An Australian Experience-floats and selling

An early sign of change to come emerged perhaps from the forthright words of Malcolm Fraser "Life is not meant to be easy" in 1971. The so-called "long boom" from 1950 to the early 1970s reached an end. It is then imperative for people to keep calm while taking the bitter pills for the predicted cure of malaise in the economy.
Being a Labour member and surrounded by an easy life mentality inherited from the Menzies years, the Whitlam government managed to install more social welfare mechanisms, including the Medibank. This echoed previous moves in the US of the Great Society and other trends in centre left governed countries of Europe. In the meanwhile, he started the early drives of competition and made tentative moves in a short of period of time in office. Tariffs were cut across the board by 25%, and the Tariff Board was abolished in 1973. These moves were intended to address international trade issues and respond to demands of GATT on lowering tariffs.
Another major change to the "traditional" economy of Australia occurred in regard to the Australian dollar. It had been pegged to the British pound, but with the rise of US dollar after the Bretton Woods system, changed all that. The floating dollar was the reality of the world's financial market, and the Australian Labour government at the time had to devalue the Australian dollar in 1974, leaving the comfortable pegged pound system in doubt. This was followed by further devaluation under the Fraser government. Combined with tariff cuts, these were considered the prices to pay to make Australia a recognised force in international trade, meeting the raised standards, frankly, not to be marginalised or discriminated against by advanced economies.
The Fraser years touched on few issues in international trade, and in general his handling was soft, moderate on deregulation. This appeared unsatisfactory to earnest believers of newly emerged popular ideas from Britain under Mrs. Thatcher or Ronald Reagan of the US. The situation in Australia was not as bad and brutal as elsewhere; a copying of British Thatcherist tactics to get things moving was postponed and in any way would not be warmly welcomed. The far right Liberals of the 21st century now cry for lost opportunities under Fraser and for having had to wait for the time of John Howard to fully execute their wholesale plans.
The succeeding Labour governments ironically became the converts of Thatcherism and rolled out the first plans of change, which were conjured up by conservative politicians such as Howard but slipped off their hands. This is called new Labour, or dry Labour, fundamentally pro-labour but keen on shifting lines to suit macro economics situations. To them, principles of economics and international business are more essential than political economy, They would feel utterly isolated if they did not take actions similar to those in other developed economies, in a brave new world where socialism was mostly discredited and social welfare was attacked relentlessly. Even red China made tentative moves towards utilising market forces in the 1980s. How incredible and unimaginable it is that the right, left and communists were aiming at similar goals in the same decade. To the new Labour government, following the pack would be the right choice.
The more energetic and pragmatic player in the Labour government, Paul Keating, pushed hard for proposed changes to get under way, to the extent of making the famous jibe of Australia becoming a "banana republic". This smacks scare tactics, in a daring effort to generate a sense of crisis and urge towards change. The Labour government did seize upon the mood of the nation, and went down to implement many of market friendly reforms. It grew not shy of taking out some of conservative lines of rationalising from abroad and from the Coalition. In my early years in Australia, the impressions of this country remained full social welfare covers and multiculturalism, a pleasant, working society which was bathed in both free market and caring spirits. Little did or could I envisage the changes behind the scene and coming this way.
Deregulation included the floating of the Australian dollar. Thereafter, the value of the dollar is up to the financial market of the world to decided or to manipulate. Floating is now the rule, not stability which underpinned previous financial systems. An immediate consequence of this floating is wild swings and a roller-coaster ride in exchange rates. One of my university tutors, an American scholar, occasionally lamented the lost value in his salary, a nominal value to 1.2 times or more to the US dollar when he came to work in Australia down to 0.6-0.7 USD a dollar. On the other hand, many expatriate Australians used their foreign currencies to buy properties in Australia, feeling extraordinarily rich at the time of a much weaker AUD. Domestic housing booms ensued.
The Labour government also lifted those restrictions on foreign investment and ownership in Australia. From that time on, Australian corporations or assets can be easily transferred to foreign hands, either traditional Western businesses from the UK or the US, or from other sources such as Japan and East Asia. There was then a murmured story that a wealthy Singaporean businessman was so impressed by the beauty of Melbourne that he offered to buy the entire city up, to no avail in front of panicked Victorian officials.
Under deregulation, public corporations were not open to market competition but to grabs of foreign as well as domestic investors. Getting rid of these sometimes inefficiently run corporations completely or partially would generate huge financial gains to governments and sharply reduce budget deficits in an instant. This represents a kind of conventional wisdom, rather than any new thinking, since "selling family silvers" has been a tried move to cope with financial difficulties by noblemen, royalties, and commoners alike in the time long past. This time around in contemporary Australia, the differences in selling are that it involved public assets built up on public revenues from many years back.
Under the rationale of competition, state monopolies are to be gone. As a result, many state corporations went under the hammer or listed to attract external buyers. The Commonwealth Bank was offered for sale in three phases from 1991, finalising in 1996 when the bank became a public listed financial institution. Qantas Airways, the national airline, began to sell its 25% shares initially in 1993 to British Airways. A complete sale may not be sensible, for the implication of losing the proud national symbol of "flying kangaroo". A change to the airline's fate cannot be ruled out, as the most recent merger talks involved Singapore Airlines in some forms.
Deregulation of telecommunications experienced a much more dramatic turn and went on more thoroughly. The Australia Telecom had to share the market with a new comer Optus, which was owned by Sintel Group and opted into mobile phones, broadband and 3G businesses. At one time, a strange scene emerged. The national corporation of Telstra (Australia Telecom) was headed by an American CEO Frank Blount, while Optus, supposedly a foreign holding, was headed by a fair dinkum Australian CEO, Bob Mansfield. The irony could not be more in the open when they both spoke in public in their respective strong accents. This awkwardness was partially fixed when Mr. Mansfield took up the position of Chairman of Telstra in 2004, returning to his rightful place.
Competition of this kind evidently worked to the benefits of users. Calls from Australia to China used to cost 5 to 6 dollars a minute in my early years in Australia; then it came with special offers, then cheap phone cards, and eventually average rates dropped significantly, with monthly plans of low fees.
Telstra was also offered its shares to sell to the investors and the public. This behemoth cannot escape the chop of dismantling. The first public offering came in 1997. I fiddled through the thick Telstra prospectus, just for a peek, but hesitated on buying any offered shares. this proved a bad business decision, as the purchase of the first offering remain profitable on paper, even after long turbulence in later years. The second offering was in 1999 and made investors loath later, as price of the stock dropped and losses showed up on paper. The third offering, the T3, was considered in 2005, and is still in process amidst wranglings. It is just well a sequence of Terminator movies, as the actions taken undoubtedly aim at the termination of this mammoth corporation seen as a state liability. As the Terminator again, the state custodian will cease to function after the curtain fall.
For these selling, they were executed by the Coalition government, after Labour's initial drives. With the agenda of deregulation endorsed and state holding discredited at the federal level, state governments made their own moves, turning public utilities including water, gas, and power into private hands. Achieving budget balances was an ultimate goal to governments, and they to varying degrees favoured unloading available assets in a privatisation rush. Rail transport in Victoria is now in the hands of Connex, and toll roads came under Transurban. Other state governments, now all Labour, followed suit and do the same in a full speed forward drive.

An Australian Experience-colonial trade and coming changes

The economy of Australia is not static; people hear little about it in international business news because either the economy is a medium one or it is running well. It has long been a member of developed countries, so there is little chance for Australia to achieve a miracle "tiger" or "dragon" performance of some newly industrialised countries of past decades.
The general impression of Australia is a sleepy country built on the back of sheep or digging. That is perhaps true of the economy before WWII, when Australia simply supplied Britain and other European countries with what they could produce on this massive continent. With plentiful export earnings from supplies those European customers, Australia even saw no need to engage in the infamous opium trade in Asia, as the British unabashedly did in the 19th century. The economy of Australia then was not dissimilar to a banana republic, being an infant economy in a comfortable cuddle of a world power and recognising its sole customer. The situation was also like a bond formed between a provincial vegetable supplier and a wholesale handler of the imperial court.
This harmonious trade pattern faced formidable challenges after the world wars. Britain unavoidably lost its commanding position in the world, not merely in military terms. The country in decline moved quickly to rely on the US and further looked to continental Europe for economic survival and opportunities. Trade with Commonwealth countries, including Australia, became less significant, even over obligatory. To a large extent, the British economy was becoming more international, rather than imperial or colonial. It took Britain (the US) 12 years to become a formal member of the EEC in 1973, which plainly shows where the British saw their future interests lie.
This was obviously a dramatic change of attitude bordering on slight towards Australia. The special relations with the "mother country" were forever downgraded. Australia, and its government, finally realised that they now must be on their own and search their own way out. The immense shock of being marginalised went beyond a sense of failed business deals; the century-old beliefs and routine trade practices were shattered to pieces in a single year. The naked truth was revealed under the sun that Australia needed to concentrate on safeguarding its national interests and cease to fantasise the immense favours from one or another giver. Australia then became relieved from colonial duties and began to obtain an equal status in world trade. Finding new major trade partners would no longer be seen as a betrayal of that once glorious imperial order. In reference to the "British to the bootstraps" Menzies years, this episode of British departure and Australian Independence was both painful and reassuring.
Searching for trading markets is not an option, but a necessity. Australia moved to the direction of the US fairly quickly. Eventually and inevitably, Australia also became more conscious of the surrounding regional development and caught the wind of emerging markets up to its north. This open trade strategy has led Australia to doing brisk business in the Asia Pacific, including that with Japan and China. Six of Australia's top ten trading partners were East Asian economies in 2002. In 2004, 47% of trade was with East Asian economies, with exports to those economies taking up 50% of export total. In comparison, trade with the EU was 19% of the total, and export to the EU took 14% of the total, in which the UK took 43%, still the largest in that colossal economic bloc, on the basis of enduring links extended on from colonial times. The UK jumped to the third-largest merchandise trading partner of Australia in 1998, chiefly a result of the disease of Asian financial crisis. Once that economic downturn was by and large reversed, and especially when the economy of China moved forward unabated, Australia managed to have its continued trading business with East Asia secured.
Despite a sense of loss at the moment of British departure, the historic turn essentially set Australia free, and Australia moved quickly to fill the void with new orders from other customers, mainly Asian. Geographically, Australia is closer to Asia than to other major overseas markets. This has been ignored previously for two reasons: an over reliance on old, familiar markets and a disregard of unexpected rise of Asian economies after the war. Luckily, Australia soon realised the value of those Asian economies as stable customers of Australian made products and services.
This turn from dependence on traditional powers to newly industrialised economies proved a smart choice. It also enhanced the spirit of competition among Australian businesses and there emerged more adventurous tendencies for much needed improvement in business practices and for lifting efficiency in operations. I once accompanied a Chinese salesman to a small sized factory in Melbourne, where the manager candidly confessed that he needed to import Chinese made lathes, cheap while reliable, in order to improve the productivity and overall financial performance. That was a year in the mid 1980s, about the time the Hawke Labour government announced their significant industrial restructuring and other related reforms.
All these chain reactions depict an evolving process for Australia to get in touch with the new world economy beyond past imperial circles. While British influence had trickled down to every corners of the society and remains, it is no hard done to the economy that Australians found additional sources of revenues to enrich the country. Loyal sentiments is one thing; economic well being is another. This is a fundamental turn of event for Australia, from a colonial to a fair world trader, decisively making the country less rigid and the economy more resilient.
It is perhaps not a coincidence that the Whitlam Labour government took decisive actions soon after the UK's entry into the Common Market. What were the imperatives? Exactly the previous government's inaction and lack of understanding of changed environment, inside and outside the country. There began a soul searching and an urgent need to switch tracks for an economy better conditioned for the new era.
On the domestic front, not long before the 1980s, cross country transportation in Australia was in such a disintegrated state that goods carried by railways to another state had to be unloaded and reloaded at borders, so that they could be on the move again, on tracks of different widths. With its colonial history of expanding from one state to another, the Australian economy was much rationalised, with strong parochial concerns and thinking embedded in life from distant past. Touring around some regions of Australia, you still get a feeling of being in some quiet and isolated areas of Italy, where people mind their own affairs, have their set life patterns and deal with local or even district issues, not being overly bothered by economic fluctuations at national or international scenes.
These separate policies and strategies of the states are a legacy of early colonies and their power of persuasion at the time of the Federation. A prime example is Queensland under Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen, when the state was claimed not even a part of Australia. In his own words, "The trouble is that Queensland get branded as being a part of Australia". States may just well run policies and other affairs pretty much against other states. Again in Sir Joh's words, "What is good for Queensland is good for Australia".
The Australian economy of a mixed nature also plays a key role in inducing major reforms in following decades. It is commonly rationalised that when severe challenges emerged something in the society must be given up, in order to cut waste or slack and then to rise up to compete. The Australian type of welfare state was established with huge expenses, chiefly in government expenditures on benefit handouts and in resultant international problems in business doing. Complaints of drawbacks included large numbers of recipients of various welfare benefits, lowered level of market competition, tedious and unpredictable employee dismissal process, and above all high tax rates to pay for all those heavy welfare costs. Budget deficits caused the government to reconsider options; raising tax rates appeared not plausible, as the existing rates proved unbearable and scary to business and residents alike. The official policy of full employment, with the backing of unions, hampered business operations, in terms of red tape and slower response to market changes.
An external factor not to be ignored is that newly industrialised economies demonstrated their surprising strength in growth and upped the ante in competition on the basis of their lower production costs. To counter this rising wave of competition, lumbering developed economies, mostly welfare states like Australia, felt the urgency to make necessary changes.
All these concerns led to restructuring drives in Australia specifically targeting the public sector and institutions in later years, those viewed most inefficient and slack. Governments, in agony, turned to fully embrace a guiding ideology totally different from that of a welfare state. Big governments with extensive welfare covers of the old days went out of fashion and conveniently dismissed, at least among the social elites. As now commonly believed, Australia indeed craved for a jolt and big benefit cuts, in order to survive and revive.

An Australian Experience-mixed economy of market and welfare

Australia is a vibrant free market economy of the West, as long as the issues of private ownership, market mechanisms and free trade are concerned. This economy evolved from the British rules and systems, boasting best practices of free market and capitalism since the 18th century.
Being a market economy clears a major stumbling block for Australia to be recognised as a good place to do business. With this crucial credential, Australia is not vulnerable ideologically, in terms of not being discriminated against as those non market economies or authoritarian societies. Consider the ordeals China has had to endure through her path to be treated fairly and equally in the world economy, such as trade embargoes, sanctions, non-tariff trade barriers, anti-dumping actions and forced foreign exchange policies. Australia is lucky not to bear those heavy punches, as a result of having a recognised market economy solidly behind it.
Taking a closer look, Australia in recent decades has in fact a mixed economy, being identified with many long standing social democratic components and operations. In practice, a mode of mixed economy is usually the norm of the world, with the public (state) and private (market) sectors taking varying shares in the economy. these days, examples of total state controls are perhaps non-existent, and that of textbook, completely free market economies are hard to find as well. The central point is instead a preferred balance of the two sectors in a particular economy, rather than an absolute confirmation of merits of one extreme of the other.
Above all, Australia is a welfare state and provides adequate safety nets and cushions against frequent economic shocks rooted in a free market economy. This legacy status has this far endured torrents of assaults, from spreading Thatcherism and unrelenting privatisation pushes of the ruling conservative government. In this sense, the Australian economy is more of the Western and Northern European type, rather than the idealised free market economy people have heard so much about after the end of Cold War.
This welfare state rationale has worked to spread the wealth created more evenly across the society. Full social welfare covers are built on tax revenues and public asset earnings, and large numbers of public servants are employed to distribute them. With government paying for most of expenses in major areas of life, one almost has little to worry about incomes if not working at all. Many grew accustomed to taking benefits regularly from a local branch of Department of Social Security. I managed to get the meaning of "dole bludger" right soon after arriving Australia, since this term was so frequently mentioned in news and in conversations, often regarded as a kind of social disease out of a badly run system. It is also possible that these generous offerings have something to do with the fact of Australians winning world-level surfing champions so often.
As this welfare system touches upon people at lower end of social spectrum, proposals or actions to alter or restrain it would seem and assault on the conscience of the whole society and are very likely to encounter loud criticisms. This system often appears as a ratchet in a piece of complicated machinery, leaving little room for reversal or rewinding. To solve entangled problems arising in this web-like system, one needs not only a little courage and determination, but also a nice touch and patience, and above all a background of decisive and detectable shifts in public mood.
Some instances indicate to people the faults in this system, such as union strikes affecting public services. Many strikes targeted governments rather than business corporations, for wage increases and benefits, disregarding shortfalls in government coffers. At one stage, tram drivers and conductors locked up their trams in central Melbourne for weeks. Those tram cars resembled abandoned street vehicles and soon began to smell. In such industrial actions, workers behaved not dissimilar to Chinese workers in state run enterprises before reforms, and their employers, governments at all levels, was not able to adopt the dismissal tactics private companies would find convenient. These incidents helped a mood change in the society about wide social welfare.
With the existence of public owned companies and state regulatory institutions, a managed balance was expected between the rich and the poor, between output and costs, and between productivity and social welfare. This ideal status quo had indeed been a reality in Australia, a more or less well apportioned mixed economy, until the raging bull of economic rationalism charged in the china shop.
The Australian economy has similarities to and difference from the economy of the US. Australia has an extraordinarily large continent to its own, but it does not have a massive domestic market to fall back on, unlike the US economy. Australia has only coastal regions to rely on, and domestic markets have insurmountable troubles to grow huge, even with a prediction of population growth to 30 million in the near future. Sucking in money from new immigrants has been balanced by constant local concerns over tides of new arrivals and environmental degradation. The economy then has relied largely on exports to bring in most earnings, from exports to motherland Britain, to the US, and to East Asian economies of new prowess. Australia is constantly in a process seeking export markets around the globe.
Australia's economic links with East Asia has been established with certain reluctant, considering the origins of this country and strong bonding with the mother country Britain. The industrialised Japan became an early taker of large quantity of Australian exports. At the height of the 1980s when that economy was hot, it was completely not comprehensible to witness Japan's long recession and mediocre performance thereafter. The economy of Japan impacted on Australia with large orders and investment of various forms in Australia. A good example is the development of Gold Coast regions of Queensland, transforming sleepy beach areas into splashy holiday resorts and fashionable dwellings. In the car industry, Toyota and Mitsubishi built car plants to sell directly to local customers, eventually making them recognised as domestic car markers of the country. Extremely old Japanese moved from Japan into purpose built villages in Queensland to be cared for during remaining days.
Although it was quite hard to foresee the reversal of fate between China and Japan at the end of the beginning of the 20th century, it is now an acceptable educated guess of a resurgent China in relative terms to Japan's remaining clout by the early 2010s. Despite all these economic rises and downturns in other places, Australia is in a position to tough it out, receiving double gains when new powers (and buyers) come to the front door. All the signs of a healthy economy and enviable living standards hinge on export markets to bring home the bacon.
Like the US, Australia has been importing from other countries to meet demands of local consumers. The list of imports is long and with wide varieties. Australia has found ways to pay for all these imports, with its bumper output of minerals and metals for export, plus manufactured goods. Some exports in the latter category are fairly high tech and in niche areas, such as medical equipment. Chinese hospitals have long used Australian made equipment, even during the high times of the Cultural Revolution. There was also a wide recognition among Chinese medical professionals of quality products Australians can make in this exclusive manufacturing field. Again in Hong Kong, the super efficient MTR system has it passenger car remodeled by a contracted Australian company, a job well done in an oversea market, but not to Melbourne's own rail systems with many aging and even shabby cars. The pull factor on the basis of business orders works wonders in a globalised world market, providing opportunities for Australian experts and business corporations.

An Australian Experience-Terra Nullius and Native Titles

Another hole in almost unblemished records of pioneering human rights and equality of Australia is the issue of Aborigines. The foundation of colonisation of lands of native peoples by the civilised world is terra nullius. That weired concept gave right for seizing land colonists found uninhabited, which were in fact inhabited by "primitive" communities or tribes. This is undoubtedly very convenient for adventurous European explorers, as whenever they saw peoples who did not dress or behave like them, they assumed the land of those groups of people was uninhabited and unused, at the very least unproductively. The essence of terra nullius is to establish a legal basis for any actions taken, seizure or possession. As there may not have been counterparts present for the European deals and treaty signing of early modern times, they rightfully assumed a non-existence of sovereignty and went ahead for justified land grabs.
Under these circumstances, terra nullius proved to be a powerful concept to convince colonising explorers, and later local inhabitants, that they were not exercising brutal conquering of peoples and civilisations, but undertaking rightful annexation and acquisition of land unoccupied and unused.
Back to Australia, even with today's population, large chunks of land of this continent are still uninhabited, and there might be a chance to apply terra nullius again. The difference now is that there is an authority to deal with. A troubling fact emerges that this authority over the whole of Australia was established by the people who gained their claim and identity through initially applying terra nullius to just a tiny part of the Australian continent when the first landing was made, with local Aboriginal tribes were in striking distance from landing sailors. The following continent wide exploration and extension of government authority derived from this small body of early administration. The question remains how this timidly originated colony could claim land over a vast continent. There must be pushes sanctioned by this European district authority and repeated uses of terra nullius in the following colonisation of two centuries. Each time terra nullius was applied, the significance of government sanction increased in proportion, and the concept itself became phony and more for disguise purposes.
The customary land rights of Aborigines overlap with pastoral or mining rights of European settlers. Which rights are to extinguish the other? This did not bother the government issuing property rights to settlers or companies, on the premises of terra nullius and crown grants. The ambiguity came to a head when the Mabo ruling highlighted the native title issue. The High Court of Australia in 1992 judged traditional use and continuous association with the land is with native Aborigines of Torres Strait. The Keating government, in response to this landmark ruling, passed the Native Title act through the Parliament. The other court ruling on the Wik case in 1996 allowed coexistence of leasehold grants and native titles. By this time, the ruling Coalition government took a different approach and amended the Act in 1998 to set record straight, that is pastoral leases have priority over native titles and cannot be taken over if a claim is made.
To a significant extent, these court rulings repudiate and overturn the concept of terra nullius, the very foundation of colonisation of Australia. It is a man made wonder that terra nullius shielded early explorers and colonists from bearing moral and legal pressure in ruthless land grabs for that long. As a result of this course of reversing verdict, some panic surfaced in certain quarters of the society in recent times, as people expected consequences of new title claims over existing land titles.
I wrote to Mr. Robert Tickner, the then Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, in 1993 about the land claim issue, making comparable references to Han Chinese settlements in Taiwan of two centuries. Existing Taiwan tribes had their land areas secured, while Han Chinese opened unexplored areas in Taiwan for farming and commercial purposes, under government supervision and scrutiny. It seems that Aboriginal communities in Australia should be able to get similar deals and gain certain security for their distinctive modes of life. Mr. Tickner in his reply stressed the official policy of reconciliation under Labour government, and his tone was indeed conciliatory. It is interesting to note that the terms used in his reply are indigenous Australians and non indigenous Australians, wider Australian community in his words. This is a step to recognising Aborigines' rights and narrowing the gap between the two, at least in terms of all being "Australians". Unfortunately, Labour lost office two years later, and the Wik case ruling heightened the tension and brought out certain urgency. The conservative Liberal government follows a trend in the society to portray Aborigines' disadvantages as real advantages in receiving extra government benefits, and inclines to relegate reconciliation to a low place in policy agendas, giving way to intolerance and impatience toward the native title issue.
In a similar vine to the twists of the "White Australia" policy, opinions and divisions on the Aborigines issue shift more unpredictably. Some quarters of the society take treatments of Aborigines as over generous. Even the open display of warmth towards outstanding Aborigines like Cathy Freeman during the Sydney Olympics petered out. Harsher remarks and tightening of handouts to Aborigines have gained currency in wider society under strengthening conservative influence.
In the short term, political parties may shirk their responsibilities in dealing with this matter head on, as they assess the costs of title claims being upheld and unhappy impression some sectors of the society may form toward them. In the long term, abandoning reconciliation and delays in formulating decisive policies and programmes incur dearer costs to Australia as a standard bearer of true democracy. It would be better to close this page at the earliest possible time and amend the records of a humanitarian society in Australia.

The Australia politics is thus stable and stimulating. Outsider observers may be not completely satisfied with the fact of a paucity of politicians turning into statesmen, of world stature and claim. The Australian type of parliamentary democracy maintains a high level of public participation and representation, bringing political figures close to the electorate and safeguarding the interests of lower social groups, as well as of higher ones. Amidst all these seemingly mundane and non-sensational affairs, the population is well cared for, with grievances and injustice mostly properly dealt with. The rise of conservatism in this country, as a mirror image of that in the US, presents a worry, but it is an understandable counter balance to the once overwhelming momentum of progressive changes in previous decades, initiated by rare charismatic Labour leaders of Hawke and Keating. This current reversing tendency cannot rule out future swings and reduced influence of the ultra right camp. Inevitably, moderates in politics always return and make radicals marginalised. Revisionism on multi-culturalism and Aborigines' rights will halt the undertakings for some considerable time ahead, but will not dismiss the tasks being carried out for long. Arch conservatism will grow out of fashion, another political correctness falling into ashes. It is the essence of an egalitarian society that counts in Australia.

An Australian Experience-from white to a right mix

The image of Australia is often that of a continent of whites, mostly British, then and now. This is the legacy of the long standing controversial "White Australia" mentality before and after the Federation. A government policy was initiated as a bill to be passed through the Parliament, and was fiercely defended by Alfred Deakin. The bill then became the Immigration Restriction Act 1901. Labour leaders supported the bill as well, many of them having inserted similar clauses in Labour party doctrines before. A prominent Labour Premier of NSW Jack Lang explained these Labour initiatives in his memoir "I Remember" with stern words of justification.
The decision to adopt a "White Australia" policy was a democratic one, given the massive and loud rhetoric in the country at the time. There had been problems during the gold rush and other regional development, where hard working Asians tried to share fortunes found with European settlers. Unions worried about cheap labour from Asian workers and then their weakening power in business and politics. Unions of white workers then took the matter into their own hands and pushed for an exclusion of non-whites from this country.
This national movement was in sync with vast and fast expansion of colonisation in the 19th century, during which a white rule steamrolled many other existing races. It is then hard to imagine that in this antipodean corner of the world people would behave any differently and offer fair deals to races which were subjected to superior white rule everywhere else. Democracy or civil liberty did not provide noticeable protection for particular minority groups; rather these ideas boosted the morale of white campaigners for a drastic, formalised solution to the race issue before the colonies were declared a sovereign nation.
Since Australia had a small population for this huge land, European Caucasian descendants and politicians decided to reserve it for the good of their original motherland, England. To them, this immigration act was not selfish, but an honest one. For an isolated continent of Australia, it would better be kept this way for one acceptable race and skin colour. The purity would guarantee later success and sustain an ideal nation. The process to pass the bill was considered by many a gentleman taking action on some kind of injustice. Great minds of this modern democracy in time of expansion did not intend to hide their straightforward prejudice and discrimination, as words of "colour", "aliens", or "racial purity" were common slurs, because social customs and norms of the era permitted them to do so. This somewhat sarcastic fact resembles the glorious Roman Empire where citizens held all rights and were served by slaves who got none. The support for the act was quite universal within the country. As the legislative arm of the government passed the bill and the motherland issued their consent, all was legal, to be enforced in a systematic and humane way.
The Whitlam Labour government formally dropped the "White Australia" policy, 70 or so years after the act was enacted. Australian whites by then no longer felt threatened by "coloured" people, the population of the country grew several folds, as such the sense of isolation and sparsity under massive waves of Asians waned considerably. Those prevalent feeling of helplessness in Federation years had ceased to make sense. More importantly, a matured civil society has been solidly established in Australia.
By the time I first set foot on Australia's soil in the mid 1980s, things turned out quite differently. The "White Australia" policy had been superseded by multi-culturalism. What a dramatic reversal this was ! This leap of faith was without doubt a gigantic one and must have skipped over the previous insurmountable. It is now difficult to pin point what caused the government and the public to retreat from that formerly steadfastly upheld policy. As there was a higher calling of humanism above lingering colonial mentality, the concrete wall against Asian, non-European immigration came to fall piece by piece in Australia.
During my long stay in Australia, there were growing trends of bi-lingual education and learning under the guidance of multi-culturalism. This was first taken as an additional way to make assimilation less troublesome for non-English speaking people, then it is understood that extra language capabilities could facilitate trade and bring more bonuses to the Australian economy. In particular, of Asian languages offers some helps in communication to smooth out difficulties Australia may face in the Asia Pacific region. By the time of the Sydney Olympics, there were significant progress as the outcome of effort and hard work by Australian people and the government. During the bidding process and around the Games, Australia's promotion pieces highlighted the harmonious coexistence of various races in this country, including many images of Asian and Aborigines in this big family, consciously avoiding giving people an impression of white dominance in the society.
As an Australian citizen of Chinese origin, I in principle agree with this courageous statement made in those years of high spirit, as people can see clearly the endeavours of Labour governments in the past decade. A minor concern is on the future and continuity. There are incidents against this principle of multi-culturalism, and open racism become more visible. This is not just a matter of shifting government policies; it derives from a century long dilemma of coexistence and equal standing. It is vital to uphold this multi-culturalism under government of both parties, despite resistance and loathing of particular social groups.
Old habits die hard. The colour prejudices could easily spring up. It is not an uncommon street scene of Aussie teenagers or adults in their bulky cars or utes, often without mufflers, sitting or bursting out abusive slurs toward Asian passers-by. Even if you are well educated and far from looking like a third world refugee, this encounter of racial abuse often come at unexpected moments and could totally ruin one's good regard of Australian people a a whole in a split of a second. This is a scene you don't encounter in Asian regions towards westerns, slurs not racially based targeting white people. These are scenes almost exclusive in Western countries, deriving from an unease over immersing Asian immigrants and mirroring deep bigotry in seeing an imagined shrinking space for whites.
During my years teaching at a university in Melbourne, white and Chinese Australians clashed occasionally but openly in classroom, arguing the truthfulness of certain events involving Chinese culture or proper racial treatment. Some radical second generation local Chinese students vented their anger in after class chats with me towards a number of "arrogant Aussie" classmates. I declined their invitation to attend their action meetings, on the ground of neutrality of a teachers. A more recent indication was the sudden eruption of sentiments in the racially charged incident at the quiet Cronulla beach of Sydney in 2005, in stark contrast to promoted images of racial harmony during the Sydney Olympics. The government staggered for a while before taking some decisive actions.
Existence of racism can be easily denied by even the participants of this occurring; it is there because many are simply not aware of it, and it is so natural a thing in daily life and in customary heritage that people thought it harmless. As they are not target of racism themselves, it is hard for them to recognise something out there as not quite right. It is perhaps a little too much to ask for a showing of a perfect human nature so that the slightest racism has nowhere to stand. In real life, nasty human nature keeps coming out to play absurd racist tricks with people's good intentions, and the tasks ahead remain as restraining racist currents to a minimum and weeding those elements out in a consistent way.
From an overwhelming all-embracing "White Australia" reality to a transforming multi-culturalism society, it has only been a mere three decades in the century. The leap in faith is remarkably gigantic indeed, while recurring racist tides appear inevitable during this process. The crux of the matter is whether the initial progress of multi-culturalism is truly irreversible and whether there is a risk of tolerance and good will becoming rare commodities, if imperative issues are not handled properly. Te conclusion one can arrive at, based on the path of multi-culturalism and recent racist displays, is that it is extremely hard to eradicate racial discrimination white clean, even in Australia.

An Australian Experience-state politics in Victoria

There is an incredible situation recurring in contemporary Australian politics. A federal government under one political party might be surrounded by state governments under the opposition party. Before the election defeat suffered by the Keating government in 1996, Liberal governments mushroomed in states. Conversely, the current Howard government of Liberal Party in Canberra is virtually encircled by Labour governments in all states, especially sandwiched by opposing states of Victoria and NSW. At a 2006 Council of Australian Governments (COAG) meeting, Howard was tightly surrounded by eight state and territory Labour leaders. It sounded quite possible that when they re-emerged from the meeting to face the press, a coup might be announced for a change of federal government.
The major means for the federal government to govern even if all states are run by the opposition is of course tax redistribution and transfer, which provide funding to major projects in states. For the 2004-2005 financial year, the federal government collected taxes of AUD$220 billion, while the states and territories could only manage a mere $41.6 billion. As expected, the states would rather beg the federal government for funding, despite ideological differences.
In the great state of Victoria, Labour has a long tradition of organising labour force and winning governments. A good example is state Labour Premier John Cain. I had wondered in early years why on earth there was a public park in northern Melbourne, Thornbury, as a memorial park for John Cain, a middle-aged Premier in the mid-1980s. I then learned that the honour belongs to John Cain senior, as they both won the prize to serve as Premiers. The Cain junior is not a figure to be easily forgotten, partly due to his slim stature and his deeply wrinkled face, the latter being taken jokingly among my friends as signs of what a hard life he must have been through. Much to the relief of a second language speaker, his English is clear, brief, and easy to follow. He projected an image of modesty and an unassuming person. His Ivanhoe residence in a side street does not look grand or posh at all, at least by outside appearance.
The successor to John Cain was Ms. Joan Kirner, a teacher by training and the first female Premier in state history. There were a lot of laughter of her appearance and styles in crazy TV comedies such as "Full Frontal". Her public image was overshadowed somewhat by an excellent actress Magda Szubanski who performed impersonation of Kirner in comedy shows. A serious political leader with that kind of unflattering image also bore full brunt of messy economic handling by previous Labour leaders, thus was reduced to a regular subject of ridicules. Kirners last ditch management of the economy and state finances failed to fill the big holes in state budgets. This miserable failure led to a change of government and the rising of the following political figure, her arch rival and more entertaining, in a sense, Jeff Kennett.
Jeff Kennett won for the Liberals in 1992, after a decade of Labour rule. That was a landslide loss for Labour, for their blunders, scandals, and mismanagement. With clear majorities in both Houses, Kennett could do whatever he desired. This handy convenience fit extremely well with his ego and grand pet plans. The reforms under Kennett were wide ranging, drastic, and in some cases, savage. The main purpose was to hurt those sacred cows of previous Labour governments. There were massive layoffs, and Kennett found ways to beat unions, let loose of employers rights to fire employees at will. Since teachers unions were considerably powerful, the Kennett government simply closed down many public schools and sacked teachers in large numbers. Empty grounds and buildings in those closed schools eerily resembled movie scenes of a ghost town. This devastation was so horrendous that even Liberal frontbenchers a decade later admitted the wrongdoings and ensuing damages, partly for rebuilding their credentials in education after loosing government offices.
This "slash and burn" strategy in fact worked for Kennett, as hurting and painful measures are to be implemented when they had a clear majority. When the next election comes, Kennett would be able to soften the shocks by offering some sweet candies, like abandoning certain draconian or unpopular charges. People with short memories would jump on the baits and allow the administration to stay. This threatening and taming process could well be a textbook politics in action for all interested.
The loudest protests were from unions, with John Halfpenny of Trades Hall Council telling rallying protesters to maintain their rage. Kennett said in public that he could not negotiate with unions with a gun pointed to his head, but staging a strike was the only gun unions had against announced redundancies and layoffs. As the election was just over a short time before, there was no possibility of a fresh election, and the huge majorities Liberals had in the Parliament could not be reduced either. The mandate under democracy was just willingly handed to this aggressive and ruthless politician. Unless Liberal MPs voluntarily crossed the floor and caused the government to collapse, there would be no chance for translating those public demonstrations and strikes into any significant change in government or in its policy. As those same MPs just began to enjoy the status of a ruling party, they had little thought of upsetting their brilliant leader.
The Kennett downfall presents a textbook case of disastrous overconfidence in politics. In 1999, state Labour endorsed a new leader, and an election was to be called soon. Kennett saw no coming threat and entered election campaigning with a prediction to win comfortably as was before. He certainly had little idea how many constituencies out there he had profoundly alienated and enraged in previous years. Election results disobeyed his wishes this time, and the two major parties reached a stalemate. The fate of a new government hung in the hands of three independents. The proud and cocky Kennett could not bear the thought that his post of Premier was being decided by a number of his opponents, and his almighty party had to bargain, humbly, with those independent MPs for a favour, those names Kennett had hardly heard of before. On the basis of Kennetts unpleasant track records and Labours persuasion, a new government of Labour was formed with support from the independents. Kennett was gone, together with his once massive, awesome Parliamentary majorities.
When I read this news in Hong Kong about Kennett losing, I had a deep feeling inside of huge relief, which cannot be described adequately in words. Regardless of party preferences, this overbearing giant in state politics finally left the centre stage, so that everyone else can get on with their normal lives. This is not merely a perspective of ones personal traits, but of the extreme extent a politician could exercise his ideologies to, which is scary. Restructuring was exciting, even profitable to some, but high social costs and immense shocks eventually wore people down.
In his high days, Kennett played his fair game in Victoria and attracted attention from desperate federal Liberals. He descended as a saviour of the Liberals nationwide and ran Victoria in an assuring manner. The federal Liberals seriously considered to draft Kennett to Canberra, for a test of leadership. Kennett declined, perhaps sensing unexplained complexities and risks that could ruin his good records of governance. What could be achieved comfortably in a state may not be obtainable at the federal level. Victoria remained the power base for Kennett, even after he quit Victorian politics, he stayed in the state and looked happy not being portrayed as a political figure of national stature. State Liberals, however, lost their tracks and are still bearing the burden of losing elections for about a decade after Kennett had his downfall.