Latest news with #EvelynWaugh
ABC News
6 hours ago
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Late ABC journalist Peter Ryan celebrated for 'long and storied career'
On the wall of Peter Ryan's Sydney home hangs a picture bearing the simple title: "Scoop." The framed and enlarged print of the Penguin cover of the Evelyn Waugh novel of that name often appeared in the background of his live TV reports filed from his home office. The satirical novel about a journalist who, in a case of mistaken identity, finds himself becoming an international news correspondent was a cultural reference point — and possibly a thoroughly-undeserved dig at himself — that Peter could never resist slyly sharing with the ABC's viewers. For anyone sharp-eyed enough to pick up on that small, personal indulgence, Pete's jovial face would always light up with delight as he proudly claimed the joke. It was no small sign of Peter's generous spirit that he welcomed the Australian viewing public inside his home, when, confronted with the challenge of pandemic lockdowns, he transformed his home office into his own remote broadcasting centre, bringing business and finance news uninterrupted to national audiences on radio and television. Of course those days were not without the occasional technical hiccup, which Peter always handled with his customary aplomb, just as he did during one fondly-remembered television live cross when an off-camera voice called out in the middle of the report "Dad, lunch is ready!" Peter embraced working from home with gusto, demonstrating a technological nous, versatility and adaptability that few could hope to match. He would delight in showing off his home "studio" to visitors and he could be paid no greater compliment than when his listeners wrongly assumed he was filing his stories from inside the ABC's Ultimo headquarters. Versatility, adaptability were always hallmarks of one of the ABC's most efficient and multi-skilled content-makers. From his earliest days in the noisy, smoke-filled newsrooms of the 1980s, Peter stepped effortlessly from a world dominated by manual typewriters, telex and fax machines, through to a media landscape fundamentally transformed by the digital and social media revolutions that would follow. As his best mate and long-time colleague, former ABC Foreign Affairs Editor and former AM host Peter Cave said today: "He was a technical wizard." "He set up the TV studio there, he set up the radio studio, and he could work from home," he said. "And he did right through COVID. And as he became ill and couldn't get into the office, he still reported from his home bureau." But Peter was never a stranger to the office where he was long a fixture as part of the ABC Audio Current Affairs team, working to generate agenda-setting news and current affairs on ABC flagship programs AM, The World Today and PM, along with creating bespoke content daily for News Radio, Radio National, the ABC local radio network and the ABC News Channel. His work ethic was always herculean — and his joy in delivering breaking news never diminishing over his long and storied career as a journalist. From his beginnings as a "copy kid" and cadet at Sydney's Daily Mirror where he graduated to covering crime and other mayhem on the overnight news beat, before moving on to what he called his "spiritual home" at the ABC where he quickly rose to become Washington Bureau Chief, a senior news executive, ABC Business Editor and Senior Business Correspondent. A Member of the Order of Australia for his contribution to journalism, he won a Walkley Award for breaking the Commonwealth Bank's money laundering scandal in 2017. His coverage of misconduct in the financial sector was instrumental to the establishment of the banking royal commission, leading to reforms that have affected virtually every Australia in some form or another. Regardless of his many accomplishments, Peter was always genuinely pleased to help others and shared that help far and wide throughout his long career. As Peter himself told his colleagues when his medical retirement was announced last month: "Be kind and caring to people who need it. "As my father once told me — treat people on the way up, the way YOU want to be treated on the way down." It's no small mark of the man that when Peter learned a younger colleague, AM Technical Producer Khem White, was planning to visit a St Vincent De Paul outlet to purchase a wedding suit, Peter insisted on taking him shopping for a "new quality suit". "I'm sure my wife was thankful I wasn't sporting the extra-large, mothball-smelling, pin-striped number. From that day forward I came to realise what a lovely man Peter is and how he will always take the time to make everyone feel valued and important. Even when he would be connecting-in from the Reserve Bank on a busy interest rate announcement day, he would always take a moment to speak to me like an equal," he said. It was that fundamental kindness and decency that characterised Peter's dealings with so many in his orbit. And there were many, many people in that orbit. "He maintained a meticulous contact book, it was amazing," Peter Cave said. "He could within minutes pull just about any business leader of Australia out of his contact book, get on to them and get them on air." Those contacts, his high regard from the business community and Peter's reputation as a fair and balanced reporter, ensured a steady flow of exclusive interviews. But he was always a fierce and effective warrior against those he saw as responsible for injustice and other misdeeds. A champion of transparency, accountability and gender equity in the boardroom and the workplace, he was always dogged in pursuing the truth and countering disadvantage wherever it existed. Among his many other professional credits, he sat on the board of the Media Entertainment Arts Alliance's Benevolent Fund, which provided help for journalists who had fallen on hard times. Regardless of his accomplishments though, Peter always had time to share a joke, some words of advice and offer a friendly ear to everyone. There are countless journalists who benefited from his advice and mentoring. And at a time when many people's careers are winding down, Peter was throwing ever-more energy and enthusiasm into his craft and his hunt to get the next "scoop". He never lost his zeal for journalism while always being generous and supportive to his colleagues and quick to offer advice, enthusiasm and praise — he always had time to offer his friendship, a word of advice or camaraderie, or just a joke or wry observation. He was the kind of person everyone walked away from feeling better about themselves. Sadly, life just didn't have enough time for Peter and we're all the poorer for it. A lifelong Beatles fan, Peter might have appreciated the words credited to John Lennon: "Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans." Peter had great plans for the years ahead, often discussing his plans for retirement and his desire to devote his future to his two favourite people — his wife Mary and daughter Charlotte. His devotion to them was an inspiration to anyone who juggles the work-life balance and a reminder that the greatest measure of anyone's success in life is the cherished memories they leave behind for those who loved them. Peter was well-loved and will be well-remembered by those whose lives he touched. We will never see his like again and we will miss him deeply.
Economist
26-06-2025
- Sport
- Economist
How Wimbledon gets its grass so green
Britain | Turf wars And why many British gardens are giving up on lawns Lie down. A good way to understand Centre Court at Wimbledon is to put your cheek on the grass behind the white line where, next week, the toes of the world's top tennis players will be. The first thing you will notice is that the grass is cold, dew-damp and bristly, like fake grass—not silky, like a lawn. It is also unnaturally level. Flattened by laser-guided levellers and cut daily to 8mm by robot lawnmowers, it feels less horticultural than architectural, its stripes like an artistic exercise in vanishing-points. The next thing you might notice is an approaching security guard. They do not, says Neil Stubley, Wimbledon's head of courts, like people 'rolling around' on it. England is the land of the lawn. In English literature, history and life the lawn looms large. England swathed its country houses in lawns; took tea on them; invented and perfected games—like tennis and cricket—to play on them. It filled its land with lawns (there are around 24m gardens in Britain, many mostly grass). And it filled its literature with them. Evelyn Waugh's characters lounge on them; P.G. Wodehouse's cavort on them; Philip Larkin killed a hedgehog on one. The lawn was so sacrosanct that for decades English gardeners less gardened lawns than guarded them. In Oxford and Cambridge, beside each inviting-looking lawn stands an uninviting sign: 'KEEP OFF THE GRASS'. What caused this fad? Partly it is history: from the 1740s Capability Brown, a landscape designer, ditched French-style geometry for gardens that demanded the adjective 'sweeping'—then his style swept the country. Partly it is serendipity: dull English skies keep such sweeping lawns well-watered. Partly it is biology. Lawn enthusiasts like to ponder which came first, the lawn or the lawnmower? The answer is: the sheep. A lawn, says Maria Vorontsova, a grass expert at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, is simply 'pretty pasture' that has been 'eaten by lawnmowers'. Snobbery played a part too: keeping grass cut short costs. Once it cost because it was so low-tech: sheep don't come cheap, and scything is slow and heavy work. Later it cost because it was high-tech: the first lawnmower, invented in Britain in 1830, cost £1,000 ($1,360) in today's money. Now, on Wimbledon's centre court, between the 'KEEP OFF THE GRASS' signs, a man crouches with a pair of steel scissors, snipping at stray strands of grass—a horticultural haircut, and, given hourly wages in London, a costly one. Lawns started to represent hierarchy as well as horticulture. In 'A Room of One's Own' Virginia Woolf's narrator is booted off an Oxbridge lawn: only men, and scholars, were allowed on the grass. It also became an eminently exportable form of Englishness. Die in the English army and, for the past 100 years, wherever you fell, your body was likely to be covered by lawn, since the organisation that buries Britain's war dead aimed for the look of an 'English churchyard' in its cemeteries in Ypres and elsewhere. Life as an Englishman might leave you. Lawns would not. The lawns at Wimbledon are not merely cut, watered, primped and preened. They are also executed when the tournament ends. Like little grassy gladiators, their lives end with the entertainment. To ensure infections don't take hold and the grass next year is young, the court is covered with plastic, and superheated steam is piped in at 190°C (so hot that it boils the water in the surface of the soil). Every blade dies. Wimbledon's grass is green. Its processes are dark. Haughty culture Which is perhaps why lawns are changing. Rewilding has become fashionable. 'No Mow May' is spreading. To understand how much lawns are changing, go to King's College, Cambridge. There, behind one of England's most famous chapels, lies another of its most famous lawns. Today, it is barely a lawn at all; it certainly does nothing so dignified as sweep. It waves in the breeze, it buzzes with bees, it is filled with butterflies. Walk through barefoot and it will tangle your toes and scratch your legs. It will smell, faintly, of marjoram. A lawn is a subservient, almost dead, stretch of grass. Walk through this and, says Steve Coghill, the head gardener at King's, 'the whole of the meadow is alive.' It began in 2018 when King's decided to turn part of its lawn into meadow. Cambridge being Cambridge, they didn't just stop cutting the grass: they involved soil scientists and botanists and ecologists and horticulturalists, all sorts of -ists, to ensure the right seeds were sown in the right way. They sowed the seeds (with students and mulled wine); then harvested them (with shire horses and, later, more wine). Then they published a scientific paper about it. The results were astonishing. Bats had increased threefold, invertebrates by 25 times. Each week, at dawn, student lepidopterists record the moths they have trapped overnight. Their names—the Grey dagger, the Nut-tree tussock—are, says Mr Coghill, 'like the poetry of 'The Faerie Queene''. (Cambridge being Cambridge, its gardeners talk like that.) Where Wimbledon executes plants, King's has resurrected them. 'The soil', says Mr Coghill, 'has memory.' Seeds of plants—clustered bellflowers, lizard orchids—that have lain dormant in Cambridge's soil for centuries have come back to life. In the soil is a memory of another era. At one edge of the meadow is a small steel sign reading: 'KEEP OFF THE GRASS'. Hidden by thistles, it is barely legible.
Spectator
23-06-2025
- Politics
- Spectator
Abortion, assisted dying and Britain's dangerous new politics
'Now, splendidly, everything had become clear. The enemy at last was plain in view, huge and hateful, all disguise cast off. It was the Modern Age in arms.' After this week I feel like Evelyn Waugh at the time of the Nazi-Soviet Pact in 1939. The politics of 'progress' has found its fulfilment in the union of two total malignancies: the campaigns to abort babies at full term and to kill old people before their time. Here is our enemy, all disguise cast off. It's the revenge of the middle-aged against their dependents I've been accused of disguising something myself: my Christian faith. And it's true that while I've never hidden it (see my maiden speech) I didn't parade my faith as the basis of my objection to assisted suicide. You don't need religious arguments to show this Bill is bad, and many atheists have been brilliant in the battle against it. You just need to actually read the Bill, and the statements of all the professional bodies who work with the elderly and dying. I'm appalled that so many MPs – judging by their asinine speeches – have plainly not done this. But now that the Bill has passed the Commons I guess I can come out of the closet and say to the militant anti-Christians who were pushing it: you're not wrong. I do also object to euthanasia on religious grounds – because the case for euthanasia is itself a religious one. Nothing else explains the failure of its supporters to engage with the detail of the Bill, or the practicalities of implementing it. Support for assisted suicide is an article of faith – faith in the capacity of individual human beings to play the role of God, towards themselves and others. Christians by contrast think human beings are fallen – weak, selfish, dangerous – so we don't trust them with absolute power. That's why over the centuries, especially in England, the idea developed that the law should protect us from each other, and even from ourselves, and certainly from the state. In objecting to assisted suicide, I was trying to defend this old fashioned idea that the law should protect the vulnerable. And in abandoning this idea we are opening the door to a terrible dystopia. Not just in the moral sphere. The things our country needs more than anything are more children, and more care for our aging population. The Commons voted this week for the opposite: death to both groups. It's the revenge of the middle-aged against their dependents. We are ushering in a dangerous new politics, a sort of hedonic utilitarianism in which the convenience of adults is paramount even over the lives of the young and old. This is the pagan philosophy, with its cult of strength, which Christianity banished but is now returning. Maybe I'm exaggerating, but these are apocalyptic times. As the world beyond Britain blows up, as technology rewrites everything, and as our own security, economy and society are increasingly, desperately, precarious, how do we feel about junking the ideas that created and sustained the peace and prosperity of these islands for 1500 years? What's the alternative story we're going to tell ourselves, in place of the one about us being individually, uniquely valuable but also chronically prone to wrongdoing? The opposite story – that we're perfect moral beings but that if we're weak or unwanted we will be killed – feels less appealing to me, and certainly less useful to the challenges of the times. If we are to withstand our enemies, bring our society together, and tame the technium (somehow ensure that human values govern the new age of machines), we are going to need values that are up to the job. I don't think humanist atheism or progressive liberalism or whatever the new religion should be called, is up to it. Christianity is. Only Christianity is.
The Advertiser
19-06-2025
- Politics
- The Advertiser
We need to close the gap. But how? Some things need to happen first
There's an uncomfortable unease surrounding Indigenous affairs in Australia. You can tell that by watching people chatting. They're likely to pick their company before they say what they really think. It shouldn't be like that. The dream situation is where Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians can chat openly and freely about all the policy options. That's not generally feasible now. Things are sensitive and you'd pick your company before starting a conversation. We've always been a bit shy of these discussions. Evelyn Waugh's son Auberon fell in love with Australia. He said he loved the openness, the commitment to "let the other bloke have his say". He added that there was one exception to this openness, namely having open discussion about Aboriginal Australians. He said we just look uncomfortable and change the subject. Some people got mad with him because he pointed out the wheel hadn't been invented. He was right to sense that this is taken as an insult. In any event, that was in the 80s and we're a lot more sensitive now. The vast majority of Australians want Indigenous Australians to be given the respect they deserve. They also want policies that will close the gap. How, you might ask, do we achieve these two goals? Indigenous leader Pat Anderson recently called for younger leaders to be brought forward. It's insightful and frankly courageous to point out that your own generation needs to move on. It's a good thing. It's not just that intergenerational change is both important and long overdue. The current crop just hasn't delivered. They've been too aggressive and accusatorial. Going on the attack should always be a last resort. Publicity, self-aggrandisement or stupidity have led many to that path. It's been worse than ineffective. It has turned people of good heart and faith away. Anderson might have called, not just for younger leaders, but for more effective and conciliatory ones. In any encounter, you can choose to be the angry antagonist and maybe play the victim to boot. It won't go well. Nobody chooses at any event to sit next to the angry grump. Nobody wants to deal with them unless they have to. If you toss onto "angry victim" an aggressive, accusatory tone, then nastiness ensues. You can't effectively argue for reconciliation if you don't have more than a few grams of conciliatory in your personality. People who aren't racist do not warm to being labelled that way. Aboriginal people need solutions-focused leaders. Take a look at Denise Bowden at the Yothu Yindi Foundation for some inspiration. While you're up that way, look at what the Gumatj clan are doing in mining and forestry. There'd be others - people getting the job done. We need more of them. As well as some fresh leadership, the varied debate around welcome to and acknowledgment of country needs to be sorted out. We just can't keep walking around with this annoying pebble in our shoe. There's no disagreement that welcome to country was never universal and, in fact, as a ceremonial event Australia-wide, it's only decades old. The extreme variation in performance of the welcome leads to uncertainty. Will the welcomer be gracious and welcoming or will the welcomed get a healthy reminder of how badly Indigenous Australians have been treated and walk away feeling chastised more than welcomed? There are two other issues with the welcome. Where it was practised, it was to welcome other clans passing through. Non-Indigenous Australians don't see themselves as passing through the land on which they live, and, for many, on which their forebears have lived for well over 100 years or more. The other is the fee charged for the welcome. Somehow, saying, "I'm welcoming you" as you sharpen your pencil and whip out an invoice pad from your back pocket seems the sort of stuff John Cleese or Ricky Gervais might have some fun with. The money, incidentally, doesn't go to some broad fund to help Indigenous Australia. Discard that notion. Think a select few on the gravy train. Personally, I'd just stop it. For all of the above reasons, it is simply causing too much negativity towards Indigenous Australia and for no gain. It's a no-brainer. Acknowledgment of country is different. It's not a bad thing to acknowledge traditional lands. The problem is at meetings and conferences, at which every person who opens their mouth starts with the breathless revelation that says, "I too acknowledge ...". It's ridiculous, and aggravates everyone else in the room. It sounds platitudinous and hollow, because it is. Largely because it's more about each person wanting to identify as a "good person". Conspicuous compassion is always popular. People get sick of it and feel annoyed. Oh, that we could have a decent acknowledgment at the beginning, and everyone just accept it's been done. The end. A test might be if, at the same time, we acknowledged two more things. First, the system of government that lets us live in arguably the most stable and peaceful country in the world. That's no small thing. Second, thank all those people from around the world who've helped make Australia what it is today. I think the three acknowledgments would sit together very well. There's more material for Cleese and Gervais in the meetings where an acknowledgment is rightly done but then looks comedic because the speaker chooses to read one out in whatever the local language was when no one in the room speaks that language. Ridiculous. MORE AMANDA VANSTONE: Lastly, we will have to bite the bullet on how to qualify as Indigenous. The current test is too loose. It's allowing big companies and bureaucracies to tick the Indigenous box by employing or giving assistance or whatever to those whose indigeneity is some way back in their heritage. The consequence of that is that those Indigenous Australians and their offspring who either haven't started a family with non-Indigenous Australians or have only done so recently miss out. Bureaucracies will almost always go for low-hanging fruit. People in regional and remote communities are harder to engage and therefore miss out to someone who had an Indigenous great-grandparent and lives in a big city. It's just easier. If we can sort these things out, we've got a better chance of moving forward together in a very positive way. Keeping on doing stuff that makes Indigenous Australia the butt of jokes is the unkindest thing we could do. To do it because you want to look good is reprehensible. There's an uncomfortable unease surrounding Indigenous affairs in Australia. You can tell that by watching people chatting. They're likely to pick their company before they say what they really think. It shouldn't be like that. The dream situation is where Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians can chat openly and freely about all the policy options. That's not generally feasible now. Things are sensitive and you'd pick your company before starting a conversation. We've always been a bit shy of these discussions. Evelyn Waugh's son Auberon fell in love with Australia. He said he loved the openness, the commitment to "let the other bloke have his say". He added that there was one exception to this openness, namely having open discussion about Aboriginal Australians. He said we just look uncomfortable and change the subject. Some people got mad with him because he pointed out the wheel hadn't been invented. He was right to sense that this is taken as an insult. In any event, that was in the 80s and we're a lot more sensitive now. The vast majority of Australians want Indigenous Australians to be given the respect they deserve. They also want policies that will close the gap. How, you might ask, do we achieve these two goals? Indigenous leader Pat Anderson recently called for younger leaders to be brought forward. It's insightful and frankly courageous to point out that your own generation needs to move on. It's a good thing. It's not just that intergenerational change is both important and long overdue. The current crop just hasn't delivered. They've been too aggressive and accusatorial. Going on the attack should always be a last resort. Publicity, self-aggrandisement or stupidity have led many to that path. It's been worse than ineffective. It has turned people of good heart and faith away. Anderson might have called, not just for younger leaders, but for more effective and conciliatory ones. In any encounter, you can choose to be the angry antagonist and maybe play the victim to boot. It won't go well. Nobody chooses at any event to sit next to the angry grump. Nobody wants to deal with them unless they have to. If you toss onto "angry victim" an aggressive, accusatory tone, then nastiness ensues. You can't effectively argue for reconciliation if you don't have more than a few grams of conciliatory in your personality. People who aren't racist do not warm to being labelled that way. Aboriginal people need solutions-focused leaders. Take a look at Denise Bowden at the Yothu Yindi Foundation for some inspiration. While you're up that way, look at what the Gumatj clan are doing in mining and forestry. There'd be others - people getting the job done. We need more of them. As well as some fresh leadership, the varied debate around welcome to and acknowledgment of country needs to be sorted out. We just can't keep walking around with this annoying pebble in our shoe. There's no disagreement that welcome to country was never universal and, in fact, as a ceremonial event Australia-wide, it's only decades old. The extreme variation in performance of the welcome leads to uncertainty. Will the welcomer be gracious and welcoming or will the welcomed get a healthy reminder of how badly Indigenous Australians have been treated and walk away feeling chastised more than welcomed? There are two other issues with the welcome. Where it was practised, it was to welcome other clans passing through. Non-Indigenous Australians don't see themselves as passing through the land on which they live, and, for many, on which their forebears have lived for well over 100 years or more. The other is the fee charged for the welcome. Somehow, saying, "I'm welcoming you" as you sharpen your pencil and whip out an invoice pad from your back pocket seems the sort of stuff John Cleese or Ricky Gervais might have some fun with. The money, incidentally, doesn't go to some broad fund to help Indigenous Australia. Discard that notion. Think a select few on the gravy train. Personally, I'd just stop it. For all of the above reasons, it is simply causing too much negativity towards Indigenous Australia and for no gain. It's a no-brainer. Acknowledgment of country is different. It's not a bad thing to acknowledge traditional lands. The problem is at meetings and conferences, at which every person who opens their mouth starts with the breathless revelation that says, "I too acknowledge ...". It's ridiculous, and aggravates everyone else in the room. It sounds platitudinous and hollow, because it is. Largely because it's more about each person wanting to identify as a "good person". Conspicuous compassion is always popular. People get sick of it and feel annoyed. Oh, that we could have a decent acknowledgment at the beginning, and everyone just accept it's been done. The end. A test might be if, at the same time, we acknowledged two more things. First, the system of government that lets us live in arguably the most stable and peaceful country in the world. That's no small thing. Second, thank all those people from around the world who've helped make Australia what it is today. I think the three acknowledgments would sit together very well. There's more material for Cleese and Gervais in the meetings where an acknowledgment is rightly done but then looks comedic because the speaker chooses to read one out in whatever the local language was when no one in the room speaks that language. Ridiculous. MORE AMANDA VANSTONE: Lastly, we will have to bite the bullet on how to qualify as Indigenous. The current test is too loose. It's allowing big companies and bureaucracies to tick the Indigenous box by employing or giving assistance or whatever to those whose indigeneity is some way back in their heritage. The consequence of that is that those Indigenous Australians and their offspring who either haven't started a family with non-Indigenous Australians or have only done so recently miss out. Bureaucracies will almost always go for low-hanging fruit. People in regional and remote communities are harder to engage and therefore miss out to someone who had an Indigenous great-grandparent and lives in a big city. It's just easier. If we can sort these things out, we've got a better chance of moving forward together in a very positive way. Keeping on doing stuff that makes Indigenous Australia the butt of jokes is the unkindest thing we could do. To do it because you want to look good is reprehensible. There's an uncomfortable unease surrounding Indigenous affairs in Australia. You can tell that by watching people chatting. They're likely to pick their company before they say what they really think. It shouldn't be like that. The dream situation is where Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians can chat openly and freely about all the policy options. That's not generally feasible now. Things are sensitive and you'd pick your company before starting a conversation. We've always been a bit shy of these discussions. Evelyn Waugh's son Auberon fell in love with Australia. He said he loved the openness, the commitment to "let the other bloke have his say". He added that there was one exception to this openness, namely having open discussion about Aboriginal Australians. He said we just look uncomfortable and change the subject. Some people got mad with him because he pointed out the wheel hadn't been invented. He was right to sense that this is taken as an insult. In any event, that was in the 80s and we're a lot more sensitive now. The vast majority of Australians want Indigenous Australians to be given the respect they deserve. They also want policies that will close the gap. How, you might ask, do we achieve these two goals? Indigenous leader Pat Anderson recently called for younger leaders to be brought forward. It's insightful and frankly courageous to point out that your own generation needs to move on. It's a good thing. It's not just that intergenerational change is both important and long overdue. The current crop just hasn't delivered. They've been too aggressive and accusatorial. Going on the attack should always be a last resort. Publicity, self-aggrandisement or stupidity have led many to that path. It's been worse than ineffective. It has turned people of good heart and faith away. Anderson might have called, not just for younger leaders, but for more effective and conciliatory ones. In any encounter, you can choose to be the angry antagonist and maybe play the victim to boot. It won't go well. Nobody chooses at any event to sit next to the angry grump. Nobody wants to deal with them unless they have to. If you toss onto "angry victim" an aggressive, accusatory tone, then nastiness ensues. You can't effectively argue for reconciliation if you don't have more than a few grams of conciliatory in your personality. People who aren't racist do not warm to being labelled that way. Aboriginal people need solutions-focused leaders. Take a look at Denise Bowden at the Yothu Yindi Foundation for some inspiration. While you're up that way, look at what the Gumatj clan are doing in mining and forestry. There'd be others - people getting the job done. We need more of them. As well as some fresh leadership, the varied debate around welcome to and acknowledgment of country needs to be sorted out. We just can't keep walking around with this annoying pebble in our shoe. There's no disagreement that welcome to country was never universal and, in fact, as a ceremonial event Australia-wide, it's only decades old. The extreme variation in performance of the welcome leads to uncertainty. Will the welcomer be gracious and welcoming or will the welcomed get a healthy reminder of how badly Indigenous Australians have been treated and walk away feeling chastised more than welcomed? There are two other issues with the welcome. Where it was practised, it was to welcome other clans passing through. Non-Indigenous Australians don't see themselves as passing through the land on which they live, and, for many, on which their forebears have lived for well over 100 years or more. The other is the fee charged for the welcome. Somehow, saying, "I'm welcoming you" as you sharpen your pencil and whip out an invoice pad from your back pocket seems the sort of stuff John Cleese or Ricky Gervais might have some fun with. The money, incidentally, doesn't go to some broad fund to help Indigenous Australia. Discard that notion. Think a select few on the gravy train. Personally, I'd just stop it. For all of the above reasons, it is simply causing too much negativity towards Indigenous Australia and for no gain. It's a no-brainer. Acknowledgment of country is different. It's not a bad thing to acknowledge traditional lands. The problem is at meetings and conferences, at which every person who opens their mouth starts with the breathless revelation that says, "I too acknowledge ...". It's ridiculous, and aggravates everyone else in the room. It sounds platitudinous and hollow, because it is. Largely because it's more about each person wanting to identify as a "good person". Conspicuous compassion is always popular. People get sick of it and feel annoyed. Oh, that we could have a decent acknowledgment at the beginning, and everyone just accept it's been done. The end. A test might be if, at the same time, we acknowledged two more things. First, the system of government that lets us live in arguably the most stable and peaceful country in the world. That's no small thing. Second, thank all those people from around the world who've helped make Australia what it is today. I think the three acknowledgments would sit together very well. There's more material for Cleese and Gervais in the meetings where an acknowledgment is rightly done but then looks comedic because the speaker chooses to read one out in whatever the local language was when no one in the room speaks that language. Ridiculous. MORE AMANDA VANSTONE: Lastly, we will have to bite the bullet on how to qualify as Indigenous. The current test is too loose. It's allowing big companies and bureaucracies to tick the Indigenous box by employing or giving assistance or whatever to those whose indigeneity is some way back in their heritage. The consequence of that is that those Indigenous Australians and their offspring who either haven't started a family with non-Indigenous Australians or have only done so recently miss out. Bureaucracies will almost always go for low-hanging fruit. People in regional and remote communities are harder to engage and therefore miss out to someone who had an Indigenous great-grandparent and lives in a big city. It's just easier. If we can sort these things out, we've got a better chance of moving forward together in a very positive way. Keeping on doing stuff that makes Indigenous Australia the butt of jokes is the unkindest thing we could do. To do it because you want to look good is reprehensible. There's an uncomfortable unease surrounding Indigenous affairs in Australia. You can tell that by watching people chatting. They're likely to pick their company before they say what they really think. It shouldn't be like that. The dream situation is where Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians can chat openly and freely about all the policy options. That's not generally feasible now. Things are sensitive and you'd pick your company before starting a conversation. We've always been a bit shy of these discussions. Evelyn Waugh's son Auberon fell in love with Australia. He said he loved the openness, the commitment to "let the other bloke have his say". He added that there was one exception to this openness, namely having open discussion about Aboriginal Australians. He said we just look uncomfortable and change the subject. Some people got mad with him because he pointed out the wheel hadn't been invented. He was right to sense that this is taken as an insult. In any event, that was in the 80s and we're a lot more sensitive now. The vast majority of Australians want Indigenous Australians to be given the respect they deserve. They also want policies that will close the gap. How, you might ask, do we achieve these two goals? Indigenous leader Pat Anderson recently called for younger leaders to be brought forward. It's insightful and frankly courageous to point out that your own generation needs to move on. It's a good thing. It's not just that intergenerational change is both important and long overdue. The current crop just hasn't delivered. They've been too aggressive and accusatorial. Going on the attack should always be a last resort. Publicity, self-aggrandisement or stupidity have led many to that path. It's been worse than ineffective. It has turned people of good heart and faith away. Anderson might have called, not just for younger leaders, but for more effective and conciliatory ones. In any encounter, you can choose to be the angry antagonist and maybe play the victim to boot. It won't go well. Nobody chooses at any event to sit next to the angry grump. Nobody wants to deal with them unless they have to. If you toss onto "angry victim" an aggressive, accusatory tone, then nastiness ensues. You can't effectively argue for reconciliation if you don't have more than a few grams of conciliatory in your personality. People who aren't racist do not warm to being labelled that way. Aboriginal people need solutions-focused leaders. Take a look at Denise Bowden at the Yothu Yindi Foundation for some inspiration. While you're up that way, look at what the Gumatj clan are doing in mining and forestry. There'd be others - people getting the job done. We need more of them. As well as some fresh leadership, the varied debate around welcome to and acknowledgment of country needs to be sorted out. We just can't keep walking around with this annoying pebble in our shoe. There's no disagreement that welcome to country was never universal and, in fact, as a ceremonial event Australia-wide, it's only decades old. The extreme variation in performance of the welcome leads to uncertainty. Will the welcomer be gracious and welcoming or will the welcomed get a healthy reminder of how badly Indigenous Australians have been treated and walk away feeling chastised more than welcomed? There are two other issues with the welcome. Where it was practised, it was to welcome other clans passing through. Non-Indigenous Australians don't see themselves as passing through the land on which they live, and, for many, on which their forebears have lived for well over 100 years or more. The other is the fee charged for the welcome. Somehow, saying, "I'm welcoming you" as you sharpen your pencil and whip out an invoice pad from your back pocket seems the sort of stuff John Cleese or Ricky Gervais might have some fun with. The money, incidentally, doesn't go to some broad fund to help Indigenous Australia. Discard that notion. Think a select few on the gravy train. Personally, I'd just stop it. For all of the above reasons, it is simply causing too much negativity towards Indigenous Australia and for no gain. It's a no-brainer. Acknowledgment of country is different. It's not a bad thing to acknowledge traditional lands. The problem is at meetings and conferences, at which every person who opens their mouth starts with the breathless revelation that says, "I too acknowledge ...". It's ridiculous, and aggravates everyone else in the room. It sounds platitudinous and hollow, because it is. Largely because it's more about each person wanting to identify as a "good person". Conspicuous compassion is always popular. People get sick of it and feel annoyed. Oh, that we could have a decent acknowledgment at the beginning, and everyone just accept it's been done. The end. A test might be if, at the same time, we acknowledged two more things. First, the system of government that lets us live in arguably the most stable and peaceful country in the world. That's no small thing. Second, thank all those people from around the world who've helped make Australia what it is today. I think the three acknowledgments would sit together very well. There's more material for Cleese and Gervais in the meetings where an acknowledgment is rightly done but then looks comedic because the speaker chooses to read one out in whatever the local language was when no one in the room speaks that language. Ridiculous. MORE AMANDA VANSTONE: Lastly, we will have to bite the bullet on how to qualify as Indigenous. The current test is too loose. It's allowing big companies and bureaucracies to tick the Indigenous box by employing or giving assistance or whatever to those whose indigeneity is some way back in their heritage. The consequence of that is that those Indigenous Australians and their offspring who either haven't started a family with non-Indigenous Australians or have only done so recently miss out. Bureaucracies will almost always go for low-hanging fruit. People in regional and remote communities are harder to engage and therefore miss out to someone who had an Indigenous great-grandparent and lives in a big city. It's just easier. If we can sort these things out, we've got a better chance of moving forward together in a very positive way. Keeping on doing stuff that makes Indigenous Australia the butt of jokes is the unkindest thing we could do. To do it because you want to look good is reprehensible.
Canberra Times
18-06-2025
- General
- Canberra Times
We need to close the gap. But how? Some things need to happen first
We've always been a bit shy of these discussions. Evelyn Waugh's son Auberon fell in love with Australia. He said he loved the openness, the commitment to "let the other bloke have his say". He added that there was one exception to this openness, namely having open discussion about Aboriginal Australians. He said we just look uncomfortable and change the subject. Some people got mad with him because he pointed out the wheel hadn't been invented. He was right to sense that this is taken as an insult. In any event, that was in the 80s and we're a lot more sensitive now.
