Trevor Cook

The Dawkins revolution: 25 years on (book review)

Last week I went to Melbourne for the launch of this book.

There's a good review on the Conversation by someone much more familiar with the policy issues involved than me.

I worked for John Dawkins in his personal office from October 1987 for about 3 years as variously a political adviser (dealing mainly with internal ALP matters and links with the ACTU), an adviser on training policy, media relations and finally as senior private secretary.

The first thing to say about working for Dawkins while he was devising and introducing his revolution is that he was a difficult and demanding boss. He treated a lot of people poorly.

Few people get to be Cabinet ministers, even fewer make any real use of the often brief time they have in those privileged positions.

As a staffer, the long-term value of your experience has a lot to do with whether your boss turns out to be one of the few who achieve something significant or one of the many time servers who flap about the place continuously out of their depth in a policy area of which they have only a superficial grasp.

I'm talking here about something far more substantial than the 'canniness' of a Bob Carr.

One of the key traits of the Hawke Government was that it had a greater than usual share of the type of Cabinet minister who has the desire and capacity to do something truly significant.

These substantial ministers were fortunate to have the backing of an excellent prime minister in Bob Hawke who encouraged substantial reform efforts without feeling the need to micro-manage and who frequently protected his ministers from the sort of party and sectional interest criticisms that will often cause a lesser political leader to wilt.

The achievement of Dawkins should also be seen as an achievement by Hawke as well.

Dawkins tried to do something significant in every portfolio he held. He came to education after establishing the Cairns group, an alliance of nations that lobbied for fairer and freer trade in agriculture. Dawkins' achievements for Australian farmers stacks up well against the often lame efforts of his National party predecessors and successors in the trade or primary industries area.

And let's be clear, the Dawkins revolution was not reform by consensus, it was not watered down to an extent that made it essentially meaningless, but broadly acceptable to all stakeholders.

Dawkins took on his critics and sought to overwhem them and out-manoeuvre them. 

Dawkins was in a fight that he could have easily lost.

The demands of that fight put a lot of pressure on his staff and his departmental officers, as well as himself.

Political reform is not for the faint hearted. It is not a parlour game.

Dawkins chose to play the game hard.

He was determined to win the argument and get the biggest changes he could.

He would never have been content with 'canniness'.

Dawkins always knew, perhaps intuited, that big changes have the best chance of lasting the distance.

Too often reforms like these get captured by the internal stakeholders, those with most at stake in an immediate sense.

The Dawkins revolution was not about universities, it was about delivering economic and social benefits from a bigger higher education sector to the Australian community.

This approach helped Dawkins win the political argument, but it did not endear him to many people in the higher education sector.

But now it is 25 years later, and about 8 ministers from both sides of politics have succeeded Dawkins as higher education minister.

Despite some tinkering, the essential architecture of the Dawkins reforms are intact.

It is a rare politician who gets to look back with pride over the continuing success of his reforms a few decades later.

As a staffer, last week's festivities confirm my long-held view that you're better off working for a difficult boss than for some plodder who prides himself on his ability to get through his paperwork and turn in a polished (but vacuous) media performance.

When I was working for John Dawkins I never thought about a 25 year celebration and reunion.

But it was a great privilege and pleasure to be there last week.

(the photo is me with Dawkins and his wife Maggie at the reunion last week)

Kerry Anne Walsh stalks the Canberra Press Gallery

Kerry-Anne Walsh, The Stalking of Julia Gillard: How the media and team Rudd brought down the prime minister

 There's a punch line here somewhere.

Despite the title, the book suggests that the author would have been surprised (not to mention disappointed and outraged) by the recent Rudd resurrection.

Walsh's argument is essentially that Rudd failed miserably in his (first) term as prime minister and is so hated by a large majority of his caucus colleagues that any idea of a successful comeback is purely a media myth (fed by a small core of Ruddsters).

Walsh's book is written with passion and purpose.

Her anger with Rudd, his caucus supporters and media "enablers" is sustained and undisguised, at times it borders on the hysterical.

The book is in the form of a diary over the period of Gillard's term as prime minister (2010 - 2013) and it retains a strong sense of immedicacy and veracity.

While Walsh clearly dislikes Rudd intensely, and is dismissive of his first prime ministership, her real targets are those (all too numerous) journalists and commentators who enabled Rudd to pursue his long-term strategy of exploiting Gillard's mistakes, including through his 'fake it till you make it' and 'momentum' tactics (the idea promoted repeatedly and relentlessly that things are swinging Rudd's way in caucus).

Walsh is thorough in recounting all the wrong pronouncements made by journalists and commentators over the past three years. It's very entertaining.

One problem with Walsh's thesis about caucus plotters and media enablers is that it downplays the mistakes made by Gillard and her government.

Related to this problem is the convolutions Walsh has to engage into to try and argue that opinion polls don't, or shouldn't, matter. They're annoying, but in a democracy public opinion is always going to matter.

A Rudd supporter would find this denial of the importance of polls deeply ironic, given the much professed claim of Gillard's supporters that Rudd was in freefall in the polls when he was deposed in June 2010.

A second problem is that she is not convincing on the idea that this was all somehow unusual or unprecedented.

There is little analysis in the book on the exceptional nature of the past three years.

It is, of course, exceptional in the sense that no first-term PM has been deposed by his own party and (eventually) returned to the Lodge by the same party room.

But we have always had leadership contests and they have often been bitter, prolonged and destructive.

It maybe that the Rudd-Gillard battle was more bitter and destructive - but the evidence is just not there in this book.

These leadership contests have all been played out through the media, via backgrounding by caucus supporters and the proponents themselves.

Similarly, Gillard was unfairly pursued over the AWU matter but so was Keating over that piggery.

But the bigger point here is that Gillard and her government (particularly Swan and Conroy) gave Rudd and his loyal band of plotters (mostly second raters who wouldn't get within cooee of a half decent ministry) far too much material to work with.

Walsh, for instance, doesn't give enough attention to the media reform, mining tax and surplus fiascos that damaged Gillard.

Moreover, Gillard was never good enough to overcome the perception that she was disloyal and stabbed Rudd in the back, her claims that she was a reluctant draftee don't strike most people as credible.

This perception was probably inevitable given her role as Rudd's loyal deputy. It matters how you get the job.

Gillard is a politician, she has long been regarded as an ambitious and ruthless. She did deals to get pre-selected and deals to become deputy leader - just like everyone else does. She organised the numbers to take the deputy position off Jenny Macklin back in 2010.

The efforts by Walsh and other Gillard fans to gloss over this reality just doesn't wash.

The deals that Gillard did to stay PM after the 2010 election only added, dramatically, to the negative public perceptions of her and consequently to her political problems.

The carbon tax deal with the Greens and some independents saw her break an election promise and directly began her slide in the polls in 2011, a slide she never really recovered from.

Walsh tries to absolve Gillard on this carbon tax lie point, but not credibly in my view. If it wasn't a lie, it was bloody awful politics and very poorly handled.

Similarly, Gillard's 'pragmatic' ditching of her agreement with Andrew Wilkie on pokies reform played into negative public perceptions of Gillard.

In addition, the Gillard Government, like most governments, could not resist the damage that time and public disappointments do.

Walsh is much more interesting on the media side of the argument.

Mostly, we know what she recounts so vividly. The cosy relationships between journalists and politicians, the obsession with leadership issues, the failure to present realistic assessments of Rudd's support and so on.

It all paints a very bad portrait of the state of political reporting in this country.

If you despair of that reporting, Walsh's book will give you plenty of ammunition and confirm your worst fears.

Walsh writes from the perspective of a long-term Canberra Press Gallery journalist dismayed by the performance of many of her colleagues in the national capital and elswhere.

She is not afraid to name the bad performers and the bad performances and repeatedly hits the target.

The question that is more interesting is why has commentary deteriorated so much?

If it has. I'm not particularly convinced.

Again, Walsh's account is short on analysis.

I would have liked to see her go more into an examination of the impact of 24 hour TV news channels, the ubiquity of media advisers and the permanent campaigning approach, and the adoption of Fox style business models by commercial radio stations.

Walsh is a bit confusing on this stuff.

She condemns the political commentators who never visit Canberra, or fly in and fly out, and then suggests the abolition of the Canberra Press Gallery.

She is also unnecessarily dismissive of so-called amateur commentators (people like me I guess) but then points out the times when social media and bloggers provided an important corrective to the herd mentality of the press gallery (eg the treatment of Gillard's misogyny speech).

Paradoxically, Walsh herself writes like one of these amateurs, her book reads like an extended blog rant - passsioned, colourful, funny etc with a clear point of view.

Paradoxically, also, that is the real strength of this enjoyable book.  

Related articles

New Gillard book describes media as Rudd pawns

The Stalking of Julia Gillard by Kerry-Anne Walsh

Rudd damns Gillard with his "help"

Labor's longer-term leadership problem

McGahern and John Williams' "Stoner"

Just a few notes about some favourites.

This weekend the annual John McGahern International Seminar takes place in Carrick on Shannon and Aughawillan (I hope to make it there one year).

This prompted a nice article in the Irish Independent last week. I loved this bit:

The people he lived among seem hardly surprised by the attention. On the day Margaret Thatcher's death was announced, it was a talking point as John Fox chatted to customers pumping diesel into plastic containers at his garage in Ballinamore.

A car was waiting for fuel at the pump, but John was good humoured as his work was interrupted – obviously not for the first time – with questions about the McGahern connection. On the demise of the Iron Lady, he remarked: "They won't be crying about her around here."

Having featured in not just one but two of McGahern's most celebrated works, Fox is probably resigned to the fact that even a glimpse of him filling petrol stops some people in their tracks.

When I visited Ballinamore a couple of years ago, I met John Fox in his petrol station and was similarly stopped in my tracks. It's a bit like meeting the actor in one of your favourite long-running TV dramas, you feel that you 'know them' but have to remind yourself that you know a fictionalised character, not the person standing in front of you. 

 When I was at the Fox garage he moved away after a brief conversation to serve a customer leaving me to talk with one of his younger colleagues. Before Fox left, we got to talking about the differences between Mohill and Ballinamore. I was sceptical that two towns so close together (about 25 kms from memory) could be very different. Fox's colleague told me (with a twinkle in his eye) that the black and tans had been stationed in Mohill and many of their descendants still lived there and "some of them haven't had the horns bred out of them yet".

See also this brief report of Roy Foster's opening address to the seminar.

One of McGahern's faourite novels was Stoner by John Williams. (McGahern also greatly admired The Great Gatsby and Jane Austen's Persuasion, which he said were the two most perfect novels in the english language).

Although ignored early on Stoner is now considered a classic. It has recently been translated into French, prompting this NPR story (thanks to Professor Jackson for the pointer):

Fast forward to today and the book is experiencing a renaissance of sorts. It is a best-seller across much of Europe, including the Netherlands, where it has been the best-selling novel for the past two months. But it is not the action-packed thriller or steamy romance you might expect to be topping the charts. It is a quiet, slim novel about a young man who leaves a hardscrabble farm in Missouri to become a literature professor in 1910.

"It sort of pays tribute to a man whose life is, in one sense, utterly ordinary, but, in another sense, rich as anyone's life can be," said Edwin Frank, who runs New York Review of Books Classics, which republished Stoner in 2006.

I love Stoner and highly recommend it.

Another McGahern favourite that I also love is Alistair MacLeod. MacLeod is a Canadian writer of Scottish highlander descent. His short stories, in particular, are very evocative.  

Related articles

McGahern's works characterised by 'revolutionary disillusionment'

Remembering John McGahern (12 November 1934 - 30 March 2006)

A visit to the John McGahern Library, Co. Leitrim, Ireland

Top 5 reasons to visit Co. Leitrim's Carrick on Shannon during its 400th Anniversary

Latham on rising living standards and the 'culture of complaint'

In the AFR this morning (paywalled), former ALP leader Mark Latham repeats part of the argument he put in his Quarterly Essay (published last week).

Essentially, Latham's idea is that the ALP is neither claiming, nor receiving, the credit its due because of the health of the Australian economy (he give way too much credit to Paul Keating for this economic health)

Latham uses previously published NATSEM statisitcis which point to a steady, and significant, rise in household incomes over the last two decades to suggest that the unhappiness of many Australians about their material well-being and prospects.

This gap between reality and perception, according to Latham, is the product of a 'culture of manufactured outrage'. Manufactured, that is, by media outlets and politicians (including Rudd at the 2007 election).

There can be no doubt that media and politicians have played on perceptions of declining material well-being in the electorate, for their own benefit. For instance, talkback radio stations (like Fox in the USA) have crafted business models around fueling these feelings of discontent and outrage.

Yet, it is difficult to believe that there is not some reality on which media and politicians feed.

Reading Matters: 2nd Australian literature month in April

Recently, I posted about how much better off we are these days when it comes to finding about novels.

Newspapers are much less central to the formation and enjoyment of a national literature.

In that earlier post, I mentioned Kim Forrester's Reading Matters blog and her efforts to promote Australian literature, as well as a broader appreciation of contemporary novels.

So I'm glad to see that she is going to have a 2nd Australian literature month in April.

To get people started she has put forward a pretty strong list of sources on Australian novels:

• A list of all the novels reviewed as part of last year's Australian Literature Month

• My reviews of novels and non-fiction set in Australia

• My top 10 novels about Australia

• Lisa Hill's ANZLitLovers LitBlog (This list of books you must read is particularly good)

• Perry Middlemiss's Australian Literature website

• 50 Must Read Australian Novels (excellent list on the Booktopia Blog)

• Past winners of the Miles Franklin Literary Award

• Past winners of the Prime Minister's Literary Awards

• List of popular Australian authors on Good Reads

• An essay about Australian novels on the Australian Government website

• Australian Women Writers website

• Free ebooks on the Project Gutenberg Australiana page

• 10 Aussie books to read before you die

Related articles

Australian Literature Month begins!

The best time ever for Australian booklovers

Australian Literature Month: April 2013

Monday musings on Australian literature: The Stella Prize longlist

The best time ever for Australian booklovers

This is a great time for book lovers.

Books are more plentiful and cheaper than ever before.

The rise of online bookshops, notably Amazon and the Book Depository, have helped Australian readers avoid costs associated with the outrageous protection of Australian publishers (one of the Rudd Government's sillier decisions); the main exception being new and recent Australian titles which are still very expensive. The advent of ebooks and ebook readers has not only seen book prices fall further, but now I can also read a book review in the NY Times, for instance, and then download and start reading it straight away. 

I used to be a more frequent habitue of bookshops around Australia, particularly Readings, Gleebooks and Berkelouws - but many others besides. 

I still visit these places, but where they were once exciting now they are more often a little sad and disappointing (not too mention expensive). The range is limited by comparison with the huge online databases that I regularly trawl through and the serendipidity I used to relish on dusty shelves I now find from a myriad of online sources.

Online sources for finding out about books have also proliferated from social networking sites like goodreads to highly successful blogs like Reading Matters, run by London based Australian journalist, Kim Forrester.  

The world's best literary review magazines can now be read on a Tablet for about the cost of a couple of newspapers, see for instance the New York Review of Books, the London Review of Books, the Asian Literary Review and the Boston Review. Many of my favourite magazines are also moving to make the most of the new tablet / mobile environment. For instance, the New Yorker and the newly re-launched New Republic. There are many more. Not only are these magazines good for finding out about books, they also contain some of the best long-form journalism available anywhere. 

As well as these old favourites from a pre-existing paper-only world there are also some emerging online only titles. Notably, the remarkably succcessful Los Angeles Review of Books and back home a new entrant in the form of the Sydney Review of Books. 

Australians now have cheap and ready access to a global literary culture, which seems to be expanding rapidly. 

Overall the Internet has been a boon but it is not without its regrets. Walking down Pitt Street south of Town Hall in Sydney the other day I felt a little sad remembering the great little second hand bookshops that used to be located around here. These were the places I went to get a cheap copy of my next Orwell, Waugh, Fitzgerald, Hemmingway, Greene, Kerouac etc. But this is just nostalgia.

With our easier access to global culture from far away Australia, do we risk losing a national literature?

Sybil Nolan and Matthew Ricketson seem to suggest the answer is probably yes in a recent article in the Sydney Review of Books. They seem to think that the future of a vibrant Australian literary culture depends a lot on the fate of the Fairfax newspapers and the space they devote to book reviews.

If you look on places like Reading Matters you can find a lot of coverage of Australian books. Similarly, a lot of Australians are active on goodreads and a lot of Australian books are being reviewed and rated there.

I would like to see a follow-up analysis to that of Nolan and Ricketson which looks at the extent to which the Internet might be providing new ways of creating a national literary culture in Australia.

But at the end of the day, I admit I don't care much. The access to cheap books and places to find out about them online is just too exciting.

Related articles

GoodReads, A Resource for Booklovers

Antonino D'Ambrosio - A heartbreak and a guitar: Johnny Cash and the making of Bitter Tears

I picked this little gem up from the bargain table at Gleebooks. Bargain tables give you the chance to try a book you might have passed over at the full cover price.

Bitter tears: Ballads of the American Indian was a controversial album (radio stations refused to play it, magazines refused to review it) made by Johnny Cash and released in 1964 after he became a star and had already had major hits with iconic tracks like "I walk the line" and "Ring of Fire". 

The focus of the controversy was a track called "Ballad of Ira Hayes", written by folk singer Peter La Farge. The track has also been recorded by Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan and Kinky Friedman. 

Cash's recording of Ballad of Ira Hayes finally made it into the charts after a concerted advertising and direct marketing campaign by Cash and some supporters.

The life and fate of Ira Hayes was an indictment of complacent post-war America. 

Hayes was a Pima indian from Arizona who returned from WW2 to a hero's welcome because he was one of the marines that featured in the famous Iwo Jima photo. After battles with prejudice, despair and alcohol he died in a ditch about a decade after he came to national attention.

This is a captivating tale that embraces the struggles of Native peoples in America, the 1960s New York folk scene, the birth of country music, Johnny Cash, Peter La Farge, Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger and much more all set in the dramatic context of social and political upheaval in America in the 1950s and 1960s.

I've read about the relationship between Cash and Dylan before - but it still impresses and amazes me. Neither man wanted to have their art pigeon-holded by fans or corporate profit seekers. Unlike many in the popular music field, they took their art seriously. Cash went into bat for Dylan when Columbia were sceptical after lacklustre sales for Bob's debut album.

Cash also took his politics seriously. It took him many years to get his prison album idea accepted by record company executives - who thought it a mad idea. They weren't too impressed with the Bitter Tears album either. Cash apparently once gave up a $10k gig to do a free concert at the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota (site of the Wounded Knee massacre of Sioux women and children by the US Army).

It's an important story in many different ways, it's well-told and readable - look out for it.

Related articles

Music History #11: "The Ballad of Ira Hayes"

Review: Johnny Cash Columbia boxed set

The Slap: Christos Tsiolkas

This is one of the most talked about books (and TV series) in Australia in recent years. 

I initially didn't read it because I thought it was going to be yet another worthy indictment of the evils of child abuse, I got this impression from a radio interview at the time of its release. The problem of taking reviews too seriously. I decided to read the book because I enjoyed the TV series so much.

Of course, it is not about child abuse. And it is well balanced in terms of the way it presents views on appropriate child discipline and punishment.

Moreover, the slap is only the focal point that brings together what can be read as 8 brief novellas about 8 very different characters. The characters act as sort of representative types for a diverse Australia. This is a very clever structure and makes for a very readable novel.

The novel is, overall, about how people struggle to establish identities (and realities) for themselves in a world that is increasingly complex. It follows them as they fight for those realities in the face of the oppositional realities put forward by other characters.

Sadly, these struggles are almost always disappointing for the characters concerned and often involve compromises. 

Also a little disappointing is that the characters sometimes seem like cut-outs, they don't quite make it to the level of great characters - people that could live outside the text (as Harold Bloom argued). Sometimes the scenes and dialogue are a little too obvious and cliched.

But for all that it is a very enjoyable novel with much of value to say about contemporary Australia.

Related articles

Australian novelist Chris Tsiolkas talks race, immigration, class and identity on BBC HARDTalk

'Loaded' by Christos Tsiolkas

Maxine McKew: Tales from a modest past and the death of Napoleon

And so another 'kiss and tell' insider account by a former politician hits the stands promoted heavily by a shocking revelation. 

In McKew's case the 'revelation' is even thinner than usual. Some unnamed ALP MP reckons there was a conspiracy to get Rudd, reckons Julia was involved.

This is hardly news. It wasn't even news at the time. Dennis Shanahan in the Australian had column after column suggesting leadership rumbles in the caucus. I thought it was ridiculous specualtion at the time.

Was Gillard involved?

Does it matter?

Well it does if you're a gotcha horse race journalist whose blood boils at the idea that a politician lied, or dissembled or whatever.

New style twitterati journos particularly like this stuff along the lines of breathless updates throughout the day in the mode of 'PM refuses to deny'.

I thought getting rid of Rudd was a mistake, I said so at the time, I think Rudd would have won the 2010 election.

But there you go.

Two years have come and gone. 

Gillard is way ahead of Abbott in the polls and the ALP is also basking in little glimmers of hope.

If Rudd couldn't win a caucus ballot in February, why on earth would he win now?

Rudd was the first first-term ALP PM to be outed by his own party. 

It must hurt him and his small band of loyal followers like Maxine McKew.

The pain is understandable.

But how in the hell do they think their cause is being aided by continually raking over the coals.

It's become so pathetic it just reminds you of Peter Costello's sporadic outbursts of leadership speculation.

It didn't do Costello or the Coalition any good, and it's not doing Rudd or the ALP any good this time round.

Of course, these regular bursts of speculation are more the product of the cosy relationships Rudd and Costello enjoy with some journalists, than any genuine movement in their respective party rooms. 

The whole insider thing.

Rudd, like Costello, presumably hopes that some media speculation will lead to some momentum which will sway nervous backbenchers.

Didn't work for Costello and there is no sign that it is doing Rudd any favours either.

I believe Maxine McKew is not widely regarded in ALP circles.

She blew in, enjoyed a great moment on election night and then all too soon it was over.

(Disclosure: I got a bit caught up too, I think it would be good for the caucus to broaden its DNA pool so I made a tidy donation to the McKew election campaign)

Arguably, McKew got too caught up in the Rudd hype - she was a key organiser of the disapppointing (and silly) 20/20 summit which did so much to define the Rudd premiership - lots of hype, lots of policy suggestions but bugger all follow through. 

Some blame McKew's laziness and lack of commitment to her electorate for the loss of Bennelong in 2010.

Her poorly timed, apparently bitter, book will not win her any respect in the ALP - and it will reflect poorly on Rudd.

McKew's journo mates are lapping it up. Maxine gets another moment in the spotlight. 

Rudd sits in Brisvegas, like Napoleon on St Helena, hoping for one more shot.

Kevin could do worse than to read Simon Leys' novella "The death of Napoleon" before he makes further plans.

Stoner by John Williams

What is incomprehensible and mysterious about Stoner is that he loves the worlds that words make in books. In the English Department at the University of Missouri between 1920 and 1960, where he passes his days, this love is neither well-known nor highly regarded. That he lives only to read, to write, and to talk about literature makes him an academic failure in the company of career-makers who care nothing for words and ideas.

via blogs.usyd.edu.au

Michael Jackson has put up a good review of one my favourite novels.  

Sadly, academics who love their subjects simply for their own sake are often few and far between and they don't often do particularly well. But for all the disappointment in Stoner's life he is to me a sort of hero because he never loses that sense of love of learning that first propelled him to want to study literature.  Over the last few years many people have asked me why I wanted to do a phd when, obviously, at my stage in life it's not a sound career move (in the sense that the investment from foregone income is unlikely to be recouped).  

The answers are complex I guess but in the mix is the opportunity to do something that is challenging and to do just do it for it's own sake. Most of us don't get too many opportunities to do that in life. Stoner being a poor farm boy is an unlikely character to devote his working life to a study of romantic poets, it would have been far more sensible to follow the crowd, make the compromises, and pursue a 'practical' career.  Williams shows that there are no happy endings in Stoner's choice, yet he is clear that Stoner made the right choice - that's the strength and beauty of this remarkable novel.