Nice scenery, shame about the rednecks

January 1, 2009

Like the war on Christmas, the new film Australia seems to be a muddled, but no doubt profitable, combination of rampant commercialism and left-liberal political correctness (see Spiked on the former, and Oz Conservative on the latter)

As a Hollywood-style historical epic the film is already commercialised enough, but the instigators of the film have to go one better and explicitly market it as a tourism promotion vehicle. Sure, movies often do make good promotional tools for tourism, as in the case of the Lords of the Rings trilogy, but usually as a by-product of a film’s popularity, not as a reason for producing a film in the first place.

The Lord of the Rings trilogy was filmed in New Zealand because the scenery suited the movies, not ( as far as I know) because the New Zealand tourism board thought filming orks and hobbits running around Fiordland would be a good way to capture the authentic essence of New Zealand.

Using a movie as a marketing video presents problems though, because satisfying modern liberal sensibilities means the producers had to get around the problem of knocking Australia while promoting it. However, using a liberal female immigrant as the heroine was a master stroke – instead of just admiring the scenery and cringing at bigoted outback whites herding around the local Abos, overseas tourist, er movie-goers and urban Aussie liberals can identify with the enlightened new-comer on her mission to bring light to the dark heart of rural white Australia (eat you’re heart out Peter Reobuck).

Conveniently, the heroine character also happens to a Brit, with a saintly indigenous understudy, a combination which allows the producers to show they’re not into passe Mel Gibson-style Pom bashing (or shooting themselves in the foot by alienating a key tourist demographic) and are fully signed up members of the Sorry generation.

Thus not only do the producers manage to knock rural white Australia while promoting Australian scenery, but they also get to promote urban liberal Australia and indigenous Australia at the same time.

Now that’s marketing.

2 Comments | Australian history, Movies, Political correctness | Permalink
Posted by mikecourtman

Central government and social services

December 11, 2007

As New Zealand and Australia become more multicultural, it is becoming increasingly difficult for central government to devise and deliver social services for different ethnic groups.

One method may be for central government to establish minimum standards of service and allow private charities and state or local government more involvement in managing and delivering services.

In The Original Australians Josephine Flood points out some of the problems that have occurred in many aboriginal communities with the closing down of established mission stations:

“Outback communities may have achieved land ownership, but their has been a huge increase in substance abuse, domestic violence and crime and a sharp decline in health, education and jobs. Missions still functioning today are confined to the Torres Strait Islands and remote parts of the Northern Territory and Western Australia, especially the Kimberley, where they provide a superb service in very difficult conditions. Now only 40 missions remain in remote regions.”

In the small central Australian town of Pakatja, Flood says the transfer of the Ernabella Mission into Aboriginal management, in 1974, has had a very negative on the local Aboriginal community:

“Under its new name, Pukatja, Ernabella still exists and the craft centre continues, but now Pukatja suffers the problems of so many outback communities. Standards of nutrition, hygiene, health and education have declined horrendously, petrol and drunkenness are rife and dedicated missionaries have been replaced by short-term employees, who tend to burn out in a couple of years.”

During the 1970s, central government spending on aboriginal advancement increased considerably, and by 2001, the federal budget for indigenous programs reached $2.3 billion.

However, while local missions provided services in exchange for work and certain standards of behaviour, few conditions are placed on eligibility for government welfare, and there is little policing of Aboriginal communities. Subsequently, there had has been little improvement in social outcomes for most outback Aborigines. These problems were exacerbated by the removal of state government controls on the sale of alcohol in the 60s and 70s.

In New Zealand, domestic violence in low-income Maori communities has become a major social issue, following a number of high profile child abuse cases.The response of central government has been to undertake national “family violence” awareness campaigns and heavy-handed legislation such as the “anti-smacking bill.”

The obvious draw back with such an approach is that it generates resentment among those sections of the population in which domestic violence is not an acute problem.

Furthermore, many central government welfare services tend to promote a left-liberal agenda, which gets in the way of effective policy making. For example, Family and Community Services, a division of the Ministry of Social Development, argues that domestic violence is a significant problem among all ethnic and socio-economic groups, glossing over the fact that the problem is much worse among low income-Maori than other sections of the community. Subsequently, a problem that could be tackled cost effectively at the local level becomes a national problem, which requires costly social engineering policies.

While the lack of a federalised political structure makes it more difficult to tailor policies for particular communities, there has been no effort by central government to allow voluntary organisations a greater role in managing domestic violence, or to establish a suitable contestable fund for NGOs.

During the last 150 years, voluntary organisations have played an important part in providing social services to indigenous communities in both Australia and New Zealand, especially in cooperation with state and local government. As the cost and effectiveness of national social services comes increasingly into question, it is high time central government thought about ways to devolve welfare services to locally based NGOs who are more in tune with what is happening in the communities in which they operate.

2 Comments | Australian history, social services | Permalink
Posted by mikecourtman

Revisionist rednecks

December 9, 2007

Among left-liberal Australians and New Zealanders, castigating white Australians for their treatment of Aborigines is a popular pastime.

However, the popular conception that the peace-loving Aborigines were massacred by rich white run holders who strode around on horseback knocking off fleeing Abo’s at will, may well be a delusion of revisionist historians.

In The Original Australians, archaeologist Josephine Flood challenges a number of misconceptions regarding conflict between Europeans and Aborigines in 19th Century Australia.

According to Flood, introduced diseases were by far the biggest killer of Aborigines in the 19th Century. Even in Central Australia, where there was intense pressure for water holes, and conflict between whites and Aborigines was very intense, Aboriginal deaths from diseases such as measles and smallpox still exceeded those from settler’s guns.

Flood’s own research into a region of South East Victoria in the mid 19th Century indicated no loss of Aboriginal life from guns, but a staggering 90 percent mortality through new diseases.

Contrary to popular belief, Flood points out that some of these new diseases may actually have arrived in Australia from Indonesia before Europeans arrived in Botany Bay:

“Historian Judy Campbell has made a compelling case that all Australia’s smallpox epidemics originated in Indonesia, where the disease was endemic and outbreaks occurred in the 1780s, 1820s, 1860s and 1870s. Fenner agrees that “origin from the Macassans is most likely,” as does Campbell Macknight, an expert on the Macassans.”

Flood’s investigations also reveal that it was extremely unlikely that early British colonists would have been able to deliberately pass on smallpox through infected material such as scabs kept in bottles, as some 1980s newspapers articles have argued.

The so-called extermination of the Tasmanian Aborigines is generally regraded as the most infamous example of European aggression against indigenous Australians.

However, there was no premeditated campaign to exterminate the island’s indigenous population. Most of the planned raids by local militia resulted in relatively few Aborigines being killed or captured, since the Aborigines were able to use their local knowledge of the rugged terrain to make their escape.

Those Tasmanian Aborigines who were deliberately shot by Europeans, were usually killed during grim, drawn out clashes with isolated homesteaders, who also suffered high casualties during Aboriginal reprisals.In terms of the death rate from armed conflict, whites in Tasmania suffered the highest death rate of any European population in 19th Century Australia, with two white settlers killed for every three Aborigines.

The highest number of Aboriginal deaths through armed conflict actually occurred in Queensland during the middle to late 19th CenturySince Queensland was settled later than other states, its settlers had access to modern, breech-loading guns, which gave them a decisive edge in firepower.

However, even in Queensland, many Aboriginal deaths occurred not at the hands of white settlers, but at the hands of the often-ruthless Native Mounted Police, who were notorious for taking few prisoners.

As Flood states:”Conflict in Australia was always small scale. There were no citizen’s militias and colonists only prevailed when supported by native police – armed and mounted Aboriginal trackers.”

While there were certainly unjust reprisals in outback history, in which many Aborigines died at the hands of Europeans, revisionist historians have not been above exaggerating such reprisals or even inventing massacres that did not exist.

For example, historian Neville Green, wrote an entirely unsubstantiated account of a massacre at Forrest Hill in Western Australia in 1926, which has recently been exposed by western Australian journalist Rod Moran in his 1999 book Massacre Myth.

Before Left-liberal New Zealanders and urban Australians accuse provincial Australians of being intolerant rednecks for their past and present treatment of Aborigines, perhaps they should start addresses their own redneck ignorance of factual history.

2 Comments | Australian history, revisionist history | Permalink
Posted by mikecourtman