So much for excellence.

The report recommends that additional government funding go to community sport (eg our many footy codes) rather than elite Olympic sports programs.

Of course, ‘framing’ comes into play here. The report want s you to believe that archery is an ‘elite’ sport while AFL and rugby league are really just community sports after all.

The report is also premised on a flawed, or exaggerated, notion that there is an opposition between community and elite sports programs.

But it is lucky that it has stirred up a hornet’s nest with its blunt rejection of the Australian Olympic movement’s claims for extra funding.

Without this controversy, the report contains nothing of interest. It is page after page of banalities and findings of the ‘no shit sherlock’ variety. Again and again, the tough issues are ducked.

Take finding 47:

Sports at all levels derive significant revenues from fast food and alcohol advertising.

Limitations on sponsorship of sport will significantly affect the industry.

No kidding, and the recommended response? None.

But there are lots of the usual lame ideas like a government program to encourage old people to volunteer to help sporting organisations. The sort of policy bumpf much loved by 20/20 conferences and the like. Butcher’s paper strategies.

Unsurprisingly, the report makes much of the health, educational, social capital etc benefits of community sport, yet there is no one on the committee with real and substantial expertise in any of these areas.

The composition of the committee is questionable, while four of the five committee members have links to the major football codes, only one has links to a major Olympic sport (hockey).

That’s not independent, that’s stacked.

Still, reading the report you get the sense that it is really just a way to help the hapless Kate Ellis reject the insistent John Coates.

Certainly, Coates got the message.

The battle will be fierce and the second-rate nature of this report (unbalanced committee, flawed arguments, little factual substantiation, unimaginative policy contribution) will not help the Government.

On Wednesday last week, during ceremonies to mark the nation’s apology, Bonney Djuric gave Prime Minister Rudd a letter seeking his support for a living memorial to the Forgotten Australians and the Stolen Generations in Sydney’s western suburbs, on a site called the Parramatta Female Factory Precinct which has long been associated with both indigenous and non-indigenous women and children committed to institutional care.

Bonney Djuric, and other ‘Parramatta Girls’, believe a living memorial could become a symbol of shared learning, giving voice to the voiceless and offer an economically-viable, culturally-rich environment for future Australians which would be of international standing.

And it would help the healing process for a lot of people.

Something like 500,000 Australians experienced care in an institution or some other form of out-of-home care during the last century. Many of these people have lived for decades with a legacy of depression, low self-esteem, phobias and nightmares which has in turn often led to alcoholism, drug addiction and prostitution. A large proportion of our prison population are drawn from the ranks of the ‘Forgotten Australians’.

In 2004, the Commonwealth Senate Community Affairs References Committee reported on the abuse of children in institutional care (Forgotten Australians: A report on Australians who experienced institutional or out-of-home care as children).

The Committee received submissions from hundreds of survivors. These detailed accounts of physical abuse and neglect, emotional abuse and neglect, sexual abuse, broad dehumanisation and cruelty by people charged with their care.

The Committee members and staff involved in the inquiry found that, ‘The scale and magnitude of the events described in evidence was overwhelming’. Indeed, two Senators broke down when speaking at the release of the report.

It is important not to condemn everyone who worked in these institutions, but it is equally as important to reveal the truth and condemn those who were responsible for perpetrating these acts, and those responsible for enabling the perpetrators to do so.

Parramatta Girls Home (PGH) operated from 1887 until 1986. During the course of that century, it was the destination for thousands of girls aged between 11 and 18 who were considered ‘at risk’.

The institution’s population represented girls from all social, ethnic and economic backgrounds including significant numbers of the Stolen Generations and many who had experienced a succession of institutions and foster care placements throughout their childhood.

PGH gained some public attention last year when it was the subject of a Belvoir Street production, Parramatta Girls starring Leah Purcell.

Bonney Djuric, who spent eight months in PGH in 1970, was an adviser on the play’s production. Written by Alana Valentine, the play pays tribute to the courage, hardship and inequality that the Parramatta girls experienced.

Australia’s convict legacy helped to shape its welfare system. In particular, those decades of transportation shaped ideas and beliefs about females who could be charged and committed to institutions for being ‘Exposed to Moral Danger’; a charge which did not apply to males. Less than two per cent of the inmates at Parramatta had been charged with a criminal offence.

The convict heritage was also pervasive in operating procedures and practices. The routines, procedures and institutional language which continued unchanged throughout the years at PGH had their origins in Parramatta’s convict beginnings.

The institution was not only associated with Australia’s colonial past in its underpinning ideas and operating procedures, but also in its physical location next to the former convict asylum known as the Parramatta Female Factory which was once the destination of all unassigned female convicts to the colony of New South Wales.

Arguably, the Parramatta site is as important in Australian history as Port Arthur and the Hyde Park Barracks. It was first explored by Captain Arthur Phillip in 1788 and shortly afterwards established as a gaol town and farm, with the first Female Factory operating by 1804 and later replaced with a grander building commissioned by Governor Macquarie and designed by Francis Greenway in 1821.

Speaking of the Forgotten Australians, the Senate Committee found that there had been wide-scale unsafe, improper and unlawful care of children, a failure of duty of care and serious and repeated breaches of statutory obligations.

The Committee recommended that the governments, churches and care providers should express sorrow and apologise for the physical, psychological and social harm caused by their neglect and worse.

Today, nearly 40 years after her own stay at Parramatta, Bonney says: ‘It is an eerie place. It could be beautiful with its old buildings and river views, but there is sense there of ghosts wanting to speak out, a sense of unspoken pain and of suffering, and the need for understanding and change.’

Bonney Djuric, and her fellow members of Parramatta Female Factory Precinct Association, want to save the area from further deterioration, while stimulating debate and raising the level of public and government awareness of the need to recognise, promote and value women’s contributions and heritage.

They propose the implementation of a dual purpose redevelopment of the site as a National Women’s Heritage Centre and the National Centre for Forgotten Australians.

They want to promote an interactive approach to historical and cultural preservation and they seek to create accessible public spaces that provide opportunities for participation in the arts whilst maintaining the historical integrity of the area.

They want the site to be a living memorial. A recognition of the wrongs of the past, but also an expression of hope for a better future for our nation and for the children who deserve better from a society as rich and sophisticated as Australia is today.

In her letter to Prime Minister Rudd, Bonney wrote that the memorial her group envisages has ‘the potential to become a world-class, leading-edge demonstration of what happens when people work together, combining art, history, technology and tourism into a site of economic opportunity, national significance and international recognition.’

Let’s hope that last week’s momentous events are not allowed to pass us behind, dimmed by the onrush of events and concerns. The events in Canberra should make us all feel a little more proud of being Australian and Bonney’s living memorial at Parramatta would be another fitting way to mark this remarkable time of forgiveness and reconciliation.

The author, a communications strategy consultant, has been advising Bonney Djuric.

The Australian’s Michael Stutchbury says this will require ‘tough-love’ policies.

Usually, this is code for giving carrots to the rich and sticks to the poor. Tough for the bottom of society, great for the top,

In economics, inequality rocks. Right?

Well, actually no.

Inequality peaked in the US just before the great depression, and it only returned to those levels just before the GFC (see Palma, Cambridge Journal of Economics).

That’s not news. Keynes pointed out that inequality made the economy more unstable.

In the period before the GFC, growing inequality encouraged people to go into debt to ‘keep up’, contributing to excessive consumer debt and a housing bubble.

This week nobel laureate and NYT columnist Paul Krugman has pointed out that the economy grew faster, and media family incomes much faster, before modern finance, and the whole neoliberal experiment, when incomes were less unequal:

Take the United States, which wasn’t damaged in the war. Take per capita real GDP. Give hostages by taking data from 1950 to 1980, which means including the 1980 recession, but stopping at 2007, so that the current slump isn’t included. Then here’s what you get:

Growth in per capita real GDP from 1950 to 1980: 2.2 percent per year

Growth in per capita real GDP from 1980 to 2007: 2.0 percent per year

Oh, and if we look at real median family income instead, we get:

Growth from 1950 to 1980: 2.3 percent per year

Growth from 1980 to 2007: 0.7 percent per year

Sorry: there’s no measure I can think of by which the U.S. economy has done better since 1980 than it did over an equivalent time span before 1980. It may be something you’ve heard, it may be something you’d like to believe, but it just didn’t happen.

We also know that more equality is better for everyone in society, with the possible exception of the super-rich, because of a recent book that brought together all the evidence, “The Spirit Level: why more equal societies always do better”. A key argument is that:

While it is often assumed that social problems bear little relationship to average incomes, the evidence suggests that income differentials within populations matter a great deal, and this is as true of American states as it is of countries around the world.

In the most unequal countries and states, there is more gender inequality, too, and these places are less generous. A higher proportion of people suffer from mental illness, and more use drugs.

Less egalitarian countries have six times as much obesity. Educational attainment is poorer, with higher dropout rates, shorter periods of paid maternity leave and less early childhood education. Teenage birth rates are higher, and it is young men from disadvantaged neighbourhoods who are most likely to be the victims and perpetrators of violence.

In more unequal countries, children experience more bullying, fights and conflict, and rates of imprisonment are five times higher. Although it is possible that heath and social problems cause bigger income differentials, inequalities are the common denominator.

The same is true for economic growth. If we want growth we have to ensure that the benefits (and the tough-love stuff) are seen to be borne more equally than in recent decades.

Unfortunately, few Australian policy makers and commentators seem willing to recognise the need for more, not less, equality.

]]> http://blogs.crikey.com.au/trevorcook/2009/11/10/more-not-less-equality-needed-for-economic-growth/feed/ 5 http://blogs.crikey.com.au/trevorcook/2009/11/10/more-not-less-equality-needed-for-economic-growth/ http://feeds.crikey.com.au/~r/CrikeyBlogs/trevorcook/~3/TTfCeauhAlo/ http://blogs.crikey.com.au/trevorcook/2009/11/09/can-rudd-save-his-ets-or-will-it-destroy-him/#comments Sun, 08 Nov 2009 22:31:50 +0000 Trevor Cook http://blogs.crikey.com.au/trevorcook/?p=6132 Rudd is a control freak.

His government is run along command and control lines (read Cameron Stewart’s interesting piece in last Saturday’s Australian magazine).

His media strategy is a campaign strategy.

Win the day, stay in front.  Make your opponent the issue. Control the message. Make no mistakes.

This is the goldfish in a bowl approach. Every day is new day, every week is anew week.

It works for politics, it’s hopeless for government.

Government is about implementation, not just rhetoric and across-the-despatch box abuse.

The ETS (emissions trading scheme) is the focal point of Rudd’s first term as prime minister.

It’s the self-designated ‘big test’ for the Rudd Government.

It’s a sleeper, potentially much bigger than the current fuss over asylum seekers.

It is, according to government rhetoric, the biggest single economic reform ever.

Bigger than the GST.

Very few people know how it will work and if it will achieve anything.

It sounds like something straight out of the Enron playbook.

A new round of financial trickery much like the stuff that just brought the world economy close to the precipice.

Environmentalists think it is a cop out. Too many compromises with too many big polluters.

The right, Alan Jones and the rest, are screaming about ‘world government’ and ‘loss of sovereignty’.

Increasing numbers of voters are buying the Opposition line that it is just a tax and part of Rudd’s global ambitions.

Cynics are asking if Macquarie Bank (and all the other CBD law and advisory firm spivs)  think it’s a great idea why shouldn’t we be suspicious.

In the face of all this Rudd has left a vacuum.

A vacuum he tried to fill last week with 14 pointless media interviews and a bizarre rant at the Lowy Institute.

The rant has only served to convince his opponents that they are getting under his skin, and that he is according to Jones: ‘rattled’.

What is needed is a real education program, some hard facts that might help win the debate and reassure the voters.

The Rudd Government seems strangely unwilling to do the hard work of a retail communications campaign.

Two years down the track and its media and broader political strategies seem stuck in the realms of the 33 day campaign when only the the headline matters.

Time is slipping away, if Rudd et al don’t win the implementation debate this whole thing is going to blow.

And what happens if Rudd gets his ETS through the Senate and the Copenhagen conference fails to make any progress?

Doesn’t bear thinking about. But I hope Rudd’s minders have a plan B.

Click, tweet, e-mail, twitter, skim, browse, scan, blog, text: the jargon of the digital age describes how we now read, reflecting the way that the very act of reading, and the nature of literacy itself, is changing.

The information we consume online comes ever faster, punchier and more fleetingly. Our attention rests only briefly on the internet page before moving incontinently on to the next electronic canapé.

Addicted to the BlackBerry, hectored and heckled by the next blog alert, web link or text message, we are in state of Continual Partial Attention, too bombarded by snippets and gobbets of information to focus on anything for very long. Microsoft researchers have found that someone distracted by an e-mail message alert takes an average of 24 minutes to return to the same level of concentration.

The internet has evolved a new species of magpie reader, gathering bright little buttons of knowledge, before hopping on to the next shiny thing.

I love that last line about magpie readers.

I can see the problem, but I think it’s about discipline. Avoid multi-tasking.

If you’re going to read books (and you should) or even long articles; you need to switch off the devices and focus.

Don’t worry, twitter will still be there – or something even crazier will have replaced it.

Journalists often over-estimate how much they know, and exaggerate their own importance.

But they’re not alone in having those shortcomings.

Where you sit is where you stand.

And people in different sectors of our complex democracy are quick to identify and lampoon the failings of everyone else.

Journalists ridicule academics for being long-winded (and dull), academics ridicule the superficialities of journalistic analysis.

Public servants sometimes think everyone in business is a spiv of one sort or another, while in the private sector bureaucrats are seen as rule-loving tossers.

These warring groups are not always wide of the mark in their depictions of each other.

More recently, we have had another cleavage thrust upon us: bloggers versus journalists.

I was cheered by Stilgherrian’s first few paragraphs in his paper to the media 140 conference. And this sentence, in particular:

This is why I think the whole bloggers versus journalists debate was and still is so incredibly stupid.

But what follows, unfortunately, is a jaunty run through the whole ’social media good, journalism bad’ story that has long since become a cliche.

A few more pars into this tour through the well-worn world of blogger resentment, we get this stunner of a summation:

Up the other end we’ve got big institutions like the Church, Science and The Media constructing narratives they call, respectively, Belief, Knowledge and News. All of them, when threatened, refer to their narratives as “The Truth”.

Oh dear.

Now I know Stig is trying to be entertaining and provocative so a certain amount of latitude is warranted.

But this sort of glibness doesn’t do anyone any good.

On the other hand, reading further I realised that this ‘critique of western civilisation in a nutshell’ really is the key to understanding the perspective of Stig and countless other social media romantics.

Folks, there is not such thing as truth. That was all a pre-digital idea. Now utterly redundant.

Once you get over silly obsessions like trying to work out what the truth is then you are free in Stig’s grand vision for our future to convey gossip along ant-like trails.

I’m not making this up.

At the end, in his paper’s coup de grace against the pretensions of journalists, Stig draws on a recent weather event to portray the redundancy of journalism:

Like ants mapping out food trails, people did this by passing signals to each other — interesting photos and factoids and emotional responses — without central control. And because they knew the people they passed them to, these messages had plenty of personal resonance.

When the industrial media factories creaked into action, maybe only minutes or an hour later, what were they adding to that process? Were they just packaging that collective narrative for the folks who aren’t yet connected to the live global hive mind?

Well there you go. No need for investigation, fact-checking, objective standards of accuracy, background, context. Not to mention a trained editorial hand to bring you the best writing and pictures.

I think we need more journalists.

I think more bloggers (and god forbid twitterers) should be embracing the skills of journalism.

I vote for excellence.

And truth.

I don’t want the ‘global mind hive’.

It sounds ugly and dystopian to me.

• Mainstream. The yes or no debate is over, its now about how. Social media is here and its important that we understand it and use it or respond to it in ways that are consistent with our corporate objectives. So social media should be in every comms strategy even if we consider it and decide not to use it or not to use it much

The Obama campaign is the current gold standard of this approach – they controlled message but they allowed people a great deal of lattitude in the way they helped promote that message

• Scalability. MySpace is dead, lost its cool. Facebook is too mainstream to be cool for kids anymore and Twitter is very limited. The more people using something, the more chaotic and junky it becomes.

• Nothing is dying. Media is fragmenting. Big media is still big media but there is more of it, more of it is delivered over the Internet and more of it has a participatory component. A fragmenting media means we as communicators have to get in front of people through a range of media. But radio will be here for a long-time, so will TV and so will newspapers.

• Content will be king, again. Especially content that actually contains new and important facts. Conversation is fine but it’s better if it’s informed. We’ve seen an explosion in opinion outlets. Crikey, the punch, national times, ABC unleashed. I don’t think business is using these outlets effectively. But opinion is great and can be important and entertaining, what is harder to do and costs more is the generation of facts – business and non-government organisations are well-positioned to help feed this need. But we’re not doing much of it yet.

This is important in a country where very few large organisations do.

So full marks for effort.

No doubt, Telstra’s re-entry into the fledgling field of corporate social media will be generally applauded within the small band of people who care passionately about this stuff.

But looking at Telstra’s new blog, called, in best marketing speak, Telstra exchange, I can’t help feel a little sad and a little more convinced that big corporates and social media don’t really mix – well, maybe a little bit, maybe as a little superficial gloss on the dull, besuited hearts of the corporate world.

Edgy, it’s not.

I guess this new approach is consistent (or ‘aligned’ in suit-speak) with Telstra’s new more co-operative approach to government and media relations.

Getting along with people is generally the best strategic approach, but it often makes for less interesting copy.

And the new blog was launched on a day when Telstra had to backflip on a PR disaster – a fee to pay your bill.

The media release on the backflip contained this wonderful example of the PR genre:

“I have listened to the community debate and believe that the way we introduced the fee did not align with our commitment to put customers back at the heart of our business,” Mr Thodey said.

“It is now clear to me that introducing this fee across our existing plans was the wrong way to encourage customers to move to electronic payments.

“We designed the fee in a way that exempted more than a million elderly, pensioners and disadvantaged people but it was still unacceptable to many of our customers.

Well, I guess that’s better than just saying ‘we got it wrong’ or ‘it was the wrong thing to do’.

Earlier today I linked to some musings by Steve Rubel about the blending of media and social media to the point that they are now the one and the same thing.

I think this is true, or will soon be true, of corporate communications.

Your social media effort will only be as good as your overall comms approach.

There’s not much point trying to get a social media fig leaf to cover up an unchanged culture where nothing is ever wrong, it just doesn’t ‘align’ sometimes.

Still, Telstra are having a go and that puts them ahead of just about every other big organisation in Australia.

And, it’s unfair to be too critical. I just wish..

Five years ago there was media and social media and the two were distinct. You know what was what. It was like there elephants and zebras. You knew the difference.

Today all media is social, all social is media. It’s impossible to separate the two.

The media all actively use social technologies to innovate, converse and collaborate with their audiences. Meanwhile, social content from friends – be it tweets or status updates or videos – all should be considered media. Yes, the elephants and the zebras have cross-mated.