The Wild Reed: July 2017

Sunday, July 30, 2017

Guruk Seascapes, from Dawn to Dusk

Guruk: the traditional Birpai name for that area of Australia that includes what is now known as Port Macquarie.

Images: Michael J. Bayly (Town Beach Oxley Beach, Flynns Beach, Shelly Beach, and Lighthouse Beach – Guruk, July 2017).

NEXT: Good Mr. Dawes

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Return to Guruk
• Overcast Skies

• Port Macquarie Days (2014)
• Seascapes (2014)
• Diamond Head
• On Sacred Ground
• An Afternoon at Flynns Beach (2010)
• Town Beach (2010)
• Tacking Point Lighthouse (2010)
• A Day Roving the Mid North Coast
• Flynns Beach (2010)
• Lighthouse Beach (2010)
• On the Rocks . . .
• Beach Cricket (2009)
• An Evening Stroll (and Theological Musings)
• Starfish
• The Empty Beach (2008)
• A Summer Afternoon (2008)
• Rocky Beach (2006)
• Flynns Beach (2006)
• Pacific Skies
• A Spring Swim (2006)
• Coastal Views (2006)
• A Solitary Ramble (2006)

Friday, July 28, 2017

The Neoliberal Economic Doctrine: A View from Australia

A common thread that runs through The Wild Reed is the critique of the economic doctrine known as neoliberalism.

As I've noted previously, I first became aware of the term neoliberalism when I was involved in various protests against corporate-led globalization in the late 1990s/early 2000s. Thanks to the writings of people such as Susan George, Vandana Shiva, David Korten, and Naomi Klein, I not only began to understand that neoliberalism was the name given to the "profits over people" ideology that underpins corporate-led globalization, but that such an ideology must be resisted if environmental sustainability is to be achieved and humanity is to have a future marked by justice and compassion.

As an economic ideology, neoliberalism is most famously associated with the policies introduced by Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom and Ronald Reagan in the United States. In the 1990s many of these policies were embraced by the Democratic party in the U.S. under President Bill Clinton. Some academics see the implementation of neoliberal policies and the acceptance of neoliberal economic theories in the 1970s as the root of financialization and of one of this form of capitalism's most destabilizing consequences, the financial crisis of 2007–08.

Writing after this and a string of other crises, George Monbiot reminds us that "neoliberalism sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling, a process that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency. It maintains that 'the market' delivers benefits that could never be achieved by planning."

Because of its devastating economic and political impact on people, culture, and the environment, Monbiot refers to neoliberalism as "the God that failed" and as "the zombie doctrine at the root of all our problems."

Susan George offers some helpful historical perspective and some hope when, in her invaluable little book, Another World Is Possible, If . . ., she writes: "Whatever the qualifiers used – corporate-led, finance-driven, or neoliberal – they all describe world capitalism’s most recent phase which it entered roughly around 1980. From the onset, say about 500 years ago, capitalism existed as a global phenomenon. The difference today lies in its scope and the nature of its major actors: giant corporations and mega-financial institutions now have remarkable latitude to set rules that govern everyone, especially because they also frequently control the media. They seek ever greater power to bend national and international policies to fit their needs. . . . Fortunately, both anger and revolt are on the rise."

Indeed. . . . And in his July 24, 2017 column, Sydney Morning Herald economics editor Ross Gittins (right) not only acknowledges this backlash but places it within the Australian socio-economic context. He also coins the phrase "bizonomics" to describe the neoliberal belief that what is good for big business is automatically good for the economy. Following is an excerpt from Gittins' recent column, "Big Business Influence Wanes as Public Rejects Credo of 'Bizonomics'."

The collapse of the "neoliberal consensus" is as apparent in Oz as it is in Trump's America and Brexitting Britain, but our big-business people are taking a while to twig that their power to influence government policy has waned.

Their trouble is the way the era of micro-economic reform initiated by the Hawke-Keating government in the 1980s eventually degenerated into "bizonomics" – the pseudo-economic belief that what's good for big business is good for the economy.

Part of this is the belief that when you privatise a government-owned business, or outsource the delivery of government services to for-profit providers – when you move economic assets and activity from the "public" column to the "private" column – you're self-evidently raised economic efficiency and wellbeing. . . . These days, it's not just leftie troublemakers who doubt that benefits going direct to big business will trickle down to the rest of us, it's every punter in the street.

Another element of bizoneconomics is governments in many anglo-phone countries maintaining the facade, but not the substance, of business regulation. They tell the public it's protected by laws governing treatment of consumers, employees, shareholders, taxpayers and others, but then rob the regulatory agencies – in our case the ACCC, Fair Work ombudsman, ASIC and the Tax Office – of the resources they need to adequately enforce the laws they administer.

In this game of nudging and winking, it didn't take long for business to realise that, its chances of apprehension being tiny, obeying any law it found standing in the way of higher profits was now optional. And that, though they could never admit it, this was the way governments of both colours secretly wanted it to be. This is what explains the plethora of business law-breaking being uncovered by Fairfax's Adele Ferguson and other investigative journalists. What's notable is the way the business lobby groups have failed to condemn corporate law-breaking.

A few decades of bizonomics have left our big business chiefs with the assurance they possess a God-given right to have their every demand accommodated.

Sorry guys, democracies don't work that way. In the end, power derives from voting punters, not corporations making generous donations to party coffers. The donations work only as long as the pollies can use them to amass enough votes for a government trying to swing it for big business.

That's what's no longer happening and the sooner you wake up to it, the sooner you can move to profit-making Plan B: find it within your business, not by lobbying Canberra.

– Ross Gittins
Excerpted from "Big Business Influence Wanes
as Public Rejects Credo of 'Bizonomics'"
The Sydney Morning Herald
July 24, 2017

NEXT: Guruk Seascapes, From Dawn to Dusk

Related Off-site Links:
The Era of Neoliberalism Is Ending and Reversing – Ross Gittins (RossGittins.com, July 19, 2017).
GPO Endgame: Sale of Most Loved Building to Singaporean Billionaires An Asset Strip – Elizabeth Farrelly (The Sydney Morning Herald, July 29, 2017).
Murray Darling Scandal Exposes Fatal Flaws in Turnbull’s Government – David Tyler (The AIM Network, July 30, 2017).
Land Titles Registry Sell-off Is Scraping the Bottom of the Barrel – Elizabeth Farrelly (The Sydney Morning Herald, April 7, 2017).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Quote of the Day – September 15, 2016
• A Lose/Lose Situation
• In a Blow to Democracy, U.S. Supreme Court Affirms Corporate Personhood
• Quote of the Day – June 8, 2017
• Progressive Perspectives on Jeremy Corbyn's Achievement in the UK Election
• "It Is All Connected"
• Making the Connections . . . Then and Now
• Standing Together
• Quote of the Day – June 30, 2016

Monday, July 24, 2017

Return to Guruk

. . . a.k.a Port Macquarie

I've spent the last week-and-a-half in the Australian coastal town of Port Macquarie, which since 2002 has been home to my parents, Gordon and Margaret Bayly (pictured with me above last Thursday, July 20).

I was happy to see that on the local council's new-look signage for the town the aboriginal word for the area – Guruk – is being used. According to the Port Macquarie News, it's a move that has the support of the Birpai Local Aboriginal Land Council which said that the town council’s decision "promoted inclusiveness and helped celebrate aboriginal culture and history."

As I've noted previously, Port Macquarie is situated on the Hastings River and has a population of around 45,000. For most of the year (with the exception of the summer holidays around Christmas) it's a quiet place, owing largely to the fact that the busy Pacific Highway bypasses the town about seven kilometres inland.

The area around the Hastings (Aboriginal: Doongang) has been home to the Birpai Aboriginal peoples for tens of thousands of years.

Left: A photograph from the Thomas Dick Collection.

Traditional Birpai life changed forever with the mapping and naming of the area by Surveyor-General John Oxley in 1818. Three years later in 1821 Port Macquarie was founded as a penal settlement for convicts sentenced for secondary crimes committed in New South Wales. The region was opened to free settlers nine years later.

Above: A rock formation on Flynns Beach that I find myself drawn to . . . and which brings to mind the writings of two authors I respect.

In A Short History of Myth, Karen Armstrong notes that, “The earliest mythologies taught people to see through the tangible world to a reality that seemed to embody something else. But this required no leap of faith, because at this stage there seemed to be no metaphysical gulf between the sacred and the profane. When these early people looked at a stone, they did not see an inert, unpromising rock. It embodied strength, permanence, solidity and an absolute mode of being that was quite different from the vulnerable human state. Its very otherness made it holy. A stone was a common hierophany – revelation of the sacred – in the ancient world.” (And, I would add, in the spirituality of many contemporary indigenous peoples around the world.)

“Trees, stones and heavenly bodies were never objects of worship in themselves”, writes Armstrong, “but were revered because they were epiphanies of a hidden force that could be seen powerfully at work in all natural phenomena, giving people intimations of another, more potent reality.”

In his book Karingal: A Search for Australian Spirituality, Rod Cameron similarly notes that, “Australian Aborigines believe that the Spirit People, the creative spirits of the Dreamtime, still live, [and that] after their epic wanderings during which they blessed the land with fertility, they retired to caves and to other sacred places to die. Their bodies are represented in the features of the sacred sites but their spirits still live and are creatively active.”

Above: Dawn on Flynns Beach – Sunday, July 23, 2017.

Above: A convict-era well.

Above: Standing at right with (from left) Geoff, Cheryl, Dad, Mum, and Yonni – Sunday, July 16, 2017.

Right: Mum, wearing earrings hand-made by singer/songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie. I bought these earrings when I saw Buffy perform last summer in Bayfield, Wisconsin.

Left: Dad (at right) with family friend Bob – Friday, July 23, 2017.

Above: With Mum and Dad at Jimmy's Bar, Port Macquarie – Thursday, July 13, 2017.

Above: Mum and Dad with a group of their Port Macquarie friends. From left: Gwen, Glenis, Chris, Cec, Albert, Mum, Dad, Peter, and Don – Tuesday, July 18, 2017.