Victoria’s truth-telling commission: to move forward, we need to answer for the legacies of colonisation

Harry Hobbs, University of Technology Sydney

Last year, the Victorian government announced it would establish a Truth and Justice process to “recognise historic wrongs and address ongoing injustices for Aboriginal Victorians”.

Since then, the government has worked in partnership with the First Peoples’ Assembly to figure out how that process would operate.

Today, the government and the First Peoples’ Assembly co-chairs announced the process would be run by the Yoo-rrook Justice Commission (named for the Wemba Wemba/Wamba Wamba word for “truth”). The commission will be led by five commissioners and, importantly, will be invested with the powers of a royal commission.

The announcement was made at Coranderrk, a former Aboriginal reserve outside Melbourne. The site is significant. Dispossessed from their country, a group of Aboriginal people were allowed in the 1860s to settle on a small parcel of land deemed unsuitable for agriculture.

Rebuilding their community, the group farmed and sold produce into Melbourne. Their success caused resentment among non-Indigenous farmers and the Aboriginal Protection Board.

In 1886, after many years of increasing pressure from the board, residents issued the Coranderrk Petition to the Victorian government, protesting the heavy restrictions that had been placed on their lives. Their petition went unanswered. Residents were evicted, and the land was eventually reclaimed by the government.

The Coranderrk Petition is one example of how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities actively resisted colonisation. It also shows governments can — and often do — act in ways that caused deep injustices. It is these, and many other events, that have motivated calls for truth in the present day.

The Aboriginal resistance in Coranderrk is considered one of the first Indigenous campaigns for land rights and self-determination in the country.
State Library of Victoria

What are truth commissions?

Truth commissions reflect the idea that there can be “no justice without truth”.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have often made this connection. For example, in the Adelaide Regional Dialogue, which preceded the First Nations Constitutional Convention (and the Uluru Statement from the Heart) in 2017, participants agreed

we want the history of Aboriginal people taught in schools, including the truth about murders and the theft of land, Maralinga, and the Stolen Generations, as well the story of all the Aboriginal fighters for reform. Healing can only begin when this true history is taught.

Truth commissions have been set up in many countries around the world as a means to investigate and redress past human rights abuses. Since the first commission began in 1974, at least 40 national truth commissions have been established.

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The most prominent truth commission is the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Set up to investigate human rights abuses committed under apartheid, the commission’s hearings were broadcast live to a captivated nation. Controversially, however, the commission could grant amnesty to perpetrators who confessed to their crimes.

Another example comes from Canada. In 2008, the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission began documenting the history and legacy of the country’s notorious residential schools system, which operated from 1878–1996.

Under this system, First Nations children were forcibly removed from their homes and families and put into boarding schools run by the government and churches. Similar to the Stolen Generations in Australia, the government had a mission “to kill the Indian in the child”, according to a national apology by then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper in 2008.

Concluding in 2015, the commission issued 94 “calls to action” to redress the legacies of the school system and advance the process of Canadian reconciliation.

Why an Australian truth commission is unique

The South African and Canadian truth commissions are valuable examples, but the process in Victoria will need to be designed differently. Thankfully, the government has acknowledged this.

Two points stand out. First, truth commissions are often set up by a new government to investigate human rights abuses under a previous regime.

However, this isn’t comparable to the abuses suffered by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Although the invasion and massacres happened many years ago, the consequences of colonisation continue to this day. This fact was recognised by the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody in 1991, which said,

so much of the Aboriginal people’s current circumstances, and the patterns of interactions between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal society, are a direct consequence of their experience of colonialism and, indeed, of the recent past.

In Australia, a truth-telling process should not simply document history and investigate “historic abuses”. Rather, it should serve as a bridge to “draw history into the present”.

Second, truth commissions often focus on individual human rights violations.

This also might not be appropriate in Australia, where many perpetrators of violence are likely to have died. More importantly, Indigenous peoples see little distinction between individual acts of violence, such as massacres, and the broader structural forces behind the laws, policies and attitudes that gave rise to and encouraged such violence.

A truth-telling process can help to identify those connections for non-Indigenous Australians.

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How Victoria’s inquiry can be a model for the nation

The Victorian announcement places more pressure on the Commonwealth government to implement the Uluru Statement. After all, the call for truth and justice is made by all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, not just those in Victoria.

The Uluru Statement called for three steps to empower Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples:

• putting a First Nations Voice in the Australian Constitution

• the establishment of a Makarrata Commission that would oversee a process of agreement-making and then a process of truth-telling.

Voice. Treaty. Truth.

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The Victorian government shows this sequenced reform process can work. The First Peoples’ Assembly in the state worked with the government to develop the Yoo-rrook Justice Commission. That commission and the truth-telling process will guide the push for treaties between Aboriginal communities and the state.

The Commonwealth government initially rejected the call for a First Nations Voice. Although its opposition has softened, it remains reluctant to put the Voice in the constitution.

This is concerning. Without constitutional entrenchment, the Voice is likely to struggle to be effective and a national process of treaty making and truth-telling may not occur. Further, a national First Nations Voice will be unable to protect important developments at the state level, like those in Victoria.

Challenges remain, but the announcement today is significant. As First Peoples’ Assembly co-chair Marcus Stewart noted,

never before have we seen a truth-telling process in this country or state.

Harry Hobbs, Lecturer, University of Technology Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Friday essay: 5 museum objects that tell a story of colonialism and its legacy

This wooden dish from Broome, pre-1892, was made by Yawuru people, collected by police and later presented by the Commissioner of Police, Colonel Phillips, to the WA Museum.
Courtesy of the WA museum

Alistair Paterson, University of Western Australia; Andrea Witcomb, Deakin University; Gaye Sculthorpe, The British Museum; Shino Konishi, University of Western Australia, and Tiffany Shellam, Deakin University

Two new Australian museums are emerging from old ones as the year draws to a close.

The new Chau Chak Wing Museum at the University of Sydney assembles rich collections from across the campus, and the WA Museum Boola Bardip (Noongar for “Many Stories”) has opened in Perth. Museums remain relevant in a globalised world where stories of objects and collecting connect people, institutions, places and ideas.

Our Collecting the West Project, in collaboration with the Western Australian Museum, the State Library of WA, the Art Gallery of WA and the British Museum, explores the history of collecting in WA since the late 1600s.

We are tracing the role of collecting in histories of empire, exploration and colonisation; the relations between natural history and ethnographic collecting; the role of state instrumentalities and private individuals; and the networks between them.

Here, we highlight five objects, some displayed in Boola Bardip’s Treasures Gallery, to reveal how they can provide us with insights into history, values, emotions and power.

One of the new exhibition spaces, the Ngalang Koort Boodja Wirn gallery at Boola Bardip.
c Michael Haluwana Aeroture

1. Everything was contemporary once — Corona Smoking Bucket, 2020

On March 26 2020, the WA government suspended tourist operations on Rottnest Island (Wadjemup) to support the government response to the pandemic. Australian citizens aboard the Vasco de Gama cruise ship were directed to be quarantined on the island from Monday March 30.

Whadjuk monitors Ben Ugle and Brendan Moore were on the island to support conservation works at the heritage site — a prison that once held Aboriginal people from all over WA, where many died.

The two Whadjuk men chose to perform a smoking ceremony for the island’s transition to pandemic quarantine facility. Smoking ceremonies are often conducted to cleanse a place spiritually, such as after a death, to welcome people, and as a sign of respect to people including past elders.

Corona Smoking Bucket: a metal beer bucket used for a smoking ceremony.
Courtesy of Wadjemup Museum Collection.

A metal tin was found for the smoking ceremony — given the unplanned nature of the event, the only suitable vessel they could find was a Corona beer bucket. Seeing the irony in the serendipitous use of this object, the “Corona Smoking Bucket” was collected for The Wadjemup Museum on Rottnest Island in March 2020.

Like many objects, this bucket symbolises several histories: the fact of its collection, the impact of a global pandemic at a local level, growing recognition of Indigenous cultural practices and the connection between an Indigenous smoking ceremony and the island’s dark history of Aboriginal incarceration (circa 1838-1931).

These histories compete also with the island’s later use — as the site of decades of annual school leavers’ celebrations, reflected in the presence of the Corona bucket.

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2. Collections carry emotions — Shell, Shark Bay, 1820

This watercolour and ink drawing of a beautiful shell — the Volute ethiopienne — was drawn from a specimen brought back from Shark Bay in 1820 as part of the French Freycinet expedition. It can now be found in the State Library of Western Australia.

Shells from WA were prized for their beauty, part of the Enlightenment’s love affair with discovering the diversity of the natural world.

Drawing of Volute ethioienne specimen, Shark Bay, 1820. A. Provist.
Freycinet collections, State Library of Western Australia, ACC 5907A/12.

Aboriginal people have long valued shells for ornamentation and exchange. Shells were also attractive items for some of the earliest European explorers of the WA coast.

In 1697, for instance, Willem de Vlamingh, a Dutch sea captain working for the Dutch East India Company, collected a number of shells from Shark Bay, including a nautilus and a conch. He failed to find the shipwreck he was searching for, but helped to chart the coast. The English explorer William Dampier arrived in 1699 and some of the shells he collected in Shark Bay ended up in Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum.

French explorers followed. Nicolas Baudin’s expedition took a considerable number of shells back to Paris, where they can now be seen at the Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle.

In his journal of the Baudin expedition, the naturalist François Peron described a mussel he found on the shore:

Of all the species of mussels known so far, the one that I discovered [in Shark Bay] is incontestably the most beautiful. Stripped of its marine coating, it shines with the most vivid colours of the prism and precious stones; it is dazzling, if I may say so.

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3. Mokare’s place — Spear-thrower, King George Sound, (Albany), c.1831

This spear-thrower was collected by Alexander Collie, the government resident at King George Sound between 1831-33, who formed a close friendship with Menang Noongar man Mokare.

Such historic objects remind us that many collections of plants and objects were formed with the expert assistance of Aboriginal people who knew the land intimately.

Spear-thrower, Albany.
British Museum, 1613225872

The spear-thrower also highlights how objects can embody moments of unexpected friendships, such as the close relationship that developed between Collie and Mokare. Mokare lived with Collie in his hut in the settlement of Albany in 1831, and when near death, Collie asked to be buried beside his friend.

Collie had worked as a naval surgeon and sent objects he collected back to the Royal Navy’s Haslar Hospital Naval Museum at Portsmouth, to assist in naval education. In 1855 the admiralty disbanded the museum, depositing the spear-thrower and other objects in the British Museum.

In 2016-2017, the spear-thrower, along with other objects collected by Collie, returned to Albany to be displayed in the Yurlmun exhibition, which focused on the meaning of these collections to Menang Noongar people today. Despite these objects being only a temporary loan from the British Museum (where they are now in storage), the Menang people viewed their arrival as a “return home to country”.

The objects collected by Collie point to the role of the Royal Navy as a key network of colonisation; the agency of individual Aboriginal people in processes of colonial collection and the potential of these collections to highlight not only the role played by Indigenous people such as Mokare but also the cultural knowledge contained in the objects themselves.

A portrait of Mokare by Louis de Sainson (1833).
Wikimedia Commons

A much earlier collection of weapons, also from Albany, hints at the complexity of collecting practices undertaken within colonial contexts. A Royal Navy surveying expedition, captained by Phillip Parker King, visited King George Sound in December 1821. The crew were engaged with the Menang people in a prolonged and intimate trading exchange for two weeks. In exchange for ships’ biscuit, the crew collected:

one hundred spears, thirty throwing sticks, forty hammers, one hundred and fifty knives and a few hand-clubs.

By contrast, at Hanover Bay on today’s Kimberley coast, a few months earlier, a cache of Worrorra weapons and artefacts were taken as a retaliatory theft for the spearing of the crew’s surgeon.

The crew members related this theft in their journals with the language of revenge: “taking possession of”, “riches”, “spoil”, “prize” and “treasure”, where they took pleasure in “capturing” an Aboriginal “depot”.

These collecting moments reveal different kinds of intimacies — of friendships and violence, trade and exchange — that occurred during early coastal encounters. They also explain why there is no early material from WA in Western Australian collections — most went to Britain as a result of these imperial networks.

4. Colonialism never dies — Wooden dish, Broome, pre 1892

This small wooden bowl carries a history that hints at the role of colonial state instrumentalities in collecting. It is part of a large collection at the WA Museum known as the Phillips Collection.

Wooden dish from Broome, pre-1892, made by Yawuru people, presented by the Commissioner of Police to the WA Museum.
Courtesy of the WA museum

George Braithwaite Phillips was the commissioner of police between 1887-1890. His family was amongst the first colonists to emigrate to the Swan River Colony (now Perth), coming from Barbados, where they owned sugar plantations.

Phillips had been a high profile civil servant and the commandant of the Western Australian Military Forces. From those positions he was able to commandeer a large network of policemen throughout the colony to collect both Aboriginal material culture and human remains.

Many of the Aboriginal objects collected by police, though not the ancestral human remains, were displayed at International Exhibitions in Paris, Glasgow and Melbourne.

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The collection, which included this bowl from Broome, made by Yawuru people, helped form the new Western Australian Museum and Art Gallery in 1894. (The bowl can now be seen at WA Museum Boola Bardip.)

Bernard Woodward, the museum’s first director, continued to ask Phillips for help in sourcing both ethnographic objects and human remains, many of them destined to be exchanged for natural history specimens and ethnographic material from other parts of the world.

So, this bowl is a powerful object. It speaks to Aboriginal cultural practices, the police as active agents of colonisation, and the complex terrain of colonial encounters and their aftermath that form part of the museum’s own inheritance — now slowly being addressed in consultation with relevant communities.

5. Collections are commodities — Red figure hydria, 350-320BC

This red figure vase (circa 350-320BC), probably from Bari
— then a Greek colony — was, according to the museum’s first art and craft register, given by Professor E H Giglioli in 1902. Giglioli (1845-1909) was the Director of the Museo Zoologico in Florence — a zoologist and anthropologist remembered as the father of Italian science.

Red figure hydria (water jar), Bari, Apulia, southern Italy.
Courtesy of the WA Museum.

He visited Australia in 1867, writing a book on Australian Aboriginal people. Giglioli understood the uniqueness of WA’s flora and fauna, seeking valuable specimens with which to build his own collection and to trade for other specimens from elsewhere in the world.

Giglioli sent Roman and Etruscan antiquities he acquired in Italy to Perth in exchange for natural history specimens, human remains and ethnographic material.

Collections circulated through collecting institutions, often exchanged or bartered. Giglioli exchanged the WA material with the Smithsonian Museum.

In Australia, antiquities from Europe had their own rarity value. Widely understood as the foundation of Western culture and aesthetics, antiquities were hard to come by in colonial society.

In 1904, Woodward wrote:

it is of paramount importance that the local craftsmen should have good examples to study, in order that they may successfully compete with their fellows in the older centres of civilisation.

The notion of civilisation was especially important in a young nation. Colonial societies, wanting to demonstrate their rightful place amongst civilised societies, often purchased copies of originals.

So it is not surprising Woodward wanted to exchange Western Australian natural history and ethnographic specimens for objects representing the high end of European artistic production or material representing the birth of European civilisation.

This was part of his effort to educate Western Australians into what they thought was the best that Western civilisation offered.

While this was a way for museums around the world to build their collections, it also involved practices that are totally discredited today and which many find deeply distressing. It is important to know about this history and address its legacies. 

The collections made by early explorers and settlers, sometimes in collaboration with Indigenous peoples, are important for their role in the development of knowledge about WA, opening up areas of scientific discovery and knowledge about First Peoples, the richness of the state’s flora and fauna and our shared historical experiences.

They are also tangible symbols of colonialism and its legacy today.

Alistair Paterson, ARC Future Fellow, University of Western Australia; Andrea Witcomb, Professor, Cultural Heritage and Museum Studies, Deakin University; Gaye Sculthorpe, Curator & Section Head, Oceania, The British Museum; Shino Konishi, ARC Research Fellow, University of Western Australia, and Tiffany Shellam, Senior Lecturer in History, Deakin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The complicated legacy of the Pilgrims is finally coming to light 400 years after they landed in Plymouth

Plimoth Plantation, in Plymouth, Mass., is a living museum that’s a replica of the original settlement, which existed for 70 years.
Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

Peter C. Mancall, University of Southern California – Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

The 400th anniversary of the Pilgrims’ voyage to Plymouth will be celebrated on both sides of the Atlantic with a “remembrance ceremony” with state and local officials and a museum exhibit in Plymouth, England. An autonomous marine research ship named “The Mayflower” has been equipped with an AI navigating system that will allow the ship to trace the course of the original journey without any humans on board.

Yet as a scholar of early 17th-century New England, I’ve always been puzzled by the glory heaped on the Pilgrims and their settlement in Plymouth.

Native Americans had met Europeans in scores of places before 1620, so yet another encounter was hardly unique. Relative to other settlements, the colony attracted few migrants. And it lasted only 70 years.

So why does it have such a prominent place in the story of America? And why, until recently, did the more troubling aspects to Plymouth and its founding document, the Mayflower Compact, go ignored?

Prophets and profits

The establishment of Plymouth did not occur in a vacuum.

The Pilgrims’ decision to go to North America – and their deep attachment to their faith – was an outcome of the intense religious conflict roiling Europe after the Protestant Reformation. Shortly before the travelers’ arrival, the Wampanoag residents of Patuxet – the area in and around modern day Plymouth – had suffered a devastating, three-year epidemic, possibly caused by leptospirosis, a bacterial disease that can lead to meningitis, respiratory distress and liver failure.
It was during these two crises that the histories of western Europe and Indigenous North America collided on the shores of Massachusetts Bay.

Despite a number of advantages, including less competition for local resources because of the epidemic, Plymouth attracted far fewer English migrants than Virginia, which was settled in 1607, and Massachusetts, which was established in 1630.

The Pilgrims, as they told their story traveled so they could practice their religion free from persecution. But other English joined them, including some migrants seeking profits instead of heeding prophets. Unfortunately for those hoping to earn a quick buck, the colony never became an economic dynamo.

A shaky compact

Plymouth nonetheless went on to attain a prominent place in the history of America, primarily due to two phenomena: It was the alleged site of the first Thanksgiving, and its founders drafted the Mayflower Compact, a 200-word document written and signed by 41 men on the ship.

Generations of American students have learned that the Compact was a stepping stone towards self-government, the defining feature of American constitutional democracy.

But did Plymouth really inspire democracy? After all, self-governing communities existed across Indigenous New England long before European migrants arrived. And a year earlier, in 1619, English colonists in Virginia had created the House of Burgesses to advance self-rule in North America for subjects of King James I.

So American self-government, however one defines it, was not born in Plymouth.

The Mayflower Compact nonetheless contained lofty ideals. The plan signed by many of the Mayflower’s male passengers demanded that colonists “Covenant & Combine ourselves into a Civil body politic, for our better ordering, & preservation.” They promised to work together to write “laws, ordinances, Acts, constitutions.” The signers pledged to work for the “advancement of the Christian faith.”

Jean Leon Gerome Ferris’ ‘The Mayflower Compact, 1620.’
Library of Congress

Yet as the years after 1620 bore out, the migrants did not adhere to such principles when dealing with their Wampanoag and other Algonquian-speaking neighbors. Gov. William Bradford, who began writing his history of Plymouth in 1630, wrote about the Pilgrims arriving in “a hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wild beasts and wild men” even though Patuxet looked more like a settled European farmland. The Pilgrims exiled an English lawyer named Thomas Morton, in part because he believed that Indigenous and colonists could peacefully coexist. And in 1637, Plymouth’s authorities joined a bloody campaign against the Pequots, which led to the massacre of Indigenous people on the banks of the Mystic River, followed by the sale of prisoners into slavery.

The Compact was even used by loyalists to the British crown to argue against independence. Thomas Hutchinson, the last royal governor of Massachusetts, pointed to the Pilgrims as proof that colonists should not rebel, highlighting the passage that defined the signers as “loyal subjects” of the English king.

History told by the victors

After the American Revolution, politicians and historians, especially those descended from Pilgrims and Puritans, were keen to trace the origins of the United States back to Plymouth.

In the process, they glossed over the Pilgrims’ complicated legacy.

In 1802, the future President John Quincy Adams spoke at Plymouth about the unique genius of the colony’s founders and their governing contract. He announced that the Pilgrims would arrive at the biblical day of judgment “in the whiteness of innocence” for having shown “kindness and equity toward the savages.”

In the mid-19th century, the historian George Bancroft claimed that it was in “the cabin of the Mayflower” where “humanity recovered its rights, and instituted government on the basis of ‘equal laws’ for ‘the general good.’”

Nineteenth-century anniversary celebrations focused on the colonists, their written Compact, and their contribution to what became the United States. In 1870, on the 250th anniversary, celebrants struck a commemorative coin: one side featured an open Bible, the other a group of Pilgrims praying on the shoreline.

Missing, not surprisingly, were the Wampanoags.

A coin honoring the 250th anniversary of the Pilgrims landing in Plymouth.
NGC Coin

A more nuanced view of the past

By 1970, the cultural tide had turned. Representatives of the Wampanoag nation walked out of Plymouth’s public celebration of Thanksgiving that year to announce that the fourth Thursday in November should instead be known as the National Day of Mourning. To these protesters, 1620 represented violent conquest and dispossession, the twinned legacies of exclusion.

The organizers of an international group called “Plymouth 400” have stressed that they want to tell a “historically accurate and culturally inclusive history.” They’ve promoted both the General Society of Mayflower Descendants and an exhibit featuring 400 years of Wampanoag History. Unlike earlier generations of celebrants, the organizers have acknowledged the continued presence of Native residents.

Prior celebrations of Plymouth’s founding focused on the Pilgrims’ role in the creation of the United States. By doing so, these commemorations sustained an exclusionary narrative for over two centuries.

Perhaps this year a different story will take hold, replacing ancestor worship with a more clear-eyed view of the past.

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Peter C. Mancall, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities, University of Southern California – Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Spare change? Cashless transactions could end the cultural legacy of the coin

Shutterstock

Michael P. Theophilos, Australian Catholic University

As shoppers and retailers do away with cash transactions, we may be witnessing the end of a major source of social and historical information – the coin.

In the modern age, coinage is increasingly seen as cumbersome, a vector for disease and costly to manufacture. Yet for more than 2,600 years, coins have faithfully preserved insights into human society through the eyes of the issuing state.

Coins reveal how rulers wanted their subjects to perceive their politics, their national identity and the social values they wanted to celebrate.

Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev wrote in 1861: “the drawing shows me at one glance what might be spread over ten pages in a book”. Nowhere is this more evident than on coinage, where words are limited.

Coins have always conveyed a message and, helpfully for historians, they are anchored to a specific time and place. Historian Harold Mattingly once called Roman coins the “newspapers of the day” – announcing new emperors, naming of heirs, proclaiming battle wins, holiday celebrations and events.

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The emperor’s new coins

Coins of the beleaguered Roman emperors of 69CE – during the Roman civil wars, when imperial reign was reckoned in months rather than years – depict imagery designed to bolster public confidence in the emperor of the moment.

Vitellius used imagery of the loyalty of the army. One example depicts clasped hands with the accompanying inscription FIDES EXERCITVVM (loyalty of the armies). The idea was far more aspirational than reflective of reality. That same year, Otho who reigned for 12 weeks, optimistically declared his VICTORIA (“victory”) and PAX ORBIS TERRARIUM (“worldwide peace”) on coins circulated during his fleeting reign.

Roman Coin Denarius of Otho.
Wikimedia Commons

Coins can offer detail where literary sources are lacking or incomplete. A large bronze sestertius (a denomination of Ancient Roman coin) that Titus had minted in 80-81CE, depicts not only external structures and statues but also intricate details of the Roman Colosseum interior. It also shows spectators, staircases, an imperial viewing box, and even depiction of the engineering mechanism for awning to provide shade.

The Colosseum on Titus’s large bronze coin.
Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

Ancient coins show that rivalry between cities is not new. In Ancient Rome, a city was honoured with the title neokoros (temple keeper) when permission was granted to build a temple to the emperor or imperial family.

The city of Ephesus was the first to be honoured with such a title during the reign of Nero (54-68CE). Cities vied to have neokoros on their coinage and in the ensuing centuries more than three dozen cities held the title, some multiple times over.

Militaristic exploits were a common theme celebrated on ancient coins. The brutal Roman response to uprising and unrest in Judea resulted in the destruction of the Jewish temple in 70CE. Many coins of the time depicting Judea Capta (Judea captured) were issued by the emperor Vespasian. His son Titus, whose sacking of Jerusalem as military commander was his sole claim to military glory, used coins to exaggerate the Jerusalem victory and secure his own line of succession.

Language used

Roman coins minted in the provinces away from Rome typically were inscribed with Greek rather than Latin. Rome may have conquered the Mediterranean politically by the first century CE, but Alexander’s spread of Hellenistic cultural and linguistic influences long outlived the collapse of his rule.

The linguistic components on coins help provide insight into the terminology used at the time. The word for city founder, ktisths, on coinage helps explain the term’s single appearance in the New Testament – though this has been traditionally translated as “creator” in modern English editions due to the similarity of ktisths to ktizw (meaning: to create).

The term’s use on coins makes it clear Peter the apostle was not referring to a cosmological creator but to a city founder and hence sustainer. When Peter writes to the marginalised and fledgling Christian community, he seeks to encourage them with an image of God as founder.

Even seemingly innocent imagery can reveal darker meaning. Pontius Pilate’s coinage for Judea showed a ladle (simpulum) and curved rod (lituus). These were commonly assumed to lack human representation out of respect for Jewish sensitivities. In fact, they were symbols of Greco-Roman pagan religion and imperial cult. This showed Pilate’s allegiance to Roman ideology rather than any Jewish sensitivities.

Pontius Pilate used symbolism on Judea coinage.
Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

Still in circulation

Imagery on older coins are very much current and still in use in modern coinage. The Athenian owl prominently displayed on the the tetradrachm coin from the 5th century BCE still features on recently issued 1 Euro coins.

The modern state of Israel sought to reverse Vespasian’s ancient war cry with a positive variation of the Judea Capta inscription. The new coin contrasts Judea Capta on one side with Israel Liberata on the other.

The Athenian owl still features on the Greek Euro coin.
Shutterstock

Money has taken various shapes and forms over human history. This includes feather money, cowrie shells, spade, boat and knife money. But it is the simple circular disk of stamped metal that has endured.

These small pieces of stamped metal have preserved insights into religion, community identity, monumentality, language and imperial power for thousands of years.

Future historians and archaeologists may find creative ways of mining cultural data out of our digital transactions, but for the time being, modern coinage continues the long human tradition of expression and national identity formation through state issued coinage.

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Michael P. Theophilos, Senior Lecturer, Australian Catholic University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The healing power of data: Florence Nightingale’s true legacy

Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

Alice Richardson, Australian National University; Jessica Kasza, Monash University, and Karen Lamb, University of Melbourne

When you’re in a medical emergency, you don’t typically think of calling a statistician. However, the COVID-19 outbreak has shown just how necessary a clear understanding of data and modelling is to help prevent the spread of disease.

One person understood this a long time ago. Were she alive today, Florence Nightingale would understand the importance of data in dealing with a public health emergency.

Nightingale is renowned for her career in nursing, but less well known for her pioneering work in medical statistics. But it was actually her statistical skills that led to Nightingale saving many more lives.

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An early spark

Nightingale was one of the first female statisticians. She developed an early passion for statistics. As a child she collected shells and supplemented her collection with tables and lists. Nightingale was home-schooled by her father but insisted on learning maths from a mathematician before she trained as a nurse.

A photo of Nightingale taken circa 1860.
Wikimedia Commons

Upon arriving at the British military hospital in Turkey in 1856, Nightingale was horrified at the hospital’s conditions and a lack of clear hospital records.

Even the number of deaths was not recorded accurately. She soon discovered three different death registers existed, each giving a completely different account of the deaths among the soldiers. Using her statistical skills, Nightingale set to work to introduce new guidelines on how to record sickness and mortality across military hospitals.

This helped her better understand both the numbers and causes of deaths. Now, worldwide, there are similar standards for recording diseases, such as the International Classification of Diseases.

Outbreak monitoring

The ability to compare datasets from different places is critical to understanding outbreaks. One of the challenges in monitoring the COVID-19 pandemic has been the lack of standardised datasets experts can compare on the number of people infected. This is due to differences in testing rules in different countries.

More than 150 years after Nightingale pointed out the need to standardise datasets before comparing them, we are certain she would have something to say about this.

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Read more:
From election upsets to climate chaos, rolling the dice helps us appreciate the odds

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With her improved data, Nightingale put her statistical skills to use. She discovered deaths due to disease were more than seven times the number of deaths due to combat, because of unsanitary hospital conditions.

However, knowing numbers alone have limited persuasive powers, Nightingale used her skills in statistical communication to convince the British parliament of the need to act. She avoided the dry tables used by most statisticians of the time, and instead devised a novel graph to illustrate the impact of hospital and nursing practice reform on army mortality rates.

Florence Nightingale’s graph showing deaths due to disease, wounds and other causes in the Crimean War.
Wikimedia/commons

Today, graphs remain one of the most effective ways to understand the effects of health care interventions, including those used to illustrate the effectiveness of physical distancing to curb COVID-19’s spread.

Flattening the curve is another way of saying slowing the spread. The epidemic is lengthened, but we reduce the number of severe cases, causing less burden on public health systems. The Conversation/CC BY ND

Florence Nightingale down under

Nightingale may not have travelled much after her wartime experience in Turkey, but she was engaged in improving public health in many countries, including Australia.

She wrote papers on the benefits of pavilion-style hospital building designs, which were later incorporated into Australian hospitals. This style consists of small wings, or pavilions, leading off a central corridor – this is convenient for nursing staff and encourages good ventilation.

In 1868, Lucy Osburn headed the first team of nurses sent to Australia to establish Nightingale-style nursing. One of the team’s first tasks was to nurse Prince Alfred, Queen Victoria’s second son, who had been shot in an attempted assassination.

Nightingale never visited Australia herself, but this did not stop her using her usual tactics of requesting data from her wide network of contacts and drawing conclusions from what she found. She was a prolific correspondent – we have more than 12,000 of her letters, and those are only the ones which haven’t been burned, lost or otherwise destroyed.

Nightingale would surely have embraced 21st-century communication. We can imagine her sitting at her laptop tweeting under the moniker @ladywiththelamp.

A trailblazer for women

In 1858, Nightingale’s achievements in statistics were recognised by the Royal Statistical Society in the UK, when she became the first woman Fellow of the Society.

After Nightingale’s fellowship, it would be more than 100 years before a woman was elected President of the Royal Statistical Society, with Stella Cunliffe’s election in 1975. It was only in 1995 that the Statistical Society of Australia had a woman as president, with the election of Helen MacGillivray.

As in many STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) disciplines, female statisticians are still fighting for equal recognition. To date, only two women have received the Statistical Society of Australia’s highest honour, the Pitman Medal.

But it’s clear female statisticians are still making headway. In 2019, five major statistical associations had women presidents. Today, on her 200th birthday, Nightingale would have been proud.

Presidents of Statistical Societies in 2019. L-R: Karen Kafadar (American Statistical Association), Louise Ryan (International Biometric Society), Deborah Ashby (Royal Statistical Society), Helen MacGillivray (International Statistical Institute), Susan Ellenberg, Jessica Utts (former President of the American Statistical Association), Susan Murphy (Institute of Mathematical Statistics).
Twitter/Author provided

Alice Richardson, Associate professor, Australian National University; Jessica Kasza, Senior lecturer, Monash University, and Karen Lamb, Biostatistician, University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Explorer, navigator, coloniser: revisit Captain Cook’s legacy with the click of a mouse

Justin Bergman, The Conversation; Sunanda Creagh, The Conversation, and Wes Mountain, The Conversation

Captain James Cook arrived in the Pacific 250 years ago, triggering British colonisation of the region. We’re asking researchers to reflect on what happened and how it shapes us today.

Click through below to explore Cook’s journey through the Pacific, his interactions with Indigenous peoples and how that journey led to Australia becoming a penal colony 18 years later.

You can see other stories in the series here.

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Justin Bergman, Deputy Editor: Politics + Society, The Conversation; Sunanda Creagh, Head of Digital Storytelling, The Conversation, and Wes Mountain, Multimedia Editor, The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Why Australia is still grappling with the legacy of the first world war

Soldiers in Anzac Cove. The war had driven Australians apart in the demands it made upon the people.
State Library of Victoria , CC BY

Bart Ziino, Deakin University

Historians have long been engaged in a fractious, sometimes spiteful, debate about the legacies of the first world war. This is especially so because the politics of the war continue to resonate in our own discussions of national identity and purpose.

We debate the extent to which the Anzac tradition reflects our understanding of what makes a good Australian, and how important our cultural affinities are with Britain. Did the war curtail a progressive spirit, and entrench political conservatism, or did it encourage a new confidence in ourselves?

These evaluations were already present the moment the war ended in November 1918. Australians had endured a terrible trauma. Sixty thousand of them were dead from a population of not quite 5 million. Another 150,000 returned sick or wounded, physically and mentally.

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Read more:
World politics explainer: The Great War (WWI)

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Those at home were quick to draw attention to their own sufferings, too. They had known the war not only in its military dimensions, but as an ordeal of waiting and worrying, of constantly fearing the worst. The Victorian parliamentarian John Percy Jones simply declared the war

has kept me in a condition of mental agony. I am hardly able to realise even yet that the fearful times through which we have been passing are now over.

What, then, should we make of that sacrifice? Some called the nation to unity around the experience of the war, and in doing so elevated the Anzacs to the peak of Australian virtue.

In the federal parliament, Senator Edward Millen declared:

this war, amongst other things, has made Australia a nation in a sense that it was not before. It has given us a new conception of national life.

A divided nation

But it was also clear the war had driven apart Australians in the demands it made on the people. Calls to unity faltered, as intense debates over recruiting for the army crystallised in two failed attempts to endorse compulsory military service by plebiscite.

Armistice celebrations in 1918. Conscription campaigns polarised Australian politics and society.
National Library of Australia

The conscription campaigns divided Australians bitterly. Those who voted against the principle found their loyalty to nation and empire questioned. Those in favour faced accusations they betrayed Australia’s future by sending its young men to die.

Australians voted against conscription in October 1916 and again in December 1917, but the effect was still to polarise Australian politics and society. The Labor Party split over the issue. Prime Minister Billy Hughes walked out and formed government with his erstwhile opponents.

The party’s now unequivocal anti-conscription sentiments found it tarred with the brush of disloyalty and ensured a conservative ascendancy in federal politics until 1929.

Even in private life, those political divisions were deep and abiding. One woman wrote to her soldier husband at the front that she had broken off friendships over the issue:

they don’t come here now since conscription I told them what I thought of them.

Returned soldiers as ‘most deserving’

It is small wonder that those on the political left – many historians included – should feel uncomfortable about the effects of the first world war on Australian society and culture.

Dugout at Gallipoli. 60,000 Australians were killed in the First World War.
State Library of Victoria, CC BY

The tendency of the war had been to draw Australia more closely into the British Empire’s embrace. The German threat provoked deep expressions of cultural unity with Britain from Australians, and further encouraged them to see their future security in terms of even closer defence and economic ties with the empire.

The Anzac tradition itself embodied those difficult politics, as it promoted the Empire-loyal “digger” as the embodiment of the Australian national character.

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Read more:
100 years since the WW1 Armistice, Remembrance Day remains a powerful reminder of the cost of war

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In Anzac’s rhetoric, Australian soldiers had proved themselves the exemplars of a series of desirable qualities such as courage, initiative, and loyalty to mates. But they had not so much achieved independence for Australia as raised Australia to equality within a British brotherhood.

For those on the political left, the veneration of the digger displaced all other potential contributions to the making of Australian nationhood, including the contributions of women, pacifists and political radicals.

Australian soldiers became the embodiment of national character, and they assumed the position of the most deserving in citizenship hierarchies.
State Library of Queensland

It reorganised hierarchies of citizenship, so returned soldiers assumed the position of the most deserving, whether in terms of government largesse or in cultural terms as the embodiment of national character.

But conservative historians have naturally been much more comfortable with that interpretation of the war’s effects than their counterparts.

It speaks to a sense that Australians held close to their British descent and traditions, while also recognising the economic and security value of continued close ties. And it gave Australians a figure whose characteristics were not only to be admired, but emulated in civic life and subsequent conflicts.

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Read more:
How the Great War shaped the foundations of Australia’s future

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A century on from the national trauma of 1914-18, the politics of that event remain present. The kind of Australia we prefer to see depends on whether we regret or embrace the effects of the first world war on Australian politics and culture.

As we gather again on the anniversary of the end of the “war to end all wars”, we might observe that the conclusion of the war only started the long and continuing effort to come to terms with its meaning.

Bart Ziino, Senior Lecturer, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Deakin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

We need to protect the heritage of the Apollo missions

Parts of the Apollo missions remain on the Moon, here you can see one of the legs of the base of the lunar landing module.
NASA

Alice Gorman, Flinders University

It’s 50 years since the two Apollo 11 astronauts – Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin – spent 22 hours collecting samples, deploying experiments and sometimes just playing in the Sea of Tranquillity on the Moon.

In doing so, they created an archaeological site unique in human history.

Now, with what’s been called the New Space Race and plans to return to the Moon, the Apollo 11 and other lunar sites are under threat. We need to protect this heritage for future generations.

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Read more:
How big is the Moon? Let me compare …

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Apollo 11’s archaeological site

The archaeological site of Tranquillity Base consists of the hardware left behind, as well as the marks made in the lunar surface by the astronauts and instruments.

Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin with the seismic experiment and other equipment left on the Moon.
NASA

The hardware component includes the landing module, the famous flag (no longer standing), experiment packages, cameras, antennas, commemorative objects, space boots and many other discarded objects – more than 106 in total.

Around these objects are the first human footprints on the Moon as well as the tracks the astronauts made walking around, and the places where they dug out samples of rock and dust to take back to Earth for scientific analysis.

The artefacts, traces and the landscape constitute an archaeological site. The relationships between them can be used by archaeologists to study human behaviour in this environment so different to Earth, with one-sixth terrestrial gravity and no atmosphere.

Assessing the heritage value

Not only this, but the site has heritage value for people on Earth. To assess this, we can look at a number of categories of cultural significance. Those in the Burra Charter are widely used across the world for heritage assessment.

Historic: There is no doubt that, as the first place where humans set foot on another celestial body, this is a very important place in global history. It also represents the ideologies of the Cold War (1947-1992) between the US and the USSR.

Buzz Aldrin leaves a footprint on the first Moon landing.
NASA

Scientific: What can we learn from the site? More particularly, what questions would we no longer be able to answer if Tranquillity Base was damaged or destroyed?

This is not just about archaeological research into human behaviour on the Moon. Apollo 11 has been exposed to the harsh lunar environment for 50 years. The surfaces of the hardware are accidental experiments in themseves: they carry the record of 50 years of micrometeorite and cosmic ray bombardment. Finding out how well the materials have survived can also provide information about how to design future missions.

Aesthetic: This type of cultural significance is about how we experience a place. While we can’t assess it in person, there are films and photographs that give us a feeling for the place. This includes the light, shadows and colours of the lunar surface from the perspective of the human senses. The aesthetic qualities have inspired many artists and musicians, including astronaut Alan Bean who devoted his post-Apollo 12 life to painting the Moon.

Astronaut Alan Bean deploys some experiments during his Apollo 12 mission on the Moon.
NASA

Social: This is about the value that contemporary communities place on the site. For the 600 million-plus people who watched the television broadcast of the landing, it was a life-changing moment representing the ingenuity of human technology and visions of a space-age future.

But the mission did not mean the same for everyone. Some African-Americans protested against Apollo 11, seeing it as a waste of resources when there was such great economic and social disparity between white and black communities in the US. For them, it was a sign of human failure rather than a triumph.

The larger the community that has an interest in a heritage place, the higher its level of social significance. It could be argued that Apollo 11 has outstanding universal significance, like places on the World Heritage List (unfortunately the World Heritage Convention cannot be applied to space).

What are the threats?

In the past few years we have seen an increase in proposed missions to return to the Moon. Some have stated their intention to revisit the Apollo sites, by human crew or robot – and this could lead to the removal of material, for souvenirs or science.

But the sites are both fragile and unprotected. The two primary risks to their survival are uncontrolled looting, and damage from abrasive and sticky lunar dust.

Look at the dust thrown up by the Lunar Roving Vehicle driven by astronaut John W. Young during the Apollo 16 mission. Both dust and rover are still on the Moon.
NASA

Removing material from the sites damages the integrity of the artefacts and the relationships between them. A casual visit could erase the original footprints and astronaut traverses. The corrosive dust disturbed by surface activities could wear away the materials.

Dust was a problem for all the crewed lunar missions. Apollo 16 commander John Young said: “Dust is the number one concern in returning to the Moon.”

The dust can be stirred up by plumes from landing or ascending vehicles, driving vehicles, walking on the surface, or, in the next phase of lunar settlement, by construction and industrial activities, such as mining.

Attempts at protection

The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 forbids making territorial claims in space. Applying any national heritage legislation to a place on the Moon could be interpreted as a territorial claim.

The US states of California and New Mexico have placed the Apollo 11 artefacts left on the Moon on a heritage list. They can do this because, under the treaty, the US legally owns the artefacts. But this does not protect the site itself.

Note the footprints on this image of astronaut Charles M. Duke junior on the Apollo 16 mission.
NASA

NASA has established a set of heritage guidelines for its sites on the Moon. The guidelines propose buffer zones around these areas, inside which no-one should enter. They make recommendations for approaching the sites to minimise dust disturbance.

In May 2019, a bill called the One Small Step to Protect Human Heritage in Space Act was introduced to the US Congress. Its purpose is:

To require any Federal agency that issues licences to conduct activities in outer space to include in the requirements for such licences an agreement relating to the preservation and protection of the Apollo 11 landing site, and for other purposes.

But the bill applies only to Apollo 11 and does not have similar requirements for the five other Apollo landing sites. It also applies only to US missions. It’s a step in the right direction, but there is still much more to be done.

The plaque left on the lunar module base during the Apollo 11 mission.
NASA

Only in the last decade has the idea of space archaeology gained legitimacy. Until recently, there was no urgency to establish an international framework to manage the cultural values of lunar heritage.

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Read more:
Why the Moon is such a cratered place

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Now we’re in a new situation. On Earth, it’s common for industrial or urban activities that disturb the environment to be subject to an environmental impact assessment, which includes heritage.

Even when there are no laws to force companies to pay attention to heritage, many consider it important to seek a Social Licence to Operate – support from stakeholder communities to continue their activities.

Everyone on Earth is a stakeholder in the heritage of the Moon. Fifty years from now, what will remain of the Apollo 11 and other sites? What new meanings will people draw from it?

Alice Gorman, Senior Lecturer in Archaeology and Space Studies, Flinders University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

As we celebrate the rediscovery of the Endeavour let’s acknowledge its complicated legacy

Natali Pearson, University of Sydney

Researchers, including Australian maritime archaeologists, believe they have found Captain Cook’s historic ship HMB Endeavour in Newport Harbour, Rhode Island. An official announcement will be made on Friday.

The discovery is the culmination of decades of work by the Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project and the Australian National Maritime Museum to locate and positively identify the vessel, which had been missing from the historical record for over two centuries. Plans are now under way to raise funds to excavate and conduct scientific testing in 2019.

As the first European seafaring vessel to reach the east coast of Australia, the Endeavour – much like James Cook himself – has become part of Australia’s national mythology. Unlike Cook, who famously met his end on Hawaiian shores, the fate of the Endeavour had long been unknown. The discovery has therefore resolved a long-standing maritime mystery.

In a serendipitous twist, it coincides with two significant dates: the 250th anniversary of the Endeavour’s departure from England in 1768 on its now (in)famous voyage south, and the 240th anniversary of the ship’s scuttling in 1778 during the American War of Independence.

Identifying the Endeavour’s location has been a 25-year processs. Archaeologists initially identified 13 potential candidates in the harbour. Over time, the number of possible sites was narrowed to five.

This month, a joint diving team has worked to measure and inspect these sites, drawing upon knowledge of Endeavour’s size to identify a likely candidate. Excavation and timber analysis is expected to provide final confirmation. Those expecting an entire ship to be recovered will be disappointed, as very little of it remains.

But this is a controversial vessel, and celebrations of its discovery will be tempered by reflection about its complicity in the British colonisation of Indigenous Australian land. While Endeavour played an instrumental role in advancing science and exploration, its arrival in what is now known as Botany Bay in 1770 also precipitated the occupation of territory that its Aboriginal owners never ceded.

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Read more:
How Captain Cook became a contested national symbol

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A ship by any other name …

Although Endeavour’s early days are well known, it has taken many years for researchers to piece together the rest of its story. One problem has been the many names the vessel was known by during its lifetime.

Built in 1764 in Whitby, England, as a collier (coal carrier), the vessel was originally named Earl of Pembroke. Its flat-bottomed hull and box-like shape, designed to transport bulk cargo, later proved helpful when navigating the treacherous coral reefs of the southern seas.

Endeavour, then known as Earl of Pembroke, leaving Whitby Harbour in 1768. Painting by Thomas Luny, c. 1790. (Some think Luny painted another ship after Endeavour became famous.)
Wikimedia

In 1768, Earl of Pembroke was sold into the service of the Royal Navy and the Royal Society. It underwent a major refit to accommodate a larger crew and sufficient provisions for a long voyage. In keeping with the ambitious spirit of the era, the vessel was renamed His Majesty’s Bark (HMB) Endeavour (bark being a nautical term to describe a ship with three masts or more).

Endeavour departed England in 1768 under the command of then-Lieutenant Cook. Ostensibly sailing to the South Pacific to observe the 1769 Transit of Venus, Cook was also under orders to search for the fabled southern continent. So it was that a coal carrier and a rare astronomical event changed the history of the Australian continent and its people.

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Read more:
Transit of Venus: a tale of two expeditions

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Mysterious ends

Following Endeavour’s circumnavigation of the globe (1768-1771), the vessel was used as a store ship before the Royal Navy sold it in 1775. Here, the ship’s fate become mysterious.

Many believed it had been renamed La Liberté and put to use as a French whaling ship before succumbing to rotting timbers in Newport Harbour in 1793. Others rejected this theory, suggesting instead that Endeavour had spent her final days on the river Thames.

A breakthrough came in 1997. Australian researchers suggested the Endeavour had in fact been renamed Lord Sandwich. The theory gained weight following an archival discovery by Kathy Abbass, director of the Rhode Island project, in 2016, which indicated that Lord Sandwich had been used as a troop transport and prison ship during the American War of Independence before being scuttled in Newport Harbour in 1778.

Lord Sandwich was one of a number of transport ships deliberately sunk by the British in an attempt to prevent the French fleet from approaching the shore.

Finding a shipwreck is not impossible, but finding the one you’re looking for is hard. Rhode Island volunteers have been searching for this vessel since 1993, slowly narrowing down the search area and eliminating potential contenders as they explore the often-murky waters of Newport Harbour.

They were joined in their efforts by the Australian National Maritime Museum in 1999 and, in more recent years, by the Silentworld Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation with a particular interest in Australasian maritime archaeology.

Endeavour’s voyage across the Pacific Ocean.
Wikimedia

Museums around the world are already turning their attention to the significant Cook anniversaries on the horizon and the complex legacy of these expeditions. These interpretive endeavours will only be heightened by the planned excavation of the ship’s remains in the near future.

Shipwrecks are a productive starting point for thinking about how we make meaning from the past because of the firm hold they have on the public imagination. They conjure images of lost treasure, pirates and, especially in the case of Endeavour, bold adventures to distant lands.

But as we celebrate the spirit of exploration that saw a humble coal carrier circumnavigate the globe – and the same spirit of exploration that has led to its discovery centuries later – we must also make space for the unsettling stories that will resurface as a result of this discovery.

Natali Pearson, Deputy Director, Sydney Southeast Asia Centre, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Cabinet papers 1994-95: The Keating government begins to craft its legacy

Paul Keating drove a policy agenda that had been rallied after the 1993 victory.
AAP/NAA

Nicholas Brown, Australian National University

If Labor was surprised by its re-election in March 1993 – the “sweetest victory of them all”, as Paul Keating claimed – there was, for months before the 1996 election was called, much less confidence in government ranks that it could hang on.

They were right. A 6.17% first-preference swing against Labor in 1996 confirmed the momentum John Howard’s Coalition leadership had built over the previous year. The political mood was shifting decisively.

Howard pitched to the values of the “battlers”, affirming “the Australia I believe in”. In contrast, Don Watson, Keating’s speechwriter, recalls that the “big picture” reforms of Keating’s prime ministership “never found a place for the people” in testing those values.

Political scientists Paul Strangio, Paul t’Hart and James Walter add that, after 1993, Keating became ever-more dominant in “a small clique of very senior colleagues”. He drove a policy agenda that had been rallied after the 1993 victory.

There were big ambitions, like Working Nation, and big symbols, like the republic. These initiatives were part of a push through 1994 and 1995, as revealed in the cabinet papers released today by the National Archives of Australia, to ensure a legacy for the program Labor had crafted since 1983.

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Further reading: Cabinet papers 1994-95: How the republic was doomed without a directly elected president

Further reading: Keating’s Working Nation plan for jobs was hijacked by bureaucracy: cabinet papers 1994-95

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In that process, the term “benchmarking” figured repeatedly in the cabinet submissions ministers debated. It was time to take stock of what had been achieved, in terms of reform, expectations of it, and principles that could not be undone by their successors.

Changing attitudes to social policy

The measures of such impact included a vital element of attitudinal change.

In social policy, ministers were assured that the past ten years marked a decisive shift for people with disabilities from a welfare approach to a “human-rights-based focus”, measured in labour market access. Cabinet called for regular reports to track how effectively this support continued to move from the margins of specialised programs to mainstream provision.

Other measures included a standard pension rate of 25% of male total average weekly earnings, a target of 100 residential care places per 1,000 population aged over 70 by 2001, and a child support system that fostered “a change in the community ethos” with regard to the obligations of separated parents.

In May 1994, cabinet endorsed tackling the more “legally complex or controversial issues” identified in the 1992 Half Way to Equal report on women’s rights. Among them was a commitment to target potential pregnancy “as a ground of prohibited discrimination”.

As Labor’s 1994 national conference adopted a commitment to a 35% quota of safe seats for women candidates by 2002, these issues achieved a clearer place in public debate.

Reforms in public and community housing were aimed at increasing the co-ordination of federal and state governments in delivering stock to meet diverse needs. The beneficiaries of such attention, it was argued, would include people with psychological illness. The minister concerned, Brian Howe, pushed for the principle that rent in such housing should not exceed 30% of income.

Progress on Indigenous Australians

For Indigenous Australians, ministers agreed that “priority be given to social benchmarks” for housing and also health and community support, employment and education. Together they would hold agencies accountable for the delivery of services, rather than simply describing the conditions to those receiving them.

The Aboriginal flag and the Torres Strait Islander flag were granted ‘Flag of Australia’ status in 1995.
AAP/NAA

The minister, Robert Tickner, urged that consultation with Indigenous clients must take into account that their “reluctance … to provide information” reflected “a more complex, historical issue”. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission’s work as a national representative body was seen as integral to overcoming this challenge.

The new National Native Title Tribunal brought sharp focus to these concerns. Keating urged that this body must have sufficient authority to counter the “implacable” opposition of interests and governments such as that in Western Australia.

Cabinet also moved to establish an Indigenous land acquisition program. The May 1995 launch of a National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families, followed by the official gazettal of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags, further consolidated a network of recognition it would not be easy to unravel.

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Further reading: Cabinet papers 1992-93: Keating government fights for Indigenous rights on multiple fronts

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Labour market reform

Indigenous affairs had some of the elements of “compassion” and “justice” Keating spoke of returning to politics. This pushed the boundaries of prevailing values.

Yet, with promising economic forecasts in early 1994, ministers were also keen to ensure there was no backsliding in the stricter discipline of microeconomic reform.

Having recently bedded-down principles of enterprise bargaining, cabinet was advised in March 1994 that the still-fragile foundations of a “productivity culture” were too vulnerable to “unrealistic” expectations developing in workplaces across Australia to risk any further iterations of the Prices and Incomes Accord.

A cabinet submission claimed that “it may be necessary to push the limits of what is acceptable” to the unions, and instead “establish benchmark criteria to assist employers in responding to claims”.

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Further reading: Cabinet papers 1992-93: the rise and fall of enterprise bargaining agreements

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While sticking to this message, ministers still worried that the people seemed not to be travelling with them. In mid-1994 they decided to appoint an independent consultant to probe the question of why reported poverty levels had not declined, “despite all the measures taken over the last decade”.

Cabinet’s Social Policy Committee regarded the evidence informing such analysis as a “statistical artefact”. The Department of Social Security ventured that the long-term impact of labour market deregulation might help explain such sentiments. Finance countered that an already overgenerous social welfare system acted as “a disincentive to efforts to improve private incomes”.

As economic signals wavered through 1994 and 1995 – despite Keating’s assurance with the 1995 budget that “this is as good as it gets” – the challenge of inclusion grew.

There were some benchmarks, clearly, that were up for debate within a cabinet still pushing Australian economic as well as social transformation.

Climate change becomes a more pressing concern

There were also some benchmarks that were troubling on a larger scale.

Over 1994 and 1995, the government was briefed on the extent to which global commitments were already proving insufficient to stabilise atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations:

… at a level that would prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system.

And even within the concessions Australia had won in those formula as an “emissions-intensive economy”, it was “only likely to achieve 46–53%” of its target by 2000.

Enhanced support for “greenhouse science” was identified as one option Australia might pursue in preserving its international reputation on these issues. More was required if we were to hold our standing in relation to vulnerable island states of the South Pacific. And more was required at home.

Major decisions were being taken that were “contrary to the terms of the 1992 National Greenhouse Response Strategy”. As ministers were told, Western Australia’s new Collie Power Station would “provide electricity at a higher cost than gas-powered alternatives”. The “extension of the electricity grid to outback areas of NSW ignored the potential for lower cost solar energy”.

Decisions to defer minimum energy standards for appliances showed “little more than lip service” to the fundamental issues of climate change. What was the point of such benchmarks if nothing was done to observe them?

If the 1996 vote reflected an electorate wearied of “big picture” reform, it was clear that the Keating government itself was seeking indicators that could affirm and entrench its achievements. Not all were easily found.

But, in retrospect, several do still stand up as enduring principles, and/or as markers around which a good deal of political conflict was to come.

Nicholas Brown, Professor in History, Australian National University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.