or Burnie, Devonport, Smithton and for all I know, Cockle Creek. It’s a sad and unpleasant fact that various means of modern diagnostics often require expensive high-tech equipment and trained staff. Duplication of services is a perennial problem and one for which I have no solution because it involves the tensions that make us Tasmanians.

Perhaps the most amusing part of the interview with Mr. Feldmaus involves cutting 100 police jobs. He made the assertion that it would not affect crime rates because: “it’s not proven that there is a strong relationship between the number of police and the amount of crime.” I found this to be rather curious because the government has certain options when it comes to cutting jobs. It is now been proven beyond all reasonable doubt that tax collection through speeding fines is a burgeoning industry and will help to top up Treasury, especially if there are curbs on gambling. However, despite the police cracking down on speeding motorists and reducing the leeway previously given to the errant, the variables of tyre pressure and reliability of speedometers mean that an error of plus or -5% is still possible. My greatest objection to this type of policing is that it greatly affects public perceptions of the police and while Tasmania police is said to be clean and effective, turning officers into revenue raisers by automobile is hardly calculated to help with the image. Listening to the radio, I heard of a plan to “take back” or reclaim the Eastlands bus mall. Bearing in mind that the mall is less than 5 min. walk of even the most rotund of Tasmanian police, it is a public scandal that behavior in that area has become a problem. Old codgers find it difficult with smokers and with the number of badly behaved kids who should be in school but decide to sign in and leave and make the shopping area a place of increasing hazard. I haven’t seen any wilding yet but it will come. Police at Bellerive police station should be rostered to patrol the mall but I’ve given up on that idea because the same applies in the city where Number One Police Plaza is within ambling distance of the city mall and the associated bus mall. Over the years I’ve suggested that police people buying their lunches should do the circuit and there should be a permanent presence in the mall.

The geographical and parochial problems associated with police in Tasmania are also reasonably complex. It’s simply not good enough that areas of cities should be regarded as no go areas for the average citizen. We hear a fair bit about Glenorchy and the problems with drugs and gambling and also the problems with outer suburban public housing, often referred to as bandit country. Informed police still report that cars are stolen in the city, driven to the outer suburbs and torched, possibly because there are no buses or no money for bus passengers. One day someone will take a good look at the transport requirements in this state and I mean from a social perspective. Even bouncing Bob, the urban geographer, with all his idle prattle about postindustrial society can’t get away from the notion of personal or private transport. We won’t give up our cars especially if we can manage to persuade the federal government to do something about LPG and LNG to run them. What Mr. Cotgrove usually fails to recognize is that the best served suburbs with public transport are close to the city centre and run to areas where privately plated government cars rest at night and perhaps a word from the wise to bouncing Bob – the amount of rubbish written about teleworkers over the years is laughable. Most managers like to see backsides on chairs, which militates against working from home and at the same time, technical advance particularly with the iPhone, the iPad and similar devices has meant that no one can get away from work. If your phone is on, the employer can get you anywhere.

My respect for the Police Association has increased tenfold with the bold words of its secretary Randolph Wieranga on several issues including police numbers, using police officers instead of civilians to man speed cameras and his printed joust with a certain legal personage who appears to believe that criminals do not exist. I particularly liked Sgt. Wierenga’s astute observation in the Mercury of June 1, when he stated that the unsophisticated brand of trickle-down economics owes more to Margaret Thatcher and past Liberal governments than more recent and perhaps more enlightened governments. My problem is that I believe that the politics of Thatcher and Reagan live on under various guises. For example, while Sgt. Wierenga commented that it was false economy for the state government to pull money and people out of the public sector, the Giddings-McKim budget was warmly welcomed by the TCCI and it would be, wouldn’t it? There needs to be a serious debate in this country, not just Tasmania, about the role of the state and what it should do in the way of governing and services. There is no iron law that says everything has to be run at a profit. The disastrous privatizations that were the hallmark of neocon experimentation bounced back very badly in Europe. The equation goes something like this: the government is told that it should not run certain services because the private sector does it better and cheaper (specious reasoning based on ideology rather than fact) and the private sector adjusts prices to meet market demand, which of course, it manipulates in the first place. The shareholders smile warmly as they collect the bonuses and watch the share market. Then things go wrong and the service breaks down because the private owners are so busy with the bottom line, they fail to maintain vital infrastructure and maintenance. We’ve seen it with the railways in Tasmania but it’s been far worse elsewhere. When that stage is reached, the private sector squeals like a stuck pig and corporations/companies look like they’re headed for the wall unless bailed out by government and if they’re not bailed out, then inevitably, government and the taxpayer has to step in and take over. If you want a horror story, try googling “Yorkshire Water.”

Over the years I have steadfastly maintained that we need to pay politicians according to their worth. Just about every opinion poll ranks them way down low with used-car salesmen, real estate agents and hucksters of various description in public perception. To finish this piece, I conclude with the observations of Mr. Feldmaus on politicians’ wages. He said: Moves to cap politicians pay rises at 2.5% were conservative. “What they’ve done is being consistent with what they’ve demanded of the rest of the sector. And I believe that is as far as they should go. The reality is, within the public sector, politicians aren’t overpaid for the amount of work they do. If the community wants to attract people into politics you have to have sufficient salaries for them to maintain a standard of living. And if you don’t, you just won’t get professionals.”

This is really rich fare because I know politicians work hard and some work harder than others. It is also true that Tasmanian politicians are paid less than on the big Island but so is everybody else. When I look at the salaries of senior public servants, judges, corporate heads, company directors many in the private sector, they all earn more than politicians. The question is whether we get our moneys’ worth from our politicians. My feeling is that if you were to take an intensive opinion poll there would be a resounding negative response and for many reasons. I have spoken on other occasions about tribalism, factionalism, feudalism and any other division in politics. The Tasmanian electoral system rewards politicians quite well and the lurks and perks referred to in previous articles show just how much non-monetary extras are available. Someone once said if you pay peanuts, then you get monkeys. I would have defended politicians had they shown they were doing the job but they haven’t and neither has the private sector despite their hand rubbing at the prospect of sacking public servants. I shall return to this theme with a certain amount of bitterness. In the meantime, to those people who write to the newspapers suggesting that an election should be held and the government would change hands I can only offer the words and wisdom of John McEnroe: “You’ve got to be joking.”

Nostradamus