The Southern Cross: a racist symbol of the nation?

An interesting article from today's Sydney Morning Herald reflects on the Southern Cross as a national symbol. Is it beautiful of racist? Transcendant or politically captive? And has it become our default national symbol? (I wonder what people from New Zealand might have to say about that!) Pic: the Eureka flag

Berlin wall anniversary

There have been several interesting articles in recent days, prompted by the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall.

• This one reports on a massive worldwide poll of people's attitudes to capitalism - and their clear verdict that it's not working. Conducted by the BBC World Service with Maryland University, and combining responses from people in 27 different countries, it found that only in the United States (25 percent) and Pakistan (21 percent), did more than one in five people agree that capitalism works well in its current form. (For some more interesting reflections on capitalism, see Richard Glover's reflections on the new film from Michael Moore).

• This one notes that French President Sarkozy has posted a picture of himself on facebook - chipping away at the wall.

Joel and I visited Berlin a couple of years ago now. I loved the city. My thoughts on it are contained in the following posts:

• Place and history in Berlin part one, part two, part three
• The Berlin Jewish museum

Sadly I don't have personal memories of hearing about the wall coming down (though I was well and truly old enough at the time). Do you? I'd be very interested to hear them...

Boat people: a challenge to Australian sovereignty?

What is it about asylum seekers attempting to reach Australia by boat that excites such an outcry in this country?

I mean, every time there's a refugee boat spotted in the water, the media goes beserk, our political leaders start grandstanding, and parliament drops other issues in order to devote time and energy in question time to discussing it.

I'd be surprised if most Australians fear boat arrivals as a security risk. I don't think the general population considers them terrorists, or in some way politically dangerous.

Perhaps there is some concern about boat arrivals posing an economic threat. Perhaps there are some people out there, especially in financially challenging times, who fear that boat arrivals will somehow take 'Australian' jobs. It's an old argument (advanced, for example, by the labour movement as a good reason for establishing a 'white australia' immigration policy) - but it doesn't really make sense, not least because boat arrivals represent such a small proportion of people seeking asylum in Australia.

The main issue is probably to do with sovereignty. Australians don't like other peole seeking to enter the country by boat because it looks and feels like a challenge to our national sovereignty. John Howard certainly read the public mood this way at the time of the Tampa episode in 2001:

'We have an absolute right to decide who comes to this country. And there is a concern inside the Government, and I suspect in the broader community, that we are fast reaching a stage where we are losing that right because of the increasing numbers of people, illegal immigrants, who are coming to Australia.'*




I actually agree with Howard's assertion that its the government's prerogative to determine who does and doesn't enter the country. Border control is part and parcel of what national sovereignty involves.

The problem is not with the 'absolute right' of states to control their borders. It is, perhaps, with the very notion of nation states and the idea of national borders. I don't imagine that this way of arranging human communities is doing to dissolve or be replaced anytime soon, but perhaps a borderless gloabl society in which people are free to move wherever they like is, in the end, the only just and equitable means of inhabiting the planet.

I don't mean to shock you, but I also agree with Howard's suggestion that Australians freak out about boat arrivals because they seem a threat to Australian's right to control its borders. I think he's dead wrong in suggesting that such people are actually a threat to the country, and i think he's dead wrong to label them 'illegal immigrants'. And, for the record, I was appalled by his government's response to the issue, and am thoroughly disappointed by the present government's decision to not only retain but enlarge the policy of dentention.

But I suspect Howard's correct that, for many people, the issue is one of sovereignty. After all, boat arrivals and contests over soveriegnty have a long-established relationship in Australian history. It's not a new point to make, but settler Australians asserted their soveriegnty over the land in part by jumping of boats and setting about making a home for themselves here. Perhaps some unconscious disquiet over the security, morality - even the legality - of white Australians' historical claim to sovereignty is what makes boat arrivals such a potent issue today. We need to get over it by changing at least two things:

• the terms of our relationship with the Aboriginal people of the land (saying 'sorry' was a start, but does not constitute an end)



• adopting a more open position on 'border control' (at the very least by giving boat arrivals a forum in which to make their claims for asylum, and appropriate physical, emotional and legal support while they do so).
  

* Source: 7.30 report

A home for the persecuted and the poor?

From Amnesty International Australia:

So-called 'boat people' make up less than four per cent of those who come to Australia seeking asylum, yet never fail to generate an astonishing political and media storm.

Here are some facts:

• more than 96 per cent of asylum seekers arriving in Australia step off planes, not boats.


• the vast majority of boat arrivals are typically found to be genuine refugees – those fleeing for their lives and safety, not simply seeking better lives in wealthier nations.


• asylum seekers are not, as the Prime Minister wrongly stated, "illegal immigrants": they are exercising the right to seek asylum under international law.

Yet right now our Government is actually considering paying Indonesia, a country which has not signed the UN Convention on Refugees, to swoop in on people desperately seeking refuge in Australia before we’ve even had a chance to hear their claims.

Ensuring the right to seek asylum is the entire reason the Refugee Convention was created in the first place, in the aftermath of Jewish persecution and genocide during World War II.

The reality is that, no matter how politically inconvenient, no government of Australia can simply wish away the victims of war, abuse and conflict. Nor should any government congratulate itself for offloading some of the world’s most vulnerable and traumatised people onto other countries.

If you want to urge our government to take a different approach, and to rise above the politics of fear, then please contact the Prime Minister:

Kevin.Rudd@aph.gov.au

or

The Hon. Kevin Rudd
PO Box 6022
House of Representatives
Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600

Pic: Tamil asylum seekers aboard a boat intercepted by the Indonesian Navy, October 16 2009.

The uses of history

Call me a nerd, but I'm excited about the upcoming workshop on Welfare History, to be held at UNSW in February next year. The program features a special plenary session on social welfare history in the 21st century - involving three of the founding Australian scholars in the field: Professor Stephen Garton, Professor Jill Roe and Professor Brian Dickey. Should be really interesting!

Anyway, I've proposed a little paper titled 'the uses of history' - which will examine the stories that a faith-based welfare provider, Hammond Care, has told about itself over the course of its history.

Established as a land settlement scheme for unemployed men and their families during the Great Depression, Hammond Care reinvented itself as an aged accommodation provider in the 1950s. In recent decades it has expanded its services into the community and prioritised the care of people with dementia as well as the financially disadvantaged. In 2007, its seventy fifth year, its CEO proudly declared that ‘while the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ might have changed, the ‘who’ of Hammond Care stays the same: it remains, as in 1932, an independent Christian charity.’

From very early in its history, Hammond Care’s leaders have looked to the organisation’s past to clarify its identity and meet particular present needs. As early as the 1930s, they pointed to the past to stimulate donations. As they ventured into aged care, they appealed to the organisation’s beginnings to justify innovation and claim the initiative in their dealings with increasingly interventionist governments. In more recent times, as politicians have critically re-evaluated the status of faith-based welfare providers, Hammond Care’s leaders have used history to emphasise the organisation’s Christian values and character. And as market models of welfare provision have reshaped the third sector, Hammond Care has mined its past for stories that differentiate it from competitors and help establish a particular market identity. In short, its changing uses of history provide a new perspective on some of the major shifts in welfare provision over the course of the twentieth century.

What I'm...

Listening to: Townsville by the Necks - one track, three instruments, 53 minutes. A gift of my coolest brother, Jono the composer.

Reading: The Spare Room by Helen Garner, an honest and beautifully written novel about the strains that terminal cancer places on the friendship between two older women. And Growl, by Judy Horacek, about a female monster who initially gets in trouble but is eventually redeemed by living up to her name.

Buying: Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, the next book on the table for my bookclub. Don't know anything much about it, except that it won the Pulitzer and Richard Glover suspects its the best book he's ever read. Also, a portable baby highchair - my first purchase from eBay.

Playing: peekaboo!

Eating: bangers and mash for dinner tonight, with fresh corn and buttery green beans.

Organising: a day conference on Christianity and History for July 2010.

Writing: a talk for cottage church on Jesus' statement 'I am the Light of the World'. What did he mean??

Experimenting with: introducing solid food to a baby. Three days in, Jem is getting the hang of being fed with a spoon. The menu has only one item at the moment: home-made organic brown rice cereal mixed with breast milk. No, it doesn't really taste very nice. But we'll try avocado and banana in the next few days.

Stressing about: getting the Hammond Care history written!! And getting Jemima and her stuff onto the train to Nowra next tuesday, so I can visit the fam while Joel is HSC marking.

Pic: the Necks, from nme.com

Faith in crisis

This weekend's job is to finalise an article that's been accepted by the Australian Journal of Politics and History. I did the research for it yonks ago (ie for my honours thesis in 2003!) It's been interesting to revisit this stuff, though, especially in light of Renate Howe's new book A Century of Influence: the Australian Student Christian Movement 1896 - 1996, (UNSW Press, 2009). Anyway, here my abstract...

'Faith in Crisis: Christian University Students in Peace and War' examines religious belief and political activism among Sydney undergraduates during the 1930s and 1940s. Confronted with such major political issues as the peace movement, the eruption of world war and the question of post-war reconstruction, a substantial number of students looked for solutions informed by faith.

The history of two influential campus groups, the Student Christian Movement and the Evangelical Union, reveals that political activity was often shaped by particular religious views. The SCM’s openness to theological liberalism and biblical criticism was accompanied by a willingness to grapple with political issues and question the capitalist structures of society. The theologically conservative EU eschewed political engagement in favour of defending the fundamentals of Christian belief and calling individuals to conversion. The religious differences between these two groups help explain their members’ contrasting responses to peace and war during the second quarter of the twentieth century. They also illuminate Christianity’s complex and significant contribution to political thought and action at Australia’s first university.

Is God a hacker?

Is God a hacker? I suspect not - though perhaps some of his followers may (unwisely) prove to be. A sad tale of fundamentalism on both sides.

more on theological temperament

The idea of a harsh land leading to a harsh view of the Christian God is central to the vision of nationalist historians like Russel Ward and especially Manning Clark. For Clark, life in the bush exposed the irrelevance of 'old world' ideas and beliefs. The new nation didn't need the empire. It didn't need the Church of England. And it certainly didn't need prudish preachers with wowserish morality. In Clark's view, what the new nation needed was a new idea of God. It needed a new fusion of the image of Christ with the enlightenment idea of the brotherhood of men. Australians needed Jesus as a mate, not as a miracle-working, body-raising God.

Interestingly, Henry Lawson (whom Clark deeply admired) was one of a number of writers to articulate the idea that Jesus was the bushman's mate. Here are the first two stanzas of his 1898 poem 'Christ of the Never':

WITH eyes that seem shrunken to pierce
To the awful horizons of land,
Through the haze of hot days, and the fierce
White heat-waves that flow on the sand;
Through the Never Land westward and nor’ward,
Bronzed, bearded and gaunt on the track,
Quiet-voiced and hard-knuckled, rides forward
The Christ of the Outer Out-back.

For the cause that will ne’er be relinquished
Spite of all the great cynics on earth—
In the ranks of the bush undistinguished
By manner or dress—if by birth—
God’s preacher, of churches unheeded—
God’s vineyard, though barren the sod—
Plain spokesman where spokesman is needed—
Rough link ’twixt the bushman and God.

This is interesting to me because it suggests that Lawson saw a positive place for Jesus in Australian life and culture. For Lawson, the bush and the experiences of the bushmen gave shape to an idea of Jesus as a mate. There was no need for churches or their preachers - the bush itself helped men connect authentically with God. Perhaps we might say that Lawson describes an Australian theological temperament saturated with ordinariness and egalitarianism - and, I might add, masculinism.

Pic: from www.todonaiart.com/blog/

an Australian theological temperament?

Do Australians have a distinctive theological temperament? Has the national landscape fostered particular notions of God? How might Christianity be different in this country to other parts of the world?

As a few readers commented, these questions swirl just below the surface of the passage quoted below from Tim Winton's Breath. The discussion reminded me of Manning Clark's answer to such questions, from vol.3 of his History of Australia. Writing of the early pastoral workers, he said:

To the town dweller they spoke like men who had forgotten their mother tongue and adopted that of the devil in its stead. The native-born in the bush inherited the habit of talking in oaths and imprecations. Some said that the dryness and the hot winds of summer in the inland aggravated this habit by inducing a degree of irritability of temper which found relief in cursing and swearing, tormenting other human beings and mocking the whole of creation as a cruel joke...

Some assuaged loneliness by improvising music on a gum-leaf, and some were sustained by the thought of what they would do when next they visited the grog shop; some became as mad as hatters, but few turned to God for consolation or were carried away by the ranting of a revivalist preacher, for there was no 'bible belt' in the bush of Australia.

The monotony, the harshness and the loneliness were broken from time to time by a visit from the head station, or the arrival of travelling stockmen. Each traveller ... rolled himself for the night in a blanket or possum's cloak, using his saddle as a pillow, and slept under the canopy of heaven. This sensation of absolute freedom, when united with the wonder and mystery of the night, and that exhilaration of the body washed clean in some mountain stream, induced a sense of well-being, a sense of the majesty of life. It was as though life in the wilds of Australia cleansed a man from Adam's stain...

In their private lives they behaved in ways that offended the self-appointed defenders and promoters of the faiths of the Old World. Unaware of what was beginning to take root in the minds of these men, unaware that in these men a new vision of the world was replacing the worn-out faiths of europe, unaware of the powerful charm these men had found in their free and wandering state under the sunny skies and clear moonlight nights down on the Monaro or up on the Darling Downs or out ont he plains of Australia Felix, the masters deplored the way of life of itinerant workers...' (vol.3 pp.273, 275)

Clark, I think, got rather carried away with his own romantic ideas. He and other radical nationalist historians of the time (such as Russel Ward, most famously,) saw the bush as a profoundly influential environment shaping the spiritual outlook of its white inhabitants. The bush workers, in turn, helped create the culture of the nation: according to Clark and Ward, they were the archetypal Australians whose culture and values eventually shaped those of the urban population.

In this view, the harshness of the pastoral frontier helps explain the apparent godlessness of settler Australians. Those who still cling to 'the worn out faiths of Europe', furthermore, are distinctly unAustralian. The only authentic spirituality is a place-based one - and for Clark, this excluded the kind of Christianity introduced here from Britain.

pic: Albert Tucker (1914 - 1999) The Metamorphosis of Ned Kelly