The uncertain relationship between social capital and inequality in the fields of corporate food production

Bruce Thomas Rose ORCID identifier 0000-0001-6601-8666

Doctor of Philosophy July 2021 Faculty of Arts School of Social and Political Sciences

Submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy - Arts, The University of Melbourne

Abstract

In advanced liberal democracies, the state seeks to create a distance between the decisions of formal political institutions and those whom they aim to govern. In doing so, the state devolves governance in ways that align with Foucault’s notion of governmentality; organising things such that people self-govern without necessarily being aware that their conduct is being conducted. The most significant characterisation of this phenomenon has been the dismantling of activities previously undertaken by the state, such as the provision of social support, and transferring responsibility for these activities to civil society. For regional communities that are physically remote from political institutions, one consequence of this reconfiguration is a sense of political abandonment. In these circumstances local elites can emerge whose primary objective is to garner from those whom they regard as ‘outsiders’, the resources they believe their community needs and is entitled to. This research contributes to scholarship within anthropology that challenges the way we think about elites. It also provides ethnographic evidence that challenges the stability of Foucault’s notion of governmentality. I explore how a powerful clique of locals, who are emotionally and economically invested in corporate food production in regional Victoria, mediate resources with other elites engaged in neoliberal philanthropy in order to address the kinds of socio-economic inequalities that appear to have divided their community during their region’s transitioning to this neoliberal form of production. Whilst these two groups initially collaborated, their conflicting narratives regarding disadvantage and the resistance they encountered from other elites who did not regard their involvement as essential, caused them to ‘lock horns’, eventually diminishing the impact of their shared endeavour. This ethnography exposes risks that can compromise efforts to address complex social issues such as rising socio-economic inequality by transferring responsibility for their governance to local elites whose interests may be conflicted and who are largely unaccountable.

i Declaration

I, Bruce Rose, declare that: i. this thesis comprises only my original work towards the Doctor of Philosophy; ii. due acknowledgement has been made in the text to all other material used; and iii. this thesis is fewer than the maximum word limit length, exclusive of tables, maps, bibliographies and appendices.

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ii Acknowledgements

I am writing this acknowledgement whilst eating a slice of freshly home baked ‘celebration cake’ and drinking yet another cup of coffee. In the background is the sound of my grandsons playing. This moment is a mixture of joy and relief -- in equal measure. The relief of finishing what has been a fabulous but at times stressful journey and the joy of realising that I will shortly be joining the chaos that is unfolding in the back garden. I would not be where I am without the support, enthusiasm, encouragement and generosity of family, friends, colleagues and participants. Nor would I have embarked on this journey as freely if it were not for the financial support provided through the Australian Government Research Training Program scholarship. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my primary supervisor Dr Erin Fitz-Henry for sharing my belief in this project, guiding me through the maze that is graduate research, encouraging me to keep probing, reminding me on occasions to be more reflective, and purging my over-use of commas and semi-colons in endless ‘first drafts’. I would also like to express my sincere gratitude to my second supervisor, Professor Andrew Dawson whose feedback throughout has opened up new perspectives for my research. This research would of course not have been possible without my participants, the fifty people who gave generously of their time, opened doors in walls that before I went to Shepparton I never knew existed. I am particularly grateful for the faith shown by those who entrusted me with their personal archives, only asking that I return them whenever they had served their purpose. My journey would not have been possible nor have meant the same to me if it were not for our family. Our children have preceded me on this path and have been a constant source of encouragement and inspiration. Similarly, my choice to return to study after a forty-two year ‘gap year’ came with the unconditional blessing of Margaret whom I doubt envisaged the last few years to include proof-reading, listening to my ‘thinking aloud’ about Shepparton, and needing to encourage me to “just write it”.

iii Table of Contents

Abstract ------i

Declaration ------ii

Acknowledgement ------iii

Chapter 1: Introduction ------1

1. Primary problem ------2 2. Contribution ------6 3. Theoretical model ------9 4. Methodology ------18 5. Thesis chapter outline ------25

Chapter 2: Tale of two cities ------28

1. From co-operatives to corporates ------29 2. “We drive our own future here” ------36 3. Employment and education ------40 4. Making vulnerable people more vulnerable ------43 5. Summary ------49

Chapter 3: Elites ------51

1. Defining elites ------52 2. Corporate-identified local elites ------58 3. ‘Flex net’ or not? ------71 4. Summary ------73

Chapter 4: Biopolitics and socio-economic inequality ------76

1. Biopolitics: tobacco, mascara and ‘clever food people’ ------77 2. Self-inflicted inequality ------86 3. The drivers of increasing socio-economic inequality ------92 4. Summary ------101

Chapter 5: The “light on the hill” ------104

1. Neoliberal philanthropy ------105 2. The 2011 Fairley foundation philanthropic summit ------109 3. Intersecting and overlapping practices ------118 4. Retaining power and losing disadvantage ------125 5. Summary ------131

Chapter 6: Discussion ------134

1. Findings ------135 2. Contribution ------141

3. Future direction ------146

Definitions and glossary ------148

Bibliography ------150

iv

Chapter 1 Introduction

There is something evocative in a landscape of irrigated orchards. It may be the gentle flow of water in open channels, or the ordered geometry of trellised fruit trees, or perhaps the sight of pickers handpicking fruit in an industry otherwise transformed by technology. For whatever reason, I am drawn to this bucolic landscape in which my fieldwork is set. Located 180 kilometres north of Melbourne, the Goulburn Valley produces 25% of the total value of Victoria’s agricultural production, earning it the title of the state’s ‘food bowl’. Since the mid 1980s, food production in the ‘Valley’ has undergone significant economic restructuring. Responding to global competition, changes in consumer preferences and concerns about food security, both horticulture and dairying have become more capital intensive and are fully integrated into complex global food systems. There are now more fruit and vegetables grown and more milk produced, on more land, generating greater economic value, than at any time in the Goulburn Valley’s history. Restructuring of food production in the region has seen growers’ co-operatives all but disappear, being replaced by food producers working on an industrial scale to meet the demands of national and international food conglomerates and two dominant supermarket chains. Less overt, but no less dramatic, has been the careful repositioning of the City of Greater Shepparton, the region’s seat of local government, its administrative centre, and home to a linguistically and culturally diverse population of 66,5001. Shepparton has been transformed from a ‘dozy town’2, economically and socially tied to the local cannery, to a town in which a corporate way of thinking dominates many peoples’ daily life, such that actions are judged and justified in business terms, and the region’s reputation as a centre of corporate food production is defended whenever it is threatened. Whilst the restructuring of the food industry in the ‘Valley’ and the repositioning of Shepparton as a town for business have been heralded as examples of successful transitions (Alford 2013; Gibson, Cameron, and Veno 1999), the benefits of both have not been felt by all in the community. In the first three decades of transition, Shepparton’s performance against most measures of socio-economic wellbeing had deteriorated to the point where it had become an outlier relative to the four larger regional centres in Victoria. Shepparton’s story may be extreme, but it is by no means unique; there are numerous food producing communities that have experienced growing socio- economic inequality whilst transitioning to large scale corporate food production. My thesis examines how a group of locals who are widely credited with driving this transformation, face and deal with the fact that not everyone in their community has reaped the expected rewards from their actions. How, this thesis asks, do they understand socio-economic inequality, attribute causality to its increased prevalence, privilege for attention some forms of inequality over others, and describe and attribute responsibility for its amelioration.

1 Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2016 Census. 2 A phrase used by one of my participants when describing Shepparton during the 1970s and 80s.

1 1 Primary problem This thesis provides a nuanced understanding of how a clique of local elites in Shepparton, who are economically and emotionally invested in corporate food production, understand, rationalise and look to address the kinds of socio-economic inequalities that appear to have divided their community whilst transitioning to this neoliberal mode of production. Through examining this group of elites in the context of addressing socio-economic inequality, this study also reveals how the overlapping of two governmental interventions, namely business-led regional development and place-based neoliberal philanthropy, destabilised the shared endeavour of this clique of elites and a loosely formed network of philanthropists and social service providers such that their efforts in addressing socio-economic inequality have failed to fully deliver the benefits they envisaged. To put this problem into context, it is important to firstly outline the circumstances in which these types of community driven interventions inform and are informed by the policies and practices of both the Victorian state government and the Australian federal government. According to Nikolas Rose, advanced liberal democracies seek techniques of government that create a distance between the decisions of formal political institutions and other social actors whom they regard as being responsible, autonomous and considered, and look to govern them through shaping and utilizing their freedom to self-govern (1996, 53). Rose claims that the most significant technique used to create this distance has been the disassembling of a variety of governmental activities previously undertaken by the state and transferring the responsibility for these functions, including regional development and the provision of social support, to a proliferation of non-governmental organisations (1996, 56). According to Rose, this reconfiguration of governance has resulted in the electoral control through local councils as intermediaries being replaced by regional partnerships with boards made up of representatives from different communities -- business, local residents, voluntary organisations, and local councils (Rose 1996, 57). The specific purpose of this reconfiguration, according to Rose, is to link “the calculations and actions of a heterogeneous array of organisations into the political objectives of the state” thereby enabling these actors to be governed at a distance through what Rose refers to as the “instrumentalization of a regulated autonomy” (1996, 57). In this way, it can be argued that Rose’s description of advanced liberal democracies is analogous to participatory democracy which, despite its bottom-up processes supposedly not privileging any groups, generates ambiguity as to who gets to speak for and on behalf of whole communities (Baiocchi and Summers 2017). An early example of the Victorian state government engaging civil society in this way is their reaction to the Australian federal government’s 1982 inquest into the canning industry (“Canning Fruit” 1982). Responding to a request from the canning industry for short term assistance, the federal government determined that the industry was in structural decline and would no longer be supported with taxpayer funding. Given that at the time ninety-nine percent of canning in Australia was conducted by three canneries in the Goulburn Valley, the state government turned to the Goulburn Valley Region Employment Development Board, an NGO representing the local business community, to report and make recommendations on the future of food production in the region. The authors of the report surveyed 1610 firms in the

2 Goulburn Valley to inform recommendations that would impact on the whole community. One of these recommendations was that food production should move away from canning and that future investment should be directed to transitioning the economy to fresh fruit production and high-value-added food processing (R. A. Carter and Luscombe 1985, 143). As a consequence of this report, prepared by business- aligned locals, the Victorian state government put in place policies and funded infrastructure that was amenable to this outcome. In the years that followed, local business elites have for the most part driven regional development using a positive narrative to promote the Goulburn Valley’s food producing credentials in order to attract investment and skilled workers to the region. As a consequence of these actions, a number of national and international food processors have facilities in the Goulburn Valley and local growers have gained the confidence to progressively shift their production to meet the needs of the fresh fruit market. The politico-economic significance of a more distantiated relationship of control between the decision making mechanisms of the state and the processes of regional development devolved to civil society is amplified when the decisions concern government spending. In Victoria, the state government’s 2019/20 budget for regional and rural development was $2.6 billion. Following a review in 2015 on how best “to give regional communities a say” in how development budgets are spent, the state government by-passed local councils as intermediaries and established nine regional partnerships, including one for the Goulburn Valley (“Regional Partnerships” 2017). Each regional partnership is made up of community and business leaders. The role of these regional partnerships is to establish the “strategic priorities” for their communities across economic, social and environmental issues and to oversee the implementation of their top priorities. There are two critical assumptions regarding community representation that underpin Rose’s description of advanced liberal democracies governing at a distance that are particularly pertinent to my research. The boards of these government/non- government partnerships comprise business-people, local residents, representatives from volunteer organisations and local councils, all of whom are presumed to be equals and to be partial in representing their particular interest group. In regional communities such as Shepparton, it is not uncommon for these positions to be filled by a small group of community-minded locals who cycle through the many committees, partnerships and boards that play an essential role in relation to local governance. They do not come to these boards as equals. Some have far more influence and power than others and in relatively small communities the consequences of challenging these individuals can flow into other facets of everyday life. Accordingly, when people sit on these partnerships, they have a strong incentive to comply with the views of a few dominant individuals. Furthermore, through their interweaving of interests across multiple entities, conflicts of interests are more likely to arise and go unchallenged in these regional settings than in locations that can draw on broader, deeper and more partial pools and whose members move in socio-economic circles that do not overlap. For example, in my study, the partner of the Executive Officer of one community- based initiative also chaired the forum that set priorities and advised both state and federal governments on which community initiatives should be funded. Despite disquiet being expressed to me privately regarding this community-based initiative

3 being preferentially funded, it is not apparent that committee members on the advisory board were prepared to formally address this conflict of interest. These roles that purport to represent the broad perspectives of communities are important devices for a new form of elites who are characterised by the way they organise and operate (Wedel 2017; A. Davis and Williams 2017). According to Janine Wedel, these roles are part of an architecture of “multiple and moving perches” through which this new form of elites exercise their power and influence (2017, 153). One of the primary concerns for anthropologists with power and influence being exercised in this way is that the processes of representative democracy can be circumvented. Consequently, in a model that presumes equal, partial and engaged representation of the needs of different groups within communities, and has the optics of being democratic, the people who set the priorities and influence the allocation of mainly government resources, have no electoral mandate and are ultimately unaccountable to their communities for the statements and decisions they make on their behalf. Rose’s description of governance in advanced liberal democracies is also complicated by the probability that neither the state nor civil society are as unified or co-ordinated as the model would suggest. For example, in August 2002, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) issued a discussion paper titled “Social Capital and Social Wellbeing” (Graczyk 2002). The paper provided background material on social capital as well as a summary of stakeholder feedback on the utility of measuring social capital. To garner feedback, the ABS conducted a series of workshops that linked various government agencies responsible for policy with non-government community and welfare organisations, research institutions and community development practitioners who it hoped would use the data to inform interventions aimed at improving social wellbeing in the community. As a consequence of the process, the ABS started to measure social capital at a local government level and published a paper (Edwards 2004) that endorsed the use of this data to support initiatives aimed at strengthening the linking social capital in communities by encouraging those with means to use their connections to help those without means to pull themselves out of disadvantage. Setting aside the debate as to the efficacy of building social capital to ameliorate socio- economic inequality and whether local elites are prepared to use their social capital virtuously, measuring social capital to identify individual community deficits supports a practice that is contrary to interventions aimed at encouraging regional development. Where regional development is governed by policies and practices that cede responsibility for attracting private sector investment to local citizens who then promote the region as prospering, as I show in chapter five those involved in interventions aimed at improving socio-economic inequality usually recruit people to their cause and make their case for funding by constructing a different reality -- one in which these regions are promoted as sites of profound disadvantage. This overlapping and intersecting of practices that limit the effectiveness of governmental interventions and/or produce unintended consequences is the subject of Tania Li’s essay “Governmentality” (2007). In her essay, Li calls on anthropologists to combine studies of examples of governmental rationalities with an ethnographic examination of concrete cases and struggles (2007). Doing so, according to Li, exposes the instability and limitations of

4 governmentality as an instrument of power. To order such an enquiry, Li proposes four axes -- firstly, examining the responses provoked by governmental interventions; secondly, examining how the practices of governmental interventions intersect with existing processes and sets of relations; thirdly, examining how those targeted reflect on the intervention and its inherent risks; fourthly, examining how the promotors of governmental interventions respond to critique. In my research, the programs, practices and effects of business-led regional development and place-based neoliberal philanthropy, are examined along these four axes, with a particular emphasis on the third and fourth. My study orbits around two groups of elites who came together in 2011 to launch a community-based organisation for the purpose of improving the educational outcomes of young people in their community. The first is a clique of elites who have driven regional development through promoting a narrative of Shepparton as a thriving community, an attractive place to bring up families and the administrative centre of a region that is ripe for business investment. This clique has traditionally adopted as its mantra that “what is good for business is good for Shepparton”, believing that the benefits of business-led regional development flows down to the community through job creation. The second group are loosely affiliated philanthropists and social assistance providers who are also deeply concerned with rising socio-economic inequality in the region. In order to construct the region as a suitable target for their attention and to raise funding for their programs, this group have used a narrative of Shepparton as a profoundly disadvantaged community that is struggling to address the increasing socio-economic inequality that has occurred as the region’s economy has been transitioned to corporate food production. The perspective of these actors is that what is good for the community of Shepparton is ultimately good for business. There is both a mutual dependency and an antagonism between these two groups. The former regard the latter as ‘outsiders’ who deliver essential social support, albeit poorly, but whose narrative over-amplifies discourses of disadvantage and presents a different reality of Shepparton than their own. The latter depend on the former to use their social capital to support and promote their initiatives but feel disrespected and are resentful of what they see as their ‘turf’ being invaded by people they believe lack the expertise and commitment to meaningfully address rising socio-economic inequality in the region. Examining how this particular network of differently-situated elites understand and look to address socio-economic inequality in Shepparton is principally an ethnographic study of a group of local elites engaging with other elites through overlapping and intersecting governmental interventions. In some cases, the practices of these interventions support the local elite’s narrative regarding increasing socio- economic inequality being mitigated through improving educational outcomes; in other cases, they challenge and threaten their role as mediators who claim both a sensibility and commitment to know what the community needs and the capability to deliver. How local elites driving regional development reflect on and engage with the practices of neoliberal philanthropy; how they resist them, in part or fully, highlights the risk of transferring the responsibility for complex socio-political issues such as equitable access to health, education and employment to unelected and unaccountable social actors whose interests might be conflicted.

5 2 Contribution Building on Janine Wedel’s uncovering of a novel form of elites that she terms ‘influence elites’, and adding to Tania Li’s perspective on the limits of Foucault’s notion of governmentality, I show how a clique of local elites, committed to the belief that community welfare is best delivered through business-led regional development, take over and change the ‘practices of governmentality’ of another loosely organised group of elites whose approach to addressing socio-economic inequality in Shepparton threatens the realisation of their vision for the region and challenges the notion that their status as mediators for what the community needs is essential. In an effort to refocus anthropology’s interest in elite studies, Wedel has joined other scholars in concluding that an unprecedented confluence of developments in the last decades of the twentieth century has enabled a new formation of elites to emerge (see A. Davis and Williams 2017; Savage and Williams 2008b; Wedel 2017). Wedel describes these new elites as ‘influence elites’, people whose elite status is derived from the way they organise and operate as opposed to occupying fixed places in institutional hierarchies. The principal concern for Wedel is how ‘influence elites’ use self-sufficient organising structures to push their policy agenda (Wedel 2018, 3). The most powerful of these structures according to Wedel are groups of elites which she refers to as ‘flex nets’-- dense, self-propelling, informal, and often, long-time trust networks that pursue common goals, co-ordinating their efforts inside and outside official structures (2017, 164). Wedel claims that ‘flex nets’ are more amorphous and less transparent than political interest or lobby groups and are adept at circumventing government rules concerning accountability and competition, such that they challenge modern democracies and free markets. In the last two decades ethnographies have been produced that contribute much to our understanding of elite cultures, how they are created and sustained, and how they are valued in wider society. These works have used a theoretical framework that is tuned to examining elites in networks and hierarchies where their power and influence is positional. For example, in his study of the structure of German elites in the context of regime change, Erwin Scheuch takes a Weberian perspective of elites in positions that control resources, and questions whether the structuralist characteristics of corporatist Germany with its sectoral elites and interlocking boards would survive internationalisation (2003). Similarly, in examining elites in Mexico, Roderic Camp claims that whilst elites in Mexico hold fewer than the two board positions C Wright Mills claims distinguishes ‘power elites’, the existence of informal networks functioning in similar ways warrant people in senior politico-economic roles being understood as ‘power elites’ (2003). Whilst this body of scholarship continues to explore ‘power elites’ there is little ethnographic understanding of the elites described by Wedel as ‘influence elites’ and even less, if any, that examines the perspectives of elites organised as a flex net. Wedel attributes this paucity of scholarship to gaps in the theoretical framework used in elite studies. Wedel contends that by being tuned to examining elites who derive their power through their position in networks and hierarchies, we understand little about elites who derive their power as connectors who move freely through multiple positions both inside and outside of government. Of particular concern to Wedel is a scarcity of empirical scholarship that reveals the way

6 these elites organise and operate and, relatedly, the circumstances under which they compete or cooperate with other differently situated elites with whom they connect. By employing a theoretical framework that melds Actor Network Theory (ANT) with existing elite theory, my research adds to Wedel’s work in identifying and providing a thick description of a clique of ‘influence elites’ organised and operating as a ‘flex net’. Rather than taking the multi-locale path encouraged by Wedel who suggests anthropologists examine ‘influence elites’ in technology and finance connecting across locales (2018, 4), I have chosen a place-focussed approach, examining local-regional elites who as a clique are mediating on behalf of their community. My choice is motivated by two factors. The first of these factors is that ‘being local’ is not simply a geographically defined concept for my core participants. By claiming to have a unique understanding as to what is needed locally my participants are accorded elites status by state and federal levels of government seeking local intermediaries with whom they can engage apolitically. Furthermore, by examining elites in a local context, I am also better able to show how they work together to develop a shared sensibility, and how this sensibility endures in the clique despite people joining and leaving. Through examining what proponents of ANT term as ‘foundational activities’ I reveal how this group of elites are able to claim and retain an authoritative voice to speak for the community by recruiting other people with different interests to their vision, apportioning roles and creating a narrative that they not only know what the community needs but also have the capability to deliver. By tracing their twenty-five year history of working together, I show how they have stepped in to provide leadership whenever they have sensed that others are failing to present their community in a positive light or not garnering for Shepparton their fair share of government funding. Where Wedel asserts that ‘flex nets’ amplify the power and influence of ‘influence elites’, I extend this notion by showing that for most, their elite status is fully contingent upon being part of this powerful clique. The second factor in taking a place-focused approach is that whilst my participants make connections across locales, where their regional development practices overlap and intersect with place-based neoliberal philanthropy is in what Foucault would recognise as the ‘witches brew’ of Shepparton. Arguing for the heuristic value in studying governmental programs as they were envisaged, Foucault claims that the gap between what is planned and what is delivered can be understood as the effect of the “witches brew”, the existing assemblage of people, locations and practices these overlapping and intersecting interventions aim to reconfigure (1991b). In my study, the ‘witches brew’ includes differently situated elites in Shepparton as well as institutions and practices that are specific to the town; for example, in funding the provision of social support there are existing practices and relationships that involve the local council, state and federal governments, NGOs and philanthropic foundations. By examining how this clique of locals driving regional development interacts with other elites engaged in providing social support in the region I also add to Tania Li’s perspectives on the instability and limitations of Foucault’s notion of ‘governmentality’. It is well understood within anthropology that there is a risk of taking concepts such as ‘social capital’ and ‘neoliberalism’ as universal and totalising.

7 For example, in calling for greater reflexivity on the part of anthropologists to the concepts of ‘reciprocity’, ‘embeddedness’ and ‘social capital’, Susana Narotzky cites the tension between the abstract concepts of theorists and the specificity of the situatedness from which these concepts derive their hegemonic power (2007, 403). Similarly, Ilana Gershon points to the risk of anthropologists producing ethnographies that are insufficient in unsettling neoliberalism, claiming that neoliberalism is often either taken to be a completed and totalising project or researchers take localised manifestations of neoliberalism as given (2011, 537). Nikolas Rose, whose observations regarding advanced liberal democracies I cited earlier in this chapter, acknowledges the instability of governmental interventions by juxtaposing what he terms the ‘analytics of governmentality’ with the ‘sociologies of rule’ (1999a, 19). According to Rose, analytics of governmentality are concerned with the emergence of particular regimes of truth regarding governing, including the ways of speaking truth, the people authorised to do so, and so forth. Sociologies of rule on the other hand, according to Rose, are more concerned with the complex, contingent, locally variable and organised ways that rules are exercised and experienced. Whilst the ‘analytics of governmentality’ and the ‘sociologies of rule’ are both empirical studies, Rose’s focus is on the former, the rationale of governmental programs as planned. According to Li, the hueristic distinction both Foucault and Rose make between what is planned and what is exercised and experienced is problematic (Li 2007, 278). Li asserts that this distinction presents governmentality as a totalising, universal concept, and downplays the importance of examining the reality of what these interventions deliver. In arguing for the ethnographic examination of concrete cases of interventions and struggles, Li claims that there is much to be learned from the acts of resistance and rejection which limit these governmental interventions and can create unintended consequences (2007, 279). My research builds on Li’s observation that governmental interventions are not isolated in that they not only enter a world in which other interventions are at play, but they also encounter unrelated confounding factors such as natural disasters, currency fluctuations and the like (2007, 280). According to Li, the presence of other governmental interventions that intersect and overlap and the unforeseen impact of unpredictable events, serve to limit the effectiveness of these programs. Whilst stressing the importance of this area for ethnographic study, Li is less expansive of the overlapping relationship between interventions promoted by differently situated groups of elites than she is on the reaction of those targeted by governmental interventions. Accordingly, much of the work inspired by Li’s perspective tends to focus on the ‘targets’ (Li’s terminology) of interventions and reveals their tactics in accommodating, resisting and rejecting these interventions. By focusing on two interventions, business-led regional development and place-based neoliberal philanthropy, I reveal how elites with differing narratives in relation to securing the social wellbeing of the community, reflect on and respond to the threat posed to each other by their respective practices. Where Li postulates that these intersections and overlaps limit the effectiveness of governmental interventions, I reveal that they can be highly charged political arenas where resistance and rejection are not only the responses of the so-called ‘targets’ of governmental programs, but

8 also the strategies deployed by elites themselves when their authority to represent their community is challenged by competing perspectives concerning the resources needed by the community. In this context I add to Li’s claim that governmental interventions are limited by being resisted or rejected by their ‘targets’ and show that they can also be limited by being appropriated and reconstructed by other elites whose status is threatened by the intervention. In providing a thick description of the struggles that result from two governmental interventions overlapping and intersecting, this study also adds to understandings of ‘social capital’. The Greater Shepparton Lighthouse Project, which I introduce in chapter three and discuss in more detail in chapter five, was developed through the prism of ‘social capital’ and is consistent with the ABS and World Bank view that through building linking and bridging ‘social capital’, those with means in communities can help those less well-off to pull themselves out of disadvantage. I show that this approach is complicated by the propensity of elites who, when sensing that their status is under threat, are likely to use their ‘social capital’ in a Bourdieusian way to marginalise and exclude other elites whose collaboration is key to improving the social welfare of people experiencing disadvantage in the community. My research not only provides an ethnographically grounded critique of ‘social capital’ but also provides a more detailed and practical perspective about an approach to the amelioration of inequality that, whilst widely promoted by policymakers and academics, has been subjected to little empirical evaluation. 3 Theoretical model. Central to this thesis is a group of locals emotionally and economically invested in corporate food production who claim to use their social capital virtuously in an effort to address growing socio-economic inequality in their community. Whilst drawing on and contributing to literature concerning elites, my examination of how this group organises and operates, and engages with other elites is also informed by, and contributes to, literature concerning governmentality and biopolitics. Accordingly, in this section I provide a longer and broader historical trajectory of the literature within which my study is situated. In their introductory chapter to “The Anthropology of Elites”, Tijo Salverda and Jon Abbink claim that, within anthropology, studies of elites remain relatively scarce compared to those in sociology, history and political science (2013, 1). According to them, whilst anthropology’s methodologies are more likely to reveal more about the nature of elites, and how they operate, historically anthropologists have not been attracted to elites and have tended to “study down rather than up” (2013, 3). This critique of the orientation of the discipline’s gaze is not new; nor is it unexpected given that one of the objectives of the editors publishing this collection of works focused on elites was to encourage more anthropologists in this direction. The ‘turn’ in anthropology’s interest in elites came in the mid 1970s and is often associated with Laura Nader’s landmark essay, “Up the Anthropologist” (1974). In her essay, Nader called on anthropologists to contribute to an understanding of how elites exercise power and influence, arguing that “never before had the actions and inactions of so few had the power of life and death over so many” (1974, 1). Nader returned to this subject in her 1995 Sidney W Mintz Lecture, “Controlling Processes

9 Tracing the Dynamic Components of Power” (1997). Nader drew on three ethnographic studies -- harmony as a tool of pacification, women’s choice in the beauty/industrial complex, and the dismissing of context in the idealised version of science in museums - - to trace how and why power is acquired, used, maintained, or lost by economic elites. At that time, according to Nader, anthropologists still knew more about the “colonised mind” than they did about the interactions between industrialists and their target populations, that created industrial subjects (1997, 723). Nader’s work, particularly “Up the Anthropologist” which was published nearly fifty years ago, was developed in a period in which the discipline’s understanding of elites was heavily influenced by American sociologist Charles Wright Mills (Savage and Williams 2008a, 2). In “The Power Elite” (1956b, 3), Mills asserted that: “the elite is composed of men [Mills’ gendering] whose positions of command in an interlocking group of government, military and corporate structures resulted in their actions or failure to act having major consequences for ordinary men and women”. The elites described by Mills in mid 20th century America derived their power through occupying positions at the top of relatively stable institutions, such as the military. Hence, Nader’s call to “look up” was made at a time when the dominant view was that power and influence was gendered, hierarchical, institutionally based and flowed vertically, from top to bottom (1997, 723). Whilst both power and influence remain at the top of organisations and continue to warrant anthropology’s attention, there is a significant body of work within the discipline that emerged in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries that challenges the dominant perspective of elites as people whose power and influence is derived from their family or class background, wealth, or institutional position (Abbink and Salverda 2013, 2). Aeron Davis and Karel Williams, for example, claim that the institutional stability upon which elite studies informed by Mills is predicated, has been eroded primarily by the growing influence of financial markets and their institutions, creating a new super rich (2017). Janine Wedel builds on Davis and Williams by claiming that along with financialisation, deregulation, economic globalisation, digitisation, and privatisation have fragmented the governing space, dispersed policy-making bodies, incorporated a variety of non-governmental entities, and made the boundaries between states, corporations and non-governmental organisations ever-more porous (2017, 157). According to Wedel, in the vacuum created by this erosion of institutionally based power and influence, new elites have formed that intermesh hierarchies and networks, serve as connectors, and coordinate influence from multiple moving perches, inside and outside official structures (2017, 153). Unlike Mills’ ‘power elite’ who are identifiable by their affluence, family name or clearly defined positions on organisational charts, Wedel’s ‘influence elites’, who are no less powerful and influential, are identifiable through how they organise and operate as connectors of networks and hierarchies. This emergence of new elites who derive their power and influence from being the connectors of networks and hierarchies has broadened the gaze of anthropologists such that it is no longer sufficient to only look up; in fact, doing so risks missing elites for whom hierarchy is an inadequate proxy for their status. This is particularly evident

10 in Horacio Ortiz’s ethnographic study titled Financial Professionals as a Global ‘Elite’ (2013). Ortiz concluded that through being responsible for the everyday global distribution of credit to sovereign states to fund their budgets, and to companies in the developing world to fund infrastructure projects, professionals in the financial industry form part of a global network of elites that are central to the political process, but often invisible. Whilst there are powerful and influential people in institutional positions above the financial professionals in his study, Ortiz found that they are subservient to this global network of elites who, like those described by Wedel, are connectors who move freely between organisations, and in and out of government roles. Similarly, in her study of a network of village presidents, lawyers and civil servants in North-western Greece (2008), Sarah Green found that this group of ‘locals’ who tenuously held positions of some authority in their region were accorded elite status equal to that of the EU bureaucrats in Brussels with whom they mediated funding for regional development programs, because of their connecting roles in “networks, webs and constellations of relationships” (2008, 261). I draw on this stream of literature to particularise the elites who are the central subjects in my work, to describe how they claimed and were accorded their status as local mediators, and to reveal the organisational and operating practices that have helped them maintain their status for over twenty-five years. My research also engages with Michel Foucault’s notions of ‘governmentality’ and ‘biopolitics’. I draw on this stream of scholarship to discuss how my participants understand socio-economic inequality and its causal relationships (or lack thereof) with corporate food production, how they preference for their attention some forms of disadvantage over others and fight to preserve their power and influence whenever they sense their elite status is under threat. Michel Foucault is regarded as the founder of governmentality studies. As the inaugural chair of ‘The history of systems of thought’ at the Collège de France, Foucault held an annual series of public lectures from 1970 to 1984 (except 1976-77). Three of the lecture series form a trilogy in which Foucault articulated his thinking on governmentality and biopolitics. In the first of the trilogy, “Society Must Be Defended” (1975 - 76), Foucault introduced biopower. In the second series of lectures, “Security Territory, Population” (1977-78) he introduced his notion of ‘governmentality’, and in the final lecture series in the trilogy, “The Birth of Biopolitics” (1978 - 79) he developed his notion of biopower as a particular form of governmentality that associates the biological phenomena of individuals with the political behaviours of human populations. Whilst Foucault does not place biopolitics in a hierarchical relationship to governmentality, in his lectures he states that a course on biopolitics could not be done without first conducting a genealogy of liberalist governmental reason (Foucault 2010, 21–22). In my work, I have taken biopolitics to be a particularised form of governmentality that acts on individuals and human populations through a process described by Foucault in “Security Territory, Population” as ‘normation’ (2007, 57). Foucault argues that ‘normation’ consists first of all in positing an optimal model to which people are encouraged to conform. In this context, normalisation is conforming to an optimal norm and being abnormal is being incapable of conforming to that norm. To acknowledge that there is an originally prescriptive character that gives the norm

11 primacy in determining what is normal, Foucault uses the term ‘normation’ rather than normalisation. As I draw on both ‘governmentality’ and ‘biopolitics’ separately to add perspectives to different parts of my work, I have separated the two notions in describing my theoretical approach. It is mainly through his 1977 - 1978 lecture series titled “Security, Territory, Population” that Foucault announced a “far-reaching correction and refinement of his analysis of power” (Bröckling, Krasmann, & Lenke, 2011, p. 1) . Rather than seeing power over populations as the sole purview of the state, and only deployed to preserve sovereignty or exercise discipline, Foucault proposed that, since the collapse of feudalism and the reformation of the church in Europe, power, not only in the hands of the state, had become increasingly concerned with creating dispositions in the population that are favorable to people conducting themselves in a manner that contributes to the common welfare of all (1991a, 92). By introducing the neologism ‘governmentality’, Foucault drew attention to power being: “the ensemble formed by the institutions, procedures, analysis and reflections, the calculations and tactics that allow the exercise of this specific albeit complex form of power, which has as its target populations, as its principle form of knowledge political economy, and as its essential technical means apparatuses of security” (1991a, 102). This “complex form of power” can be understood in Foucault’s words as “processes by which the individual acts upon himself”, or self-subjectification (1993, 203). We also know from Foucault’s writing that his use of the term “political economy” refers to “the correct manner of managing individuals, goods and wealth” and has come to mean ‘the economy’ (Dean 2009, 29; Foucault 1991a, 92). The “apparatuses of security” referred to by Foucault incorporate, alongside legislative and disciplinary practices, demographic norms as tools of subjectification (Dean 2009, 29), for example population life-expectancy norms being used to subjectify people as being too old to warrant organ transplants. Accordingly, through studying the everyday ‘practices of governmentality’, researchers are said to be able to “appropriately account for processes of both subjectification and state-formation” (Bröckling et al., 2011, p. 2). There is, however, a cautionary note that should preface any critique of Foucault in relation to governmentality or any work invoking his name to support a position in relation to this form of power. Foucault acknowledged in his lecture series that his work on governmentality was “still at a raw and early stage” (Foucault 1991a, 90). That governmentality was a ‘work-in-progress’ is evident in his neologism only forming part of his lecture series in the concluding remarks, as if he was ruing the choice of not having made governmentality more prominent. According to Foucault, “the more exact title I would have liked to have given the course of lectures I have begun this year [1977-78] is not the one I originally chose, ‘Security, Territory and Population’; what I would like to undertake is something which I would term a history of governmentality” (Foucault 1991a, 102). Foucault died unexpectedly before he had fully developed this line of argument. Accordingly, his contribution to ‘governmentality’ is often more accurately referred to as germinal in the work of others who have taken what is said to be his “inherently provisional and fragmentary”, “sketched-out” concept, and given it analytical purchase

12 (Bratich, Packer, & McCarthy, 2003; Gordon, 1991; Miller & Rose, 2008). It is therefore important in critiquing ‘governmentality’, or in attributing a way of thinking to Foucault, to clearly distinguish the source as being either Foucault’s published “raw and at an early stage” work on ‘governmentality’ or the work of others inspired by a Foucauldian sensibility on ‘governmentality’. In a similar light, claims that Foucault’s published lecture, re-titled “Governmentality” (1991a), has been particularly influential should be tempered by the knowledge that ‘governmentality’ has been worked and reworked by others whose scholarship is also heavily cited. Following Foucault’s death in 1984, governmentality studies proceeded along three distinct trajectories (Bröckling et al., 2011, p. 8). Foucault’s fellow researchers continued his work on understanding the development of the modern welfare state. In Great Britain, a network of scholars took “Foucault’s instruments” down another path to understand contemporary social transformations, mostly those associated with neoliberalism (Bröckling et al., 2011, p. 9). It is this body of scholarship, characterised by the work of the Anglo-Foucauldians Nikolas Rose, Colin Gordon, Graham Burchell, Pat O’Malley and others, that has come to be known as Post-Foucaudian (Stenson 2008, 42). From the 1990s governmentality studies moved along a third trajectory as an independent research field within a series of disciplines in the social and political sciences and cultural studies. On commenting on the analytical power of governmentality in this context, Nikolas Rose shows how this way of thinking enables scholars to understand governance at a practical, quotidian level, rather than as institutions and ideologies (1999a, 57). Used this way, a governmental rationality can challenge the stability of dominant concepts such as neoliberalism and globalism by identifying the instability of their everyday tactics and practices, the differences and resistances in what is said, how it is said, and what allows it to be said (Rose 1999a, 57). Scholars working in this vein are not endeavoring to unpick ideologies, nor are they using Foucault’s methodology; they are, instead, examining ‘practices of governmentality’ themselves and thinking about how these practices and the resistances to them relate to self-government, self-subjectification and the subjectification of others (Bröckling, Krasmann, and Lenke 2011, 11; Lessenich 2011, 304). It is in this third trajectory that anthropologists concerned with power asymmetries in food production and global food systems are to be located. For example, in his book “Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies”, Seth Holmes explores the governmental practices that normalize and make invisible the hierarchies of ethnicity, labour and suffering of undocumented, indigenous Mexican pickers working in U.S. agriculture (2013). Also found in this trajectory are anthropologists as scholar-activists, giving a voice to people and communities that have been silenced by powerful state and corporate elites, and exposing through their ethnographies the subject-making and state-building characteristics of the ‘practices of governmentality’ associated with corporate food production. For example, in studying the effect of neoliberal agrarian policies in Mexico that privileged agribusinesses’ access to ground water, Christian Zlolniski determined that public opposition to the inequalities of these governmental policies rested on raising peoples’ awareness of their part in the country’s larger hydrological system (2011).

13 With a few exceptions, most notably James Ferguson’s well cited “The Anti-Politics Machine: Development, De-Politicisation and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho” (1990), interventions such as the globalisation of food systems or the introduction of neoliberal agrarian policies are mostly presented as totalising in their effects. Whether they delivered what was envisaged, or whether there were unintended consequences from these interventions, or whether there was something else going on beyond the scope of these interventions is rarely the primary focus of these ethnographies, giving the impression that both governmental interventions and their practices are reasonably stable and deterministic. With the publication of her work, “Governmentality” (2007), Tania Li, challenged the notion that ‘governmentality’ is homogeneous and totalising. Li claims that there are four factors that moderate the planned effects of ‘practices of governmentality’. These factors, according to Li, are that power is contingent on the ‘target’ (Li’s terminology) having the agency to act; that targets of governmentality have dispositions that cannot be simply configured according to plan; that governmentality is premised on neoliberalism which should not be taken for granted; that governmental rationalities are predicated on successful transformations (2007, 276). According to Li, the ‘analytics of governmentality’ as described by Nikolas Rose (which is also consistent with Foucault’s approach) juxtaposes what was planned to be delivered and what was actually delivered, giving primacy to the former (2007, 278). Whilst studying governmental rationalities is justifiable according to Li, and it is acknowledged by its proponents to only produce “fragments of the real” (Foucault’s words), Li asserts that these studies tend to be undertaken in isolation from the factors that produce the gap between what was planned and what was delivered (2007, 278). Why this is problematic for Li is that it is often the resistance and rejection of governmental interventions and the unintended consequences of the very ‘practices of governmentality’ through which these interventions are operationalized that makes them unstable (2007, 278). It is on this basis that Li calls for a shift in the focus of empirical research from being informed by governmental rationalities that are taken as given, to studying concrete cases and struggles of governmental interventions ethnographically, focusing specifically on their limitations. According to Li, ethnographies of ‘practices of governmentality’ should be equally concerned with both the formal practices of governmental interventions and the informal practices of compromise and accommodation, everyday resistance or outright refusal (Li 2007, 280). Li further complicates the task for researchers by highlighting that ‘practices of governmentality’ rarely sit in isolation from other processes, including other ‘practices of governmentality’, and that processes outside the scope of governmental interventions, such as the influence of the media, changing consumption habits, floods and droughts also influence people’s behaviour. Accordingly, an ethnography of governmentality and its practices is also particularly concerned with how the effects, proximate and indirect, planned and unplanned, intersect with other processes such as industry restructuring, changes to the terms of trade, drought and so forth. (2007, 280). This multi-faceted perspective on governmental rationalities can be seen perhaps most vividly in Marina Welker’s “The Green Revolutions Ghost”. In her ethnography, Welker shows how a mining company’s

14 efforts to get local residents “back on the land” as “productive and self-reliant subjects” through sponsoring a pest management training program, instead produced subjects who were radicalised against corporations and the government, claiming that they were dependent on and entitled to conventional forms of development aid from the mine (2012). Drawing principally on Li, I examine ethnographically the struggles relating to two governmental interventions in order to unpack how local elites in regional Victoria, Australia, understand the causal relationship between corporate food production and increasing socio-economic inequality in their community. Relatedly, I examine how their commitment to business-led regional development informs their decision to preference one manifestation of socio-economic inequality over others, and how they see their roles and the roles of others in providing for the community’s welfare. I specifically focus on two understudied elements of Li’s argument. Firstly, that intersecting and overlapping ‘practices of governmentality’ can destabilise governmental interventions. I study how the narrative of disadvantage used by neoliberal philanthropy to galvanise support for their social assistance interventions, intersects with the narrative of the region thriving used by local elites to support business led regional development, threatening each other’s interventions. The second element of Li’s argument examined in my research is that reflecting on the intervention, those who are not the targets of the intervention might regard it as a threat and in responding, produce unintended consequences. In my research, the group of local elites central to my research initially partnered with another, loosely aligned, group of elites and then fell-out over on reflection that their status as essential mediators was being challenged by others. To explore how this group of local elites rationalises the problem of socio- economic inequality being promoted by other elites engaged in place-based neoliberal philanthropy I have turned to Foucault’s notion of ‘biopolitics’. I focus specifically on how this particularised form of governmentality that establishes new norms of behavior by which some people become normal and others become abnormal, may account for social fissures in the community. Biopower emerged from Foucault’s 1975-76 lecture series to the Collège de France titled “Society must be Defended” . In this series of lectures, Foucault examined the historical conditions that oriented the state to intervene in populations in order to enhance their wellbeing. However, it was not until his 1978-79 series, “The Birth of Biopolitics”, that Foucault developed his notion of biopolitics, noting that rather than simply being a collective of distinct individuals with interests and rights living in a given territory, since the eighteenth century3 populations have been understood as sets of natural phenomena with their own immanent laws of transformation and movement which are both the object and result of epidemiological, statistical and economic knowledge (Foucault 2007, 70). For Foucault, biopolitics was an attempt to rationalise

3 According to Foucault, whilst 18th century mercantilists and cameralists saw populations as “a productive force, conditional upon it being effectively trained, divided up, distributed, and fixed by disciplinary mechanisms”, they still regarded them first and foremost as juridical-political subjects. Foucault attributes 18th century economists generally, and a group of French economists (physiocrats) specifically, with understanding populations as “a set of elements in which we can note constants and regularities, identify the universal desire of producing benefits, and we can identify a number of modifiable variables on which it depends” (2007, 74).

15 the problems posed by the characteristics of individuals on the governmental practices aimed at disciplining and regulating populations (Foucault 2008, 317). By his own admission, Foucault failed to develop his notion of biopolitics, preferring to focus his ‘The Birth of Biopolitics’ series of lectures on contextualising biopolitics within neo-liberalism (2010, 185). Foucault rationalised his approach by asserting that the problems posed to governmental practice by populations are inseparable from the framework of political rationality within which they appear (Foucault 2010, 317). He argued this point by observing that American neo-liberalism is a movement diametrically opposed to the form of neo-liberalism found in the German social market economy (2010, 323). According to Foucault, the latter regards the market as a fragile regulator of prices, requiring a policy of social interventions that include assisting the unemployed, providing health care cover and social housing, whereas the former extends a market rationality to domains that are not exclusively or primarily economic, for example in the provision of social welfare. This is important in the context of my work as the provision of social welfare in Australia is increasingly informed by the extended market rationality of American neo-liberalism (Mendes 2009, 102). As a consequence of Foucault’s preference to focus on contextualising biopolitics within neo-liberalism, his thinking on biopolitics itself is more seminal than developed and has benefited greatly from scholars who have taken his work and explored questions he left unanswered, such as how biopolitical programs might be activated, what sort of life is taken for granted when biopolitical norms are set, and what is done to people through these programs (Fassin 2011, 185; Li 2010, 66; Escobar 1984). Biopolitics is a distinct form of power, best understood as a particularised form of governmentality with its own technologies and practices, working with other forms of power to act on both individuals and populations through the processes of normalisation (Dreyfus and Rabinow 2013, 184). What makes biopolitics distinct from other forms of power is what Foucault terms ‘normation’ (2007, 57). Foucault’s neologism is designed to show that the disciplinary techniques of biopolitics posit an optimal model in terms of certain results, and endeavours to get people to conform to that model. As such, what is ‘normal’ conforms to a predetermined ‘norm’, and what is ‘abnormal’ is incapable of conforming to that ‘norm’ (Foucault 2007, 57). It is biopolitics that presents populations as human collectives, measured, regulated, constructed and produced through the ‘normation’ of death rates and family planning programs, health regulations and migration controls, and the like (Foucault 2008, 317). For example, in his book “The Biopolitics of Lifestyle” (2016), Christopher Mayes shows how in populations, lifestyle norms such as diets and exercise are fabricated to govern individual healthy choices that in turn concurrently secure the population’s health and reduce the cost to the state from the consequences of obesity. In exploring how biopolitics works in state systems of violence and domination, Bruce O’Neil shows how the ‘normation’ of peculiarities of the US governments program of ‘extraordinary rendition’, that include moving detainees through a network of secret detention centres in different countries, legitimises practices that strip detainees of all rights ordinarily associated with citizenship, securing them as an abnormal population against which crimes are not crimes (2012, 467).

16 These two contemporary examples reveal biopolitics as a regularising endeavour of the state. However, there is a significant body of scholarship that extends Foucault’s notion of biopolitics beyond the sole purview of the state, and into what anthropologists are theorising as ‘biocapitalism’. The important defining characteristic of biocapitalism is the simultaneous capture of value related to the health of populations and the creation of value in terms of private rather than public capital (Sunder Rajan 2006; Rose 2007, 32–34). There are two schools of thinking in relation to biocapitalism (M. A. Peters and Venkatesan 2020, 111). The first stream concerns the remaking of boundaries between nature and culture and is mostly concerned with the commodification of biomatter. For example, Hannah Landecker’s history of tissue culture explores how the unit of the cell has become more scientifically, technically, philosophically and economically important to how living things are thought about and manipulated (2007, 7). The second school of thinking focuses instead on the economics and ethics of organisations generating capital through creating new behavioural norms to which labour must self-discipline if it is to participate. A particularly useful example of this stream is Peter Benson’s “Good Clean Tobacco” (2008). By framing the tobacco industry’s transformation as biocapitalism and linking structural changes to the strategic use by the industry of stereotypes, discriminatory practices and stigma, Benson shows how health-driven production and discourses of cleansing, naturalize the harmful consequences of tobacco as individual accountability, and redistribute the blame to smokers, migrants and marginal growers for their individual shortcomings (2008, 371). An early example of Foucauldian scholarship that links the creation of new behavioural norms with the objective of generating private capital is Arturo Escobar’s4 “Discourse and Power in Development” (1984). Whilst predating the term ‘biocapitalism’, in this essay Escobar claims that the biopolitical processes of individuals either self-disciplining or being disciplined to create ‘normalised’ subjects are “constitutive and indispensable for the development of capitalism” (1984, 379). Escobar’s interest in “Discourse and Power in Development” is to relate the disciplinary and normalising technologies of biopolitics to the situation and struggles in the Global South as it engages with the “whole apparatus of development”, including international organisations and local-level development agencies (1984, 383). In rationalising the value of applying Foucault’s thinking to less developed economies, Escobar claims that not only is there a connection between the processes through which power is exercised in both less developed and advanced economies, but also the former is the realm ‘par excellence’ of all manifestations of power in today’s world from which we can learn (1984, 378).Taking these two points into account, I argue that bottom- of-the-pyramid (BOP)5 schemes in less developed economies are a form of biocapitalism with practices of ‘normation’ not dissimilar to those explored by Benson and present in one of the interventions examined in this thesis, namely, business-led regional development as pursued by local elites in Shepparton.

4 At the time, Escobar was studying under Paul Rabinow and Hubert Dreyfus at the University of California and largely attributes the development of the paper to his participation in a working seminar conducted by Michel Foucault at the university in late 1983. 5 Refer to the Glossary for a brief description of Bottom-of-the-Pyramid schemes.

17 In summary, using this theoretical framework, my research adds to the anthropology of elites by providing a thick description of an understudied formation of local elites organised and operating as a powerful clique. My research also adds to governmentality studies by examining two overlapping and intersecting governmental initiatives and showing that in addition to provoking resistance and rejection, their points of intersection can be highly charged political terrains in which the balance of power in regional locales is at stake. In the remaining two sections of this chapter, I detail the approach that I have taken to my research and outline the remaining chapters in my thesis. 4 Methodology My research methodology was designed to reveal how a group of concerned local citizens in Shepparton who are invested economically and emotionally in corporate food production, perceive socio-economic inequality in their community and envisage its amelioration. In particular, I sought my participants’ perspectives in relation to two sets of five interrelated issues. Firstly, how they understand socio-economic inequality and how they relate the transition to corporate food production to deepening socio- economic inequality throughout their community. Secondly, how they privilege for their attention some forms of inequality, how they describe solutions, and how they attribute amongst themselves, and between themselves and others, roles and responsibilities for ameliorating socio-economic inequality in their community. To this end, I conducted twelve months of fieldwork, mostly in Shepparton from December 2017 to December 2018. My fieldwork was supplemented by desk and archival research. Before detailing each facet of my methodology, I will briefly outline my connection with Shepparton and discuss some of the methodological challenges faced by anthropologists studying elites. I first conducted fieldwork in Shepparton in 2014. My interest at that time was in understanding how the risk of losing SPC/Ardmona, the city’s iconic local cannery, might impact on how people identified with Shepparton as a place for business and the Goulburn Valley as a region of corporate food production. Prior to then, my only association with Shepparton was childhood memories of family road trips in the 1960s and 1970s to buy from SPC unlabelled cans of preserved fruit referred to as ‘shinys’. Accordingly, in 2014, when it came to recruiting participants for this earlier study, I initially turned to ‘friends of friends’, people who others knew had lived in Shepparton for much of their adult lives and had witnessed the trials and tribulations of the canning industry as the market for fruit transitioned from preserved to fresh, and the terms of trade moved from mercantile to global free-trade. Some of my recruits participated out of curiosity, others because they had something to say about the value of the cannery to their community, and still others who were concerned about what I might write, requesting that I “please don’t paint [them] in a bad light”. When I returned to Shepparton two years later, during the planning phase for this study, I was able to reconnect and enlist the support of three participants from my earlier research. The only change in our relationship, two years on, was the sense of reciprocated familiarity that comes from having shared in my previous work. The purpose of outlining how I forged my own connections in Shepparton is to firstly explain that I

18 have no prior ‘special’ relationship with the community, and secondly, to reflect on some of the ways the methodological challenges that are said to confront those studying elites ethnographically manifested themselves in my fieldwork. In their introduction to “The Anthropology of Elites” (2013, 3), Tijo Salverda and Jon Abbink assert that elites are ‘closed and impervious to critical researchers’, and that studying elites demands a high degree of self-reflexivity on the positioning of field researchers, particularly anthropologists who, due to the history of their discipline, are often more attracted to subaltern and marginal groups (although this is admittedly changing, and has changed quickly over the past couple of decades as evidenced by ethnographies previously cited in this chapter). I will tease out both points separately, starting with the second. Self-reflexivity is always demanded of researchers, regardless of the subject. I suggest that what requires anthropologists to be even more vigilant in reflecting on their position in relation to elites may not only be a predisposition of the discipline but also the possibility that researchers are closer to elites than they may care to acknowledge. In her 2012 essay, “The Straw in Anthropologists’ Boots: Studying Nobility in Poland”, Longina Jakubowska makes this point when describing her study of elites in her homeland of Poland following on from her long-term ethnographic fieldwork with the Bedouin in Israel’s Negev Desert (2012). For Jakubowska, questions of reflexivity arose from writing for her local audience, in her language, about elites with whom she shared the experience of living in the same country, understanding its ideological and cultural underpinnings, and the practices by which it is governed, all of which narrowed the gap between her and the subjects of her research (2012, 186). The same could be said of my position relative to the elites who are central to my study. Apart from all of us being ‘baby boomers’ who have grown-up in Australia, we share a close affinity with business. Before becoming an anthropologist, I worked at a senior level in banking, both in Australia and overseas. For much of my career I represented my employer directly with elites in business, the media, in bureaucracy and in government. This shared affinity with business, together with my ‘white maleness’, age and my experience working with elites put me in a relatively unique position amongst graduate researchers, which leads me back to Salverda and Abbink’s first point. I suggest that not all anthropologists studying elites experience them as being closed and impervious to critique. Jakubowska, who had little difficulty recruiting participants for her study, observed that her participants, who heavily rely on the privileging of a discourse of victimisation after 1989, were keen to use the opportunity to be heard through her research (2012, 188). Furthermore, Jukubowska also observed that studying elites tends to skew, in the opposite direction, the asymmetrical power relationship that favours anthropologists when studying the underprivileged; opening up the possibility that elites as participants might use their power to influence research outcomes (2012, 187). Michael Herzfeld sees this skewing of power relations in favour of elites as making them impervious to critique but, like Jukubowska, he does not see them closed to researchers asserting that “the genuinely powerful admit the ethnographer whose prying is just so much scratching on the granite rock-face of its empire” (2000, 229).

19 How receptive elites are to participate in research seems to be contingent on two dynamics: firstly, the basis upon which they are accorded power and influence, and secondly, the extent to which they believe their status is under threat. If power and influence is positional and not under threat, then it would appear that elites have little to gain and much to lose from allowing access to researchers. This is a point made by Cris Shore who claims that economic, corporate, military and political elites cultivate a mystique and opaqueness around their roles and routinely restrict access to their activities, lest they be exposed for what they are (Shore 2002). If, on the other hand, elites are accorded and maintain their status by controlling a narrative, which is the case for my participants who are legitimised as mediators through their claim of having a unique sensibility and commitment to the community, then they are more likely to be open to researchers, especially those with whom they are familiar and sense an affinity. I had little difficulty recruiting participants. I put their willingness down to four factors. They were confident in their position of power relative to mine; they had a genuine desire to learn through discussion; they saw the opportunity to voice their views in defence of positions they knew were contested and, particularly for the elites who are central to my study, they took comfort in the fact that other more powerful members of their group were supportive of my research. I will now return to describe the methods I used in conducting this ethnography. I was initially attracted to Shepparton by what appeared to be a paradox. In a community that has successfully managed the transition from one mode of food production to another in order to remain relevant, how is it that despite best intentions, a general consensus between elites as to what needed to be done, and an understanding that increasing socio-economic inequality in their community produces damaging social and economic effects more broadly, efforts to meaningfully address the increasing gap between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’ have failed to change its trajectory? My primary data for this endeavour was sourced through sixty semi-structured conversations, mostly of sixty minutes duration. As my fieldwork progressed, it became clear that some of my participants were more central to driving community initiatives than others, prompting me to have follow-up conversations with ten. Our conversations were in offices and orchards, cafes and homes, and focused on two broad subjects: firstly, my participants’ background and their involvement in community driven initiatives and secondly, how they understood socio-economic inequality in their community and thought it could be best ameliorated. Whilst the relevance to my research of the second point is self-evident, it is worth dwelling for a moment on the importance of the first. By having my participants discuss their background stories I was seeking to gain insights into their life experiences that might enable me to reconcile, using a Bourdieusian logic, how the values and beliefs of individual participants could be inculcated into the collective subjectivity of the social group to which they belong. Central to Bourdieu’s theorising is his notion of ‘habitus’, which he described as a relatively stable structure of dispositions, grounded in people’s history and called upon, unconsciously, to shape their present and future practices (Bourdieu 1977, 78). Whilst ‘habitus’ is often used as a stand-alone concept, Bourdieu’s conceptualisation is that people’s practices are the result of an unconscious relationship between their

20 ‘habitus’ and their position within a social field6, and the current state of play in that social field (Bourdieu 1993, 76). For Bourdieu, both the ‘social field’ and peoples ‘habitus’ are structured. Furthermore, the relationship between these two structures not only give rise to certain practices but, in a reciprocating fashion, both the ‘field’ and people’s ‘habitus’ act upon each other in ways that change both (Maton 2012, 52). In other words, people enter into social fields with dispositions which are not only changed by entering into the social field, but also change the social field in turn by the mere fact that they have entered. Whilst Bourdieu’s theorising on the relationship between ‘habitus’ and ‘field’ is well-used ethnographically7, it is not without its problems, the principal two being the risk of the structure in the ‘field’ being understood as determining the practices of the actors (Thomson 2012, 77) and the absence of reflexivity implied in people’s past shaping their future practices. That said, Bourdieu remains useful to me in providing a framework for directed questions that help in understanding how my participants’ values and beliefs might permeate the collective values and beliefs of the group to which they belong and, if so, how they might challenge, expand or constrain the way the social group and its individual members might think about, and act, in relation to ameliorating socio-economic inequality in their community. The second facet to this line of questioning was designed to establish the extent of my participants’ involvement in community driven initiatives and to reveal how these initiatives were organised and operated. This is an important aspect of my methodology as it draws responses that address the two previously noted gaps identified by Janine Wedel in theoretical framework used in elite studies, the modus operandi of ‘influence elites’ and the circumstances in which they chose to collaborate or compete with other elites. For this I drew primarily on Actor Network Theory (ANT). Mostly associated with Bruno Latour’s work “Reassembling the Social” (2005), ANT tends to be included in the research methodology of ethnographies to demonstrate that non-human actors have a form of agency. For example, in her study of the political ecology of Canadian farmers, Brigit Müller shows how participating in large- scale export agriculture limits farmers’ “fields of possible action” in confronting blizzards, tornados, hail storms and drought to “the engineering of nature” by large agro-chemical companies (Müller 2008). ANT is also used to describe human agency in the context of mutable networks of humans, non-humans and non-human entities. For example, in Law and Lien’s study of human-animal relationships in the field of salmon farming in Norway, the authors use ANT to explore how human beings and animals emerge in specific relations embedded in material practices, contending that both the salmon and salmon farmers have no shape or form beyond practices and their relations (Law and Lien 2012). In his work “Bourdieu, Latour and Rash Abbas” (2019), anthropologist Felix Lang melds concepts from ANT with Bourdieu’s conceptual framework of social fields to better examine cultural production in instances where material objects are the most immediate expression of the field’s structure, and the field is in a state of flux with actors’ relationships being ungrounded and transient.

6 References to people’s position within a social field is a reference to their relative levels of ‘social capital’ in a social hierarchy. 7 In disciplines other than anthropology where its use has been generally limited to the application of Putnam, Coleman or Bourdieu (Smart 2008, 409)

21 ANT incorporates the actions of actors (humans, non-humans and non-human entities) into networks engaged in ‘world-building’ activities in which people’s practices and identities are constructed (Latour 1999, 19). I have chosen to use, as have other scholars, the term ‘foundational’ in lieu of ‘world-building’ to convey the same importance to activities that in part construct people’s identities (Baiocchi, Graizbord, and Rodríguez-Muñiz 2013, 336). These ‘world-building’ or ‘foundational’ activities are described as “real, historical, traceable assemblages of people, things, places, and ideas that are held together by links and relations of different kinds assembled, disassembled and reassembled around activities” (Baiocchi, Graizbord, and Rodríguez- Muñiz 2013, 336). In this thesis, I have used the concept of ‘foundational activities’ to explore how working on community initiatives together has configured this group of local elites. Specifically, in shaping the way they make decisions, defining their shared values and beliefs, their self-subjectification as knowledgeable and committed ‘locals’ and entrenching their modus operandi. To reveal how local elites recruited others to their vision for the region and established their claim within a broader network to be the ones best placed to mediate on behalf of the community, I have applied what Michel Callon, one of the leading proponents of ANT, terms the four ‘moments of translation’ (problematisation, role assignment, enrolment and mobilisation) to each of the five ‘foundational activities’ I identified during my fieldwork (1984, 196). Identifying these foundational activities involved a process of iteration. As I mentioned previously, I initially recruited my participants from relationships I had developed during my earlier work in the Goulburn Valley. The first of my conversations were with three people I knew to be particularly well-connected, community spirited and long-time ‘locals’. In these conversations I sought from them the names of others with whom they had collaborated on community or regional development initiatives. I then invited those mentioned to participate in my research, weaving into these subsequent conversations the same questions seeking the names of others with whom they had worked. I continued to source participants through introductions until I reached the point where the names being put to me by recruited participants were people whom I had already considered. This ‘snowballing’ process was initiated from more than one point so that I could mitigate the risk of missing sources who are less well connected but none-the-less engaged. Through ‘snowballing’ I identified a network of thirty-five local people who were neither accredited nor professionally engaged in the provision of social assistance and had collaborated together on a number of locally initiated projects that I had come to understand in ANT terms as ‘foundational’ or ‘world-building’. Some of these initiatives dated back to the early 1990s. Of the thirty-five identified, I recruited thirty participants; three people identified were no longer in the community and two saw no value in participating. In addition to the practical benefits of ‘snowballing’ to recruit participants, this technique was particularly relevant to my methodology as it also revealed the nature of different associations within this network of local elites as well as the relative power and influence of individual members. In addition to identifying the participants who are the central subjects of my research, ‘snowballing’ also revealed twenty other elites of interest; people with whom this group engaged as they worked to ameliorate socio-economic inequality in their community.

22 The combined fifty elites who participated in my research are people who are invested economically or emotionally in corporate food production in the Goulburn Valley and/or part of a broader network of people Mills would identify as ‘power elites’ providing social support services in Greater Shepparton. Of the fifty, I have particularised thirty as corporate-identified in that they coalesce around the promotion of their region as one driven primarily by corporate food production; large- scale, vertically integrated systems run on corporate rather than familial lines. These are everyday people who choose to channel their energies into improving their community. This group comprise elected representatives in local and state government, accountants, solicitors, real estate agents, journalists, civil engineers, valuers, labour contractors, consultants, media owners or hotel proprietors. All are white, mostly over fifty, mostly self-made, and mostly men. The remaining twenty participants are considered by corporate-identified local elites to be ‘outsiders’. Most live in the region, three are engaged in philanthropy, ten have leadership roles in local not-for-profits providing social support services and seven are state government bureaucrats who work or have worked in Shepparton. As my plan was for this ethnography to be a thick description, including direct quotes to convey the perspectives of my participants, all sixty semi-structured conversations were recorded, having first gained written consent from my participants. On the ten occasions when follow-up conversations occurred, I confirmed with those participants that their written consent still held. To record our conversations, I used an iPad installed with iTalk; the iPad being less obtrusive in public settings. My participants spoke freely, rarely qualifying comments as being ‘off the record’, and on only three occasions was I asked to pause the recording8. In part this reflected an openness that comes from them being confident in their argument, and a trust in me that I would not to put them at risk; one participant observed that they “relied on me to filter what was said”, another shared documents under the guise of “welcoming my views” whilst at the same time reminding me that the documents were confidential. Sometimes I was requested by those involved in community projects to provide genuine feedback on how others saw their initiatives; being asked ‘how are we going’ or ‘what are people saying’. Whilst corporate identified local elites generally spoke freely about others in their community, sometimes asking that other people’s names not be mentioned, those in this group never spoke disparagingly about other members of what I came to identify as a clique. My participants would sometimes make comments that were clearly designed to diminish the significance I might give to views other than their own. For example, in one case I was told “don’t listen to them, their views are toxic”, in another, “they were unceremoniously sacked which might have changed their view of the world” and “they are not huge thinkers, they are not strategic”. The confidence of local elites is such that only very occasionally would I feel their discomfort when they sensed that I had been speaking with elites who were outside of their group and were people with whom they had clashed.

8 On one occasion the discussion involved a legal settlement, on another occasion the participant who do not live in Shepparton but had worked with corporate-identified local elites and still worked with others in the area was unwilling for their views of the Lighthouse Project to be on the record fearing the repercussions if comments could be identified as theirs, the third occasion was when one of the corporate-identified local elites became uncomfortable discussing the outcome of a negotiation with State Government involving another member of the clique.

23 All of the recorded conversations were subsequently transcribed. Whilst time- consuming, I chose to transcribe these recordings myself. My reasoning for doing so was threefold: to ensure that I had not lost any of the nuances in my participants comments; to protect the anonymity of my participants; and to avoid the risk of exposing comments of a personal nature made to me in good faith by people who could be identified by what was recorded. By weaving a consistent set of core questions into all conversations and by coding my transcribed conversation notes with ‘key words’, I was able to thematically recovery data from the transcribed conversations even though some participants had expressed their understanding of socio-economic inequality and its amelioration differently than others. My data from recorded conversations was supplemented by data sourced through participant observation. In August 2018, I attended the fourth Sir Andrew and Lady Fairley Philanthropic Summit9 held in Shepparton. Of the eighty attendees, twenty-one were participants in my research, including twelve corporate-identified local elites. I was invited by another philanthropic foundation to their “Meet the People, Feel the Issues” road show in Shepparton in which local initiatives aimed at addressing socio-economic inequality were show-cased to prospective grantors. I also engaged with some of the activities associated with the previously mentioned Lighthouse Project. For example, I was an observer at a staff/volunteer data-workshop conducted by the Lighthouse Project and attended one of the project’s regular weekly staff meetings. I observed two in-school volunteer sessions organised as part of the Lighthouse Project and met with teaching staff. Attending the Lighthouse Project activities and the philanthropic summit enabled me to view both of these initiatives at an operational level, and to look for evidence that either corroborated or was inconsistent with the views expressed by my participants or revealed tension between differently situated elites. My primary research data was also supplemented by: • access to privately archives, • taped recordings of the 1993 Clever Food Conference10 • an unpublished manuscript, • the pre-reading and video recording of the 2014 Fairley Foundation philanthropic summit, • private papers • commissioned research, publications and public statements, • board reports and correspondence. These documents and recordings have provided important context and background detail to the five foundational activities driven by these local elites over a period of twenty-five years (1993 - 2018), as well as the four philanthropic summits that have been material in structuring the way this group of elites understand and have come to be involved in ameliorating socio-economic inequality in the community.

9 There have been three summits; 2011, 2014 and 2018. There was also a follow-up CEOs summit in March 2012 which brought together 101 community people and, as the first stage of the Lighthouse project, represented an extensive community consultation that was designed to find local leaders outside the welfare service system. 10 First of the foundational activities organised by some of the elites central to my study. The conference was the forum in which the strategy to position the region as a food-bowl was developed.

24 5 Thesis chapter outline In this chapter I have located my fieldwork in Victoria’s Goulburn Valley, a regional economy driven by corporate food production and beset by increasing socio-economic inequality. I have introduced the problem my research endeavours to address and have shown how my work draws on and contributes to elite studies, by examining ethnographically a novel formation of elites, and to studies of governmentality by examining how overlapping and intersecting practices of two concrete cases of governmental intervention are resisted and rejected when local elites reflect on the risks posed to their status as essential mediators. I have also provided a detailed review of the historical trajectory of the literature concerning elites, ‘governmentality’ and ‘biopolitics’ and have concluded the chapter by detailing my methods and my methodology. In chapter two, I provide context to the paradox of the contemporaneous growth in wealth for some and increasing socio-economic inequality for others as the focus for food production in the Goulburn Valley transitioned from being dominated by local canning co-operatives to supplying ‘fresh-to-the-market’ produce and high value processed food products. I start by briefly outlining the history of irrigated food production in the region and discuss the shocks that hastened the decline in the dominance of grower co-operatives and the emergence of large-scale corporate food producers. In doing so, I include the voices of locals whose lived experience provides an insight into some of the cultural and social consequences of this transition. Then, by citing the opening address to the 2014 Fairley foundation forum of philanthropists, local elites and social assistance providers I reveal that there is a strongly held belief amongst the local elites central to my study that they, not governments or so-called ‘outsiders’, know what is best for the community and have the capability to deliver. I then turn my attention to employment and education, both of which are seen by all of my participants as priorities in addressing increasing socio-economic inequality in the community. I reveal how educational outcomes have failed to match employment opportunities and how a combination of fewer low skilled jobs and barriers to access those that remain, have created a labour surplus in a region in need of a labour reserve. I conclude by profiling two phenomena experienced in the region, namely parents moving their children from ethnoculturally diverse urban schools, and the ‘placed-based’ trialling by the Australian government of welfare reforms. I show that both phenomena are known to exacerbate the harmful effects of socio-economic inequality reducing the effectiveness of efforts aimed at addressing disadvantage in communities. In the third chapter I discuss the definition that I have chosen to use for elites and I introduce my participants. Building on Janine Wedel’s notion of ‘influence elites’, I examine how the confluence of public sector reforms, the privatisation of public assets, delocalisation of businesses, and the emergence of an increasingly globalised food system were catalysts for this group of elites to claim and be accorded elite status as local mediators for their community. I highlight distinctions between these elites who I particularise as corporate-identified and local, and differently situated elites with whom they connect and compete to address increasing socio-economic inequality. I describe corporate-identified local elites and, using the methodological tools associated with ANT, show how these elites organise themselves in ways that create

25 and perpetuate their shared values and convictions. Specifically, I introduce five ‘foundational activities’ involving local elites working together and, through detailing two of these initiatives, reveal how a common set of practices that have helped preserve their status as mediators developed over the last twenty-five years. I conclude by showing that the local elites in my study organise and operate in ways that are analogous with Janine Wedel’s description of a ‘flex net’ -- an exclusive clique in which the private and official power of its members are amplified such that the clique’s authority is greater than the authority of any individual member, and potentially more enduring. My fourth chapter discusses how elites in Shepparton rationalise socio- economic inequality in their community, reflect on a causal link between increasing socio-economic inequality and the region’s transition to corporate food production, and conclude that socio-economic inequality is best ameliorated through improving the educational outcomes and social connectedness of young people. Drawing on Foucault’s notion of biopolitics I argue that business-led regional development initiatives can be understood as a form of biocapitalism with its particularised practices of governmentality. One of these practices is to create a positive vision and narrative of the future to which people are expected to normalise. I show that through these practices fissures in the community are created that result in those who are unable to meet the labour needs of the vision being subjectified as irresponsible and undeserving. I argue that the presence of these fissures that divide the community on the basis of whether peoples livelihoods come from production or from welfare can deemphasise the inequitable distribution of, and access to, social resources and reconstruct socio-economic inequality as a self-inflicted phenomenon. I then show that due to their commitment to business-led regional development, local elites not only see vulnerable people as responsible for their own circumstances but also regard socio-economic inequality as a harmful phenomenon that percolates up in communities, denying them of both the capital and human resources to garner the resources needed to fully achieve their vision for the region. I conclude by revealing that whilst corporate-identified local elites acknowledge that structural changes to food production have made life more precarious for some, they attribute the region’s disproportionate growth in socio-economic inequality to a combination of four factors: welfare recipients and refugees being encouraged to settle in the region, a not-for- profit sector profiting from rising disadvantage, intergenerational welfare dependency resulting in children growing up in households in which both education and work are not valued, and an overly generous welfare system that disincentivises those on welfare from becoming economically productive. In the fifth chapter I extend Tania Li’s scholarship on the limits of governmentality and show ethnographically the overlapping and intersecting of two governmental interventions -- business-led regional development and place-based neoliberal philanthropy. I show how local elites who up until 2011 had mostly concerned themselves with promoting a narrative of the region as prospering were drawn into partnering with differently situated elites who they regard as outsiders -- philanthropists and social assistance providers who see the region as struggling as a consequence of rising socio-economic inequality in the community. I firstly show how in 2011 the Sir Andrew and Lady Fairley Foundation philanthropic summit was a key

26 event in energising corporate-identified local elites to become more actively involved in ameliorating socio-economic inequality. Responding to what they saw as the public airing of a narrative that portrayed Shepparton as a place of entrenched poverty and sensing philanthropy’s ambition to extend its power and influence in the community beyond being a passive funder of public purpose initiatives, local elites chose to partner with this network of outsiders, rather than risk having their status as essential mediators for the community eroded. I specifically focus on one of the initiatives promoted by the organisers of the summit, the Lighthouse project, and examine how these two groups of elites with their own ‘practices of governmentality’ initially endeavoured to forge connections and bridge gaps, but quickly ‘locked horns’ over their respective roles. Through concentrating on the Lighthouse project, I show that this group of local elites legitimise their involvement in ameliorating socio-economic inequality by claiming that intergenerational welfare dependency and the failings of educators have denied business the ‘job-ready’ labour reserve they need to support their vision for the region. I also show that local elites see their role in the Lighthouse project as using their connections to build ‘social capital’ in the community so that young people can envisage an alternative future to welfare dependency and be energised into pulling themselves out of disadvantage. I conclude by showing that the way local elites took control of the Lighthouse project, changed the narrative of disadvantage in the region and attributed roles and responsibilities for ameliorating socio-economic inequality amongst themselves and between themselves and others, reveals appropriation and assimilation as additional tactics to resistance and rejection, that also limit governmental interventions. The final chapter in my thesis draws on chapters three, four and five to discuss the substantive findings that answer the five questions put to my participants, namely: how do they understand socio-economic inequality, attribute causality to its increased prevalence, privilege for attention some forms of inequality over others, and describe and attribute responsibility for its amelioration. I then show how my research has added to the anthropology of elites and to governmentality studies. Specifically, by employing a theoretical framework that melds Actor Network Theory with existing elite theory, my study has revealed a formation of elites operating in a regional setting that accords with Janine Wedel’s notion of ‘influence elites’ organised into a powerful clique she describes as a flex net. My study provides a thick description of how this clique claimed and were accorded the status of mediators for their community and how they have preserved this status over twenty-five years. Through examining their reflections on the implementation of the Lighthouse project, my study also reveals ethnographically the circumstances under which this clique competes or cooperates with other elites whom they regard as outsiders. I then describe how my work contributes to governmentality studies in that it extends Tania Li’s scholarship on the limits of governmentality by examining the resistance that emanates from what Foucault terms as the ‘witches brew’ when local elite reflect on the risks posed by the overlapping practices of differently situated groups of elites. I provide examples of how their response in these circumstances can produce conflicting and perverse outcomes. I conclude by proposing the future direction for research opened up by my approach.

27

Chapter 2 A tale of two cities

As far as addresses go in Shepparton, it does not get much better than The Boulevard. Overlooking the Goulburn River, which supplies irrigation water to the region’s dairy farms, orchards and market gardens, the fine homes and equally fine cars are testament to life being good for some in this Central Victorian regional city. Sandwiched between The Boulevard and Shepparton’s multi-million dollar Olympic- standard ‘Sports City’ is a pocket of homes where the growing gap between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’, is strikingly obvious. In the ironically named Glory Way, Champion Lane and Inspiration Street, disability access ramps outnumber balconies and front lawns have long become the final resting place for unregistered cars. Those from The Boulevard have little cause to socialise with the residents of Glory Way. Many drive past the inner-city schools to go to smaller schools on the outskirts of Shepparton where their children can “hang out with other aspirational kids”11. They play club tennis or golf, their children are in teams that use the facilities of the Sports City complex, they work at a level remote from anybody working-for-the- dole, and they have no need to visit Centrelink12 as clients. The Boulevard and Glory Way represent the tale of two cities, the Shepparton of people with ‘means’ whose lives revolve around a vibrant and successful business community, and the Shepparton of people with very little who “find themselves in a welfare system and are trying to find the best way to extract what they can from it”13. As previously noted, Shepparton is a business town. The Greater Shepparton City Council sees its role in relation to business as a facilitator, actively competing with other Victorian regional councils for new business investment (Gibson, Cameron, and Veno 1999; Funtera and Ruzzene 2017). Council bureaucrats rationalise the primacy they give to their business development strategy by claiming that the value of business investment flows down through the creation of direct employment, the fostering of ancillary business to support the investment and the contribution both make to a growth-oriented and buoyant economic atmosphere (Funtera and Ruzzene 2017, 19). To ensure members of the community are well placed to participate in the local business economy, the Council has also developed ancillary strategies to support the government and education sectors in building the region’s ‘human capital’ (Funtera and Ruzzene 2017). Whilst the Council’s strategy has been highly effective in attracting investment, the anticipated benefits for the broader community have failed to materialise, causing some community members to voice their sense of disillusionment about the benefits presumed to accrue from business-led regional development (Gibson, Cameron, and Veno 1999, 5). Issues of particular concern to community members are social polarisation, increasingly precarious employment and the depletion of social networks and resources (Gibson, Cameron, and Veno 1999, 5). This sense of business-led regional development under-delivering on its promise has increasingly become obvious to those outside Shepparton (Alford 2013). Rather than

11 A comment made by one of my participants to explain why they had moved their children from a school in which many of the students came from disadvantaged backgrounds. 12 CentreLink is the part of the Department of Human Services that delivers social security payments and services. 13 Observation of one of the corporate-identified local ‘elites’ participating in my study, who volunteers, working with the homeless.

28 being seen as a buoyant and growth-oriented economy, by 2014 Shepparton was being portrayed in the mass-media as a place of racism, youth unemployment and drugs (Evans, White, and Bridson 2016, 2). In this chapter, I provide some introductory descriptions and statistics that give an historical context to Shepparton and reveal the extent to which socio-economic inequality is a significant problem in the region. I firstly discuss the region’s transition to large-scale food production and, using the words of one of my participants, describe how life in Shepparton has changed for many people as a consequence. I then cite the opening address of the 2014 Sir Andrew and Lady Fairley Philanthropic Summit held in Shepparton and show that the self-sufficient entrepreneurship that has been a constant reality in the region’s settled history underpins local efforts to address the challenges of increasing socio-economic inequality. Focusing on two aspects of the local economy that my participants regard as priorities for their attention, namely employment and education, I show how Shepparton’s performance in both aspects has deteriorated relative to other regional centres. I conclude by profiling two phenomena, ‘white flight’ and ‘place-based welfare reform’ and discuss how both may have exacerbated the problem of rising socio-economic inequality in the region. 1 From co-operatives to corporates Whilst those who live on the Boulevard may not be directly connected to corporate food production, their socio-economic wellbeing most definitely is. The region produces fifty percent of Victoria’s fruit and table tomatoes, and thirteen percent of the state’s dairy production. With just under ninety percent of the value exported14 from the region coming from what is locally grown, agriculture and food processing drive Greater Shepparton’s $3.6b economy (“NIEIR Regional Statistical Profile Greater Shepparton” 2018, 18). Over the last century and a half, money and migration have transformed the district’s open landscape of wheat and grazing into the engineered topography of intensive, irrigated dairying and horticulture. Improved access to markets, the introduction of new technologies, investment in irrigation, and successive waves of migration have combined to enable dairying and horticulture to develop to the point where they have come to define the region as a ‘food bowl’, and its people as self- made and enterprising. Free selectors15 settled in the district from the 1870s to the early 1880s. To produce an income whilst they cleared land for wheat and grazing, they engaged in dairy farming. Rail access to Melbourne’s markets and the introduction of cream separators and refrigeration in the early 1890s enabled dairying which had mostly been a stop-gap activity, to become a viable enterprise in its own right. To process and market their products, dairy farmers built the Shepparton and District Co-operative Butter, Cheese and Ice Factory in 1894, followed by another in nearby Tatura twelve years later. These butter factories used a co-operative business model in which dairy

14 In this context, exported means goods produced that are surplus to local consumption and for which value is exchanged to buy goods and services that are not produced in the region. Food production, processing and transport account for $1.38b of the region’s $1.55b of exports in 2017 15 reference to those who, under schemes promoted by some Australian colonies (pre-federation), settled crown land defined as agricultural, for the purpose of establishing intensive agriculture (mainly wheat growing).

29 farmers provided most of the capital in return for their milk being processed at the factories and taken to domestic and overseas markets developed for them by the co- operatives. This grower/owner co-operative model would be replicated in the region by horticulturalists fifteen years later and would endure as a defining feature of food production in the region into the first decade of the twenty-first century. The story of intensive horticulture in the district is similarly linked to private enterprise. It was a local syndicate of pasturalists who energised irrigated fruit production in the district by subdividing into small holdings 730 acres that had been purchased for the purpose. In 1897, the first orchard was planted on these holdings at Ardmona, a town across the river to the west of Shepparton. Fourteen years later, crown land at East Shepparton, Grahamvale and Orrvale was subdivided into small holdings under a government sponsored irrigation scheme. This land to the east of Shepparton would become the location for most of Shepparton’s orchards. Growth in fruit production quickly exceeded the capacity of the markets in Melbourne and elsewhere. To absorb this excess production, the Shepparton Fruit Preserving Company (SPC) was established in 1918 followed by Ardmona Fruit Co-op Ltd (Ardmona) in 1921. Like the butter factories before them, capital was sourced from growers who then were able to have their produce dehydrated or canned and taken to markets developed by the co-operatives. Whilst rail opened up markets, and technology and irrigation made intensive horticulture and dairying economically viable, it was migration and immigration that brought expertise and scale. Before WW1, migration to the area was predominantly from British and German immigrants taking up the land privately subdivided for orchards in and around Ardmona. In 1913, Jewish refugees escaping persecution in Russia settled and established orchards in the government’s new irrigation subdivision at Orrvale, east of Shepparton. Immediately following the war, returned soldiers seeking a new future migrated to Shepparton to take up small holdings on both sides of the river under the Discharged Soldier Settlement Act (1917). Between the two world wars immigrants arriving from the rural regions of Albania, Greece, Italy and Yugoslavia settled in the irrigation area east of Shepparton. In the late 1940s to the early 1950s Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians and Macedonians leaving Europe in the wake of WW2, came to the region and also settled in the irrigation areas east of Shepparton. The district’s most recent wave of migration started in late 2003. Attracted to the area by the prospect of obtaining work as horticultural labourers or in food processing, 7,630 Afghan, Congolese, Iraqi, Sudanese and Syrian refugees were resettled on the Shepparton side of the river under the Australian government’s Rural and Regional Resettlement Scheme for refugees. The Second World War and the three decades that followed were boom years for the region’s economy (Gibson, Cameron, and Veno 1999, 8). By the early 1970s, other well-known food producers including Campbells Soups, Heinz, and Henry Jones IXL, had joined SPC and Ardmona. During this period, the City of Shepparton was established. The election of Andrew Fairley, the managing director of SPC, as Shepparton’s inaugural mayor started a trend that melded local government with local business for much of the second half of the twentieth century. The lives of people living on the orchards and in Shepparton and Mooroopna were inextricably linked to their canneries. In my previous study I was

30 told how the sixties and seventies were the “golden years of canning” and of “the town being the factory” or how the factory was “a massive mother-ship” around which all activities revolved. When I met with a grower from Mooroopna who no longer grew canning fruit, he proudly pointed to a sepia photo on his office wall and told me about his grandfather “picking for Ardmona”. Townspeople told me about working the season to earn holiday money or to pay school fees or buy a washing machine. For university students, working at the cannery was seen as a rite-of-passage that provided income over the summer break. One of my participants who worked for SPC for thirty years told me how their great-grandfather worked for SPC on the first day of operation in 1918, and that their grandfather was a grower/shareholder in the 1920s and 30s and how relatives worked the season at the cannery because they were preferenced over outsiders. The boundary between economic and social life was also blurred. The Ardmona Fruit Co-op sponsored Mooroopna’s football team whilst SPC fielded its own team and contributed to the local pavilion which bears the name of a former SPC director, Harry Luck. When a new children’s ward was needed at the local hospital, the managing director of SPC volunteered to be the deputy chair of the fund- raising committee and the cannery raised three-hundred thousand dollars in one day by processing for free the fruit donated by their growers. The first shock to the region’s economy came in 1972 when Britain joined the European Economic Community. This led to a dramatic loss of the region’s international market at a time when the export trade in canned goods was becoming more competitive and the domestic market was slowing as consumer preference drifted to fresh produce (Gibson, Cameron, and Veno 1999, 8). According to one grower, the Ardmona cannery lost ninety percent of its business overnight. In the following decade employment in the fruit sector fell by forty percent and seasonal work at the canneries, which was mostly done by women, fell by twenty percent (Gibson, Cameron, and Veno 1999, 8). The second shock to the region’s economy came with the 1981 recession which led to a major rationalisation of food processing in the region. In 1982, following an Industries Assistance Commission inquiry into canned fruit, the Australian government announced a financial package to assist growers to reduce production of fruit destined for canning by removing fruit trees (“Canning Fruit” 1982). The government had formed the view that the canned fruit industry was in structural decline, with any positive change in domestic demand over the next five years unlikely and exports expected to fall significantly in this period (“Canning Fruit” 1982, i). In making this finding, the government concluded that growing fruit for canning was unlikely to be profitable without ongoing government assistance and that growers would need to find alternative outlets for their fruit and uses for their land (“Canning Fruit” 1982). At the start of the six-month inquiry, ninety-nine percent of Australia’s canned peaches, pears and apricots were processed by three canneries in the Goulburn Valley. During the enquiry, Henry Jones-IXL closed its canning operation at Kyabram, leaving only SPC and the Ardmona Fruit Co-op in a region that had boasted nine canneries in the golden years of canning. As the federal government inquiry was underway, the Victorian state government sponsored a regional industry survey to examine ways to mitigate the significant job losses resulting from the contraction of canning in the Goulburn Valley

31 (R. A. Carter and Luscombe 1985). Amongst the authors’ recommendations was a call for a co-ordinated regional development strategy that included the development of new markets for agricultural products, attracting further food processing industries, and addressing the environmental crisis of salinity brought about through intensive irrigation. Consequently, those growers who could afford to rebuild their orchards with varieties that suited the fresh fruit market started to do so, and those that could not either remained to supply the shrinking needs of the canneries or left the industry. Of the two remaining canneries, only SPC diversified; acquiring other food processors in Victoria, exploring new export markets, and investing in emerging food packaging technologies. With grower/shareholders unwilling or unable to commit more of their capital to a cannery that no longer processed and marketed much of their production, SPC’s diversification strategy was funded through debt. Rather than securing the future of SPC, which had in the mid 1980s been profitable, diversification had left the cannery with a heavy debt load and insufficient cash flow to service its commitments. In 1990, news broke of SPC delaying payment of half their growers’ entitlement for fruit delivered in February (Adams 1990a). The reason given by the then chairman of SPC was that the company’s debt was being restructured and full payment would be made within ten days. Six days after the announcement of grower payments being delayed, a group of grower/shareholders, led by local Merrigum grower John Corboy, called for the removal of the five members of SPC’s board (Adams 1990b). These five board members, including the chairman and the managing director, lived in Melbourne (four) and Sydney (one) and were reportedly on the board because banks wanted to see “the influence of Collins Street”16 in the running of the cannery. Before the shareholders voted, the deputy chairman, former banker Ken Porter, urged grower/shareholders “not to crucify the company on the cross of local factions, local dislikes and local hates” (Adams, Braniff, and Miller 1990). The Corboy-led challenge prevailed in what was reported in the Shepparton News as ‘locals’ replacing ‘outsiders’ as directors of SPC, a perspective that remains particularly salient in the relationship between local elites and ‘outsiders’ discussed in the following chapters. Corboy was appointed chairman of SPC and four other locals were appointed to the board. Shortly after the board spill Jeff Tracy, whose family owned the BMW dealership in Shepparton, was appointed as managing director on what was now an all-local board. In conversations with Jeff, he has been quite open about his lack of knowledge of the canning industry, stating that what he lacked in experience he made up for in the trust that comes from being local. Reflecting on this period, a journalist for the Australian Financial review stated that: “the Corboys and Tracys are part of a local corporate culture which grew out of the co-operative structure that comprises growers, workers, indeed, the entire Shepparton community, that says an SPC that has survived for 79 years will automatically survive for another 79” (M. Davis 1990). SPC was again in the headlines in December 1990 with the announcement that an agreement had been reached with staff to significantly cut penalty rates, in order to

16 At the time, Collins Street was the financial centre of the state of Victoria and was home to the stock exchange and the head offices/state offices of all of the major banks.

32 save the company. Tracy is reported to have said that had employees not determined where costs could be saved, management would have instituted “arbitrary” job cuts (Russell 1990). In what came to be seen in Shepparton as outsiders denying local workers their right of self-determination, the Victorian Trades Hall Council17 threatened industrial action to prevent national award conditions being conceded by one group of workers. When the matter came before the Industrial Relations Commission, the Victorian Trades Hall Council’s view prevailed and SPC were compelled to work with the unions to find alternative savings. Both SPC and the Victorian Trades Hall Council claimed victory, and in an editorial in the Shepparton News that valorised staff for saving their company no reference was made to the fact that the national award covering workers’ terms and conditions, which the board had endeavoured to circumvent, remained intact. Reflecting on the period, Tracy told me how SPC had returned to profit in 1991 courtesy of favourable exchange rates, crop failures overseas and lower costs. In 1993 the company which had been funded by growers in 1918 was listed on the Australian Stock Exchange. By 2001/2 both SPC and Ardmona canneries were struggling under the weight of three factors: the continued drop in demand for canned fruit, the practice of the two dominant supermarkets sourcing canned tomatoes from overseas suppliers whose canneries were subsidised, and a high Australian dollar favouring imports over exports. Consequently, SPC and Ardmona merged. Commenting on the price paid to Ardmona growers for their shares in the cannery, one orchardist told me that: “Ardmona growers became more investors than growers. Some got out of the industry and others invested less in their orchards and focused on their investment in the cannery which they got more out of.” In 2005 Coca Cola Amatil (CCA) bought SPC/Ardmona for $490m. I was told by a SPC/Ardmona grower/shareholder that: “the commercial benefits of being part of CCA were compelling … at last people would recognise our value … but what we didn’t understand was that what had been the ‘mothership’ was dissolving and when the commercial benefits to CCA evaporated there was nothing left”. Shortly after the acquisition, the relationship between growers and SPC/Ardmona began to deteriorate. The cannery which had previously taken all the fruit their members could supply steadily introduced smaller and smaller quotas. In 2014, SPC/Ardmona cut fruit quotas by fifty percent without notice to growers, an action which, according to one East Shepparton grower “lost them the right to be considered part of Shepparton”. Whilst the cannery became less significant to the region economically and it no longer was the mothership that provided seasonal work for students and housewives, it remained a ‘bellwether’ for the region’s commitment to corporate food production. For example, in 2014, when CCA sought government assistance to remain in Shepparton, a community campaign to save the cannery was launched under the banner of “Toss a Tin in the Trolley”. When I asked a spokesperson for the campaign why people were being encouraged to buy canned fruit that they were unlikely to

17 The Victorian Trades Hall Council helps organise activities and campaigns with and on behalf of affiliated unions.

33 consume, I was told “if you don’t support SPC/Ardmona, what does that say about Shepparton?”. Shepparton’s settled history of people capitalising on opportunities and responding to threats has changed people’s lived experience in the region. In order to give a sense of this and to highlight some of the cultural changes in the community brought on by the shift from co-operatives to corporate food production, I have included an extract of a transcribed conversation I had with one of my participants, a church elder in their late sixties. My narrative is un-indented and non-italicised. “I was born in the Goulburn Valley and lived all my working life in the region. My father was a dairy farmer. With 100 acres and about 80 cows we were able to run a reasonably successful business, dad was paying the farm off, raising a family in average sort of circumstances.” How have things changed? “Now of course, you’ve got larger dairy farms, larger herds, employed labour, water being bought and sold, fodder being brought in, higher inputs, more concentrated inputs, pressure on achieving higher production, record keeping. These days you can’t spray a paddock without keeping copious records.” So, larger farms but fewer families? “Yes, you’ve seen the depopulation of rural communities. In the smaller towns around here you’re seeing abandoned and closed dairies and sometimes almost abandoned houses … now rented out to people at cheap rent for people who want to live in the rural environment.” Has the same happened in horticulture? “Yes, the old smaller blocks have gone. Twenty years ago, the staples were apricots, pears and peaches. Well now, we grow more apples in the Goulburn Valley than Tasmania does. So, there are some changing dynamics going on. One of my friends grows persimmons and now we’re the biggest regional grower of nashi fruits, and kiwi fruits in Australia. And these are all newer crops that have emerged in the last twenty years.” Is that because of the growth in demand for ‘fresh-to-market? “Yes, the variety and range of fruit grown here has broadened and that’s been a challenge for a lot of the old farmers to adapt to the new requirements, quite stringent export requirements.” And different capital requirements on the business? “The machinery, the automated sorting machinery to get your scale of production is quite expensive. One of my friends has imported some of that equipment in a company called Bornholm Fruits. They’ve been one of the families that has migrated into that bigger scale production successfully. Some of the smaller ones have just simply sold up and moved on or had their orchard swallowed up in urban development.” So, again larger orchards but fewer people?

34 “Yes, with more automation. Wherever they can they have automated. The one roadblock they are running into is the actual picking. They are desperately seeking machinery and equipment that will do an effective picking job.” So, has the change in population around horticulture and dairy impacted on the community in Shepparton? “The depopulation means that there’s less people involved in the industry. There’s been a corresponding increase in the service industries in places like Shepparton, Kyabram and Tatura where you’ve got education and health employing huge numbers. And you ask what the biggest employer in Shepparton and people say SPC. It would be the hospital or education. An interesting social phenomenon is occurring in the town. How we feel about the place, SPC is iconic but it is more of an emotional centre of the town than it is economically. And whether we like it or not, its size has been diminishing over the years and its centrality to our economy is diminishing. People don’t like to face that but that’s what’s happening. Because tomorrow, if someone announced they were selling it or closing it down there would be almost panic in the streets, but only for a moment.” Where in the ‘golden years’ of canning, eighty percent of fruit production went to the canneries, today canning accounts for only twenty-five percent of fruit production. In the year following my fieldwork CCA, who had paid $490m for SPC/Ardmona in 2005 and invested a further $75m in upgrading the facility, sold the cannery for $40m. The buyers were Shepparton Partners Collective, a joint venture between a Sydney based private equity business and a Melbourne based fund manager. There were no community campaigns to save the cannery from these ‘outsiders’. Nor was there any perceived threat about what the sale would say about the people of Shepparton. Hence, there was no panic in the streets of Shepparton, not even for a moment. It may be that SPC/Ardmona no longer means much to those living on The Boulevard, but for people the likes of whom live on Glory Way, the cannery’s fate represents the loss of low skilled and casual jobs that in the past enabled them to get by. Since the mid 1990s, Shepparton has experienced worsening levels of unemployment to the point where employment rates in Shepparton now rank below Victoria’s four other regional cities. Exacerbating the increasing unemployment rate is Shepparton’s continued underperform in educational outcomes. Compared to the rest of regional Victoria, fewer students in Shepparton complete year twelve and transition to tertiary institutions. The combined effect of unemployment, lower educational outcomes, increasing alcohol and substance abuse, domestic violence, and a crime rate thirty-two percent higher than the rest of Victoria is that Shepparton ranks sixty- seventh out of eighty-one local government areas in the Australian Bureau of Statistics 2016 Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas. Whilst most of my participants acknowledge that these indexes reflect the complexity of socio-economic inequality, all focus their attention on educational outcomes and employment. Accordingly, I will discuss Shepparton’s performance against these measures in more detail. However, before I do so it is important to show how the region’s history of private enterprise informs the way local elites have taken the lead in managing change in the community. To do this I will briefly discuss the

35 opening presentation at a philanthropic summit convened in Shepparton in 2014, to examine ways of addressing increasing socio-economic inequality. The presenter is David McKenzie, the inaugural chair of the Committee for Greater Shepparton (C4GS), a self-sufficient organisation established by local elites to mediate economic, cultural and social resources on behalf of the business community. 2 “We drive our own future here” In a 1999 study of regional communities experiencing socio-economic change, the authors noted that people in Shepparton saw themselves as being in control of their destiny (Gibson, Cameron, and Veno 1999). In supporting this argument, the authors compared the first two decades of restructuring food production in the Goulburn Valley with the rapid privatisation of the Victorian state government’s energy assets in the LaTrobe Valley. Apart from the different rates of change, the predominant distinguishing characteristic between these two communities was that Shepparton has a history of private entrepreneurship whilst the LaTrobe Valley’s history is one of government-led investment. According to the authors, three factors determine whether communities feel in control of their own destiny or see themselves as victims of change, as was the case in the LaTrobe Valley. These three factors are; people’s perception of the rate of change, the naming and understanding of change as either externally driven or self-inflicted, and the positioning and representation of the community in relation to change (1999, 20). Through referencing each of these factors to an extract of McKenzie’s opening address to the 2014 Sir Andrew and Lady Fairley Foundation Philanthropic summit, I will show how the scope of private entrepreneurship has been extended beyond the realm of business such that it informs the way local elites engage with ‘outsiders’ to address increasing socio-economic inequality in Shepparton. Before I tease out McKenzie’s opening address, it is important to put the 2014 philanthropic summit into perspective. There have been three philanthropic summits in Shepparton, the first in 2011, then in 2014 and again in 2018. The purpose of these summits has been to bring ‘out-of-town’ philanthropists into contact with the leaders of local not-for-profits, with the aim of getting a more co-ordinated approach to philanthropic funding. The 2014 summit brought together an audience of eighty comprising the leaders of local not-for-profits, local elites and representatives from philanthropic foundations based in Melbourne and Sydney. In his opening address to the 2014 summit, McKenzie observed that: “In many respects Shepparton’s story is a tale of two cities. Until the late nineteen nineties Shepparton was a relatively job rich area providing work for those who wanted it. Unemployment was historically lower than in other Victorian cities and towns. Shepparton had a place in the national consciousness as a place made rich by irrigation and as an area prized for the highly valued fruit and milk that it produced. Shepparton was and still is home to some nationally significant businesses and it proudly regarded itself as a ‘can do’ and a private enterprise town who made and shaped its own future.

36 By referencing the town as having made and shaped its own future, McKenzie reinforced the widely held notion amongst locals that it is the community who have historically driven change in Shepparton. McKenzie then went on to speak about the external factors that challenge regional and rural communities, saying: “As with all agricultural-based economies, Shepparton was challenged from time to time. Poor seasonal conditions and unfavourable commodity prices sometimes combining to put great pressure on one or other of the sectors, sometimes both at the same time. That pressure did flow into town from time to time into the city areas or the urban areas but historically and strongly Shepparton always rallied and came back more strongly than it ever had before. Shepparton’s strength was and certainly still is its people. They are resilient, organised, adaptive and innovative …. well ahead of their time.” The importance of this narrative is that external factors are commonly cited by local elites as the primary drivers of issues that challenge the community. As a consequence, the increasing disadvantage evident in the community is generalised as not being specific to Shepparton and is disassociated from any structural changes relating to transitioning to corporate food production. Speaking to the rate of change in Shepparton, McKenzie noted that whilst change is ever-present, the rate of change is neither constant nor predictable. According to McKenzie, “Our greatest strength, ‘our do it ourselves’ attitude, gradually became our Achilles heel. Through the 2000s when Shepparton faced a confluence of the most significant challenges that perhaps it ever faced it took some time to realise that the ground had shifted from under us. Many parts of our community were ill-equipped to recognise that shift early enough and to know what to do about it. Key to the challenges that arose over that ten or twelve- year period were the millennium drought which absolutely strangled our productive capacity, having an impact on employment and on people’s perception of what the future could be here. The high Australian dollar absolutely crippled our export capacity, and a rapidly changing demographic over that period revealed a lack of understanding that refugees were different to migrants and had different needs. And ultimately, a lack of whole of community recognition about the two-tiered society we had evolved into”. According to McKenzie, whilst the ever-present risks of agriculture had made the community resilient, a confluence of unforeseen events has caused a tectonic shift that disturbed the status quo, causing some in the community to act in ways that undermined their narrative of Shepparton as a vibrant and unified community. This is not the first-time local elites have cited the disruptive influence that a confluence of external events has had on their community. In the late 1980s and early 1990s the region was in drought. In 1991 the Australian economy followed most of its trading partners into recession. Burdened with high levels of debt and facing a reduction in revenue, both federal and state governments sold off assets. The newly elected Kennett government in Victoria embarked on what is widely acknowledged as the “most extensive public sector reform program ever witnessed in Australia” (Connoley 2007, 1). As part of this reform, the local councils were consolidated, government assets were sold off, and services that had been decentralised to regions

37 withdrew back into Melbourne. Local councillors who up until that time were mostly prominent businessmen, were replaced by state government appointed Commissioners whose role was to be agents of the state. Councils like the City of Shepparton were required to put to tender all contracts and the relationship between the council and locals became that of supplier and customer in which the views of the community were garnered by council bureaucrats polling opinions rather than being electorally accountable to the whole community (Munro 1997, 80). During this period of public sector reform, businesses that relied on local branches, such as banks and insurance companies, used advances in computerisation and communications to delocalise, closing some branches and reducing the status and staffing of others. McKenzie went on to describe how these ‘perfect storms’ undermine community resilience: “These issues had a clearly observable effect on the psychology of Shepparton. Unfortunately, our citizens were often leading the charge in voicing strong fears and anxieties about what the future of Shepparton might be. Our civic pride and our sense of self were eroded significantly over this period. By the end of the millennium drought, our community across all sectors had been challenged for so long by so many externalities that we forgot just how strong our fundamentals actually were”. The local elites in my study often rationalise their engagement in community initiatives in terms of having to step in to overcome the inaction or dysfunctional behaviour of others, mostly on the part of local government, whom they regard from time to time as being disconnected from the business community and having failed to present Shepparton in a positive light. McKenzie went on to explain how local elites responded to the loss of self- esteem in the community by stepping in and providing leadership: “In mid 201218 a small group of half a dozen concerned local citizens held a public meeting. We put the case for the formation a C4GS to about two- hundred community leaders and it is acknowledged that in the room at that time was a heavy weighting of business leaders. We presented quite a stark picture of where Shepparton was at on a number of key indicators such as health outcomes, educational attainment, workforce participation, childhood development and clear evidence of emerging intergenerational structural disadvantage. And despite the room at night being full of long-term active engaged local citizens I really think it's fair to say that a lot of the information that night was an absolute revelation for many of them. Shepparton was clearly in the midst of a defining period of challenge and unfortunately a substantial proportion of the city didn't even know it. As I show in chapter five, this positioning of the business community in Shepparton as a latent force that, once made aware of the problem, has both the capability, and the commitment to do what was needed, serves two purposes. Firstly, it legitimises local

18 The meeting was in July 2013, it was not public, it was by invitation only for the purpose of recruiting members for the Committee for Greater Shepparton. (sourced from personal archives from the convener of the meeting)

38 business leaders as the ones best placed to address social issues, secondly it co-opts the broader business community into providing financial support for initiatives driven by local elites. This discourse of business driving the broader community agenda is evident in McKenzie’s concluding remarks: “Those of us intent on making Shepparton all it can be must be focused on making Shepparton’s tale a tale of one city, not of two. The mantra of Shepparton as I alluded to before a private enterprise and ‘can-do’ town, we do it for ourselves here, that's one of the things we like to try and differentiate ourselves apart from our regional peers, you know we drive our own future here, and on that front, the mantra has probably been historically ‘what's good for business is good for Shepparton’. Through the committee we’re really trying to reshape that for our members and express it as ‘what's good for Shepparton will ultimately be good for business’. In the committee forum we now have a very high level of engagement from a key group of citizens who are used to making things happen. They keenly understand that our two-tiered community here is not someone else's problem. So, the focus today is not on money, it's on information and it’s on vision. It will display to everyone here that Shepparton has the whole of community-will to confront the challenges that exist here and to become a safer and fairer and more inclusive city than it is today. Ultimately from a committee point of view, I’d just like to close with saying we exist for one purpose, we’re here to work collaboratively for a stronger and fairer Greater Shepparton and, we’re here to work with anyone is ready to work with us.” McKenzie’s opening address to the summit is an important reaffirmation of Gibson, Cameron and Veno’s 1999 observation that the community sees itself as “being in control” of change. The address is also important in that it shows how local elites tend use these forums to establish and reinforce two key themes in their narrative of the region. Firstly, that Shepparton faces the same challenges as any other regional centre and that these challenges are not of their own making. Secondly, that as concerned citizens local elites step-in because others, most often the local council, have not done their job or have failed to recognise the problem. In the next section I briefly discuss the two areas of disadvantage that for most of my participants are critical in relation to ameliorating socio-economic inequality in the region -- namely employment and educational outcomes. However, before I outline the status of both, it is important to stress that the local elites in my study believe that socio-economic inequality has been exacerbated by an education system that has failed to deliver and a family environment that does not encourage educational achievement. In other words, my participants see socio-economic inequality ameliorated by addressing what they see as an educational deficit and not a lack of suitable jobs resulting from the region’s transitioning to corporate food production.

39 3 Employment and education Greater Shepparton has an available workforce of 39,70019 and an employment rate of seventy-eight percent. There are four industry sectors that account for nearly sixty percent of jobs, namely agriculture and food processing (20%), health care and social assistance (16%) retail (11%), and construction (10%). Since 2000, agriculture and food processing, and retail have remained stable with an annualised growth rate of .2% and .5% respectively20. The growth sectors for employment in Shepparton have been health care and social assistance, and construction, with annualised rates of 5% and 5.6% respectively. These growth sectors have mainly created skilled, full time jobs. In construction, the jobs created are virtually all filled by locals. However, in the health care sector, a significant number of the jobs created are part-time and 18% of health care employees commute into Shepparton from as far away as the northern suburbs of Melbourne. Whilst my participants claim that regional development has created jobs for those who want to work, a significant number of jobs created relate to providing social infrastructure and assistance for those who are under-employed or out of work. Shepparton has always provided low skilled and seasonal employment for locals. These jobs have been an important source of work experience for early school leavers, have enabled immigrants to work their way into a new life, and have enabled vulnerable people to supplement their welfare income. However, two changes associated with the transition to corporate food production have reduced the number of low-skilled and seasonal jobs and, for those jobs that remain, have made them more difficult for locals to access. When I asked one of my participants, a journalist who had covered Shepparton for more than thirty years, how changes to employment in the region might have impacted on disadvantage over time, they told me: “If you look at the figures for Shepparton today, they aren’t that good, I think we’re probably higher than the national average, not sure how we compare to other regional centres, but unemployment is an issue statistically and it lies at the root of, I think personally, a lot of problems that are manifest. Take into account that some people don’t want to work and will never work or can’t work, there is still a disturbing number of people who are not in work or are in work and who want to work more. Like one of the refugee families I’ve been working with, he’s working as a trolley collector, shelf stacker, and on a ‘chook’ farm and I’ve heard he’s just got his hours cut at the chook farm. Even for those who are prepared to do just about anything it is still a challenge. Shepparton was seen as a place where you can get seasonal work. Well that’s OK if you want to pick fruit and work in a packing shed in the summer for a couple of months, or work at SPC for the season, that’s OK for a couple of months but what are you going to do for the rest of the year.” The loss of seasonal jobs in SPC/Ardmona alone is material, especially for those whose income is derived from a potpourri of casual jobs. In discussions I have had with

19 Available work-force is based on the 2016 census work-age population (15-64) less the proportion of the 15-19 year old population engaged in secondary and tertiary studies. 20 Whilst the census data shows agriculture and food processing as being stable for the last eighteen years, this data is collected in August when workforce numbers are lowest in horticulture and fruit processing.

40 growers and with bureaucrats from the Department of Health and Human Services, I have been told that in the early 2000s, SPC/Ardmona’s employed two thousand permanent staff throughout the year and in the season employed an additional five to six thousand semi-skilled casuals. By the time Coca-Cola Amatil sold SPC/Ardmona in 2019, there were five hundred permanent employees and it was anticipated that seven hundred semi-skilled workers would be needed in the 2019/20 season (Dobson and Long 2019). In other words, one thousand four hundred permanent and four thousand seasonal jobs have been lost from the cannery alone. Compounding the loss of low skilled and seasonal work in food processing, the low-skilled and seasonal work that has traditionally been available in horticulture to locals has been significantly reduced and that which remains is difficult for locals to access. Horticulture continues to be in a period of transition that started with the move from growing fruit for canning to growing fruit for the fresh market. Between 2001 and 2011, the area planted with fruit trees expanded by 26% and the density of planting increased through trellising (Santhanam-Martin and Cowan 2017, 18). In the same period, the number of growers declined as orchards consolidated. As a consequence, individual horticultural businesses are generally larger, more integrated and employing more intensive growing practices. These changes demand highly skilled permanent staff and a range of management roles normally associated with businesses operating on a corporate scale. Furthermore, what were low skilled jobs picking fruit for the canneries have become semi-skilled jobs picking for the fresh market. The quality and aesthetic of fruit and vegetables are determined by supermarkets who will reject cases of fruit if more than two pieces fail to meet their standards (Merrett 2017, 18). Accordingly, to meet these standards, greater precision in orchard and market garden management is needed to reliably produce high quality fruit and vegetables with a particular aesthetic, whilst carefully controlling costly inputs such as water, pesticides, fertilisers is needed to meet the supermarkets’ price-point. This has caused seasonal work-practices to change. Where pickers for canning fruit stripped trees, pickers for the fresh market selectively harvest trees by picking only the fruit that meets the supermarkets’ quality and aesthetic standards. They also need to avoid damaging the fruit to retain this aesthetic. Moreover, where once picking was done by a mix of itinerant farm labour on the harvest trail, grey nomads, local families and students, it is now done by backpackers (40%) and foreign farm labour on working visas (40%) organised through labour hire contractors set up by the major growers, with connections to backpacker hostels and offshore labour agencies. In summary, the employment landscape in Shepparton is changing from low/semi-skilled to semi/highly-skilled and from casualised to permanent/part-time. New skilled jobs have been created in health care and social assistance, and the construction sectors, mirroring the growth in these sectors Australia-wide. At the same time, in agriculture and food processing where there was once low skilled full-time, part-time and seasonal work accessible to locals, this work now requires greater skills and is organised by a network of labour hire contractors geared to foreign sourced labour. When my participants talk about employment, it is mostly permanent full- time/part-time work, not casual/itinerant labour. In these discussions my participants

41 claim that there are more jobs than ‘job-ready’ people in Shepparton. ‘Prima facie’ this appears to be the case. There are thirty-three thousand jobs in Greater Shepparton and thirty-one thousand people in work21. However, there is a cautionary note in relation to these numbers. The Australian census occurs in the August of any census year and consequently does not include the estimated six to eight thousand itinerant agricultural workers who are in the district from November through to April. It is this perception that jobs remain vacant for want of skilled labour that has led my participants to focus on improving the educational outcomes of young people in order to address socio-economic inequality. The argument made is that by doing so, school leavers are better placed to take up the opportunities created by regional development and pull themselves out of disadvantage. This leads me to the second issue that locals prioritise in addressing socio-economic inequality; namely education. There are 10,300 students enrolled in Shepparton’s twenty-six schools (“My School” 2020). Amongst Shepparton’s student population, literacy and numeracy, which are key determinants in educational attainment, are between four and seven percent lower than all students at all year levels in Victoria (Alford 2011, 8). Whilst my participants talk about focusing on supporting young people from ‘cradle-to-career’, the metrics that are given primacy tend to be those relating to two periods of transition, from primary to secondary school and from secondary school to work or further non-compulsory education. Accordingly, school retention rates and university enrolments are seen as important areas to focus on to ensure the population of students completing their education are ‘job-ready’. It is therefore of concern to my participants that student retention rates in Shepparton are the lowest of all Victorian regions, with only a third of all students completing year twelve and going on to further education, compared to fifty percent of all Victorian students (Alford 2011, 7). This outcome mirrors the level of educational attainment across Shepparton’s work aged population. Census data reveals that only thirty seven percent of this population have completed year twelve compared to forty seven percent in the broader Victorian population. Disengagement from education is higher in Shepparton than in the rest of Victoria. Twenty-five percent of Shepparton’s fifteen to nineteen-year-old school leavers are neither working nor studying, compared to fifteen percent for Victoria. According to the University of Melbourne’s Katrina Alford, who has published two socio-economic profiles of Shepparton (2013; 2011), there are three factors that may contribute to these higher levels of disengagement: firstly the rate of teenage pregnancies in Shepparton is twice the Victorian rate; secondly, the Victorian government’s ‘fast-track expulsion’ policy enables ‘unruly’ and ‘unproductive’ students to be expelled without any assistance in finding another school; and thirdly, adverse changes to the Youth Allowance scheme resulting in University deferral rates in Shepparton being more than twice the state average (Alford 2011). Worryingly, there is also evidence of school absenteeism in mid-primary aged children, which is an early warning sign of student disengagement. These trends, according to Alford, are indicative of an education deficit resulting in relatively more people available for unskilled occupations and fewer people available for scientific, technical or trade occupations compared to other

21 2016 Census

42 Victorian regional cities. This deficit is exacerbated by the majority of successful school leavers transitioning to further education going to metropolitan areas rather than enrolling in Shepparton’s three tertiary institutions. This last point appears to be of concern to many local elites. For example, one of my participants, an agronomist who had come to Shepparton thirty years ago, told me: “Amongst our immediate group of friends, Graham has four children, we have two, the McMeekans have four, Ackhursts have four, Wilkie has got four. Now between all of us, at any given time there might be one or two back in Shepparton for a while out of twenty or thirty and they’re all employed, they’ve all generally gone to university, they’ve been born or raised in Shepparton and they’re not coming back. How do you attract other new ones to take their place who can then help with some of the problems and contribute in the ways that you and we agree are needed”. Whilst there does appear to be a skills deficit that, if addressed, would improve the employment prospects for school leavers, this skills deficit applies to semi- skilled/highly skilled jobs that tend to be advertised more broadly. The loss of access to low skilled jobs not only impacts on the prospects for school leavers seeking entry level work but also on those who rely in part on a patchwork of income possibilities to get by; stacking shelves, retrieving supermarket trolleys and labouring on ‘chook’ farms. In the next section I discuss two phenomena that are present in Shepparton and are often associated with increasing socio-economic inequality in communities. The first of these phenomena, ‘white flight’, is claimed to disadvantage students by reducing diversity, removing positive peer pressure, disincentivising teachers, and supressing the building of ‘bridging social capital’, contributing to the residualisation of public schooling (Edwards 2004; C. Ho 2011; Hudson 2011). The second phenomenon was the Australian government’s place-based welfare reform trials conducted in Shepparton from 2011 to 2015. At the centre of these trials was increased conditionality being placed on welfare recipients in order that they continue to receive welfare support. Welfare conditionality has been linked to increasing socio-economic pressures on already vulnerable people (Mendes 2018; Hampshire 2018; Wacquant 1999). The relevance of both of these phenomena to my study is two-fold. Firstly, both were identified by some of my participants as being factors that were more unique to Shepparton and could account in part for Shepparton’s increasing socio-economic inequality compared to peer regions. Secondly, they expose conflicts of interest involving the local elites in my study. In the case of ‘white flight’, local elites transferred their children away from the inner-city schools and now volunteer at these schools that have become residualised because of their actions. In the case of place- based welfare reform trials, support services enterprises in Shepparton with local elites on their boards benefited from the estimated extra $20m of government funding that flowed from the trials. 4 Making vulnerable people more vulnerable In practically every one of the City of Greater Shepparton’s publications extolling the virtues of the region, there is a claim of multiculturalism, of how people have been welcomed and, through hard work and community support, have prospered. This narrative of multiculturalism almost always talks about the diversity in the region’s

43 population of 66,500, citing statistics such as 3% of the population being Indigenous, another 15% being born overseas, and 14.6% of the city’s households not speaking English at home. This perception of the region being multicultural is broadly held. In a newspaper article in the Weekend Australian warning politicians to be alert to Shepparton’s conservative population feeling ignored, the journalist retold the story of Shepparton being built on immigration, claiming: “the path from fruit-picking to process work or professional jobs and home and farm ownership is as clear as the open channels that carry water from the River Murray” (Le Grand 2017). However, the multicultural narrative applied to Shepparton may neither reflect the quotidian encounters between people of different cultural backgrounds, nor rest as easily in the community as the Council’s promotional brochures would suggest. For example, in a Committee for Greater Shepparton (C4GS) commissioned study titled “From Disadvantaged to Thriving” (Evans, White, and Bridson 2016) that included local people’s perceptions of the Shepparton community, one of the participants observed: “I think of Shepparton as a multicultural place that hasn’t learned to deal with its multiculturalism. So, there’s a tension between the very large population, which added a lot of richness to life here. Then contrast that with having a conservative Anglo-Saxon community that’s historically been here that are not very welcoming to the broader multicultural parts of society and that includes the Aboriginal population. As a result, there’s probably some issues with racism that create divisions in the town” (Evans, White, and Bridson 2016, 10). The tension referred to is also evident in the response from a local social worker to my querying whether racism was, as had been suggested at the 2018 Fairley philanthropic summit, a form of disadvantage in the community. They told me: “I don’t know if a fear is the same as racism, I guess it could be. A fear of Islam coming in, a fear of difference. And there’s a lot of difference even in the Islamic community for example. We’ve got four or five different mosques in our community … Albanian and Turkish and all these different mosques and none of them agree with each other … they’re all in conflict with each other … so that’s where your biggest conflict comes from. Some of the most racist things I’ve ever heard is from Islamic community to Islamic community. Just like the conflict in the fruit industry between the Greeks and the Macedonians, or the ‘blue-bloods’ from the other side of the river, and between the Sicilian and the Calabrese, they still hate each other”. One of the most obvious examples of the gap between the multiculturalism promoted by the council and that which is experienced in people’s daily lives, is evident in Shepparton’s schools. In his 2011 study “Social capital in Shepparton”, Rob Hudson observed that there had been considerable ‘white flight’ from Shepparton’s inner primary schools to primary schools on the edge of town (Hudson 2011). The significance of this observation is that it is widely accepted that schools are prime locations to build relationships that transcend boundaries such as age, race, ethnicity and income; in other words, schools with diversity build ‘bridging social capital’ that fosters tolerance and cohesion (Hudson 2011). This point was also made by Christina Ho in her study of the lack of diversity in Sydney’s schools (C. Ho 2011). According to

44 Ho, nothing can replicate the experiential knowledge gained by students confronting and learning how to negotiate cultural difference, and in building cross-cultural friendships. Hudson went on to claim that this movement between schools was triggered by the arrival of Iraqi, Afghan, Congolese, Sudanese and Syrian refugees since the early 2000s (2011, 21). Whilst this claim to a causal link is unsubstantiated in Hudson’s study, the timing of ‘white flight’ gaining momentum does reconcile with the commencement of the Regional and Rural Resettlement Scheme which saw refugees start to be resettled in Shepparton from late 2003 and early 2017. This notion that the motivation for parents to move their children was based on factors other than the curriculum is supported by a 2015 study, funded by the Victorian Multicultural Commission, examining social cohesion in Shepparton and Mildura (Moran and Mallman 2015). In this study, researchers were told by local school principals that the Anglo-Celtic communities had transferred their children to less culturally diverse schools for two reasons -- firstly in response to the schools becoming culturally diversified, and secondly, that the more culturally diverse schools in urban areas had a higher proportion of low socio-economic students (2015, 65). The scale of the shift can be seen in a description of ‘white flight’ given to me by a retired former Department of Education and Employment bureaucrat who worked in the area in the late 2000s. They told me: “We’ve had a really strong move away from the state system to the local Catholic and Independent schools. So, our numbers have gone down. For example, Mooroopna Secondary went from 900 kids at its peak to a bit over 300. Shepparton High went from nearly 900 to 500. We have gone into a residualised system. Of the four government secondary schools in Shepparton and Mooroopna, one tends to get better outcomes, not significantly but better, another is doing it tough, one with a very large intake of refugee kids and the other with lots of Koori kids, are doing it really really tough. Anybody who has the capacity and the means to be able to move out of the system into the private education system does it so therefore we get a concentration of disadvantage in the public system leading to a vicious cycle of poor results”. When I asked if the government primary schools were similarly impacted by ‘white flight’, I was told by this participant that where government secondary schools were losing students to independent schools, in the primary school sector ‘white flight’ involved a shift of students from government schools in urban areas to government schools that were semi-rural. In other words, the curriculum was virtually the same but the socio/economic profile of the families in the urban schools was different. Where lack of cultural diversity in schools may adversely impact on multiculturalism in the broader sense, lack of economic diversity in schools with a high proportion of students from disadvantaged backgrounds makes them even more vulnerable by negatively impacting on their educational outcomes (C. Ho 2011, 6). This effect in Shepparton was explained to me by another senior bureaucrat in the Department of Education and Employment who told me: “You don’t have that peer effect of high aspiration, highly capable young kids that are driving along the class and driving teachers to be better. So, teachers’ aspirations start to reduce. I’ve lost count of the number of times I have heard

45 “well that’s just Shepparton” or “they’re a Shepparton kid, what can you expect”. It is really deflating. And it’s not just about the disadvantage because those kids who are capable aren’t getting extended either. It is better to be a disadvantaged kid in Box Hill than it is to be an advantaged kid in Shepparton. You get better results with the highly aspirational kids in the class pushing you along”. That there are schools in Shepparton that lack the cultural and economic diversity of the community is evident in the enrolment data on the government’s MySchool website (“My School” 2020). Greater Shepparton’s nine urban government primary schools have an Aboriginal/LBOTE22 enrolment of forty-one percent in a community in which the combined primary school aged Aboriginal/LBOTE population is twenty-one percent. By comparison, the five semi-rural schools to which students have moved have an Aboriginal/LBOTE enrolment of fourteen percent, two thirds of cultural diversity of Greater Shepparton. A similar pattern is evident in relation to the schools’ economic diversity. Shepparton has a socio-economic index of relative disadvantage (SEIFA) of 948. This means that out of the seventy-nine Local Government Areas (LGA) in Victoria, Greater Shepparton is the thirteenth most disadvantaged. The government primary schools in urban Greater Shepparton have an average SEIFA of 908, ranking them in the tenth percentile of schools nationally, whereas the five semi-rural schools have an average SEIFA of 1021, ranking them in the fifty-fifth percentile of schools nationally. The same pattern is reflected in the secondary school sector with the most disadvantaged schools also being the ones with the highest proportion of Aboriginal/LBOTE students. In summary, as a consequence of ‘white flight’ Greater Shepparton’s schools appear to lack the socio-economic diversity that Ho claims is crucial in fostering multiculturalism, Hudson asserts mitigates against increasing disadvantage in the community, and educators claim motivates teachers and students to achieve higher educational outcomes. As I will show in chapter five, local elites’ response to the negative consequences associated with ‘white flight’ has been to run a volunteering program in residualised schools, providing retired community members as readers in primary schools and mentoring students and supporting business related programs in secondary schools. The second phenomena that may be contributing to Shepparton’s increasing level of socio-economic inequality is the Australian government’s trialling of welfare reforms in the region from 2011 to 2015. Welfare payments that are conditional on people meeting certain obligations have been found to be overwhelmingly detrimental to the financial, social, physical and psychological wellbeing of already vulnerable people on welfare (Brady and Cook 2015). The relevance of this observation for my study is that the Australian federal government’s trialling of a number of welfare reforms in Shepparton was based on a principle of ‘mutual obligation’ first introduced to Australia in the late 1990s to target unemployment. In the 2011/12 federal budget, the government announced a $3 billion, six-year program to develop skills and increase employment participation. The program aimed to support communities, families and individuals, particularly those experiencing long-

22 Language Background Other Than English

46 term social and economic disadvantage, to improve their own wellbeing (Australia and Treasury 2011). The program included measures that required those receiving welfare payments to take on extra responsibilities if they were to continue to receive assistance. Whilst welfare conditionality is not new to Australia, over the last two decades significant changes have been introduced that make the receipt of welfare benefits conditional upon individuals changing their patterns of behaviour (Mendes 2009, 103). Shepparton, along with nine other local government areas was selected as a priority location to trial these measures under a program called ‘Better futures, local solutions’. Shepparton’s selection as a trial site was not discussed with the community prior to the budget announcement, a fact confirmed to me by one of the local elites who was recruited into the program to help determine how federal funds would be allocated. They told me: “I don’t recall community consultation to any great extent. I recall a few stories in the paper, and maybe a Federal media release and a little bit of dialogue at national level”. Whilst Shepparton had not feature as one of Victoria’s most disadvantaged communities previously (Vinson, Rawsthorne, and Cooper 2007), its selection was based on its population being amongst the highest Australia-wide in terms of numbers of welfare recipients, including those receiving parenting payments (Tennant 2018). This left local community leaders unable to explain why Shepparton had been chosen (Tennant 2018). One of my participants who during the trial had worked locally as a senior bureaucrat for the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) recalled that: “the concern in the community more broadly was why had Shepparton been bundled up with communities it wouldn’t necessarily have considered as its peers from a social disadvantage perspective …. there was a perception that Shepparton was not tracking as badly as some of those other communities”. Furthermore, not all measures were trialled in all locations. The trial in Shepparton used two measures specifically targeting the behaviours of the long-term unemployed and of families without working parents. The first measure imposed obligations that required single mothers to attend periodic interviews and workshops, and to develop and maintain training or employment plans as soon as their youngest child was six months old. Whilst not specifically targeted, humanitarian refugees and Aboriginal families experiencing more complex and acute forms of vulnerability and disadvantage were caught up in the trial. The second measure introduced was income management. A bonus payment of $250 per annum was offered to people volunteering to have their income quarantined and only accessible at certain retail outlets via a ‘basics’ card (Tennant 2018, 2). Included in the trial was an allocation of $3 million over four years to support the implementation and delivery of locally developed programs aimed at boosting engagement, capability and workforce participation among the target group. A local advisory group made up of six community service agencies and chaired by one of the local elites in my study was established to decide upon projects to be funded (Australia and Treasury 2011, 32).

47 This episode of the Australian government trialling welfare reforms ran for four years with an estimated $20m23 additional welfare related expenditure flowing into the Goulburn Valley over that period. Following an interim examination by the Department of Jobs and Small Business of the overall impact of the program the federal government announced that the trials would cease with no final evaluation, leaving local people ignorant of any of the trials outcomes. In 2018, David Tennant, the CEO of FamilyCare in Shepparton presented a paper to an international conference on welfare conditionality held in the UK (2018). The paper discussed the experiences of the reform trials in Shepparton from the perspective of leaders of not-for-profit agencies who work directly with the people in Shepparton targeted by the trial. The report notes that the leaders’ perspectives were consistent with those of other not-for-profits in Australia in their opposition to welfare conditionality that is disciplinary. They also reported difficulty in striking a balance between assisting vulnerable people to engage with the reform measures and weighing-up the ethics of being part of the infrastructure delivering punitive measures. Most reconciled this conflict by expressing the view that if it wasn’t them then it would be a commercial operator with less concern for the participants. Tennant’s report (2018) found that people who used the services of these agencies had been impacted adversely by the trials. Factors reported were that the measures created additional compliance challenges and costs to people whose lives were already complex and prone to crisis. Another impact reported was that people’s agency in managing themselves and their families was removed, creating a sense of resentment. Those who arrived in the region as humanitarian refugees felt their choices to establish themselves had been taken away. Others spoke of already vulnerable people being further stigmatised, saying that the trials were “another way of being told you’re no good”. As evidence that the program had made things worse for some people on welfare, one of the participated in Tennant’s study told me: “The main thing that’s changed since 2011 is the Commonwealth’s intervention. Now the increased poverty rates won’t all be about the conditionality, but I’d be very surprised if those numbers didn’t show a disproportionate number of single parent women, the much broader movement onto ‘Newstart’24 for women with children who are less than 8 years old, and the grandfathering provisions that came in just a couple of years ago. These have made a key difference to a group that just happens to be over-represented in our demographics here and the reality is in a community, things that impact on a couple of hundred actually make a difference in the data”. In relation to how the trials impacted on the broader community, Tennant’s report found that the discourse surrounding the trials had served to emphasise differences and in so doing had exacerbated a sense of separation between those targeted by the trial and the rest of the community. One of the participants reported that focusing on individual behaviours had come at the expense of recognising the structural causes of

23 Estimated by one of my participants who heads up one of the local welfare support providers that participated in the trials. 24 Refer to glossary for a brief description of the ‘Newstart allowance’ and ‘parenting payments’

48 disadvantage, citing as an example the difficulties in training volunteers to work with vulnerable people who were now considered responsible for their own circumstances. The welfare reform trials in Shepparton ran for four years. Since ceasing in 2015, no comprehensive study has been conducted to show whether or not the aims of the trials were achieved. However, the relevance of the trials to my research is that the way local elites responded to them provides an important insight into how they understand and look to ameliorate socio-economic inequality, and how they see the role of governments, particularly in relation to ‘place-based’ initiatives. 5 Summary Whilst my participants often speak of divisions and fissures in the community, of people who live on one side of the river or the other, and of locals and outsiders, the division that is the most polarizing is how Shepparton is represented, as the city of the people who live on the Boulevard or of those who live on Glory Way. In my introduction to this chapter, I spoke about Shepparton being a tale of two cities. David McKenzie also used the phrase in his opening address to the 2014 Fairley Foundation philanthropic summit. An alternative perspective is that Shepparton is a city of multiple narratives, two of which are central to the tension between local elites and those whom they regard as outsiders. The first of these narratives is grounded in the region’s settled history of private enterprise. Since the mid 1800s people have come to the Goulburn Valley to build for themselves a better future. Unlike the energy-based economy of the LaTrobe Valley, which was driven by government investment, the Goulburn Valley’s economy has been largely driven by local private investment. It was European settlers who came to grow wheat, wool and meat who transformed dairying from a ‘stop-gap’ endeavor to what is now a multi-million-dollar dairy industry. It was a syndicate of private investors who established irrigated orchards, built the co-operatives and set the course for what would not only define the region’s economy but also how locals would think about themselves. That this is so is exemplified in the comment; “if you don’t support SPC/Ardmona, what does that say about Shepparton”. This first narrative valourises free-enterprise, entrepreneurship, and multiculturalism, and positions locals as being self-made, resilient and most importantly the ones who take responsibility for their own destiny. Representative of this narrative is the opening address of the 2014 philanthropic summit when McKenzie claimed that “we do it for ourselves here … we drive our own future … we’re here to work with anyone who is ready to work with us”. The second narrative has taken greater purchase in the last three decades. This narrative talks about Shepparton as an increasingly disadvantaged community; of people who are unemployed and unemployable. In this narrative people on welfare have come to Shepparton seeking cheaper rents and precarious work. They live in the houses made vacant as the orchards and dairy farms consolidate. They have no economic or social connection with the region. This narrative is used to explain how not-for-profits have been attracted to the region, and how employment in the health and social assistance sectors has grown. It is also the narrative used to compete for

49 government and philanthropic funding to mitigate the effects of rising socio-economic inequality in the region. In the next chapter, I introduce in greater detail the local elites who are central to my research. I explore their dominant role as mediators who believe themselves to be best positioned to address socio-economic inequality in Shepparton owing to their unique understanding of their community. I highlight distinctions between this group of elites and other elites with whom they connect and compete; the policy-makers, philanthropists, service providers, educators and academics engaged in providing social support in the community. What makes the first group of elites particularly worthy of scholarship is that by their actions and inactions they define socio-economic inequality in their community and determine who is worthy of support and who is not.

50

Chapter 3 Elites

Before I introduce my participants and, using Actor-Network Theory (ANT), reveal how this clique of local elites’ claimed, were accorded, and have maintained their status as local mediators, I want to firstly discuss the term ‘elites’ and the definition of elites I have chosen to use in this study. Despite the growing body of scholarship in what has become the anthropology of elites, the term ‘elite’ is problematic for many anthropologists. Cris Shore suggests that the term has been used in so many different ways that its meaning is no longer secure (2002, 4). Bill Watson similarly claims that whilst the work of anthropologists in this field has been outstanding, in many instances the meaning of the term ‘elite’ has been ‘taken for granted’ and ‘rough-and-ready’ attempts to introduce qualifications that create the perception of boundaries between types of elites mask the reality that these boundaries are often highly porous (2002, 110). In her ethnography “Elites on the Margin”, Penelope Harvey acknowledges that identifying the Peruvian ‘mestizo’ traders in her work as elites, risks attributing them with too much personal power, and overlooking the ways they are caught up in a much wider global history of power relations which anthropologists have played a part in constructing (2002, 79). Keith Hart claims the term ‘elite’ is a crude and reactionary concept not unlike the term ‘peasant’. However, in dismissing the term, Hart acknowledges that the term has been useful for social anthropologists in focusing attention on the causes of persistent human inequality (2002, 35). The terms ‘elite’ or ‘elites’ are helpful to my study in two ways. Firstly, I have used the adjectives ‘corporate-identified’ and ‘local’ as prefixes to the terms to distinguish those who are central to my research, from those with whom they connect and compete. I accept that adding these qualifying adjectives creates abstract factions that, even if they were to exist would be far more porous and amorphous than the classifications suggest. I am also acutely aware that simply prefacing ‘elite’ with a qualifying adjective introduces a subjectivity that has not been rigorously tested. Consequently, I am using the term ‘corporate-identified local elites’ simply as a convenient construct to distinguish differently situated people and groups, nothing more -- nothing less. The second and more fundamental way the terms ‘elite’ or ‘elites’ have been used in my study is to put some heuristic form around understanding how a group of seemingly ordinary people leading ordinary lives have been able to acquire and maintain their legitimacy to control significant economic, cultural and social resources in the name of their community. To this end, in addition to drawing on the works of anthropologists studying elites, I have used Bourdieu’s understanding of social fields to illuminate how those participants central to my research both relate to each other and to those whom they regard as outsiders. The definition I have chosen to use is relatively open and is suited to ethnographic fieldwork in that rather than focusing on hierarchies or networks, it encourages identifying and understanding elites from their actions and inactions, how they talk about their role in society, and how others refer to them.

51 1 Defining elites Tijo Salverda and Jon Abbink define elites as: “a relatively small group within the societal hierarchy that claims and/or is accorded power, prestige, or command over others on the basis of a number of publicly recognised criteria, and aims to preserve and entrench its status thus acquired” (2013, 3). Whilst the authors describe their definition as nominal, it contains three important dynamics that are central to understanding the complex interplay of social processes in which the elites in my study engage. Firstly, the definition is amoral, taking no position as to the rightness or otherwise of how power is attributed and sustained. Secondly, this definition recognises that the power and status of elites is attributed to them by others; hence elite is usually a term of reference rather than a self- referencing term. Thirdly, in this definition elite status is not accorded in perpetuity; once conferred, maintaining status becomes the primary objective of elites. By claiming that elite status is attributed, without then being prescriptive as to the parties involved in the process of attribution, Salverda and Abbink’s definition invites anthropologists to broaden the focus of their research beyond the familiar field of elite/subaltern relationships. Sarah Green’s previously cited study of regional elites in North-Western Greece is a case in point. In her ethnography ‘Eating Money and Clogging Things Up’ (2008), small-town lawyers, city presidents and civil servants are attributed power and influence not only by their communities but also by other elites - - European Union (EU) bureaucrats with whom they mediate and control EU development funding in the region. Similarly, the local elites in my study are accorded elite status by other local actors as well as state and federal government politicians and bureaucrats with whom they mediate resources for Shepparton. This is evident in a practice I describe later in this chapter where the Victorian state government by- passes the City of Greater Shepparton council to “bounce ideas around” and to discuss “policy opportunities” directly with these local elites. However, being overly focussed on the fact that elite status is accorded by others risks diminishing the significance of Salverda and Abbink’s point that status is also claimed. Whilst the small-town lawyers, city presidents and civil servants in Green’s study are accorded elite status by their respective communities and EU bureaucrats, the knowledge that comes from their professional roles legitimises their claim to mediate on behalf of their communities. In my study, elite status is accorded to a group of elites who position themselves as “concerned local citizens” with the local knowledge and vision needed to mediate resources on behalf of their community. Accordingly, whilst it is important to understand how this group have been accorded elite status by others, it is equally important to understand the mechanisms they use to secure their own claims to having a sensibility and commitment to the community to know what is needed. The third dynamic in Salverda and Abbink’s definition that is particularly relevant to my study is that elite status is not accorded in perpetuity; once conferred, maintaining status becomes the primary objective of elites (Salverda and Skovgaard- Smith 2018, 1). By asserting that elites aim to preserve and entrench their status once

52 attained, Salverda and Abbink importantly recognise that elite status can be highly unstable and is often in flux. Green noted this point in the conclusion of her study by stating that whilst the way in which communities in North-Western Greece will mediate EU funding in the future was unclear at the time of her study, the publicly recognised criteria that bestowed elite status on these small-town lawyers, city presidents and civil servant elites was already in the process of being renegotiated by the community (Green 2008, 279). That the status of the local elites in my study needs to be reasserted from time to time is evident in the previously cited opening address to the 2014 Fairley Foundation philanthropic summit. In stating that the “the psychology of Shepparton had changed and that our citizens were often leading the charge in voicing strong fears and anxieties about the future of Shepparton”, David McKenzie appeared to be voicing the concern of local elites that the confidence or commitment of others to their vision for the region had waned. That this is so is clear in his comment that “we forgot just how strong our fundamentals are”. In this context, the closing comment that the C4GS, an organisation established by local elites and funded by business, “only exists for the purpose of working with people ready to work with us”, can be understood as local elites re-establishing their claim to be the ones who are best able to mediate resources for the community. Before moving on from Salverda and Abbink’s definition, it is worth teasing out the authors’ reference to elites being “a relatively small group within the societal hierarchy”. C. Wright Mills is widely acknowledged as setting the debate for much of the post-war elite scholarship through his critique of what can be understood as a Weberian model of hierarchies and bureaucracy (A. Davis and Williams 2017, 6). Mills argued that power operated in a societal hierarchy with a ‘power elite’ at the top consisting of corporate, military and executive leadership, a middle stratum of labour, regional elites and government bureaucrats, and at the bottom, the masses (Mills 1956b, 4). Whilst elites in powerful positions continue to be the subject of elite studies, recent work tends to incorporate more heterogeneous networks, combining power derived through structure with power derived through interrelationships (Khan 2012, 365). That said, the focus of these studies can tend to preference for attention either hierarchies or networks. For example, whilst Karen Ho’s insightful study of Wall Street locates investment bankers in a hierarchy that both empowers and constrains, much of her ethnography focuses on the way investment bankers derive power through their networks (2009). In other words, Ho’s work examines relational power. The opposite orientation is evident in Roderic Camp’s “Informal and Formal Networking among Elite Mexican Capitalists and Politicians” (2003). Where the title might suggest a preferencing of networks over hierarchies, Camp critically examines networks to argue that the classical ‘power elite’ described by Mills and thought to be non-existent in Mexico, were in fact present in Mexico’s politico-economic hierarchy. As such, Camp’s study focuses on positional power. Both Ho and Camp’s work reinforce the importance of context, without which there is a risk of over-locating elites in either hierarchies or networks and missing important drivers of elite status that are contained in the processes that are present in both (Penelope Harvey 2002).

53 Accordingly, I have taken Salverda and Abbink’s reference to social hierarchies to be synonymous with what Bourdieu describes as social fields. For Bourdieu, the social world is a composite of social fields, each with a set of practices bound together by common stakes and concerns, and an understanding of ‘the rules of the game” (Grenfell 2012, 70). Within each of these fields there is both a hierarchy of power and influence, and people who forge connections with their counterparts in other fields. According to Bourdieu, peoples position within these social fields is not fixed in that their power and influence ebbs and flows. In other words, elites in this context are not defined by their role or their function, but by their position at any time within semi- autonomous fields. To be clear, this is not a reintroduction of the debate about the relative importance of either hierarchies or networks; it is an observation that when applying a Bourdieusian perspective, hierarchies and networks tend to meld. Accordingly, whilst some local elites in my study have more power and influence than others, and some are more pivotal as connectors with government bureaucrats, philanthropists, social assistance professionals and academics, their relative position is far more fluid than classical understandings of hierarchies and networks would suggest. In my research I draw a particularly strong distinction between elites who C. Wright Mills (1956b, 3) classically describes as those who claim or are accorded power because of their family or class background, wealth, or institutional position, and elites who Janine Wedel (2017, 154) describes as claiming or being accorded power because of the way they operate, particularly in four aspects: firstly, their flexibility in shifting and overlapping roles, and their lack of fixed attachment to any particular sector or organisation in pursuit of their strategic goals; secondly, their informality and supplanting of formal structures and processes, while still using them when beneficial; thirdly, the entities they mobilise, including consultancies, think tanks, and nongovernmental organisations; fourthly, their role as connectors, in official, corporate, private organisational ecosystems, and in networks vis-à-vis each other. Whilst Wedel focuses on elites at a national and transnational level where these four modes of operating may seem more self-sufficient and subversive, I focus on elites using these methods at a regional level where these operating practices tend to be prevalent and are reflective of the way political, economic and social practices are intertwined in these locations. Wedel and others contend that elite studies have taken for granted C.W. Mills’ proposition that positions at the top of institutions are both stable and enduring (2017, 153; Savage and Williams 2008b, 2). In challenging this dominant perspective, Wedel argues that since the 1980s these institutions have faced the conjuncture of a number of unprecedented disruptors, opening the door to a proliferation and diversification of elite actors, thereby fragmenting and destabilising the nature and sources of Mills’ notion of elite power (Wedel 2011). For example, the end of the Cold War in 1989 powerfully destabilised the US military-industrial complex that Mills’ ‘power-elites’ had established during the Cold War era, with the mission to win the war (Savage and Williams 2008b, 15). Absent the reality of two nation states locked in an ideological battle that dictated the fates of developing nations, and the prosecution of regional conflicts, bipolar authority evaporated. The thematically linked collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 saw the emergence of what has been described as an

54 ‘arriviste plutocracy’ (Savage and Williams 2008b, 3). Schooled in circumventing the communist state, long-standing informal, non-state groups of elites decentred power and influence from the state, repositioning the state-private nexus through the acquisition of state assets and public resources in Russia ‘at fire-sale prices’ (Wedel 2011, 153). Davis and Williams see financialization25 as the late twentieth century’s preeminent disruptor of ‘command post’ power (2017). The increasing importance of financial markets, and their related institutions, motives and elites, has resulted in corporate CEOs, who Mills credited with having the ability to impose their own discretionary priorities, increasingly constrained by having to seek prior consent or endorsement from capital markets and activist investor groups (Savage and Williams 2008b, 11). As a direct consequence of this conjuncture of disruptors, the traditional sources of elite power articulated by Mills, have become fragmented and unstable, and new players have entered a socio-political ecosystem that is less distinct and, having more permeable boundaries, harder to regulate (Wedel 2011, 152). By focussing on how these new forms of elites use their social organisations and networks to influence the development of public policies, Wedel exposes what she terms as a crisis in democracy created by the disruption of institutions like the military, and the outsourcing of policy development to non-governmental individuals and groups. Whilst the local elites in my study have influenced government policy in ways that could be seen as undemocratic, as I will show later in this chapter and again in chapter five, being overly focussed on this aspect risks losing sight of the fact that they are in part the product of the policies and practices of advanced liberal democracies (Rose 1996). From its gazetting as a city in the early 1950s to its consolidation in 1994 local business leaders in Shepparton were also the city’s elected councillors. In 1994, it was the state government in Victoria, not the local council or the community, that determined that the relationship between councils and local citizens would be informed by council bureaucrats polling opinions rather than councillors seeking an electoral mandate for their strategies. It was also the state government that replaced local councillors with government appointed commissioners. As a consequence, absent a local presence, the state government relied on other social actors to act as conduits for regional development and to support their programs, including the provision of welfare. In other words, local elites in advanced liberal democracies are part of a wider history of changes to governance in regional cities. They are crucial in efforts to govern these communities at a distance and have been legitimized by government and non- government actors who choose to defer to them as subject matter experts representing local communities. Unlike the case of the LaTrobe Valley community discussed in chapter two whose local economy was driven by government decisions regarding energy production, Shepparton has a long history of private enterprise shaping their own future; a history encapsulated in McKenzie’s previously cited comment that “we do it for ourselves here”. Even in the golden years of canning when SPC and Ardmona dominated people’s daily lives, decisions were made locally and ‘towns people’ were given preference over outsiders for seasonal work. The community also has a long history of confronting outsiders whenever they sense the community’s best interests

25 Refer to Definitions and Glossary for the definition of financialization I have used in this study.

55 are not being met or their economic security is under threat. It was this sentiment that in 1981 saw five hundred local farmers confront state government politicians at Kerang, causing the Victorian government to change its direction in addressing salinity and in managing water resources. It was also this sentiment that drove the fight to regain local control of SPC in 1990 and in 2014 had mothers “tossing a tin in the trolley” to save the local fruit industry from the threat of subsidised imported canned goods. Accordingly, in the early 1990s, in the midst of a drought and a deepening economic recession, when the state government introduced wide ranging reforms that saw public transport, energy and water assets privatised, the delocalising of government decision makers, and the corporatisation of local councils, local elites felt that their ability to represent a local perspective to state and federal governments had diminished. Facing what they saw as an abandonment of their region, the elites central to my study came together in 1993 to rebuild the connections with the State and Federal governments and, in doing so, to claim ownership of the vision of their town as a town open for business, their region as a place of corporate food production and their community as being made up of Clever Food People26. Whilst the local elites central to my study accord with Wedel’s understanding of ‘influence elites’, individually some also accord with Mills’ understanding of ‘power elites’. My point in making this distinction is that I am primarily focusing on elite status in the context of it being claimed, accorded and maintained on the basis of a shared vision which sees this group legitimised as the ones to represent their community. Accordingly, for the purposes of recruiting participants, organisational charts, family trees or wealthiest-people’s lists were not particularly helpful. As observed by Roderic Camp in his previously cited study of Mexico’s political and economic elites, focusing only on these types of formal proxies for elite status can result in failing to recognise the significance of deep, informal networks and other sources of interconnections, local and remote, between elites (2003, 149). Similarly, relying solely on network analysis is unhelpful as it tends to draw scholars into making assumptions about relative individual power based on established empirical measures and arguments, such as interlocking directorships, and downplaying the impact of power and influence derived by association (Savage and Williams 2008b, 3). My approach to identifying elites for my research has been to first examine what exponents of Actor-Network Theory (ANT) describe as foundational or world- building activities -- activities that assemble, disassemble and reassemble associations of actors in order to enact a particular reality (Savage and Williams 2008:3). By definition, these activities stay in people’s consciousness and, in the case of my participants, were proffered readily whenever I asked them to recall initiatives that had been laid down in the sediment of the communities history. Later in this chapter I profile five examples of these foundational activities which include the establishment

26 The publication ‘Clever Food People 1993 - 1997’ (Carr and Ryan 1997, 28) notes two uses of the term ‘clever food people’. The first is aspirational, as used in the vision statement, and refers to all of the inhabitants of the Goulburn Valley to indicate that they are thought leaders in the sustainable production of food. The second usage of the term in this publication is in reference to 314 people who are acknowledged as the closest friends and supporters of Clever Food Inc, the organisation through which the Clever Food Committee developed initiatives after the demise of SKYROD a joint council body that provided financial and administrative support to the Clever Food Committee from its inception to 1995.

56 of the Clever Food Committee (1993-1997) and its present day incarnation, the Committee for Greater Shepparton (established in 2014). The relevance of ANT to my study is two-fold; firstly, it brings into question how knowledge is developed and maintained (Law 1992, 379). In his analysis of ‘the market’ using ANT, Michel Callon argues that knowledge as a regulating feature of markets is highly variable and any reliance on common cultures and shared rules or conventions to govern behaviour completely misses the point that these cultural devices are open to interpretation (1999, 185). Furthermore, according to Callon, the limits created by different interpretations of knowledge can only be removed during interactions, negotiations and discussions. In this context, examining the foundational activities involving the group of local elites central to my study is helpful. As I will show in chapter four using the same framework as Callon (1984), local elites problematised the previously discussed events of 1992 as the region lacking a vision, then used the Clever Food Conference in 1993 to lock into place their role in representing the community, negotiated the role of other actors, and mobilised the actions needed to achieve their vision. The second aspect of ANT that is relevant to my study is the notion that people’s identities, interests and beliefs are drawn from participating in ‘foundational activities’ (Latour 2005, 76). In other words, ANT does not presuppose any stable notion of the actor, whether they be human or not, their size, psychological make-up, and the motivations behind their actions. Actors are products of activities they are involved in. For example, in their study titled “Actor-Networks, Farmers, and Identity”, Benjamin Gray and Jane Gibson drew on ANT to show how farmers’ participation in the industrial agricultural network had shaped their decisions and their identities, defined the types of knowledge and skills they valued, and as a consequence entrenched unsustainable production practices (2013). Gray and Gibson found that even though farmers understood that their practices had long-term detrimental effects on the environment, their commitment to a network of technologies and practices made it difficult for them to extricate themselves from it, even had they wanted to (2013, 96). Using ANT in my methodology suits examining elites who are identified as such by their actions rather than their positions in networks and hierarchies. As Felix Lang notes, this is especially so where these social fields are in flux and the relation between actors may only be transitory (Lang 2019). Accordingly, it is in the context of being involved in the activities I have identified as ‘foundational’ that those participants who are central to my study can understood as elites with a sensibility and commitment to their community. Michel Callon describes this subject-building relationship between actions and actors as ANT presenting “an actor that may alternately and indiscriminately be a power which enrols and dominates or, by contrast, an agent with no initiative which allows itself to be enrolled” (1999, 182). In the next chapter I show that even though local elites understand corporate food production as harmful to some in their community, their commitment to a vision for their region in which the benefits of business-led regional development flow down to the community through job creation, makes it difficult to problematise increasing socio-economic inequality as anything other than people failing to make themselves job-ready for the opportunities created.

57 2 Corporate-identified local elites As I have previously mentioned, there are two groups of elites in my study. Firstly, the elites who are the central actors, people I have particularised as corporate-identified locals. It is this group of elites who promote a narrative of their community as being driven by business and who, as business leaders, claim to be the ones best placed to mediate resources on behalf of the community. The second group of elites in my study are the philanthropists and local social assistance providers whose narrative of disadvantage in Shepparton is used to garner resources for ‘public-purpose’ initiatives, such as improving the educational outcomes of Shepparton’s young people. In aiming to address the increasing socio-economic inequality that has tarnished the image of Shepparton and has made life more precarious for many in the community, these two groups of elites initially forged connections in 2011 but then, when the status of the first group of local elites was challenged, they ‘locked horns’. I use the term corporate- identified to signify that the group of elites central to my study coalesce around the notion that the regional economy is driven primarily by corporate food production -- large scale, vertically integrated systems run on corporate rather than familial lines. As is evident in the previously cited speech to the 2014 philanthropic summit, this group claim their status as local mediators by positioning themselves as ‘concerned citizens’ ready to work with anyone who is ready to work with them. Consistent with Salverda and Abbink’s definition of elites, neither group of elites would self-reference as such, with the first describing themselves as “a private group acting in the region’s best interests, progressive people keen to see their entrepreneurial and energetic town move forward” (Summons 2015, 11) and the second as subject-matter experts aiming to provide public goods for the community in Shepparton. Whilst some of these other elites are involved in corporate food production and/or are local, their status tends to be positional and accorded to them as individuals rather than by being part of a local clique. They represent the upper set of families who Mills (1956a, 30) contends stand above the middle classes and the masses in every town and small city, mainly controlling resources through corporate, government or institutional positions. This distinction between elites who are engaged in corporate food production and are local and the group of local elites who are the focus of my study, can be seen in the limited way the former is engaged by the latter in ‘foundational’ activities. Those directly involved in corporate food production help fund the organisations set up by the local elites in my study but do not become actively involved in driving the agenda of this clique. Probably due to the vagaries of primary production and the rhythm of horticulture and dairying, those directly engaged in corporate food production, the horticulturalists and dairy farmers, mostly devote themselves to industry causes. For example, they were activists during the previously cited salinity crisis, they fought to save the cannery, they exposed the supermarkets for stocking ‘dumped’ foreign imports and for paying too little for milk, and they campaigned to protect the apple and pear from foreign diseases like fire-blight. The large-scale horticulturalists and dairy farmers control economic resources through their businesses, they sit on the fruit and dairy industry boards, mediate between the smaller operators and the supermarkets, and are part of what Foucauldian scholars would recognise as the ensemble of institutions, procedures, calculations and tactics that are the practices of

58 corporate food production. Whilst they are well known in the industry, the broader Shepparton community would most likely only come across their family names on the matrix of roads that have connected farms and guided seasonal workers to the orchards of the Turnbulls, or the Lennes or the Pogues for over a hundred years. Their involvement in the activities initiated by the local elites central to my study is generally by invitation only, mainly to garner their moral and financial support and to pre-empt any resistance that might come from them being excluded. In Bourdieusian terms, they are not within the same social-field as local elites, they do not share a common concern about the community, nor do they understand the ‘rules of the game’ of being a corporate citizen. When I asked one of the local elites central to my study to explain why it was that only a few orchardists seemed to be involved in community issues, they told me: “they devote themselves to the business and they do a sterling job but there aren’t a lot of them that you would say were active, good corporate citizens”. With a few notable exceptions, the corporate identified local elites who are central to my study are towns people running their own businesses or in professional practices. As I previously mentioned, they are white, mostly over fifty, mostly self-made, and mostly men. They socialise together, meet up at the football, many are members of the same Rotary Club and attend the same churches, and they have participated together in foundational activities such as the Clever Food Committee, the Committee for Greater Shepparton and Foodbowl Unlimited, each of which are outlined later in this chapter. It is this clique who have been leading local regional development since the early 1990s when they felt the state had ‘abandoned’ the city and that local government, without the direction of business-people on council, lacked vision and was “often leading the charge in voicing strong fears and anxieties about what the future of Shepparton might be”. As I noted in the previous section, within Bourdieu’s notion of the field people’s power and influence ebbs and flows and their relative position is fluid. This is evident in the transcript of a discussion I had over lunch with two of the more prominent group members27. Again, my narrative is un-indented and non-italicised. H: The one thing we haven’t talked about is the ‘boy’s-club’ ‘Boy’s- club’? H: Tell me you haven’t noticed. We all know who they are. There’s Glenn, Mike, the two Peters, Gordon, Clive sort of. There’s Laurie, and Bob’s in there, Trevor thinks he is, no, he is in there. There’s a new group, some of the orchard people. Really, I don’t see the orchardists popping up, H: No, they don’t but they’ve got power. But very few of these initiatives have the orchardists on their Boards or Committees. J: My observation as well … probably the time, could be a factor. Their energies have been on their businesses.

27 People’s names have been changed.

59 And you’ve got Ric? H: Yes, and the Williamsons. They’ve certainly got that authority. Some of the ones we’ve talked about are very adherent to the ‘boys-club’, people like Gordon and the two Peters, particularly the older one, it’s more like clubby for them…. it’s that sort of clubbyness. Maybe it’s also generational! J: Yes, I agree with that. They are not as active, but they are always there being supportive. I’m not being critical. H: And, there’s a couple of young blokes who hang around the Committee for Greater Shepparton. Shaun, Gregory and Paul, old school, proper old school. Harry doesn’t seem as prominent as he used to be! J: No Why’s that? J: He actually challenges a lot. Some of this clubbyness requires being very affable. He is less about the clubbyness and more about social justice and education and change. Anyone else? H: Peter Mac was there for 5 or 10 years but he’s retired. Graham hasn’t retired but he’s not very prominent, he’s a chemist. And the Billingtons are well connected. And women? J: There are hardly any women in the boys-club and they’re there by little breaks. They got there at the end. There’s Katherine obviously, and Rosemary is there and Jenny. Maybe Carol is there a bit! J: Don’t know. She’s certainly positioning herself really strongly. Sounds a bit gendered. J: True, the influencers are probably predominantly men whereas the women are the workers; the doers. The clear gender bias is also evident in Martin Summons’ unpublished manuscript, “Watershed: the fight for Victoria’s irrigation water” in which the author describes this group as “Shepparton’s big boys club”. References to a ‘boys club’ and ‘clubbyness’ were not uncommon in our discussions and I took the terms to mean cliquish. This sense of ‘clubbyness’ is evident in the response I was given by one of my participants when asked how it was that they had worked with the same closed network of people on many initiatives, I was told “you work on such and such and then you’re asked do you want to come along to this meeting and listen to this one, and it’s people that you’ve worked with

60 before and you realise the skill set that potentially you need and you go well so and so has got the skill set, he’s a businessman and an astute social observer and commentator and we know each other, we know each other’s strengths and weaknesses and also we know who’s willing and who’s not” This group of locals often look for leadership to Ross McPherson and speak of him in reverential terms. One of the next-generation in this clique told me: “Ross has his own view of himself and where he sits here. You can’t help not have a certain view when you are a go-to … not only Ross there are a number of them … but I do use him as an example because a lot of people do see him, respect him highly, respect his advice and opinions and things like that, a sounding board for what may or may not happen”. Ross is a third-generation local media proprietor, born and bred in Shepparton. Following in the footsteps of his father, and his father’s father, Ross is committed to community service; a commitment for which he was recognised in 2019 through being awarded the Member of the Order of Australia. Ross is also well connected to senior government bureaucrats and politicians at the highest level. As one participant noted: “Ross has his clubs and his networks”. According to another of my participants, “Ross is the king of Shepparton.” Still another spoke of invoking his name to challenge City of Greater Shepparton bureaucrats whose perspectives did not accord with their own. Ross’ imprimatur is sought, and his influence is felt by other local elites. I asked an ex- councillor about their decision to run for office and was told that “Ross was very supportive … he encouraged me as a community leader and saw me being a good fit for the job”. Only a few of the group were born in Shepparton. The majority come from rural and regional Victoria or southern New South Wales. Unlike the local elites of the past who were captains of industry, served on Council and were recognised by their family names being memorialised in streets and parks, buildings and sports fields, this group for the most part maintains a relatively low profile beyond their professional positions in town. Typically, they come from farming stock or comfortable middle-class families and their knowledge of disadvantage and poverty has been gained through their professional involvement in the criminal justice or health systems, or through volunteering in the community. They claim that this gives them an ‘arms-length’ objectivity that enables them to understand what really needs to be done; a perspective not available to those living with disadvantage who, according to them, are too embroiled to see the bigger picture. For example, reflecting on the significant weight given to a survey in which the views of children living in families experiencing disadvantage were polled, I was told by one member of the clique: “I learnt about real child deprivation through the courts by dealing with disadvantaged families for years. No food and no nothing … wild dogs in the back yard and fifty thousand empty Jim Beam cans … kids stinking going to school and having no lunches. This was all the evidence in cases you’re in and so over the years you should get a picture of how people are surviving and how bad it is. But you couldn’t ask those kids. Because those kids don’t even know how bad it is. They don’t even know. If they’ve got mum at home and they get something to eat and get kicked out the door, hey, that’s life”.

61 There are a few within the clique who have experienced disadvantage first-hand. These few talk about changes to disadvantage in the region by comparing their life to the way they see people living in poverty today. One reflecting on their own experience told me:

“I grew up in a commission28 house. There were working poor such as my family, my father worked really hard. When I was born, he was an apprentice. He used to work second and third jobs. I grew up eating stuff my kids would turn their nose up to. I can remember there were working class poor like us and then there were welfare recipients. The welfare recipients were really frowned upon by the working class because they were receiving government assistance. It was a really taboo thing to do, you were really down and out if you were relying on government handouts”. The political leaning of the local elites central to my study is mostly conservative. As a group, they have been referred to by other more liberal-minded locals as the Tea Party Club, likening them to the fiscally conservative political movement within the Republican Party in the US whose members support lower taxes, lower government spending and small-government principles. Many openly express traditional ‘family- values’ and yearn for long-gone social norms, pondering whether the loss of both has resulted in the deteriorating social cohesiveness in Shepparton. When we were discussing how best to avoid imposing a set of value on vulnerable people and setting aside their own, one of the members of the clique reflected: “I always ask myself what is going on here, what is happening because this is not the Shepparton I grew up in in the 70s. At the heart of it is we’ve got dysfunctional families. Something has disassembled that family structure and it has only gathered pace since the 70s. Somebody has got to ask themselves, why is that? What are the social conditions that have produced this disintegration, and can we retrieve that? Because that’s what we’re talking about, retrieving the sorts of family values. And people will say oh it’s because you come from a white middle-class farming background. Not really, I don’t think so. I think I have generally the accepted values in all of the society back then”. When I asked one of my participants who works in the social assistance sector and is not part of the clique, if the community had conservative values, they, told me: “When I came here in 2003 there was no bulk billing clinics in town and only one or two chemists that would dose methadone, and it is still the case now. Back then you couldn’t get a chemist to dose the morning after pill and they wouldn’t let a young woman go on any birth control medication unless they had their mother with them.”

28 The Housing Commission of Victoria was responsible for providing public housing in the state of Victoria from 1937 to 1984

62 This conservatism is not unique to Shepparton. Citing research conducted by the Centre for Excellence in Rural Sexual Health (CERSH)29, I was told by this participant that: “Here and in Bendigo and in other regional centres, the chemists’ personal religious view informed who was going to get access to medication.” When I approached CERSH to validate this claim, I was told that amongst the local doctors and pharmacists who were supportive of improving access to emergency contraception and medical abortions, some were concerned that they will be exposed to a backlash from the community if their involvement is made obvious. Local elites often lead or influence projects across a broad spectrum of areas, such as fast rail links to Melbourne, access to water resources, aged care facilities, private schools, expanding the hospital and consolidating the secondary schools. They spend time together and socialise their plans for Shepparton and the region at barbeques, dinners, and social and sporting clubs. As one explained: “A lot of us were involved in Rotary in Shepparton, the Central Rotary Club. That was a place where we had a lot of conversations about where’s our town going and what are we going to do about it and if someone’s going to do something about it has to be us, we can’t just wait for the government”. When I asked another participant how community projects were initiated, they cited as an example how the seed of an idea that changed the funding of community initiatives had germinated at a barbeque: “About fifteen years ago, John and I were eating a roast chicken on my back deck and I said to John that we get hit up all the time for requests for philanthropy. He said we could do it better, there’s this model they have in America, United Way, let’s do something like that. So, we set up a steering committee and came up with the Community Fund30 and it went from there”. When I asked who was involved in the steering committee, I was told, “you’ll find a lot of the same finger-prints on a lot of these things …the indigenous employment program, the Bridge Youth Service”. Members of this clique of elites sit on each other’s boards and on the boards of local NGOs, chair community councils, direct the major regional events, partner with government on regional development initiatives, steer steering committees, and lobby for their ‘fair share’ of whatever there is to share. In the context of mediating for the community, they describe themselves as “privateers, shovel-ready whenever dollars are floating past” (Summons 2015). One of the more junior members of the clique described this ensemble of governance as “an organised local architecture of people who know where the issues are and where they are not”. Nominees for these governance roles come from within the group. A quiet word is had, a shoulder is tapped, outsiders are dissuaded from nominating. The chair

29 I was unable to source this piece of research to validate the claim. However, I spoke with one of the people in the Centre for Excellence in Rural Health involved who told me that my participant’s perspective was consistent with theirs. 30 Refer to Glossary for a brief description of the Community Fund

63 of one of the more prominent committees told me, “it is important to keep a level of local agency”. Dissenting voices are exorcised. An executive of one of the major not- for-profits providing social assistance, and considered an ‘outsider’, spoke to me about being unceremoniously removed from a committee controlled by local elites. They told me “I logged on and found I was no longer on the website”. At other times people who are outside the group are moved aside not so subtly. One of the founding members of another steering committee controlled by this clique of elites was allegedly sacked early in the program’s life, claiming that they were told, “we have to take this project back from you outsiders”. Another who was being encouraged to put their name forward for CEO of the initiative was told by a prominent member of the clique not to. Members of this clique of local elites hold down multiple governance roles at the same time, potentially creating conflicts of interest -- a point discussed in chapter one, and one that I will return to later in this chapter when discussing the implementation of one of their initiatives, Foodbowl Unlimited. The individuals involved accord with Bourdieu’s previously cited description of those in social fields who act as connectors with other social fields. One of the local elites saw this overlap as providing opportunities to network and get things done. In explaining their own experience, they revealed a microcosm of how local elites exert control through governance. “What happens is that you’re the chair of one body and then you’re also chairing the School Council at the same time and they sort of feed across almost, sometimes accidentally, sometimes dangerously people might say. But you find the people on your committee will be saying we need to do something about this … we’ve got a HR problem … hang on, I’m on the such and such Board and we went through this last year. So, in a smaller community, the opportunity for networking are strong. And we’re not quite so precious about it either. What might be seen as conflict of interest sometimes, and you do have to be careful with that, but there are enormous opportunities for getting outcomes, including co-operative engagement with other organisations within the town, people are on other bodies and so the only dangers are, and we faced this a few times, is that in terms of potential conflicts, people have to be aware of what’s going on and if you have a connection and you announce that connection and tell people, you can actually work with it”. Members of this group of local elites percolate through a hierarchy of community boards and committees; when one of their number moves to a more influential position they are replaced by a more junior member of the group; recruitment to the role of CEO for one of the community organisations, as told by one member of the clique, can be viewed in this context: “Graham was identified for that role. He had been out and about a bit. He was President of the Shepparton Food Festival and he was keen young bloke. You know he’d be on the committee at the tennis club and then he would be crop up somewhere else. People began to say oh that Graham he’s into things and those who knew him socially said he’s got the smarts”.

64 It was early in my fieldwork that I came to understand this group of local elites as a powerful clique not unlike Janine Wedel’s description of a ‘flex net’. The initiative that was pivotal in forming this clique was the previously mentioned Clever Food Conference in 1993. From this point, local elites started to refer to each other as working collectively to achieve a shared vison for the region. For example, one of the founding members of the Clever Food Committee told me that ever since the conference: “Many of the same suspects involved in Clever Food have been active. The SPC revival was part of it as well. It’s the same sort of people. The jobs for Christmas campaigns and the whole fire-blight Campaign years ago [2011] you might remember --- lots and lots of involvement. The Bridge Youth Service was another thing the group got going so a long involvement of a moving group of people, some coming in and out and other new people coming”. It is noteworthy in this comment that my participant draws a distinction between individual elites who come and go, and the clique whose focus on community development is enduring. That the clique remains intact and ideologically stable despite members coming and going and resurfacing in different configurations, is a feature attributed by Wedel to a ‘flex-net’, a configuration I will describe in more detail later in this chapter (2017, 165). That other local elites also see themselves as being part of a clique with an enduring shared conviction to drive community development is evident in the comment of one who came to the region in 1996, three years after the Clever Food Conference. When I asked this participant how they got involved in the group, they told me that they had worked professionally with one or two and was then invited to work on initiatives created in the clique. Reflecting on how things get done in the clique this participant told me31: “Things that you think are impossible, you go to Shaun, Geoff and Roger. So, that’s why I always like working with them. It is like a dream team … a quite unusual chemistry … it just has so much history, years and years of history of working together on what we call our crazy hairbrained schemes”. Whilst those of my participants who are outside this group acknowledge its existence, they most often regard the clique in a negative light and reveal an underlying tension that exists between local elites and those whom they connect with in the broader community. An educator who has lived in Shepparton for four decades told me: “There does seem to be a cohort of people who are quite influential and see themselves as influential. They are all interconnected, a bit like an upper-class social set that say things like we don’t need other people to tell us what to do, we know what to do, we live here”. Since 1993, this group of local elites have claimed and been accorded status as mediators by other elites, particularly state and federal government bureaucrats and politicians, who want to engage the Shepparton community. Rather than asserting their individual power and influence, they have organised themselves as an informal

31 Assumed names

65 but powerful clique, interacting with each other in multiple roles, coming together as needed, to advance their cause or protect their status as mediators. Whilst people come and go and, as Bourdieu suggests, their power waxes and wanes within their social field, their shared conviction expressed as “we drive our own future here” has endured for more than twenty-five years. Unlike elites who sit within networks that may have divergent aims, the aims of the clique are indistinguishable from the aims of its members. Whilst their role as mediators emerged from the Clever Food Conference in 1993, it is through four subsequent foundational activities that they have been able to preserve recruit other actors with diverse interests to the notion that they are the ones who know what the community needs. With the exception of the Lighthouse project, which was established in 2012, the five foundational activities I identified were conceived, organised and operated by members of this group. The first of these activities was the Clever Food Committee (1993-1997) which was conceived as a direct consequence of the local council members who were predominantly from the business community being replaced by state government appointed commissioners whose mandate was to corporatise local government. Through the Clever Food Committee, local elites re-established themselves as the ones with the vision needed to lead regional development in the Goulburn Valley. The inspiration for the establishment of the Clever Food Committee can be traced to the foresight of Ross McPherson and Peter Ryan. Ross had returned to Shepparton in 1985 after twelve years away. Peter arrived in the Goulburn Valley in 1989 to take up the role of principal at the Dookie Agricultural College. It was Ross and Peter who assembled the Clever Food Committee with the expressed purpose of providing a common forum to create and develop ideas and solutions concerning the region’s infrastructure, and strengthening connections with state and federal governments (Carr and Ryan 1997, 3). It was the Clever Food Committee who first developed a holistic vision for the region, namely: “By 2001, the Goulburn Valley will be recognised as the world’s finest quality source of clean, wholesome food and clever food people. It will have achieved the environmental balance, the educational excellence and social cohesion to achieve this goal” (Carr and Ryan 1997). The Clever Food Committee ran for four years, merging in 1997 with Shepparton’s Sustainable Regional Development Board; an organisation chaired by one of the Clever Food Committee members. Given that Peter had chaired the Clever Food Committee from its inception, I asked him to reflect on what had been achieved. Peter’s response was to refer me to a booklet chronicling the committee’s activities (see Carr and Ryan 1997), adding: “At the end of that four years when energy was starting to falter, we made the deliberate decision as a committee to say we are going to wind this up. If we haven’t sown the seed broadly enough now, forget it. It was a time to say that phase was done.” Peter’s reflection provides an important insight into how this initiative differs from previous ones involving the same people. Peter’s reference to the committee as a “phase” validates that the Clever Food Committee was a distinguishable part of something else. That this was the case is confirmed in Peter’s last newsletter to

66 members in December 1996 in which he argued that “whilst it was time to voluntarily wind up the “movement, the Clever Food forum could always be re-created if required in the future”. The Clever Food Committee can be seen as representing the first two steps in what Michel Callon refers to as the process of forming networks -- namely, to create a problem-solution around which all network actors can coalesce and then lock them in to specific roles that have been proposed by the lead actors (1984, 196). In establishing the committee as a forum to develop ideas and solutions concerning the region’s infrastructure and political connections, Ross and Peter were recruiting a diverse group with differing interests in Shepparton to a network of actors committed to delivering a very specific vision for the region -- one in which members of the clique of local elites would take the lead. Furthermore, seen in the context of an instrument to recruit actors with differing perspectives to a common cause, should the Clever Food Committee be reformed in the future, as Peter suggested, it would indicate that people’s commitment to the vision may have waned and/or there were new actors needed to be recruited to their vision. Whilst the second foundational activity identified had its genesis in the Clever Food Committee it warrants being profiled separately in that it demonstrates how, as Lang (2019) suggests, examining these activities reveals that Bourdieu’s ‘field’ transcends boundaries. Realising that the reform of the public sector underway at the time had depleted their links with state and federal government, under the leadership of Ross McPherson, this group established the Goulburn Valley Leadership Program in 1997. The program has operated since 1998 as the Fairley Leadership Program. In its twenty-two years, over 550 local alumni have forged connections beyond Shepparton, mostly through annual visits to the region by participants in Leadership Victoria’s Williamson Program, an alumni who it is claimed “end up in all sorts of positions with a bit of a feel for what happens up here.” The third initiative is arguably the most controversial. In 2004, in the middle of the millennium drought, Foodbowl Unlimited was launched, an initiative that aimed to “look at ways to improve the region’s competitive advantage and to get people focused on something that was positive”. The impetus for the initiative was a meeting between a core group from within the clique and the Global Foundation, a Melbourne based not-for-profit ‘think tank’ funded by the private sector and philanthropic sponsors (“Introducing the Global Foundation” 2020). According to its website, the Global Foundation uses its “unique convening power enabling people from all walks of life to meet and work together in addressing some of the greatest global challenges, including food security”. The foundation also makes it clear on their website that they choose “not to be the story, preferring to support the work of those in positions of authority and influence”. In all respects, the Global Foundation is consistent with what Wedel describes as a vehicle of elite power and one of the ways ‘influence elites organise and operate (2017, 158). After evaluating options presented to the Foodbowl Unlimited steering committee a core group of clique members successfully lobbied for $2 billion of government funding to revitalise the region’s irrigation system. In exchange for this investment by both federal and state governments, a third of the water saved by ‘stopping the leaks’ in the irrigation system was to be piped to Melbourne. In an unpublished manuscript chronicling Foodbowl Unlimited, one member of the clique

67 was quoted as telling the state premier Steve Bracks that as the Labour government had no elected members in Shepparton, they had nothing to lose electorally by approving funding [for a project that had its detractors in the community] and ceding control of the implementation of the project, to local elites. Consequently, in December 2007 when the state government established the Northern Victoria Irrigation Renewal Project (NVIRP) to implement the project, they deferred to this clique of local elites to nominate people for the governance roles of this statutory body. In this sense, Foodbowl Unlimited is an example of ‘influence elites’ reorganising governance and bureaucracies to suit their own purpose (Wedel 2017, 165). That this is so is evident in a report published in 2011 following an investigation into the Foodbowl Modernisation Project (Brouwer 2011) in which the Victorian ombudsman found that the NVIRP had not implemented the project transparently and equitably and had failed to manage its contractors conflicts between their public duties and private business interests (Brouwer 2011). Given that the governance of the project was ceded to local elites by the state government, it is particularly pertinent that the ombudsman also found that there had been a fundamental misunderstanding by NVIRP directors and senior managers of public sector principles such as conflict of interest, good governance, privacy and transparency. The fourth initiative, the Lighthouse project, emerged from the first of the Sir Andrew and Lady Fairley Foundation Philanthropic Summits, convened in 2011. When launched in 2012, the stated aim of the Lighthouse project was to address the disadvantage associated with young people’s poor educational outcomes and their lack of social connection (“A Framework for Change Greater Shepparton Lighthouse Project” 2015, 3). Both the Lighthouse project and the 2011 Philanthropic Summit are examined in detail in chapter five. The fifth initiative is the Committee for Greater Shepparton (G4GS) which was launched at the aforementioned 2014 philanthropic summit. McKenzie’s previously cited comment in his opening address to the summit, that “we forgot just how strong our fundamentals actually were” indicates that people’s commitment to the vision had waned and they needed to be recruited again to the cause. In, December 2012, a small group from this clique of local elites sat down for their annual Christmas lunch. According to one of the attendees: “Normally it’s just a pretty light hearted stuff but in 2012 one of our friends stood up and got all our attention and took us away from our lunch and our wine and said look you know we all need to be honest with ourselves there’s a lot of head-winds the region’s facing and the city’s facing and we all probably recognise that the city we walk around, we’re having a bit of trouble recognising, there is increasing obvious disadvantage, there’s all sorts of things economically and socially that have really come to land on us for all sorts of reasons and you know, who’s going to do something about this. He sort of challenged us all and asked, what are we all going to do about it. We all just went back to our lunch … early in the new year a group of six of us reconvened and we started talking about a Committee for Greater Shepparton”. As was the case in 1993, local elites felt the need to recruit the broader business community to their vision and, believing that the City of Greater Shepparton council at the time were no longer effective advocates for business, to re-establish themselves as

68 the ones to mediate with state and federal governments for the resources they believed the community needed. As one of the founders of the C4GS told me: “the millennium drought from 2000 to 2010 had crippled the area and there was just a general negativity ..we had a dysfunctional council, one way or another, issues with the public gardens, with the brothels, with a whole heap of things, nothing was coming our way [by way of state and federal government investment] so we thought we need to try and get some things happening, more on the business and industry and employment side of things than on the community side of things”. Reminiscent of the modus operandi used by the Clever Food Committee to recruit people to what Callon calls a problem-solution equation which all actors must accept (1984), the steering committee invited two hundred mainly business people to the Parklake Motel in Shepparton so that the “case for” could be put to them and their financial support could be garnered. The group of six engaged a consulting firm specialising in irrigation-based agriculture and well-known to senior members of the clique, to help develop the strategy and vision for the C4GS. The vision along with four strategic pillars32 were subsequently workshopped by the eighty invited attendees at the 2014 Fairley Foundation Philanthropic Summit whose agenda was devoted to garnering broader community support for the initiative. Following the 2014 Fairley Foundation Philanthropic Summit, the C4GS was launched with all board positions filled by members of the clique. Apart from being slightly more expansive, the C4GS’s vision for the region is consistent with the Clever Food Committee vision in 1993; "the Australian centre for dairy and horticulture, exporting reliable premium quality fresh and value-added produce via innovative practices and world class irrigation systems. As a major business centre, we will be connected to the world through modern infrastructure and supported by a thriving and educated community that celebrates its rich culture and diversity" (C4GS Annual Report 2015-2016). David McKenzie, who is the son of the former CEO of the Clever Food Committee, became the inaugural chair of the C4GS and held that post until 2019 when he resigned, having concurrently held the chair of the Regional Partnership for Goulburn33 one of nine regional partnerships set up by the Victorian state government in 2016 on the basis of local communities being “in the best position to understand the challenges and opportunities faced by their region”. The significance of the Clever Food Committee, the Fairley Leadership Program, Foodbowl Unlimited, the Greater Shepparton Lighthouse Project and the C4GS is that rather than controlling state institutions, as the Peruvian mestizo traders did in Penelope Harvey’s “Elites on the Margin”, local elites established these parallel, self- sufficient entities as apolitical. Through these entities which were largely a response to the Victorian state government distancing political decision-making institutions from the region, local elites have purposefully disassociated themselves from the activities

32 The C4GS generates activities along four streams; Productive, Creative, Connected and Inclusive. 33 These nine regional partnerships form what is known as the Regional Development Advisory Committee (RDAC) which is the Victorian state government’s “lead body for regional development policy advice” (“Regional Development Advisory Committee,” n.d.) .

69 of local government and become a shadow form of pseudo-government to which state and federal governments of all persuasions could refer. For example, in a discussion I had concerning the committee’s relationship with Victoria’s Labor government, one of the committee members told me: “I think initially they might have been a little bit wary, but the reality was that they didn’t have good networks through Northern Victoria and didn’t have perhaps as deep an understanding of the issues as they felt comfortable with. So, where do they go? Quite often when they’re up around here and they go and see Councils there’s quite conservative Mayors in most councils here because that’s just the nature of these communities and they found us [the C4GS] to be determinately apolitical and so very early on there was a level of trust and both sides [Conservative and Labor] are really quite free with what they share with us because nothing’s ever come out that shouldn’t have come out. They know that they can talk to us and bounce ideas off us … policy development opportunities …. What do you think would happen if we did this? What are your thoughts if we go in that direction? And we can add value to that, influence their early thinking and they know that no-one else knows who isn’t in that loop. Nothings ever come out, so we’ve built that sort of trust relationship right across the spectrum”. Whilst these organisations claim to be apolitical, their involvement in the election of members of the clique to parliamentary positions would suggest otherwise. There is a long-held view amongst local elites that being a politically safe seat has resulted in Shepparton missing out on government funding. For example, when we were discussing funding and infrastructure, one member of the clique told me: “We’ve been a safe National Party34 seat state-wide and a safe Liberal35 seat for years at a Federal level, we’ve been overlooked because we’re too safe. In fact, the Labour party at the last state election put up a twenty-three-year-old university student as their candidate because it’s a lost cause anyway, which has been really unhelpful for us.” In recent years, this group has backed one of their own as an independent candidate for state elections; the first time in 2002 and the next in 2006. In 2014 the C4GS was instrumental in two election campaigns, one Federal and the other State. I was told by a committee member: “we got involved in a couple of political campaigns … our candidate got up as an independent and it’s fair to say the Committee for Greater Shepparton had a lot of background involvement in that. Then swapping the seat from Liberal to National was also a deliberate thing because the Nationals were sort of tuned into a lot more of the issues particularly around water. So, the committee has been quite good on strategy -- they’ve been very effective at State and Federal politics.”

34 The National Party of Australia, also known as the Nationals or the Nats, is a conservative Australian political party traditionally representing, graziers, farmers and rural voters. 35 The Liberal Party of Australia is a major centre-right political party in Australia. For much of its recent history, when in government, the Liberal Party have governed as a coalition with the Nationals.

70 The successful independent candidate for the 2014 state election had been on the board of the Fairley Leadership Program for eight years and was also involved in Foodbowl Unlimited. Following these changes to the political landscape there is generally a positive feeling amongst local elites central to my study that funds are now being directed to them. When I asked one of my participants if funding had started to flow with the election of an independent candidate, they told me: “Since we’ve had the Independent member, it’s hard to know and they [the government] would deny it but everything is political these days, everything, and I think we’ve done better under Suzanna because it’s political.” When I first became aware of the Clever Food Committee, I believed it to be a discrete initiative that assembled a small group of people who, through working together, developed a shared identity and shared values that positioned them to work together on subsequent initiatives. What I have found is that in addition to spawning a powerful clique of local elites and providing them with the template for subsequent activities, the Clever Food Committee was important in enlisting a broader network of people with diverse interests to support the clique’s vision for the region and legitimise their role as essential mediators. Wedel describes ‘influence elites’ who, like the local elites in my study, are not dependent on specific entities and who consolidate their power and influence into potent power cliques, as a ‘flex-net’ (2017, 164). In the next section, I argue that the elites central to my study are better understood as a ‘flex net - a dense, self-propelling, informal, and often long-time trust network that pursues common goals, co-ordinating their efforts inside and outside official structures (2009, 15–19). 3 Flex net or not? According to Wedel, ‘flex nets’ are a configuration of ‘influence elites’ that fuses official and private power most completely (2017, 163). Justifying her need for a neologism to describe this configuration of ‘influence elites’, Wedel cites four features that distinguish the way they operate -- firstly, members interact in multiple government and non-government roles, resurfacing as a group at different times to achieve their shared ideological goals; secondly, their shared convictions and actions are enduring and the clique remains intact even though individual members change roles or leave the group; thirdly, they secure near-exclusive access to key information thereby rendering their actions impervious to critical judgement; finally, they reorganise governance and bureaucracies to suit their own purpose, sometimes creating their own structures and at other times occupy existing structures of others, personalising the practices for their own ends (Wedel 2017, 165). For the purpose of arguing that the corporate identified local elites in my study warrant being understood as a ‘flex net’ I will briefly summarise the activities of the ‘Locomotive Group’ who Wedel cites as an example of ‘influence elites’ configured as a ‘flex net’, showing that the way they organise and operate is not dissimilar to the practices deployed by corporate-identified local elites in Shepparton working on community development initiatives. The ‘Locomotive Group’ is a powerful clique who at the turn of the century briefly turned Iceland, a fishing-based economy of 300,000 people, into an improbable

71 banking powerhouse. By introducing the ‘Locomotive Group’ into my argument, I am not suggesting any parity in the scale of the impact that the local elites in my study have had on their communities, nor am I drawing a conclusion as to the morality of one based on the actions of the other. My intent is to show why the local elites in my study should be understood as a ‘flex net’ and, as such, the expressed values and individual actions of this group of elites should be seen as collectively held and executed. My summary of the ‘Locomotive Group’ is drawn from work that examines the group’s role in introducing free market policies that transformed Iceland’s economy, leaving it overly exposed to the effects of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) in 2008 (see Wade and Sigurgeirsdottir 2012; Hart-Landsberg 2013; Bergmann 2014; Wedel 2017). For much of Iceland’s post WWII history its economy has been based on cold- water fishing. With trade protected and capital markets heavily regulated, by 1980 Iceland had become one of the most prosperous countries in Western Europe. During this period of prosperity, the ruling elite was a bloc of fourteen families popularly known as ‘the Octopus’ who dominated most key industries, controlled the country’s most powerful political party, and rewarded those loyal to them through patronage. In the early 1980s, a neoliberal political interest group, founded by David Oddsson and Geir Haarde, began to emerge. Taking their name from the student paper they edited whilst studying at the University of Iceland, the ‘Locomotive Group’ promoted free market policies that, as the economy started to slow, were becoming increasingly attractive. Members of the Locomotives had taken senior roles in politics, the judiciary, business and the media. In 1982, Oddsson became mayor of Reykjavik and immediately embarked on an aggressive program of privatisation which included the sale of the municipality’s fishing interests. This not only benefited financially the ‘Octopus’ but also a number of the Locomotives. In 1991, Oddsson became prime minister. His success in extending the Locomotives free market policies to the state was predicated on him reassuring the ‘Octopus’ families that his rapid privatisation of state institutions would not impoverish them or dilute their power. In 2002, in an endeavour to control the narrative on the economy, the Oddsson government abolished the National Economic Institute which had a reputation for independent thinking. By 2003 Oddsson had taken Iceland into the European Union and had completed the privatisation of the two state banks. Majority ownership and control of the banks was vested in the ‘Octopus’ families. In 2004 Oddsson resigned his prime ministership to take up the self- appointed position of governor of the Central Bank of Iceland (CBI). Oddsson was replaced by his protégé and co-founder of ‘the Locomotive Group’, Geir Haarde who had been Oddsson’s finance minister since 1998. At the time, the leading academic champion of Iceland’s free market experiment, Prof Hannes H. Gissurarson, another member of the ‘Locomotive Group’, wrote in an article published in the Wall Street Journal, that Oddsson’s experiment with liberal policies is the greatest free-market success story in the world (2004). By 2006, concerns about the liquidity of Icelandic banks and the CBI’s capacity as a lender of last resort were being raised by both the International Monetary Fund and banks outside of Iceland. To allay fears, the privatised banks expanded their retail funding activities into other EU countries, the CBI, under Obbsson’s direction,

72 borrowed to shore-up their increased liabilities and other members of the Locomotives used the media to present a flourishing picture of Iceland as a financial centre. In 2008 Lehman Brothers collapsed in the United States, international credit markets froze, triggering the global financial crisis (GFC). Starved of liquidity, Glitnir, the smallest of the Icelandic banks, sought help from the CBI as lender of last resort. Oddsson ordered Treasury to buy 75% of Glitnir’s shares which further undermined international confidence in Iceland’s banking system resulting in the two larger Icelandic banks, Kaupthing and Landisbanki, also being unable to access international credit markets and requiring them to be bailed out by the government. What had been seen as an experiment in free market economics, is now regarded as a textbook case of macroeconomic meltdown. If these failures had occurred in the United States, at US$173 billion, the bankruptcy of the three Icelandic banks as a collective would rank third in the U.S history of bankruptcies. In the aftermath of the GFC, Haarde lost his prime- ministership and in 2010 was charged with breaching of ministerial responsibility. In 2015, Haarde became Iceland’s Ambassador to the United States before joining the World Bank in 2019. Oddsson was forced out of the CBI in 2009 and became editor-in- chief of Morgunblaðið, the leading Icelandic newspaper headquartered in Reykyavik; a position he continues to hold. In this account of ‘the Locomotive Group‘, the aforementioned distinguishing features in Wedel‘s description of a ‘flex-net‘ are clearly evident. The ‘Locomotive Group‘ operated inside and outside government to transform Iceland‘s economy through neoliberal policies and practices. They recruited a network of actors with diverse interests to their neoliberal cause, they controlled the narrative through controlling the media and shutting down narratives that threatened their own, and they occupied institutions of governance in order that their actions could go ungoverned. From the way local elites in Shepparton have organised and operated since 1993, it would be reasonable to understand them as according with Wedel’s description of a ‘flex net’. I have shown how local elites refer to themselves as being part of a clique in which people move in and out, resurfacing when needed to work as a group. I have also shown how they regard themselves collectively as an organised local architecture of people who know what the community needs and believe it is entitled to. It is also clear that despite the movement of people in and out of the group, they have since 1993 driven a vision of their region predicated on the belief that the benefits for the community of corporate food production flow down through people being meaningfully employed. I have also described the self-sufficient structures, such as the Committee for Greater Shepparton, that local elites have created which circumvent and marginalise other government and industry bodies, arguing that these institutions are failing to respond to the needs of their constituents. 4 Summary In this chapter I have described a comparatively small group of people who are invested economically or emotionally in corporate food production in the Goulburn Valley and who, along with a broader network of loosely affiliated people Mills would identify as ‘power elites’, are involved in providing social assistance in Greater

73 Shepparton. They number about thirty-five and are mostly townspeople running their own businesses or in professional practices. Through the lens of traditional theoretical frameworks used in elite studies, it is questionable whether most of this group would be generally identified as elites. Certainly, some hold positions of power and influence in their own right within the networks and hierarchies of government and business, and two or three are from powerful families whose history in the district goes back three or four generations. However, the majority are ordinary people leading comfortable lives whose elite status is mainly contingent on the company they keep. What distinguishes this group from the ‘power’ elites in the networks they engage, is that they empower and are empowered by their own exclusive clique which combines whatever private and official power they have and amplifies it such that as a clique they are more powerful than as individuals, and their values are potentially more enduring. The catalyst for this clique forming was the destabilising of institutionally based power in the early 1990s, brought on by public and private sector reforms, including the corporatisation of local government which saw the business- people removed as councillors. Seeing their ability to influence and advocate receding, and the government bureaucrats and private sector senior managers who had previously sat on community boards leaving the region, some of this group of locals assumed leadership of the region’s development agenda through the Clever Food Committee and set about building a local leadership pool in their own likeness. In order to legitimise their claim to speak for the community, they recruited other local actors to their vision and allocated roles that positioned themselves as the ones who would mediate with government. In so doing, they have established themselves as the alternative to local government in understanding and advocating for what the community needs. This clique of local elites who principally drive regional development in the Goulburn Valley are analogous to Wedel’s description of a flex net, a dense, self- propelling, informal, long-term, trust network that pursues common goals, co- ordinating their efforts inside and outside official structures. Understanding this group local elites as a flex net is important for two reasons. Firstly, it changes the power dynamics in the broader networks of elites with whom they engage. They form a powerful and influential covert faction exerting their influence from many and varied roles. Accordingly, in forums designed to represent the heterogenous interests of communities, such as the previously discussed Regional Partnerships, the perspectives presented as those of independent elites are more likely to be informed by the collective self-interest of the clique rather than the various and competing interests of the community. Secondly, this formation of elites appears to be conducive to achieving long- term strategic objectives. After all, despite people moving in and out of this clique in Shepparton, their shared vision of the region as a place of corporate food production, their city as a town for business and themselves as the ones ultimately responsible for the community’s wellbeing has endured for more than twenty-five years. However, for the same reason, it could be argued that elites organised and operating as a clique are unlikely to be truly game-changing. Whilst the region’s transition from co-operative to corporate food production is impressive, I argue that the overall vision for the

74 Goulburn Valley’s economic, cultural and social resources has changed little since European settlement in the 1870s. In other words, elite cliques appear well suited to ‘staying the course’ they have set or inherited rather than challenging the status quo. In the next two chapters I show how being committed to a shared vision of business-led regional development framed the way this clique of local elites in Shepparton rationalise the problem of socio-economic inequality, understand the drivers of growing socio-economic inequality in their community, target for their attention some forms of disadvantage over others, and apportion the responsibility for ameliorating this inequality between themselves and others. In doing so I show that apart from a genuine desire to improve the wellbeing of their community, two factors were key in motivating this group of local elites to become involved in 2011 in addressing socio-economic inequality. The first of these factors is their sense that the narrative promoted by both neoliberal philanthropists and other elites in the social support sector involved in addressing disadvantage in the region misrepresented Shepparton and damaged their ability to recruit to their vision the required business investment and skilled professionals. The second factor was that neoliberal philanthropy elites were not only promoting solutions that challenged the claim of local elites to having a unique understanding of what was needed but were also asserting that they had done little to address the problem.

75

Chapter 4

Biopolitics and socio-economic inequality

Of all of my participants, I have known John the longest. John was one of the original ‘clever food people’, he worked with other members of the clique on Foodbowl Unlimited and again on the formation of the Committee for Greater Shepparton. These days he is no longer part of the clique. John cites his retirement from business as the reason -- some members of the clique suggest otherwise, claiming that he challenged too much. When I asked John why little progress had been made in addressing increasing levels of disadvantage in the community, he told me: “We don’t see results in addressing disadvantage because we are not changing the system. The system is set up to have some losers, isn’t it. It is systemic disadvantage the whole thing and there is no one in Australia who is brave enough to change the system” Most of the local elites central to my research rationalise the increasing socio- economic inequality in Shepparton as a consequence of systemic or global issues that are beyond their control. Rarely do they countenance the possibility that transitioning to corporate food production might have been harmful to the local community. In this chapter, I show in more detail how this clique local elites explain Shepparton’s worsening socio-economic inequality relative to its peer regions, and how they understand the causal relationship between this trend and the contemporaneous transitioning of the local economy to corporate food production. Drawing on scholars who have extended Foucault’s notion of biopower to the fields of organisational anthropology and development studies, and referencing the Clever Food Committee’s 1993 vision for the region, I argue that business-led regional development initiatives that are contingent upon individuals in the community changing their behaviours in order to participate, are manifestations of biocapitalism as defined by Kaushik Sunder Rajan and Nikolas Rose (Sunder Rajan 2006; Rose 2007). That is to say, business-led regional development represents an expression of biocapitalism because it simultaneously captures value in the form of increased human capital in the community as well as value in the form of growth in private capital generated as a consequence of regional businesses having access to a job-ready labour force. This is an important observation in understanding how this clique of local elites frame their response to increasing socio-economic inequality in the region without disturbing their belief in a narrative that has a very long history of citing the personal attributes and behavioural choices of poor people as being largely responsible for poverty and disadvantage. Despite their claims to being inclusive of the whole community, business-led regional development can be prone to creating fissures that result in those who are unable to meet the labour needs of business being ‘subjectified’ as irresponsible and undeserving, and administered in the community as dysfunctional anomalies. I show that by weaving selective anecdotes into a regional development narrative suggesting there are more than enough unfilled jobs requiring only a will to do them, local elites not only perpetuate this long held belief that vulnerable people are so because of their attributes and choices but also positions them as a drag on the region’s economic development for not ‘stepping-up’. I conclude by revealing that whilst local elites

76 acknowledge that structural changes to food production have made life more precarious for some, they attribute the region’s growth in socio-economic inequality to a combination of four factors: 1) welfare recipients being encouraged to settle in the region; 2) an overly generous welfare system that disincentivises those on welfare from becoming economically productive; 3) a not-for-profit sector profiting from rising disadvantage, and 4) intergenerational welfare dependency resulting in children growing up in households in which both education and work are not valued. 1 Biopolitics: tobacco, mascara and ‘clever food people’ Key to interpreting the way local elites understand the crucial dimensions of socio- economic inequality and its relationship to corporate food production, is Foucault’s notion of biopower -- specifically, the normalising practices of biopolitics. According to Paul Rabinow and Nikolas Rose, biopower brings together the vital characteristics of human beings, as living creatures who are born, mature, inhabit a body that can be trained and augmented, and then sicken and die, and the vital characteristics of populations composed of such living beings (2006, 197). Foucault uses the term ‘biopolitics’ to “embrace all the specific strategies and contestations over problematisations of collective human vitality, morbidity and mortality, and over the forms of knowledge, regimes of authority and practices of intervention that are desirable, legitimate and efficacious” (quoted in Rabinow and Rose 2006, 196). In my study I argue that biopolitics frames the range of possibilities available to local elites in attempting to address increasing socio-economic inequality. To introduce Foucault’s thinking into my argument I start with a case-study in which biopolitics is evident in a corporate setting. I then relate the normalising practices used in this case-study to the practices of organisations linking their strategic objectives to a set of aspirational norms through the use of vision statements. By extending the discussion of vision statements into their application in bottom of the pyramid (BoP) schemes, I show that the practices that codify aspirational norms in corporate settings are examples consistent with Rajan and Rose’s previously cited definition of biocapitalism, which is a specific form of biopolitics in which two forms of value are conflated -- value in the form of the health and well-being of individuals and value in the form of increased private capital for corporations (Dolan 2012). Through referencing the Clever Food Committee’s vision statements, I then show that the practices used in BoP schemes to create mini-entrepreneurs whose skills and traits are amenable to the needs of business are also evident in regional development initiatives that require people to be job-ready in order to participate. The relevance of this finding for my research is that socio-economic inequality and how it is best ameliorated can become a question of how best to help people become wage and salary earning jobholders rather than how value might be equitably distributed such that more people have equal access to good housing, healthcare and education. An example of Foucault’s ‘biopolitics’ in a corporate setting is Peter Benson’s study of the impact on North Carolina tobacco growers and farm workers resulting from the industry’s transition from marketing tobacco leaf through auctions to entering into twelve-month contracts with tobacco companies to supply leaf direct (2008). This shift was driven by the tobacco industry to give it greater control over production, and was ostensibly a pre-emptive response to anticipated regulatory changes which would require tobacco leaf to meet certain ‘cleanliness’ standards

77 (Benson 2008, 358). The function of these contracts is to codify a new set of behavioural norms through which growers can be regulated in ways that are consistent with cleaning-up tobacco and repositioning the image of the industry as responsible corporate citizens. Accordingly, these contracts stipulate among other things that the bales of leaf be free from any non-tobacco related material (paper, string, dirt, sand etc) and only have a moderate level of the chemical MH30 (a known carcinogen used to inhibit flower production thereby increasing leaf production). Failure to comply with these requirements risks individual contracts being terminated. With no other method of marketing leaf, the termination of a contract would often result in growers being forced out of business (Benson 2008, 360). Whilst the requirements of these contracts may seem reasonable, there are other elements in the contract system that require certain behavioural norms from growers to ensure the renewal of their annual contracts. For example, each grower has a profile with their tobacco company in which their production history, average crop grades, chemical levels and instances of non-tobacco related material are recorded (Benson 2008, 364). Also recorded are comments on the growers appearance, attitude, and the cleanliness of their trucks. According to Benson’s informants, these profiles are increasingly part of the decision-making process employed by tobacco companies in deciding whether individual contracts are renewed (2008, 364). That these elements are representative of biocapitalism is evident in the language used by tobacco companies. Conflating their business imperative of presenting the industry as clean and responsible with the new behavioural norms expected from growers, the industry talks about terminating contracts as a “surgical procedure that excises waste to secure a healthy population of growers” (Benson 2008, 366). In his ethnography, Benson introduces two key features of Foucault’s conception of biopolitics -- firstly, that norms are relational; they are “applied to both a body one wishes to discipline and a population one wishes to regularise”, in this case individual growers and the group of tobacco growers respectively (Foucault 2003, 253). Without this reference to an optimised population, norms cannot operate on the individual. In Benson’s ethnography, it is the fabricated and optimised norms codified through the contract system that enable the subjectification of “surviving” growers as people who are compliant, docile and professionally presented. Similarly, those who challenge the tobacco companies and are “surgically cut” from the system are stigmatised as deviant, abnormal, and morally deprived (2008, 366). The second key feature of Foucault’s notion of biopolitics exposed in Benson’s work is that normalisation creates anomalies that, once isolated from what is normal, become the focus of biopolitics to normalise. According to Dreyfus and Rabinow, the advance of biopower is contemporaneous with the appearance of anomalies that biopolitics is well placed to supervise and administer in order to normalise, but never fully does so (2013, 195). Before the contract system, tobacco growers’ biometrics were isolated from the marketing of their leaf by an auction system that cared little about the presentation or demeanour of growers. In contrast, the contract system aims to govern the behaviours of individual growers to produce a normalised population of growers whose behaviours are consistent with the objective of creating value for the tobacco industry through its repositioning as being ‘clean and responsible’. In so doing, the contract system also creates growers who are distinguished by their failure to be

78 normalised, reinforcing the need to maintain the deployment of biopolitical technologies like the contract system to reform but mostly to protect their repositioning of the tobacco industry from these ‘abnormal’ growers who have been exorcised. The contract system is not the only practice deployed by the tobacco industry to create new norms that conflate business imperatives with the health and wellbeing of its stakeholders. At the time of Benson’s study, Phillip Morris had been rebranded as Altria. When this occurred, Canadian-American cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker described the rebranding as an: “egregious example of phonaesthesia36 being used to reposition an organisation’s image from bad people who sell addictive carcinogens to a place or state marked by altruism and other lofty values” (Pinker 2007). Altria’s ten-year vision statement is: “to responsibly lead the transition of adult smokers to a non-combustible future” (“Our 10-Year Vision,” n.d.) This vision is contingent on Altria’s customers and employees normalising to a suite of aspirational norms codified in the supplementary visions for the organisation, namely: “actively switching adult smokers to non-combustible products [….] building employee capabilities and evolving the way we work and behave”. Vision statements like these have long been understood by anthropologists as normalising instruments (Wright 1994). These statements are designed specifically to bridge the gap between an organisation’s strategic imperatives and the aspirational norms required to achieve these imperatives (Gluck 1984, 10). Since the publication of Tom Peters and Robert Waterman’s “In Search of Excellence”(1986) ‘culture’ has increasingly come within the purview of mission or vision statements (Wright 1994, 23). Peters and Waterman argue that strong corporate cultures are embodied in coherent vision statements which often have embedded in them population characteristics and norms to which individual members of the target population are expected to aspire through self-governance, lest the vision for the organisation not be achieved (Wright 1994, 23). In this context, there is broad consensus that vision statements are essentially biopolitical. I argue that vision statements are better understood as technologies of biocapitalism in that they are instrumental in simultaneously capturing value related to the health of a population and value in the form of capital accumulation for the organisations that promulgated them (Sunder Rajan 2006; Rose 2007, 32–33). In the previously cited case of Altria, this simultaneous capture of value is evident in the claim that switching of smokers to non-combustible products is good for their health as well as being good for the wealth of Altria’s shareholders through helping to shift the organisation’s product mix from tobacco to the new and emerging market of e-cigarettes. One of the fields of scholarship in which vision statements as technologies of biocapitalism is particularly evident is the study of organisations that extend their

36 According to the Oxford dictionary, phonaesthesia occurs when certain sounds become associated with certain meanings.

79 corporate social responsibility (CSR) into regional development through bottom of the pyramid (BoP) schemes. The relevance of focusing briefly on this stream of scholarship which is mostly focused on BoP schemes in the Global South is that the practices of biocapitalism in these schemes are not dissimilar to the practices of business-led regional development I observed in Shepparton. BoP schemes work by generating employment opportunities for informal and subsistence workers who are able to normalise to a suite of entrepreneurial traits and skills in order that they can earn their livelihood through selling the products and services of the schemes’ promotors. For example, in Catherine Dolan and Kate Roll’s paper on the impact of a number of BoP schemes across sub-Saharan Africa (specifically in Kenya, Malawi, Uganda, Mozambique and Ghana), the authors claim that BoP reframes development from a statist approach to a pro-market approach by bringing together the profit motive of organisations engaged in their core business, and the state’s development objective of reducing poverty (2013, 126). According to Dolan, anthropological interest in BoP schemes has been mostly concerned with the ways that these initiatives create their own closed economies, deflect the responsibility for poverty reduction to the poor, use management techniques, practices, tools and infrastructure to recast the poor into entrepreneurial subjects in the service of global brands, and create fissures between these new entrepreneurs and the poor who do not exhibit entrepreneurial behaviours (2012, 4). I will briefly pick up on the last two interconnected points as they are especially relevant to the way local elites in Shepparton understand socio-economic inequality. The entrepreneurs of BoP schemes are fashioned through a set of ideological and material practices that aim to produce and hone the requisite traits for them to succeed in earning a livelihood in resource-poor settings (Dolan 2012, 3). In Catherine Dolan and Mary Johnstone-Louis’ study of Avon in South Africa, for example, the authors show how the company pursues its vision of what they term ‘compassionate capitalism’ through a set of discourses and practices that aim to produce industrious, self-disciplined and empowered employees (2011, 21). One of the technologies used by Avon to fashion these traits is their mission statement. Avon’s publishing of a mission statement for its workforce can be understood as an example of a practice of biocapitalism in that it melds the corporate objective of selling products with the creation of a new valorised subjectivity of the micro-entrepreneur. “This is the company that puts mascara on lashes and food on tables … we're the company that not only brings beauty to doors, but also opens them. The company that supports six million independent micro-entrepreneurs in over 100 countries. The company that for more than 125 years has stood for beauty, innovation, optimism and, above all, for women. We are proud to be in the business of beauty with our network of micro-entrepreneurs.” (“Our Representatives” 2020) If aspiring micro-entrepreneurs want to have “doors opened for them” and earn an income in order to put “food on the table”, they need to normalise to traits associated with entrepreneurship. Those who are unable for whatever reason to become Avon entrepreneurs are, in biopolitical terms, abnormal and become disconnected from programs that are promoted on the basis that they address poverty in the broad community.

80 Altria changing its business mix and positioning itself as a responsible citizen, and Avon promoting BoP as a strategy that enables micro-entrepreneurs to pull themselves out of poverty in South Africa by selling its products might seem remote from the aforementioned Clever Food Committee’s strategy of business-led regional development in Shepparton. However, I will show in the coming pages that like Altria and Avon, the Clever Food Committee’s vision for the region is similarly contingent on a set of aspirational norms that are beyond some members of the community. As a consequence, those who are unable or unwilling to normalise are cast as abnormal and closed off from having access to resources that in the past provided a livelihood that enabled them to put food on the table. As noted in the previous chapter, the inspiration for the Clever Food Committee can be traced to the foresight of Ross McPherson and Peter Ryan. The Clever Food Committee started as a series of conversations between the two in which Ross suggested “getting things started by running a big conference”. For him the primary issue at stake was strengthening connections: “Country people have been very good at raising money at working bees and pitching in together, but the nourishment of leadership really came from outside. Clever Food Conference came about from the realisation that our local leadership was being diminished by the Kennett state government selling-off the Gas and Fuel Corporation and the State Electricity Commission, and centralising government services. The people who used to circulate through regional communities, the bank managers, the manager of the local SEC or the Gas & Fuel guy, the sort of people who’d end up on your councils for a few years, and on the school councils, on hospital boards and the water authorities, people who might be here for five or seven years, they were gone. Kennett’s centralisation had a huge impact on diminishing local leadership”. Interestingly, in discussing the actions of the Kennett state government, no mention was made of the local government reforms which saw councillors, predominantly business-people, replaced by government appointed commissioners -- a point Ross subsequently acknowledged as partly motivating his desire to revitalise local leadership. Peter’s interest was more aligned to balancing economic and community development and appears to have been influenced by the thinking of Harvard Business School professor Michael Porter37. According to him, “Economic development depends upon its labour force and a viable community. So, things like health facilities and health services, education and education services, sport recreation and culture and the arts are of a high standard and are not neglected in any way. If real economic development is going to work, community facilities actually have to be first class otherwise people won’t come, there’s always this relationship between economic development and community development.”

37 Peter kindly lent me his personal documents relating to the Clever Food Committee which he chaired for all of its four years. In those documents relating to regional development was a journal article of Michael Porter’s which Peter said he ‘must have been reading at the time’.

81 Peter saw the Clever Food Committee creating a wholistic strategy in the Goulburn Valley, aimed at achieving a global competitive advantage based on secure, clean food production. For him, a strong community comes from having a strong economy. Reflecting on the period, he told me that “Even then you could see that the whole Greater Goulburn Murray Irrigation District had great potential but didn’t seem to be doing anything. There was a whole lot of food manufacturing going on in little places and yet the disadvantage we talk about in Shepparton today was just as evident then and you could see that things just weren’t working. I guess we recognised the economic base needs to be strong if you are going to have a strong community. We took the view promoted at the time by Porter that we needed to leverage our natural resources and be globally competitive and that something has to drive it and that’s where the Clever Food Committee came from” In June 1993, to socialise their thinking, over three hundred people were invited to a two-day conference in Shepparton sponsored and organised by the Shepparton, Kyabram and Rodney Development Organisation (SKYROD), an economic development joint venture between the Shires of Shepparton, Campaspe and Rodney38. At the Clever Food Forever conference, Edward DeBono, a leading American business strategist at the time, addressed a plenary session of seven hundred locals for three hours. According to Peter, the decision to involve DeBono was “to shock us into doing something”. Under the guidance of DeBono, a vision for the region was developed, along with six ‘accompanying visions’ (Carr and Ryan 1997, 8). Consistent with what Michel Callon (1984, 196) describes as ‘moments of translation’, the Clever Food Forever Conference problematised the effect of Kennett’s public sector reforms, particularly the reforms to local government, as exposing the region to a lack of local strategic leadership. To position the Clever Food Committee as the ones to take on this role, Don McKenzie, the Executive Officer of the Clever Food Committee, was charged with the responsibility to garner broader local government and community support for these ‘visions’ by conducting a number of public forums and developing actions that would become the agenda for the committee. Analogous to Janine Wedel’s description of elites exercising their influence through multiple perches, Don, who was also a SKYROD employee at the time, subsequently became the corporate manager responsible for economic development for the Greater Shepparton City Council. This role was significant for local elites in that, under the Kennett reforms, council bureaucrats responsible for the region’s economic development were encouraged to poll sectors within the community to develop their strategies rather than test their strategic thinking through council elections. Consequently, through the appointment of Don McKenzie to the position of corporate manager, the vision developed by the Clever Food Committee became the vision of the Greater Shepparton City Council. The Clever Food Committee determined that: “By 2001, the Goulburn Valley will be recognised as the world’s finest quality source of clean, wholesome food and clever people. It will have achieved the

38 SKYROD’s establishment recognised that much of the infrastructure and many of the organisations engaged in food production were spread across the three Shires. SKYROD ceased to exist after the Shires amalgamated with the City of Shepparton in 1994 as part of the Kennett government’s public sector reforms.

82 environmental balance, the educational excellence and social cohesion to achieve this goal” As previously mentioned, the committee’s vision for the region was supplemented by six ‘accompanying’ visions, including one each for agribusiness, education, and what are bundled as ‘social-issues’. These ‘accompanying’ visions were developed in breakout sessions during the Clever Food Conference in June 1993. The vision for agribusiness is that: “By 2001 the Goulburn Valley’s customer focussed, innovative farming and food processing systems will be setting world standards in productivity and quality products which continually evolve through responsive linkages between growers, processors, marketers and customers.” The vision on ‘education’ states: “By 2001 the Goulburn Valley will have a flexible education system that meets the needs of all, provides highly valued education to motivated learners, is tailored at the evolving needs of the whole community and has stimulated an ongoing vision of the future.” The vision on ‘social issues’ is: “By 2001, the committee sees the Goulburn Valley as a community which values creativity and co-operation, whose strong commitment to participatory democracy ensures leadership and harnesses talent and energy for the sustainable use of the region’s resources. To achieve a sense of public pride in the capacity of local people to: • Make change the community’s friend • Support and encourage each other through difficult transitions • Willingly share the spoils of success • As Clever Food People, welcome the challenge of remaining the best in the world.” The committee’s vision and supplementary visions are consistent with the widely held belief that wealth is created by producing more, and is distributed through employed labour (Ferguson 2015, 36). Many would associate this productionist39 view with the phrase ‘give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime’ which, as James Ferguson asserts “promotes upskilling populations rather than giving handouts to address poverty” (2015, 35). I will return to this point later in this chapter and in chapter five when I show how this core belief of local elites that is embedded in their vision for business-led regional development influences them in privileging some forms of disadvantage over others. To achieve the committee’s vision, people needed to exhibit specific skills and traits. They needed to be motivated learners, resilient, supportive, sharing, inspired by the vision of the committee, and committed to ‘participatory democracy’40. In other words, people needed to have a particularised form of agency to not only energise the committee’s vision but also to earn their livelihoods as wage and salary earning job-

39 Refer to Glossary for the definition of productionist. 40 Refer to Glossary for the definition of participatory democracy.

83 holders. Expecting people to be reflexive in their responses to a market rationality, to flexibly manage themselves as if they were a collection of owned and improvable skills or traits, and to have the wherewithal to enter into alliances with others as if they were themselves businesses aligns with what Ilana Gershon describes as a neoliberal perspective on agency (2011, 542). According to Gershon, those who have this very narrow perspective on the agency of others fail to account for broader cultural factors, for resistance from people who refuse to see themselves in narrow neoliberal terms, and for people’s socio-economic circumstances that limit their ability to act. For example, in Elysée Nouvet’s ethnography of life on the social and economic margin in Nicaragua, the author found that in a society famous for its collective, grassroots activism for social justice, simply surviving consumed people’s energies such that few living with inequality found the time and energy to join any movement that worked to transform socio-economic inequality in Nicaragua (2014, 83). Gershon further argues that assuming people are reflexive in their responses to market rationality and that they make carefully weighed choices to improve their skills and traits, results in the social relationships they form and the social strategies they pursue only being judged as sensible or otherwise in terms of the market. This not only makes abnormal anybody whose social relationships and strategies seem inconsistent with a market rationality, but also makes them culpable for their circumstances by concluding that they are where they are because of the considered choices they are deemed to have made. This neoliberal view of agency is clear in a comment made to me by one of the local elites in response to my question of how they saw socio-economic inequality in Shepparton. I was told: “I know a bunch of factory workers that think that all this talk about disadvantage is crazy. A lot of them didn’t come from a much different background themselves or were really close to it. They just look at it and think well people on welfare make poor decisions and we’ve done this and this is where we are …. and that’s where they are. That’s one element that I sort of sometimes grapple with a little bit. How do you do it [address socio-economic inequality] in a way that is actually all about self-empowerment as opposed to just hand-outs and all the rest of it.” This comment is evidence that the perspective codified in the Clever Food Committee’s vision, which sees people reflexively responding to new opportunities, may have contributed to creating new fissures in Shepparton between those who are job-holders and those who are unemployed or under-employed. As I will show later in this chapter, there are people who are seen to have responded reflexively in order that they can participate and earn their livelihood and then there are those who are seen to have deliberately chosen to source their livelihood through welfare. In making this argument I am not claiming the absence of pre-existing fissures, nor am I suggesting that some of these pre-existing fissures have not been solidified as a consequence of the norms in the committee’s vision for the region. For example, I was told that the authors of the committee’s ‘social issues’ vision justified the inclusion of ‘participatory democracy’ as a norm, in recognition of the fact that women and kooris were marginalised from fully participating. That these pre-existing fissures have also been solidified is also evident in the previously cited opening address of the 2014 Fairley Foundation Philanthropic Summit in which the speaker acknowledged that:

84 “a tectonic shift [had occurred] that has led to the social cracks that have always existed in the community developing into fault lines in what has become a two-tiered community”. My argument is that in addition to the aforementioned fissures which tend to distinguish people’s participation along gender or ethnic lines, a new one has formed around the notion that some people choose welfare before paid employment to source their livelihood. Evidence of this fissure can be seen in the following observation made by one of the local elites who has lived in Shepparton for more than forty years. When asked whether it was changes to work or changes to welfare that led to more people being on welfare, they responded: “It’s a bit of both in that the really mundane jobs that people used to do either aren’t there or they are being done by outsiders. People won’t do them because it’s a better life on welfare … so a touch of hunger would help…I guess what I’m saying is that in the 70s you’d see these people with no education and not much going for them but they worked and that made them more functional in society. There was a compact between giving your labour and getting paid for it and realising this is how the system works. A lot of people have no knowledge of that compact anymore.” The significance of this comment is that it reinforces the observation that local elites mainly view socio-economic inequality as a problem associated with people choosing to be on welfare rather than choosing to be “more functional in society” by working for a living. The compact referred to is a productionist view that wealth is created and shared through paid work and is consistent with the notion that development creates a society of wage and salary earners (Ferguson and Li 2018). Accordingly, those who are seen to have chosen to be on welfare are presumed to “have no knowledge of that compact anymore” and as a consequence are no longer regarded as functioning in society. In his book, “Give a Man a Fish”, Ferguson claims that this productionist perspective assumes that poverty is a problem of production and that the solution is to bring “the hungry man into the world of productive labour”(2015, 36). According to Ferguson, this claim is flawed as it ignores the possibility that there may simply be insufficient meaningful employment for which people are still being trained (2015, 37). It could be argued that Ferguson’s observations are not relevant in the context of business-led regional development in Shepparton. After all, Ferguson’s fieldwork was in Lesotho, an economy in which there was no history of paid employment, whereas mine is in Shepparton an economy in which there is meaningful work for which people can be trained. However, this ignores the reality that restructuring food production has substantially reduced the number of jobs that were accessible to those on welfare for whom skilled employment has never been and arguably may never likely to be the norm. This point was explored by Ferguson in a working paper he co-authored with Tania Li titled “Beyond the Proper Job” (2018). In this paper, the authors observed that the prevalence and persistence of informal, precarious and non-standard employment in both the Global North and Global South is such that waged and salaried employment should not be presumed to be the norm. Consequently, Ferguson and Li claim that a better approach to ameliorating poverty would be to have a meaningful distribution of wealth through a combination of state transfers and mechanisms that normalise alternative sources of livelihood other than being engaged in production

85 (2018, 11). This approach was foreshadowed by Loïc Wacquant who, in his work “Urban Marginality in the Coming Millenium”, proposed a fundamental restructuring of the welfare state by severing subsistence from performance in the labour market through innovations such as a universal citizen’s wage (1999, 1646) To make the argument that this productionist view has created a new fissure rather than a pre-existing one that has been solidified, I refer to the point made by Foucault, prompting his neologism ‘normation’. Following Foucault’s logic, codifying as norms skills and traits that are not part of the current reality, makes abnormal those skills and traits that previously were not seen as such. Shepparton has long been associated with providing low skilled and seasonal work for locals. The Clever Food Committee’s vision was to transform not only food production but also the labour force required by corporate food producers. Responsible citizens were required to reflexively modify their traits and skills in order to participate in a reality of skilled labour that did not exist. These codified norms tend to make anomalies of those who for whatever reason do not respond reflexively to this market rationality. Being seen as dependent on others for one’s livelihood is only an anomaly in relation to the norms in the committee’s vision for the region, which calls on people to participate in production as wage and salaried job-holders. Furthermore, as Ferguson notes, being dependent on others has only become associated with welfare as a consequence of a productionist view which distinguishes livelihoods derived from welfare as being dependent and ignores the fact that workers are dependent on others for their participation in the workforce (2015, 39). The relevance of norms and fissures to my research is two-fold. Firstly, it shows that the way local elites understand and talk about socio-economic inequality is consistent with a long history of the behavioural choices and personal attributes of vulnerable people being cited as responsible for poverty and disadvantage. Secondly, by seeing welfare as abnormal, endeavours to ameliorate socio-economic tend to be limited to normalising practices, often foisted upon welfare recipients, that have the sole aim of making people wage and salary earners. In summary, business-led regional development strategies that are contingent on local populations reflexively acquiring new traits and skills in order to energise and participate in the vision are manifestations of biocapitalism. As such, these strategies can create fissures between those who have the wherewithal to adapt to a new reality, and those who, for whatever reason, cannot and end-up being subjectified as anomalies. This perspective that normal people adapt to new norms and work for a living and people who are unemployed are abnormal, reorients the way local elites understand and approach socio-economic inequality in their community. 2 Self-inflicted inequality Socio-economic inequality is generally understood in the social sciences to flow down discriminately through practices that preclude some people from having the same access to housing, health care, education and employment as others. However, as Shapiro, Meschede and Osoro noted in their longitudinal study of the widening total wealth gap between white and African-American families in the US between 1984 and 2009, there is a common perception that personal attributes and behavioural choices are key factors behind the racial wealth gap, and that this deeply entrenched view is

86 reinforced by “government policy and the configuration of both opportunities and barriers in workplaces, schools, and communities (Shapiro, Meschede, and Osoro 2013). In a study commissioned by the Sir Andrew and Lady Fairley Foundation and presented to the 2011 Fairley Foundation Philanthropic Summit convened in Shepparton, economist Katrina Alford asserted that structural change to the local economy had reconfigured the composition of the region’s labour market (2011). Alford observed that low skilled employment in agriculture and manufacturing had declined, that the low skilled jobs that remained had become more precarious and, in the case of agriculture, these low-skilled jobs were being undertaken by backpackers and foreign workers41. Alford also observed that as access to low skilled jobs was being lost to locals, employment in the skilled areas of healthcare and social assistance had grown. Of particular concern to Alford was the loss of employment opportunities for young people and aboriginal people whose poorer educational outcomes and already low socio-economic status made them particularly vulnerable to systemic poverty (2011, 4). Alford concluded that the increasing gap between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’ in Shepparton was a direct consequence of the labour market struggling to reinvent itself in response to these structural changes which had created a surplus of unskilled labour and a deficit of job-ready skilled labour (2011, 5). In other words, the normalising of the local workforce that was envisaged in the Clever Food Committee’s various vision statements had failed to fully materialise. Alford’s conclusion that the labour market was struggling to reinvent itself in response to structural change is evidence of the effects of structural change trickling down discriminatively. This perspective also aligns with that of British economist Barbara Harris-White whose paper examining the relationship between capitalism and poverty in India identified as one of the factors driving systemic poverty, stagnant pools of long-term unemployed people resulting from regional development under capitalism (2006). According to Harris-White, these stagnant pools of unemployment not only impoverish those who are without work, but also discipline and disempower those who remain employed against pressing for improved pay and conditions (2006, 1243). Harris-White concluded that whilst it was not possible to eradicate the processes that result in poverty under capitalism, it was possible to mitigate against their impact. Similarly, Tania Li, in her study of dispossessed rural populations in Asia, also claims that these pools of labour that are often misunderstood as a reserve and are administered and supervised through interventions aimed at getting people back to work, may in fact be surplus to the requirements of capital and may never be meaningfully employed (2010). When I asked those of my participants who had attended the 2011 summit or had read Alford’s report, to comment on her perspective that increasing socio-

41 In 2005, under intense lobbying from the fruit industry to address the shortage of seasonal labour, the Federal Minister for Immigration announced changes to the twelve-month Working Holiday (417) visa and the Temporary Work (457) visa (Allon, Anderson, and Bushell 2008, 81). Under these changes, backpackers could apply for a twelve-month visa extension, contingent upon them completing eighty-eight days of work in mining, construction or agriculture. Of the forty-five thousand applicants granted a visa extension in 2013/14, ninety-percent qualified through itinerant horticultural work; picking and packing fruit and vegetables (Underhill and Rimmer 2015, 28). Picking has now become part of the ‘backpacker experience’.

87 economic inequality in the region was linked to restructuring, the reaction was generally dismissive. According to one: “Alford just misunderstood completely what’s happened and she got very upset and angry about it --- her whole thesis is that welfare is driving this economy and in a sense it is but she got the causes wrong” To grasp how local elites concluded that Alford “got the causes wrong”, it is important to understand how this group pathologise ‘socio-economic inequality’ as a self- inflicted phenomenon. In this section the cited comments are mostly their words; my parenthetical text is in brackets. Amongst this group there is a broad acknowledgement that some people have been disadvantaged by changes to food production in the region. When I asked how job opportunities had changed since the Clever Food Committee in 1993, I was told: “I reckon there was a structural economic transition and reduced opportunities in manufacturing which is not uncommon through regional Australia. Shepparton has always been a factory town with the opportunity to make more than a good living wage and live with real dignity. The manufacturing sector which had sustained that part of the population for such a long time was changing year by year really quickly and other opportunities weren’t presenting themselves very well.” Another told me: “There’s an inequality story in this region and it probably relates to the way food production has happened [but] we’re really different to parts of the United States, the ‘rust belt’, because they just lost a whole heap of jobs and a whole heap of industry. Yes, we’ve had some challenges, but we haven’t lost jobs. People say we need job creation, but we are desperate for people and those suffering from disadvantage are not work ready for those jobs. So, for me the question is how did we get to a point where there are so many jobs that need to be filled and so many people who can’t do them or can’t do anything. Some people haven’t been able to keep up with the way that industry works in a global competitive environment in 2017/2018. I assume they came from families where no one really cares but they fundamentally find themselves in positions where they’re just not [employable]. The world’s moved on and they haven’t…which is really sad…and detrimental to our economy. Both of these comments agree that structural change has impacted on employment. The first claims that the reduced opportunities in manufacturing experienced in Shepparton are not uncommon in regional Australia and that other opportunities weren’t presenting themselves very well. The second comment claims that jobs were lost in Shepparton but unlike other places, those jobs have been replaced. Both responses seem to acknowledge and accommodate Alford’s portrayal of industry reform being disruptive. However, by suggesting that persistent unemployment was a problem in connecting unemployed people with new job opportunities, both of my participants downplay the significance of structural reform in creating a pool of unskilled, persistently unemployed labour for whom there are fewer jobs open to

88 them and those jobs that remain being more precarious, resulting in socio-economic inequality increasing at a greater rate in Shepparton in comparison to its peer regions. During most conversations, ‘success -stories’ of people transitioning from one form of employment to another were frequently woven into a generalised narrative. These anecdotes were then used to either counter Alford’s argument that there are fewer jobs, or to diminish the significance of socio-economic inequality flowing down from structural changes in the economy. For example, when one member of this clique challenged the title of my thesis which they took to be suggesting that corporate food production had disadvantaged people by taking away opportunities for them to participate, I was told: “In my opinion there is some disadvantage as a result of it [the corporatisation of food production] but the numbers and the population is relatively small…and I’d go one step further saying perhaps most of those folk [the ones displaced by restructuring] are the ones who are able to pick up the bootstraps and go and do something else because they’ve had an experience [work]. That would be my thesis. Its anecdotal but that’s the way I think it works.” Another similarly challenged Alford’s claim that the labour market was struggling to reconfigure itself by generalising the experience of orchardists who had left the industry when demand for canned fruit declined and the capital requirements of transitioning to fresh fruit production was beyond their means. They told me: “You don’t find many retired farmers on welfare. If they’ve sold the family-farm they’re workers … they end up having jobs … they’re people who know how to get up early and to turn up … in fact they’re like gold everybody wants them …. any old orchardist is grabbed hold of as a gardener because they know how to prune”. Both of these anecdotes of transitioning cite examples of people who do not fit the profile of either the young people cited in Alford’s report, nor do the jobs they have transitioned from align with the low-skilled itinerant jobs lost from the cannery or made more precarious in the orchards and market gardens. What both anecdotes reveal is a switch of focus away from Alford’s position that “access to low-skilled jobs had been reduced”, to a position that asserts that the jobs are there for the people who display a work ethic through having “had an experience” or for those whose skills make them ‘job ready’, a sentiment captured in the phrase “they know how to prune”. As I have detailed in chapter two, employment in Shepparton has changed. The cannery is no longer the ‘mother-ship’ and the town is no longer the factory. My participants’ anecdotes do not reflect the enormity of the economic and social consequences felt by those displaced by restructuring that occurred as the region transitioned from canned to fresh fruit production, and from itinerant farm labour to backpackers and teams of foreign workers sourced through labour hire companies. As such, they tend to downplay the significance of what has been lost and enable other accounts of transitions to be used to show that people’s socio-economic disadvantage is driven by their own behavioural choices and personal attributes, as is particularly evident in the following comment.

89 I asked one of my participants whether industry restructuring, including the recruitment of backpackers and foreign workers, was an example of the way in which prejudices regarding peoples’ attributes and choices is embedded in structures of domination given that changed labour hire practices made it more difficult for locals on welfare get these types of low-skilled jobs. I was told: “They might say I’ve never been able to get a job. Respectfully I’d probably challenge that. Take the Afghani refugees. Here are people who have been belted by war and deprivation, living in Pakistan for years while they’ve been trying to get a boat trip to Indonesia, and they rock up to Australia and within 10 years most of these guys own their own homes and they’re buying orchards. Here are guys that have had nothing and come from a war or conflict background and they’ve thought this is fantastic. So, I would have thought they were unequal and yet they’ve managed to make their way. So, I really don’t understand it when people say there’s inequality well it was pretty unequal for those blokes, yet they’ve made their way. Didn’t even have the language. Language is a barrier as well. Yet they still made their way”. Apart from revealing a blindness to the possibility that others on welfare have been traumatised and have had to face complex challenges, embedded in this comment is a bias that equates being on welfare with lacking the personal attribute of a positive work ethic. The consequence of this bias in which there is a distinction between people responding ‘normally’ and improving their circumstances through work and others unable to do so is that, as Dolan observed in her study of ‘bottom-of-the- pyramid’ entrepreneurship, the latter are seen as undeserving and in the mind of the public, rightfully excluded (2012). In summary, these comments show that whilst local elites acknowledge that increasing socio-economic inequality is associated with the reconfiguring of the labour market following the region’s transition to corporate food production, they diminish the scale of events and cite dysfunctional behavioural choices and the personal attributes of those on welfare as the reason for their poor socio-economic status. As such, there is a commonly held view that the only barriers to people participating economically are self-imposed. In 2016, the C4GS commissioned the University of Melbourne’s Business School to evaluate the first two years of the committee’s work. The primary focus of the report titled ‘From Disadvantaged to Thriving’ (Evans, White, and Bridson 2016) was to evaluate the work of the Committee in repositioning the image of Shepparton. As part of the report, community members were surveyed to get a better understanding of perceptions of the image of Shepparton. Those conducting the evaluation concluded that Shepparton was “suffering from a split personality”, most notably between how locals viewed Shepparton and how they perceived Shepparton was viewed by outsiders. The respondents felt that the external perception of Shepparton was that it was a divided community, known for welfare, racism, unemployment and drugs (Evans, White, and Bridson 2016, 9). The report also noted that this perception of Shepparton along with the failure of local schools to produce ‘job ready’ labour had negatively impacted on the region’s ability to attract both business investment and talented people to come and live in the city (Evans, White, and Bridson 2016, 29). This dichotomy of having a surplus of jobs opportunities in a region of high unemployment

90 that is struggling to attract and retain talent, invariably led to conversations with my participants that included anecdotes of how Shepparton’s reputation to outsiders and the lack of ‘job ready’ local labour undermined their efforts to realise their vision for the region. I was told: “There are job opportunities here. For example, with the first stage of the hospital [redevelopment] going up we have a major shortage of nurses and doctors. So, we are trying to get money to recruit and train nurses who are going to stay and work in hospitals, so the jobs are there. The manufacturing people are looking for people to work. Up until recently, we have battled to get talented people.” Another of my participants, an agronomist, relayed a discussion they’d had with a local fodder producer. They said: “I was helping a guy with his agribusiness and I was just interested in what it would take for him to expand. I asked, was it capital, was it the markets? He said … ‘I’ve got plenty of money I’ve got capital, I could buy some more land could get some more gear. The dairy farmers are not irrigating as much pasture and are looking to buy fodder. What’s holding me back? … Well see that kid over in the tractor, he’s nineteen, he left school a bit early but he ‘gets’ the GPS system he can work it he turns up at 7 every morning, sometimes you have to tell him to go home. If you can get me five of him, I’ll buy extra gear…that’s what’s holding me back” The significance of these comments is that they subjectify those deprived of access to sufficient low-skilled jobs as a drag on business-led regional development because they either do not have the skills or are not prepared to work. In this sense, socio-economic inequality has a negative impact that percolates up into the business community. This shift is enabled by what Paul Farmer describes as a subtle erasing of history that covers up the enabling conditions of structural violence. For example, in the previously cited ‘From Disadvantaged to Thriving’ report, the authors noted that “the region faces significant challenges, many precipitated by the millennium drought and consequent impacts on the economic and social prosperity of the region” (Evans, White, and Bridson 2016, 5). At no point did the authors mention the structural changes that resulted in low income jobs being lost and those that remained becoming increasingly inaccessible. In this sense, the report commissioned by local elites can be seen as contributing to deemphasising the harmful effects of structural changes and emphasising the harm caused by a drought that was ostensibly nobody’s fault. There is no doubt that the millennium drought had a deleterious impact on the region. However, the shift to large scale food production and the move away from canned to fresh fruit and vegetables, are more directly linked to the changes in the labour market described by Alford -- changes that effectively made a proportion of the population surplus to the requirements of business. I have shown in this section that those who are on welfare are mostly regarded as having failed to be responsibly reflexive to a market rationality. They are perceived to lack a work ethic and to have chosen to live on welfare. As such they are mostly seen as the architects of their own poor socio-economic status. I have also shown that in countering the notion that socio-economic inequality has trickled down into the

91 community through structural change, local elites have asserted that the local economy has been disadvantaged by being denied a ‘job ready’ labour force and that their task in attracting business investment and talent has been made more difficult by the negative external perception of Shepparton as a divided community, characterised by welfare, racism, unemployment and drugs. In this sense, the impact of socio- economic inequality is seen by local elites to have percolated up into the rest of the community, demanding action if their vision is to be realised. In framing their response to the region’s disproportionate growth in socio-economic inequality, this clique of local elites cites a combination of causal factors that they claim are not of their making. 3 The drivers of increasing socio-economic inequality When I asked local elites why Shepparton had become an outlier in its level of socio- economic disadvantage, compared to other regional cities in Victoria, I was told that the primary causal factors were an overly generous welfare system and a growing population of welfare recipients drawn to the city by cheap housing and a strong social welfare support structure. This perspective of a welfare system that disincentives people being economically productive is consistent with the neoliberal position cited by sociologist Philip Mendes in his submission to the 2018 Australian Government’s Inquiry into Intergenerational Welfare Dependency. In his submission, Mendes claims that neoliberals argue that welfare is a bad thing, welfare spending is too high, and income support should not be used to redistribute power and promote greater equity (2018, 2). Whilst the elites in my study broadly agree with this neoliberal view of the welfare system, there were nuanced differences in the way they describe these drivers taking effect. These differences can be grouped into four typologies -- 1) that the region has inherited someone else’s problem through both internal immigration and an influx of refugees; 2) that providing welfare support begets people requiring welfare support; 3) that those on welfare are likely to produce welfare dependent children; and 4) that the welfare system is too generous, providing little incentive for people to participate in the economy. Representative of the first typology -- that the region has inherited someone else’s problem -- is that welfare recipients are being actively encouraged by the Victorian state government to relocate to Shepparton where social housing is more easily accessible. I was told: “When Kennett closed the Housing Commission they [The Department of Health and Human Services] started putting people out in the wider community where cheaper housing was obviously the focus and of course the country was cheap. It started off in Gippsland, then Seymour, Benalla, Wangaratta and then Shepparton. The real estate agents will say that about 17 to 18 years ago the percentage of their rent book which was Government/Centrelink guaranteed was around 5%, now it’s in excess of 76 -78% and that’s not because of what happened to the existing [local] population. So typically, DHHS will ring up one of the agents and say we’ve got 12 single mothers to place in the next 6 weeks how many can you give us … and they ring around. The reason Shepparton has been particularly vulnerable is because we’ve got this big number of ethnic

92 growers who made a little pile in the orchard and growing tomatoes and they love government guaranteed rentals that they can drive past on the weekends. So rather than getting a factory in Campbellfield yielding 6.5% they’re happy to take 4% because the government does everything, repaints, fixes everything and all they do is get money gradually and over time. So, what the region gets is people who are very dislocated, single mums with no social structures. Now the government wasn’t going to fix it and so we had to own this problem of a huge welfare rump not of our making. DHHS will tell people waiting for social housing to go to Shepparton, ‘you can get a house up there straightaway’. We’ve ended up with a very schizophrenic community, commercially quite vibrant but with this huge welfare rump” I have confirmed through a former DHHS bureaucrat who retired in Shepparton that there was a program in the early 2000s that saw people relocated from Melbourne to a number of regional centres. I was told by: “Going back to the early 2000s in the early days of the Bracks government, there were very large public housing lists in Victoria but in some of the country areas there were a lot of empty houses so this was particularly true along the Hume corridor so Seymour, Benalla, Wangaratta, Wodonga, and quite a bit here in Shepparton quite a bit in Kerang. So, what they [the Bracks government] did was moved people off the wait list in Melbourne into houses in these areas. These were people who had a great need for support services and they [the Bracks government] didn’t increase the support services at the same time and of course they had no extended families or anything. So, they sapped- up a lot of services and it caused a lot of social issues particularly on that corridor.” Whilst this comment tends to corroborate the previous one, there are a number of issues in my participant’s comment that need to be unpacked to understand the significance that should be given to this so-called ‘welfaring of the bush’ as a driver of growing socio-economic inequality in the region. I spoke with a number of real-estate agents who confirmed that the percentage of their rental books that were subject to some form of welfare subsidy had increased in the order of magnitude quoted by my participant. However, all rejected the notion that the increase was disproportionately skewed to non-locals with one real-estate agent telling me that the tenants receiving rental assistance were mainly young locals. That the recent growth was locally driven was also confirmed to me by the retired DHHS bureaucrat who told me: “Our level of transfers from the metropolitan area in the public housing system was incredibly low. We filled the waiting list from people in Shepparton. We didn’t have to look elsewhere so that wasn’t much of a problem for us.” Another of my participants who has been engaged in developing the state government’s housing policy for the region, claimed that rather than having a surplus of available houses, there is a shortage. They told me: The wait list for public housing has gone up by eleven percent state-wide but here it has more than doubled in the last four years. And even worse than that is the wait list for early housing which are the people at risk of homelessness or

93 recurring homelessness, they’re escaping domestic violence, they have mental health issues, that waiting list has tripled. The previous comment that Shepparton is particularly vulnerable to new welfare recipients joining the community because of the actions of ‘ethnic’ growers is also presented as a material factor in explaining why Shepparton has disproportionately more people on welfare than other regions. Whilst there are some cases of growers subdividing productive horticultural land, it does not appear to be material in driving rental stock from the supply side, nor is this practice more associated with any particular ethnic grouping. Furthermore, the housing stock that was available to the Bracks government in the early 2000s were houses made vacant by the depopulation of rural communities, described in chapter two, as people came off the land and others left the region following the consolidation of orchards and dairies. This comment on ‘new builds’ may be more of a reflection of tensions that have simmered for decades regarding rezoning orchards for industrial or residential purposes that have little to do with land use and more to do with unresolved questions, mostly raised by growers, as to how an orchard owned by a prominent local real estate agent was rezoned by council as residential land. Despite local real estate agents and government bureaucrats refuting the narrative, this understanding of an influx of somebody else’s problem persists among some of the older members of the clique who recall the government’s program in 2000. One whose involvement with the community dates back to the Clever Food Committee in 1993, told me that this importing of welfare recipients has coincided with an exporting of talent, thereby amplifying the gap between the haves and the have-nots. “A lot of our brighter kids go to university in Melbourne and mix with other educated and clever kids making them less likely to come back. In return we’re getting an influx of the other end of the spectrum. We’ve got all the same people who are battling that every other country centre and areas of Melbourne have but because of the [housing] affordability situation we end up with a net influx of additional welfare recipients who are likely to have families earlier, bigger families, so the whole thing gets exacerbated”. In both of these comments, welfare recipients are not only characterised as ‘outsiders’, coming into the community, but also as exhibiting behavioural choices and personal attributes that make them anomalies in the community: they are young single mothers who have been dislocated by shifting into the area, they have no social connections, are “at the other end of the spectrum”, and “likely to have bigger families earlier” thereby exacerbating their own socio-economic disadvantage. By characterising welfare recipients as anomalies, the diversity in causal explanations for those experiencing disadvantage is lost and, as argued in section one of this chapter, people become subjected to supervision and administration by those who see them as aberrant (Dreyfus and Rabinow 2013, 195). Furthermore, ‘othering’ is particularly problematic in determining the way community resources are equitably applied in support of vulnerable people. Sandra Morgen and Jeff Maskovsky in their 2003 study of welfare reform in the post-welfare era in the US point out how rhetoric that defines families as ‘undeserving’ welfare dependents, whose “immoral, deviant,

94 dysfunctional lifestyles and family structures lead to intergenerational poverty”, undermines the public assistance, sympathy and tolerance they are likely to receive (2003, 325). This outcome is evident in the following comment which was given in response to my questioning whether the business community would be as supportive of initiatives that aimed to address homelessness or alcoholism, rather than children’s educational outcomes. I was told: “Probably not. Whether this is right or wrong, there’s this feeling that yes society’s not perfect, people do make their choices in life. Now a lot of people get dealt difficult hands and I haven’t been dealt one of those so I’m in no position to point the finger and say you should have done this or that, but you do have choices. The community sympathy is for children who have so much potential and our job is to provide them with the ability to realise that potential. Now if we provide it and then they become addicted to substances or a drain on society or whatever, be that as it may, you’ve made your choices but to have that happen because there wasn’t the right infrastructure or educational opportunity well that’s criminal for a country to do that so that’s what we need to change” In answering the same question, another simply justified their focus by telling me: “We’ve given up on anyone over 24.” ‘Othering’ people as undeserving has been shown to lead to discriminatory welfare support policies and practices. Mendes cites an occasion when the former treasurer of Australia called for family payments to be conditional on good behaviour and urged that payments be taken away from undeserving “bad parents” and directed to deserving families (2009, 106). Barbara Harriss-White’s ethnography of the politics of poverty in South-East Asia similarly shows how the social response to destitution is contradictory. According to Harriss-White, charity and kindness are transferred to the so-called deserving destitute, the old, young widows, the sick and the disabled, whereas society sanctions the selective violation of the rights and dignity of those deemed ‘undeserving’ -- working-age people addicted to substances , sex workers and unskilled migrant casual labour (2005, 888). Given that I have previously cited the political conservatism of local elites, it is worth noting that ‘othering’ people as undeserving is not the sole domain of conservative politics. As Ferguson reminds us in ‘Give a man a fish’, an antipathy toward distributive livelihoods in the form of welfare has also been associated with the ‘productivist left’, citing Marx and Engels’ characterisation of poor people who relied on welfare as being part of the “lumpen proletariat” and suggesting that “they were of little human or political value” (2015). That this risk of discrimination against vulnerable people in Shepparton is real, is evident in the comment one of my participants made to me when we were discussing parent’s defending their custody rights through the courts. They told me: “Parents go into court and say you can’t take my kids. What the justice system explains to them is actually they are not your kids, they don’t belong to you, they were born to you and the State allows you to look after them so long as the State decides that you are capable of looking after them. But if the State decides you can’t. That’s a legalistic technical thing, but maybe we need to have this attitude that actually all these kids around here we need to step in a bit

95 more and offer positive role models where there aren’t and not be too worried about the parent’s rights.” The second explanation this group proffer for the disproportionate increase in socio- economic inequality in their region is that being in the business of providing social assistance, not-for-profits have a vested interest in increasing the numbers of people being classified as requiring welfare. I was told: “Welfare is big business here which feeds back into the make-up of our community. We are heavily reliant on welfare here and the make-up of our community at the moment is really skewing that way I think” This view of welfare as big business is supported by the data presented in chapter two and is backed-up by Alford’s previously cited presentation to the 2011 philanthropic summit. There has been a structural shift in the region’s economy, one that was not envisaged by the Clever Food Committee in 1993. The marked disparities in the material standards of living, educational attainments and occupational skills that had socially excluded many vulnerable people during the restructuring of food production and the transitioning of Shepparton, have made the city a prime site for those engaged in providing community services (Alford 2013). The healthcare and social assistance sector is now the largest employer and the fastest growing sector in Shepparton. Since 2010 the economic value produced by the sector has grown by 60% (“NIEIR Regional Statistical Profile Greater Shepparton” 2018). Among the people who have come to Shepparton to do business are a large number of national not-for-profits who compete for government funding with home-grown not-for-profits in providing social assistance. The growth in the number of organisations providing social assistance led one of the local elites attending the 2018 Fairley Foundation Philanthropic Summit to voice their concerns about these organisations failing to deliver sufficient value in return for taxpayers’ dollars they receive. When I asked them to elaborate, I was told: “If you and I went for a walk we would see agencies far and wide. All of those agencies are for the most part government funded. They’ve all got a corporate structure, so they are trying to grow, and they are vying for the contract to do XYZ and the government doles out the money for three or four years. Now that means that all of a sudden, all these agencies have got their own sort of agendas which is fine and there’s all this money coming in and these people are going and delivering services. Now it’s not evil. It’s a lot of good people doing good things, trying to look after people but where a corporate structure in which welfare or battling people become clients, and when you have middle managers from the corporate world with growth strategies, it gets competitive with other businesses and the aid dollar becomes something to haggle over”

A number of local elites recognise not-for-profits as being no different to any other business and see the sector as having no incentive to ameliorate disadvantage and every incentive to look for new ways of categorising disadvantage to attract government funding. For example, when I asked a former local politician how social assistance had changed in the region, I was told: “my disappointment with the agencies [the not-for-profit sector] is that they come here because we have indigenous, we have low socio-economic, we have new settlers, we ‘ve got the full gamut but they tend to coral their people and

96 say these are our people because these are our income source. So, they’re not really trying to find outcomes for them”. This perspective of not-for-profits being conflicted, aligns with a large body of literature, particularly from the US, where welfare reforms have similarly recast the role of not-for-profits in responding to community needs. In an article reviewing the first ten years of welfare reform in the US, Karen Curtis claimed that the contract relationship that had developed between the state and not-for-profits had transformed this sector, “moving it away from its core mission, commercialising the sector’s operations and compromising its autonomy” (2007, 31). In her study of non- party political processes in Bangladesh, anthropologist Lamia Karim similarly describes not-for-profits as businesses entangled and constrained by market forces, donor mandates, state and national politics and local power struggles (2001, 93). This entanglement can be seen particularly vividly in Nicole Marwell’s ethnography of community-based organisations, in which she reveals how the autonomy of not-for- profits is lost when local elected officials trade their political support with higher levels of government in exchange for service contracts that favour local not-for-profits (2004, 265). Not-for-profits have also been criticised for being instruments of government policy and helping to refashion power relations in ways that do little to address the conditions that produce the inequalities they seek to address (Rodriguez and Rodriguez 2017). For example, in their ethnography of nine community-based organisations providing free health care to the Muslim communities in Chicago, Detroit, Houston and Los Angeles, Lance Laird and Wendy Cadge note that the not-for- profit’s ability to call to attention the failures of existing health care provision is muted by their dependency on winning government funding (2010, 226). In this way, not-for- profits end up providing services for poor and marginalised groups while simultaneously propping-up or at least not challenging neoliberal systems that keep people poor and marginalised (Laird and Cadge 2010, 226). In their ethnography of not-for-profits providing welfare support in both India and the US, Rodriguez and Rodriguez similarly found that not-for-profits were not simply complicit in “buttressing systems” that keep vulnerable people vulnerable, but that to attract funding, these agencies were increasingly promoting tactics for addressing inequality that resonated with neoliberal inspired government policy, enabling the government to dismantle social welfare programmes and defund public social services, increasing vulnerability for some (2017, 609). An example of not-for-profits being engaged in practices that risk already vulnerable people becoming increasingly so is evident in a discussion I had with a social worker who is currently employed by one of the not-for-profits in Shepparton. They are not part of the clique of local elites. They made it clear to me that the government’s priorities took precedence over whether or not the program improved the lot of disadvantaged people: “The competition for government funding, it’s nasty, it’s really brutal. You also had these ideological moments where there was a ‘basics’ card42 for people on benefits where they ended up with all of their benefits being put into a card and they could only spend it on certain things. We ended up in one of the

42 Part of the Australian government’s place-based welfare trials that ran in Shepparton between 2011 and 2015.

97 government’s programs, we had some family members come to us and say this is great, this is the first time I’ve actually had money to buy groceries because people can’t steal cash off me but then we’d have others beating their chests in the main street saying it is a fundamental breach of human rights and how dare we. You are caught in this kind of philosophical battle, but it added huge amount to our bottom line and the Board said great, look at all those dollars”. The third typology in explaining increasing socio-economic disadvantage in the region is intergenerational welfare dependency. Despite the fact that most vulnerable people in Shepparton move in and out of the welfare system (Tennant 2018), there is a persistent and widely held view amongst local elites that links parents’ and grandparents’ behavioural choices and personal attributes deterministically with a lack of aspiration in their children to seek work. An example of this perception is shown in the following anecdote from one member of the clique. We were discussing the poor educational outcomes from both the state and Catholic schools in Shepparton over the past two decades. Of concern to this participant was that children who by being born had been “given a really poor deal in life” and had also had “their cards marked for life” by an education system that had failed them. When I asked if this was the reason for prioritising educational outcomes as the best means address socio-economic inequality, I was told: “I’ve worked in the legal system and I’ve worked for the local community health service. This stuff’s [intergenerational welfare dependency] all blindingly obvious to me. I worked here in the courts when I was young. The children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren of the people I used to see when I was young, are hitting the courts now. The difference was when I worked here, most of these people had a strong connection with work. The people who were hitting the courts might have been a bit dysfunctional, but not wildly dysfunctional and they had a connection with work, they actually either worked, had jobs or they at least worked the fruit season or did some work…we’ve now got a couple of generations that have been paid to stay at home on government benefits and be dysfunctional” Like drugs and alcohol dependency and gambling, welfare dependency is seen as an addiction (Mendes 2018, 3). It is argued that by framing welfare as a form of dependency, it becomes a cause of people’s low social and economic status, rather than a symptom, masking the real drivers of persistent poverty (Chambers 2018, 1). Mendes extends this argument, claiming that reference to welfare dependency per se is a “capitulation to the neoliberal political agenda which aims to undermine public sympathy for disadvantaged people by shifting the attention from the social context of disadvantage caused by poverty to the individual flaws of the disadvantaged” (2018, 2). When I commented to one of the younger members of this clique that there appeared to be a dominant narrative from local elites that linked welfare dependency and dysfunction in families. They agreed, telling me: “It [the narrative] is all about a failure of the people as opposed to a failure of the system which is not very sophisticated if you like …. point the finger …. somethings wrong with you -- you are intergenerational poverty and you have failed, as opposed to -- we have systematically failed a cohort in our community. It’s structural as well. It’s an international socio-economic issue

98 really. Like a western world international socio-economic issue. Look at UK look at the ‘rust belt’. But people see it as a personal or local failing. But look that’s why Trump came to power. We were part of it, we’re not special. I think a lot of deeply thinking people would now have these conservative, quite brutal assessments of poverty. I don’t remember growing up with this. I think we’ve lost compassion.” I have not been able to locate ethnographies examining the phenomenon of parent’s poor socio-economic status being reproduced in their children. However, economists and sociologists sourcing data from large national surveys such as the Household, Income, and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey43 have shown that growing up in welfare dependency limits the opportunities of children to fully participate in society, making them more likely to similarly be persistently on welfare (Perales et al. 2014). According to the Department of Social Services young people aged between 22 to 24 are 2.9 times more likely to be on income support if for over 80 percent of their childhood, their parents or guardians were receiving welfare payments (DOSS Joint Departmental Submission 2018, 2). To put this claim into context, in 2016, twenty-two percent of households in Shepparton had incomes equal to or below $400 per week which, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, represents living in poverty. There are two perspectives that help explain how the poor socio-economic status of parents could be reproduced in their children. The first explanation is that depleted family resources limit children’s access to the tools and experiences that enhance skill development and can lead to better employment opportunities. The second is that children are more likely to learn behaviours that reinforce joblessness as a viable alternative to work if their parents exhibit behaviours and preferences that place little importance on education or work. Whilst many of the local elites in my study attribute the reproduction in children of the socio-economic status of their parents and grandparents to this second perspective, the evidence from the limited research available is inconclusive and contradictory. For example, in a study of the intergenerational transmission of welfare dependency conducted in Sweden a clear intergenerational effect was observed however, the authors noted that the effect reflected a combination of social assistance, the children’s adjustment to school and the parents’ criminality (Stenberg 2000). In another Swedish study specifically designed to isolate the effect of receiving welfare benefits from other factors, the authors concluded that there was little if any positive evidence of a causal relationship between the parents receiving welfare benefits and their children’s future use of welfare benefits (Edmark and Hanspers 2012, 24). In Irma Mooi-Reci’s comparative study of the employment consequences of growing up in dual-jobless families in the US and Australia she concluded that in Australia exposure to relatively longer dual-parent joblessness may have resulted in the higher risk of children growing up in these environments being jobless as adults (2020, 68).

43 The Household, Income, and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey (HILDA) is a nationally representative longitudinal study of Australian households. It is conducted annually and explores ten topics including the intergenerational transmission of income poverty.

99 Finally, the fourth typology claimed by local elites to be driving socio-economic inequality is that the welfare system is too generous to incentivise people into meaningful employment. This perspective is evident in an answer given to me when I asked one of the few growers in this clique of local elites if picking was a viable route out of poverty, they said: “If they are not incapacitated because of a health reason, the types of jobs that are on offer are fairly low skilled, so I think they could participate if they wanted to. I don’t think the will’s there. They just think the amount of government assistance and support for being out of work is at a sufficient enough level where they are now weighing up the cost of participating against the risk of losing their benefits and saying I might as well just stay on welfare because nothing is required of me. Not only do many within the clique consider that the level of payment is too high, but they also see conditionality in the welfare system encouraging people to only do what is necessary to continue to receive the benefit. When I asked the same grower if people on welfare were picking fruit to comply with the conditionality of the Newstart allowance, I was told: “the government thinks of picking as a work for the dole activity. Dole related work doesn’t work. Why would we want unfit people who just pick one bin to comply [with the conditionality of hours to be worked] and then leave”. Criticism of the government being overly generous is not limited to the provision of welfare support. One of my participants who is in civil engineering claimed that the government’s support for further education has had unintended consequences. According to them, there is a community-wide acceptance of social welfare that stems from the government financially supporting further education, contributing to an increasing the number of people receiving welfare payments and increasing the perception that disadvantage is on the rise in Shepparton. They told me: “What’s happened is welfare has become an acceptable means of earning a living. When I was growing up, welfare was not acceptable. Welfare is now acceptable. So, when you can earn a thousand dollars on welfare why go and pick fruit for $800 bucks. Hard job. Our society has said that it’s OK to get welfare. Kids do a gap year and then go and collect a Youth Allowance to go to school [tertiary education]. Youth Allowance is a form of welfare. So, we teach our kids have 12 months off and then go and get Youth Allowance which turns into Newstart automatically [when they complete their tertiary studies and start looking for work]” The primary welfare payment for jobseekers is the Newstart allowance (NSA). The other relevant payment to those on welfare in Shepparton is the ‘parenting payment’44 which is linked to the NSA rate. The NSA includes a mutual obligation that requires the recipient to have an agreed job plan and be looking for work for them to continue to receive the benefit. At the time of writing this thesis, for singles with no dependants, the NSA is $559 per fortnight and for partnered recipients the allowance is $504 each per fortnight. To put the adequacy of these payments into perspective, in their

44 Refer to Glossary for a brief description of ‘parenting payments’

100 submission to the South Australian government’s select committee on intergenerational dependence, the South Australian Legislative Council Select Committee on Poverty, the South Australian Council of Social Services (SACOSS) claimed that those on the NSA in South Australia receive $134.98 below the poverty line per fortnight and, over the past twenty years the NSA has declined in real terms from 24% of the average wage in South Australia to 19% (SACOSS Submission 2018, 6). According to the SACOSS, life on the NSA is made more difficult by ‘poverty premiums’ that accrue from being unable to access cost saving technologies, to buy in bulk, to receive discounts for early payments etc. Furthermore, in a study of the impact of the NSA on single parents, it was found that a parent with one child and an additional private income of between $75 and $125 per week would have an effective marginal tax rate on that income of 65%, up from 40% before the NSA (Brady and Cook 2015, 7). In a tax policy briefing prepared by the Australian National University’s Crawford Policy School, it was suggested that unless the recipient was able to secure full-time employment, under the NSA they would be subjected to higher effective marginal tax rates on any additional private earnings (Ingles and Plunkett 2016, 10). As a consequence, when all costs are factored in, part-time, precarious employment such as picking would be more likely to cost NSA recipients more than if they stayed at home. Local elites generally believe that increasing socio-economic inequality in their region, particularly high unemployment, is mainly caused by an overly generous welfare system supporting people who continue to make poor life choices. For the most part the local elites in my study firmly believe the people on welfare in the region (excluding those receiving the age pension) are internal immigrants or refugees, encouraged to come to Shepparton by affordable housing, a robust community services sector and, in the case of refugees, the prospect of work. According to my participants, because they lack the social connection and, with the exception of refugees, are unwilling to work, their transition to new employment opportunities is stalled, they become persistently welfare dependent and pass on this way of life to their children. Most importantly, there is a common narrative expressed in all four typologies -- those on welfare are fundamentally different to those who are not. As such, this clique of local elites views people receiving welfare as anomalies in the community, to be administered and supervised by governments, welfare providers and those in the community who believe they are best placed to do so. 4 Summary In this chapter I have shown how this clique of local elites understand the problem of socio-economic inequality in their community and how they rationalise the relationship between increasing socio-economic inequality and the contemporaneous transitioning of the local economy to corporate food production. Using Foucault’s notion of biopolitics, and later theorisations of biocapitalism that build on it, I have shown that vision statements used in regional development are technologies of biocapitalism that establish new norms for people to aspire to if they are to participate economically. In the case of Shepparton, these new norms have been established by this clique of local elites and promulgated through the vision statements of the Clever Food Committee in 1993 and the Committee for Greater

101 Shepparton in 2014. These new norms require, amongst other things, that Shepparton’s people be motivated learners, resilient, supportive, inspired and committed to participatory democracy. As Peter Benson revealed in his study of the tobacco industry, and Catherine Dolan and Kate Role exposed in their review of BoP schemes in sub-Saharan Africa, those who are unable to normalise to these aspirational norms become anomalies and are supervised and administered as such. As a consequence, new fissures can form between those who grasp the opportunities presented, in this case by business-led regional development, and those for whom there are no meaningful opportunities in the new reality. The importance of understanding this aspect of biocapitalism in the context of how local elites understand socio-economic inequality and its amelioration is that it frames their responses in ways that are amenable to achieving their vision of business-led regional development. Rather than understanding of socio-economic inequality as a form of disadvantage that flows down through practices that discriminate, many of my participants hold a view which has a very long history among political conservatives that socio-economic inequality is a phenomenon largely driven by people’s behavioural choices and personal attributes, which are often passed down inter- generationally. In pursuing this argument, the local elites central to my study tend to background as a casual factor any reference to the structural changes involved in transitioning to corporate food production that have reduced the number of low skilled jobs in the region and have made more precarious those that remain. Few if any countenance a scenario in which people are compelled to remain on welfare by a lack of opportunity and a tax system that penalises less than full-time employment. Accordingly, they focus their attention on mitigating the effects of socio-economic inequality in the region to building a reserve of job-suitable people. Persistent welfare dependency is mostly seen as a problem of people failing to be responsibly reflexive to the new opportunities presented by regional development. The consequence of this perspective is not only that welfare recipients are seen as the architects of their own disadvantage, but they are also seen as holding back regional development by failing to present themselves as ‘job ready’. As such, socio-economic inequality is mostly understood by local elites as a self-inflicted form of disadvantage that percolates up through the community, muting business’ ability to create wealth. Given that local elites understand socio-economic inequality as a self-inflicted form of disadvantage that percolates up, their accounting for the increasing gap between the haves and the have-nots in Shepparton is similarly pathologized. Despite some variation, this group mostly argues that growing socio-economic inequality in their region can be attributed to people on welfare choosing not to participate and a welfare system that is too generous, providing no incentive for people to work. Whilst the evidence that the NSA alone puts people below the poverty line and that finding some work has negative rather than positive financial consequences, this view that Mendes associates with neoliberalism prevails. Furthermore, nearly all local elites extend the significance of this behaviour by claiming that growing up in families that choose welfare over work, results in young people also choosing not to work and seeing no value in preparing to do so. This understanding of intergenerational welfare dependency being the consequence of inherited or modelled behaviours and traits is

102 understudied and the significance of this issue as a driver of increasing socio-economic inequality remains contested. Complicating the perspective that the welfare system is ultimately to blame, is the view that Shepparton has disproportionately received more people who are already on welfare, either through domestic migration or an influx of refugees, and due to their lack of social connections and, in the case of refugees, language skills, are unable to find meaningful work. As I previously mentioned, were it not for the fact that the local elites central to my study are committed to business-led regional development and that their vision for the region has arguably created anomalies out of people who for whatever reason are unable or unwilling to normalise to their vision, how they understand socio-economic inequality would be unremarkable. However, as Benson convincingly argued, like all forms of biopolitics, biocapitalism never fully normalises populations reinforcing the need to maintain and deploy technologies to protect the new norms. This characteristic of biocapitalism is important in understanding how local elites frame their response to increasing socio-economic inequality. Local elites draw a clear distinction between young people whom they regard as blameless victims of poor parenting and an education system that has failed them, and anyone “over twenty- four” whom they have given-up on, believing they have no desire to grasp the opportunities and become fully functioning members of the community. In the next chapter I explore why local elites chose to become actively involved in improving the educational outcomes and social cohesiveness of young people, when previously they chose not to do so. To explain their motivation, I discuss the initial six years of the Lighthouse project, an initiative in which local elites use their connections to build ‘social capital’ so that young people can envisage an alternative future to welfare dependency and be energised into improving their socio-economic status. I argue that in operationalising Lighthouse, local elites were able to bring control of the project back within their clique, develop their own ‘place-based’ version of governing community projects, and attribute roles that are consistent with their strongly held view that they -- and they alone -- have the sensibility and commitment to know what the community needs to ameliorate socio-economic inequality, and have the wherewithal to deliver.

103

Chapter 5 The “light on the hill”

Ever since the Clever Food Conference in 1993, this group of local elites has consistently promoted a positive narrative of their region as a centre of corporate food production and their city as a place for business. Whenever this narrative is threatened, it has been this clique that steps in, takes control and steers the discourse back to their vision of Greater Shepparton as thriving place to live, work and bring up families. In this chapter, I show how both threats to this narrative and to the legitimacy of this clique as mediators for the community, drew local elites into partnering with other elites whom they regard as ‘outsiders’ -- the neoliberal philanthropists, local social assistance providers, academics and educators for whom Shepparton is a place of such profound disadvantage that it warrants being singled out for their urgent remedial attention. I first show how the 2011 Sir Andrew and Lady Fairley Foundation philanthropic summit was a key event in energising local elites to become more actively involved in ameliorating socio-economic inequality. Responding to what they saw as the public airing by outsiders of this narrative of Shepparton as a place of entrenched poverty and sensing criticism that as mediators they had done little if anything to improve the circumstances of vulnerable people, this clique chose to partner with outsiders, rather than risk having their narrative of regional prosperity eroded and their status as mediators for the community diminished. I then narrow in on one of the initiatives promoted by the organisers of the philanthropic summit -- the Lighthouse project. I examine how this clique of local elites and this loosely aligned network of neoliberal philanthropists and social assistance providers initially endeavoured to forge connections and bridge gaps, but quickly ‘locked horns’ as governance of the Lighthouse project shifted and the emphasis on disadvantage was replaced with a more generalised focus on improving the educational outcomes of young people. Through concentrating on the Lighthouse project, I show that this clique of local elites legitimised their involvement in ameliorating socio-economic inequality by repeatedly claiming that only they have the understanding and commitment to orchestrate the delivery of what is needed. I also show that local elites see their role in the Lighthouse project as using their connections to build ‘social capital’ in the community so that young people, whom they see as blameless victims of socio-economic inequality, can be normalised as ‘job-ready’ for the opportunities presented by business-led regional development. I conclude by showing that the way local elites appropriated the Lighthouse project, backgrounded the narrative of disadvantage in the region and attributed roles and responsibilities for ameliorating socio-economic inequality amongst themselves and between themselves and others, are best understood as tactics of resistance and rejection of some of the practices of neoliberal philanthropy that threatened their elite status. Before I explain why the 2011 Fairley Foundation Philanthropic Summit was key to drawing local elites closer to the orbit of those engaged more directly in addressing the consequences of socio-economic inequality, I will briefly discuss what anthropologists have termed ‘the neoliberal turn in philanthropy’ -- a biopolitical development characterised by philanthropic foundations aiming to lift people out of

104 poverty through changing their behaviours, rather than focusing on improving peoples’ material conditions and creating better opportunities for them to access social resources (Arney, Chavez, and Taylor 2013). 1 Neoliberal philanthropy On the 8th of April 2020, the founding chairman of the Fortescue Metals Group (FMG), iron-ore billionaire Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest, announced that he and his wife Nicola had donated a further $520 million to their private charitable foundation Minderoo (Hewett 2020). The announcement followed Forrest’s media release a week earlier in which, as chair of the foundation, he reported that Minderoo had allocated a $160 million funding package that included 90 tonnes of medical supplies being flown from China “to help Australia deal with the COVID-19 crisis” (Minderoo Foundation 2020). In the media release, Forrest stated that: “Fortescue Metal Group’s deep and enduring relationships with China are unparalleled in Australia and have allowed Minderoo Foundation to supercharge procurement efforts, on behalf of and in collaboration with the Western Australian and Federal Governments”. In other words, from his position within a network of ‘power elites’45 that include senior Chinese government officials, Forrest was able to negotiate in ways that he claims are not available to either the state government of Western Australian or the Australian federal government, both of whom are either outside this network or carry less influence within it. Forrest’s FMG is the world’s fourth largest iron-ore producer. Its “deep and enduring relationship with China” is grounded in commerce. The group has sold iron ore to China for over thirty years and, in 2012 when the iron-ore price collapsed and FMG struggled under its billions of dollars of debt, it was Chinese steel mills prepaying their iron-ore purchase contracts that saved the company (Garvey 2020). Forrest claimed his mediation was essential by saying: “Unprecedented times cannot be met with a precedented response and the trusted relationships, procurement expertise and logistics knowledge of the FMG and the Minderoo Foundation teams, have been fundamental in rapidly securing this vital equipment”. Minderoo was established by the Forrests in 2001 and claims to be one of Asia’s largest philanthropic organisations (Minderoo Foundation n.d.). According to its website, the foundation is “a modern philanthropic organisation seeking to break down barriers, innovate and drive positive, lasting change”. Blurring the boundaries between public and private, Minderoo’s policy is to “get the right people in the room and share our proven models between philanthropists, faith, business and government leaders to develop policies for long term change” (Minderoo Foundation n.d.). The reason I have cited the Minderoo Foundation is that, like the Sir Andrew and Lady Fairley Foundation that features in my study, Minderoo is an example of neoliberal philanthropy in that it changes the way philanthropists engage with communities. Specifically, rather than funding programs that emanate from communities, neoliberal

45 As described by Charles Wright Mills (1956b, 5)

105 philanthropy endeavours to embed itself as the essential mediator in determining which communities and which issues will qualify for philanthropic funding. Philanthropic foundations are assets-based, private, self-governing, not-for- profit, distributing entities whose raison d’être is to serve a public purpose for which it is usually rewarded by tax concessions (Anheier and Daly 2006, 8). Much of the scholarship regarding philanthropic foundations is drawn from the US where these organisations are a primary source of grant-based funding for community development (“Foundation Stats” n.d.). Traditionally, foundations in the US have mainly operated as entities running institutions such as hospitals and schools. However, in the 1980s a combination of economic growth, unprecedented private- wealth creation, the retreat of the welfare state and the rise in neoliberal ideology led to the role of philanthropic foundations being reformed such that they now mostly pursue the objectives of their founders through conditional grant-making and/or implementing their own programmes and services (McCrea 2016, 104). This is evident in the Minderoo example where Forrest’s philanthropic actions can be interpreted as shoring-up a relationship with China at a time when Sino-Australian relations were strained. Whilst philanthropic foundations have a long history of pursuing the interests of their founders through public serving programs, when these programs are of their own making, a moral ambiguity that scholars have for decades associated with brokers is introduced to philanthropy (James 2011, 319) From a Foucauldian perspective, neoliberal philanthropy can be understood as a form of governmentality with its own practices that aim to govern the way philanthropically funded initiatives are conducted (Kohl-Arenas 2011, 812). Accordingly, the practices of neoliberal philanthropy target the conduct of those involved in the governance of public purpose initiatives. There are three practices that are common in setting neoliberal philanthropy apart from traditional philanthropy. The first is the adoption of corporate practices including the use of business language in its discourse. For example, in describing the shift in philanthropy’s engagement with public education in the US, Kenneth Saltman has noted how philanthropists describe giving to public schooling as a ‘social investment’ that begins with a ‘business plan’, involves ‘quantitative measurements of efficacy’, is contingent on ‘being replicable’, and will ideally ‘leverage’ public spending in ways that are compatible with philanthropy’s ‘strategic objectives’ (2010, 64). The second common practice is the depoliticising of its strategic objectives through framing a narrative based on expertise. This is evident in the Minderoo example where a narrative of unprecedented times in which procurement and logistics expertise are needed, legitimised the foundation taking a lead over what civil society would ordinarily expect to be an initiative brokered between governments. The third common practice is the increasing use of metrics to describe their reform programs and to measure their success (Merry 2011a, S52). Neoliberal philanthropy has been praised in business schools for creating shared value in ways not dissimilar to the BoP schemes discussed in chapter four. Philanthropists like Bill and Melinda Gates have been lauded as “honest brokers who can allay fears by mitigating power imbalances between small local enterprises, NGOs, governments and companies” (Porter and Kramer 2011, 73). However, neoliberal philanthropic foundations are generally more critically engaged by anthropologists.

106 The principle concern amongst scholars taking a Foucauldian perspective is that philanthropic foundations have become key conduits for practices that aim to acculturate the poor into the market rationalities that produced entrenched poverty in the first place (Kohl-Arenas 2011, 812; McCrea 2016, 103). For example, in her study of the structuring effects of large-scale poverty programs on the actions and strategies of regional community-based institutions in California’s Central Valley, Erica Kohl-Arenas found that organising the poor through participatory philanthropic initiatives provides a certain range of opportunities as well as firm limits to changing the political- economic relationships that produce regional poverty (2011, 811). In forming this view, Kohl-Arenas shows how in a philanthropically funded program aimed at alleviating the entrenched poverty associated with the increasing use of migrant labour, the program’s organisers used consensus to keep growers ‘on-side’, promoting the notion that farm profits and worker wages could increase contemporaneously (2011, 819). As a consequence, the initiatives deemed worthy of funding involved migrant workers improving their health outcomes through education, the state being lobbied for improved housing, and health care services providing multi-cultural training. No initiatives were supported that challenged growers’ favouring the intensified recruitment of low wage immigrant labour, on the basis that cheap labour was more profitable than mechanisation (Kohl-Arenas 2011, 818). Some scholars applying a Gramscian sensibility to their analysis of neoliberal philanthropy claim that through forming partnerships of governance, philanthropy not only denies civil society a counter-hegemonic force to the power of states and private corporations but also exploits power asymmetries that lock the poor into the interests of capitalist systems to which philanthropy is both politically and ideologically committed (Morvaridi 2012; Roelofs 2003). In making this argument, Behrooz Morvaridi (2012), for example, cites the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) and one of its projects, the Water Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA), funded by the Gates and Buffett Foundations. WEMA is a private-public partnership which includes Monsanto, one of the world’s largest producers of genetically modified seeds, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre, and the agricultural research systems of five sub-Sahara African countries (Oikeh 2018). The stated goal of AGRA is to help smallholding farmers to boost their productivity, increase their income and lift themselves and their families out of poverty (Morvaridi 2012, 1197). According to Morvaridi, AGRA supports programs like WEMA that encourage farmers to prioritise what they term ‘pro-poor’ crops that are marketable through a network of AGRA aligned dealers. These programs prioritise the replacement of traditional crops with new varieties that have been genetically modified to increase productivity. Finance for both the pesticides and genetically modified seeds is secured by a voucher system that ties the smallholding farmers to the products of multi-national corporations that partner with philanthropy in AGRA’s programs (2012, 1197). Morvaridi argues that, in the name of poverty reduction, new varieties of crops are introduced to sub-Saharan Africa that suit the strategies of global food systems, whilst smallholding farmers are subjectified as consumers of corporate products rather than producers of food (Morvaridi 2012, 1197). Of particular relevance to my study is the involvement of neoliberal philanthropists in public education. As I noted in chapter two, the educational

107 outcomes in Shepparton’s public schools are seen by most local elites to be deficient in producing ‘job-ready’ school leavers to fill the surplus of suitable jobs they claim have been created through transitioning the local economy to corporate food production. It is generally accepted that neoliberal philanthropy is a political valve that deflects criticism of the inequitable upward distribution of wealth and the privatisation of public assets, including public education (Peck 2012, 107; Saltman 2010, 69). In her article on the politics of educational philanthropy, “Looking a Gift Horse in the Mouth” (2012), Janice Peck claims that neoliberal philanthropy’s engagement with education perpetuates two familiar myths that underpin a neoliberal view of poverty: firstly, that socio-economic inequality is the result of the deficient study habits of the poor and/or the defective skills of public school teachers, and secondly, that there are enough good jobs for everyone who gets educated (2012, 108). Peck further asserts that it is through this attributing of the inequitable distribution of societal resources (health, housing, education and employment) to the habits of the poor and the deficient skills of educators that people are less likely to raise questions about how “all the money ended up in so few hands” (2012, 108). Kenneth Saltman similarly argues that philanthropy has traditionally seen the role of educators as “fostering productive individuals and greasing the inclusion of working people in the very ideologies of corporate hegemony that undermine their own interests” (2010, 69). However, his principle concern is that the emergence of neoliberal philanthropy has seen attempts by givers to exert greater control over the money spent on educational reform and, as a consequence, greater emphasis on the privatisation of public educational resources in ways that exacerbate social and class hierarchies (Saltman 2010, 75). Whilst each of these works focus on programs that can be understood as explicit and calculated governmental interventions, according to Tania Li, these interventions are not formed ab initio, their targets are not “clean slates waiting inscription”, and their effects are by no means pre-determined (2007, 276). This uncertainty in the effects of governmental initiatives, according to Li, can be understood by examining how their practices are variously accepted, compromised, resisted and rejected by their targets (Li 2007, 279). The effect of these factors on the governance of philanthropic funding is clear in Niamh McCrae’s study of community development organisations in Ireland (2016). Through examining the practices of the Migrants Rights Centre in Ireland (MRCI), a community organisation committed to advancing migrants’ workplace rights and organising workers, and its philanthropic funder, the ONE Foundation (ONE) whose primary benefactor’s wealth was created in an industry hostile to organised labour, McCrae critically examines whether philanthropically funded community development work can challenge potentially harmful practices of capitalism. McCrae shows how both MRCI and ONE compromised what appeared to be conflicting practices; MRCI in accepting a grant condition requiring a hierarchical governance structure that appeared contrary to its grassroots democratic principles and ONE funding a campaign against regressive changes to Ireland’s work permit system (2016, 111). McCrae concluded by claiming that ONE allowed MRCI significant freedom and accepted that their principles were being challenged because these compromises represented less of a threat to their interests than if they were marginalised from organised unionism in Ireland which is traditionally engaged as an interest group in state ‘brokered’ neoliberal reforms (2016, 115). In other words, it was better for ONE to be ‘inside the tent’ than not.

108 In this chapter, I argue that in 2011 the Sir Andrew and Lady Fairley Foundation attempted to transition from a relatively passive grant giving foundation to a foundation guided by the practices of neoliberal philanthropy. This transition would position the Fairley Foundation as mediators with the Shepparton community and with other philanthropists, for the causes they considered worthy of philanthropic funding. Drawing on the work of Tania Li, I show that in attempting to transition to a neoliberal philanthropic governance model, the foundation not only introduced practices that clashed with those of business-led regional development, but also challenged the status of local elites as mediators, through by-passing them and working with other elites in the community to determine what issues were worthy of support. I specifically focus on how the practice of promoting a narrative of disadvantage sufficient enough to rally community support for their initiatives might not only clash with the narrative of local elites promoting Greater Shepparton as a thriving centre of corporate food production, but also cast aspersions as to the competency of local elites in representing the community’s welfare needs. 2 The 2011 Fairley Foundation philanthropic summit The Fairley name is synonymous with Shepparton. James Fairley arrived in the district from Scotland in 1887 and opened a grocery store. One of his three sons, Andrew, became a retailer, orchardist, developer, the first Mayor of the City of Shepparton, a Commissioner of the State Electricity Commission for 20 years, and a long-time Managing Director and Chairman of Shepparton Preserving Company (SPC). Known for his business acumen, Andrew led SPC for over 40 years, transforming it from a failing business to the largest cannery in the Southern Hemisphere. In 1951, he was knighted for his service to the fruit industry and regional Australia. As head of the Shepparton’s largest employer and with a family name historically linked to Shepparton, Sir Andrew Fairley’s power and influence was accorded not only by his position in SPC but also through his family history and wealth; he was, quintessentially, a member of Mills’ local ‘power elite’: families who, mainly through controlling economic resources, stand above ordinary members of local communities (1956a, 30). Sir Andrew died in 1965 and, with Lady Fairley, bequeathed an estate of £421,00046 for the benefit of the people and communities of the Goulburn Valley through the Sir Andrew and Lady Fairley Foundation. Today the Foundation is chaired by Sir Andrew’s great-nephew and namesake. I first met Andrew Fairley in February 2018. As the chair of the only philanthropic foundation specifically dedicated to the Goulburn Valley community, I was keen to understand his vision for Shepparton and how he saw the role of philanthropy in ameliorating socio-economic inequality. Andrew’s vision for Shepparton is tinged with nostalgia: “As a young person this was an amazing place where you could ride your bike down the street at 8 o’clock at night and not have a worry in the world and your parents didn’t worry about it either. This is a different place today. We need to reclaim what we had, to change it back to what it ought to be and what it deserves to be.”

46 $11.7m in 2020 value as per the Reserve Bank of Australia’s Pre-Decimal Inflation Calculator

109 In conversations with local elites, Andrew’s contribution is mostly acknowledged through the Fairley Foundation which over the last two decades has championed and funded a number of projects under his leadership. Despite his undoubted commitment to Shepparton, Andrew does not regard himself as local, is never referred to as such, and is not considered by the local elites central to my study, as part of the clique. Andrew, like his great-uncle, is part of the ‘power elite’ engaged in community development in the region. Understanding Andrew’s connection to Shepparton, and his relationship with local elites provides important context to their reactions to a series of philanthropic summits convened in Shepparton by the Sir Andrew and Lady Fairley Foundation47. On the 14th of October 2011, the Fairley Foundation facilitated the first of these philanthropic summits in the region. When I asked what motivated him to organise the 2011 philanthropic summit, I was told: “I need to take you back to 2009 or 2010. One day I was doing some work in identifying just how much money was coming into Shepparton and I identified that it was philanthropically over $5m a year. Then when I looked at the statistics and saw that on any measure, whether it is in school retention rates and teenage pregnancies and kids in the criminal justice system in levels of indigenous unemployment, we’re a really struggling community, I just couldn’t understand where all the money was going. I looked at some of the projects that people that I know we’re funding. They were really nice to have but they weren’t changing the game, and so I had this idea, we should get everybody together, everybody who funds in Shepparton or everybody who’s aspirant to fund in Shepparton and we should get them to meet the people in town and they should then be able to work through a plan as to what are the three most important things that are going to change the game because none of these things are changing the game --- it was at the same time as I had the epiphany that Sir Andrew, as somebody who used his capital wisely and built the most unbelievable business in the Goulburn Valley and in Northern Victoria employing thousands of people, would never have really been happy with us being a palliative partner. If we were giving another $1000 to the primary school to put shades up over the playground or a little bit more money to community care organisations to scrape some more kids of the street --- that’s’ not changing the game. So, I said to our Board, we need to be brave and we need to change the way we think. I said this is what I want to do, and I want to get as many foundations as we can on board.” To convey the significance to my study of what Andrew told me, I need to deconstruct his comments. Firstly, Andrew is describing the moment the Fairley Foundation attempted to transition to neoliberal philanthropy. In his own words he says Sir Andrew would not be happy for the foundation to continue to be a palliative partner, giving a bit here and there without making any difference. Neoliberal philanthropy aims to change the governance of philanthropic funding, from mediating with grantees

47 There have been three summits; 2011, 2014 and 2018. There was also a follow-up CEOs summit in March 2012 which brought together 101 community people and, as the first stage of the Lighthouse project, represented an extensive community consultation that was designed to find local leaders outside the welfare service system (Participant D16 2020).

110 the issues that will be supported to becoming immersed in programs of their own making. Whilst they might continue to make grants, their core practice is to broker their own programs. That this is new for the Fairley Foundation can be seen in Andrew’s comment to his board when he was proposing that they develop with the community three game-changing initiatives; he said, “we need to be brave and we need to change the way we think”. The second significant point in Andrew’s dialogue is his turning to ratings and measures to build a narrative of sufficient enough disadvantage in Shepparton to warrant philanthropic funding. It is accurate that Shepparton’s comparative performance in these metrics is worse than its peers however, by using these and other measures, Andrew has built a narrative of Shepparton being “a really struggling community”. This narrative is contrary to the narrative of business-led regional development which promotes the region as thriving and justifies the investment by claiming that the benefits flow down through job creation. The third significant issue is that Andrew’s comments indicate the shift in philanthropy to a corporate form of governance which, according to Sally Merry, deploys statistical measures and replaces political debate with technical expertise to establish its legitimacy (2011a, S84). For example, rather than debating the underlying racism inherent in indigenous unemployment or the societal values that determine instances of teenage pregnancies are indicator of a community struggling, discussions fall to experts in data collection and social workers and centre on what to measure and what these measurements mean (Merry 2011a, S88). That Shepparton “doesn’t fair well” is not based on empirical evidence, it is a conclusion drawn by many from comparative measures that classify phenomena, such as teenage pregnancies, as proxies of a community doing poorly. Intrinsic to these practices is the prominence given to ‘evidence-based’ funding disciplines which require grant recipients to develop measures of what they have accomplished (Merry 2011b, S84). ‘Evidence-based’ funding is not unique to the governance relationship between neoliberal philanthropists and grantees; states also apply this discipline when assessing and reviewing grants funded by government revenue. In her paper, ‘Measuring the World’, Merry cites the US government’s Millennium Challenge Corporation in arguing that ‘evidence-based’ funding pits grantees against one another as they compete to garner funds (2011b, S90). This competitive funding environment was made clear to me when I spoke with the chair of a local not-for-profit, who is not part of this clique of local elites in Shepparton, about their seeking of funding from the Australian federal government. They relayed an account of their meeting with a bureaucrat whose support with government funding was in part motivated by a desire to send a message to other grantees in Shepparton to ‘lift their game’. They told me: “when we arrived at Parliament House one secretary was available and she came down, she was one of the secretaries to the Minister for Social Security, she was lovely, knew all about the disadvantage [in Shepparton] and she said, ‘how much money do you want?’ So, I went to the lowest figure. She said, ‘you’re going to have to give me the proposal and I’ll give it to the department of course … they’ve got to approve that … it is something new, unique, different and is going to make a lasting impact and to be honest, we spend a lot of money in Shepparton and nothing really ever happens, it’s hopeless they don’t

111 make any difference whatsoever’. So, they let us know that we could have the money, which was great … but she did say to us that funding us might be the catalyst to shift the others by example really, and move them out of their complacent sameness, almost by threatening them really, that there was a new player on the block that was actually getting results which of course was kind of difficult for us really because that put us in a kind of vulnerable situation”. An ‘evidence-based’ competitive funding environment driven by the neoliberal ideologies of both philanthropy and governments, tends to favour larger grantee organisations that have the resources, can invest in building relationships, and can comply with tender conditions relating to good-governance (Merry 2011b, S91). In describing this environment in Shepparton, I was told by the head of another local not- for-profit: “They [other CEOs of not-for-profits] are just as likely to stick me in the back as anybody in that environment. They are fighting for the same scraps falling off the same table in the same areas. In the world of community health services, the Victorian Healthcare Association (VHA)48 is our peak membership body. It’s our pathway into government funding. So, when initiatives are announced, you need to have established relationships and champions [like VHA] in your corner. So, when a state bureaucrat says “Minister, this is what we need to do” and the Minister says, “great, let’s put it out across the State” and the tenders go out and we apply, the first thing is the relational connection with the bureaucrats. So, they say “ Minister, XYZ is part of our community health CEO networks and they’re linked up across the State and what they’re saying in their tender is factual and Minister, we recommend that you do put money out and you use them as the vehicle”. So, I spend a lot of my time in Melbourne going to VHA meetings. I travel to Melbourne for a three-hour meeting, because if I am there at the table looking at the Melbourne bureaucrat who is answering to the Secretary/Director level, I am familiar to them.” It is these relationships and practices that are part of Foucault’s previously introduced ‘witches-brew’. Foucault uses the term ‘witches-brew’ in making his argument for the heuristic value in studying governmental programs as they were envisaged by theoreticians. Using Jeremy Bentham’s schema for prisons, Foucault shows that Bentham’s panopticon was a fragment of the reality of nineteenth century prisons. Foucault argues that studying Bentham’s Panopticon is valuable for the very reason that it falls short of describing ‘real life’. Foucault points out that comparing schemas such as Bentham’s panopticon to the functioning institutions, inherited buildings, established practices administered by existing incumbents, failures of the schemas are made visible. In accounting for the difference between the theoretician’s schema and reality, Foucault uses the term ‘witches-brew’ to describe this existing assemblage of people, locations and practices with which the governmental programs envisaged by theoreticians interact and overlap. Where Foucault approaches the study of governmental programs by examining how the theoreticians perspective might differ from the reality, Tania Li approaches the same task by examining how the acceptance,

48 VHA was established in 1938 and is the health care sector organisation that advocates for members with government.

112 resistance and/or rejection of the theoretician’s perspective creates a reality that falls short in delivering what the theoretician envisaged. Whilst starting from different premises, both conclude that governmental initiatives are unstable in that they enter a world of competing practices and external forces that diminish their effectiveness in modifying the way in which people conduct themselves. However, taking Li’s perspective provides a more nuanced understanding of the power dynamics within the ‘witches brew’ that spawn the resistance and rejection of efforts aimed at reconfiguring behaviours within it. The “people in town” who were invited to the 2011 summit were all part of this ‘witches-brew’. They were the local elites central to my study, senior representatives of NGOs involved in providing welfare services in Shepparton, and representatives from the City of Greater Shepparton Council. According to one member of the organising committee, Andrew “rallied the troops from Melbourne and brought a really significant cohort of philanthropists, Pratts and Myers and the likes”. The townspeople were chosen by the local organising committee and were invited because of their involvement in the governance of community support services, either as providers, mediators and/or advocates. As one of the attendees observed, grass-roots organisations that were deemed to be too small to engage with neoliberal philanthropy were notably absent. Prior to the summit, a trilogy of scene-setting papers was distributed to attendees for pre-reading -- Katrina Alford’s “Shepparton: the Needs and Issues for Philanthropy” (2011), Rob Hudson’s “Social Capital in Shepparton” (2011), and Jan Carter’s “Some Trends in Results Based Philanthropy” (2011). In his opening address, Andrew proposed to the gathering that instead of targeting individual organisations or causes, the philanthropic community adopt a community-embedded and collective funding approach to three “game-changing” areas, namely: addressing poor school retention rates, empowering and integrating Aboriginal people into the community, and encouraging the City of Greater Shepparton to set a vision for the whole community. When I asked how these three areas were chosen, I was told that: “We had presentations from the business community, from the social policy people, from local government, from the service providers. So, the whole morning was spent really painting the picture and then the afternoon we spent in workshops actually coming to a view about what were the three big issues that would change the game for Shepparton”. Not all presentations carried the same weight in “painting the picture” for the afternoon’s workshop. Central to the outcome were the three scene setting presentations that were either commissioned by the Fairley Foundation or made by the foundation’s representatives. Katrina Alford from the University of Melbourne, who I first cited in chapter two, spoke to three issues: the socio-economic profile of the region, an assessment of those in the community she deemed most vulnerable to socio-economic disadvantage, and “a number of matters of interest to philanthropists” when funding or planning to fund initiatives in the region. These matters of interest for consideration were principally governance issues which included gaps in local welfare support services, deficient local capacity and competency in accessing and managing funding, inadequate case co-ordination between local welfare providers, local agencies

113 ‘going the rounds’ of philanthropists following their failure to adequately manage and report previous philanthropic grants, poor linkages between service providers and local government, and inadequate measures of the effectiveness of philanthropic funding (Alford 2011, 17). Alford was followed by Rob Hudson from the Brotherhood of St. Laurence, who spoke to his 2011 study of the causal relationship between the creation of social capital and levels of disadvantage, social inclusion and social cohesion in Shepparton. By his own admission, his perspective was heavily influenced by the works of US-based political scientist Robert Putnam (2000), one of the foundational academic theorists of social capital whose scholarship has significantly influenced policymakers engaged in development, educational policy, and other adjacent fields (Harriss and De Renzio 1997). When I asked Rob why he was interested in ‘social capital’ he said: “I had read Putnam and others on social capital and I guess from my perspective I was always interested in that whole idea about how communities contribute to social change within their local communities. Programs alone are not enough, you’ve got to have the right kind of leadership, the local leadership relationships and support to be able to help, work with and shift a community towards the kind of change that you want” Referencing Alford’s paper, Hudson concluded that the combination of domestic immigration, the recent influx of refugees to the region and the increasing levels of socio-economic inequality had increased levels of social isolation and levels of distrust resulting in the depletion of bridging and linking social capital and the heightening of social exclusion for many in the region49. According to Hudson, these two tertiary effects make it more difficult for people to seize the opportunities created by economic development, and therefore make it unlikely that they can pull themselves out of disadvantage. Hudson’s perspective that local elites could use their ‘social capital’ more effectively to support vulnerable people appears to have resonated with local elites who generally frame ‘social capital’ as having been instrumental in securing employment in the past. For example, one of my participants reflecting on the title of my research commented: “two generations ago, even if you were from a very working-class family or lower, someone you knew had a factory or a business and the network would help you get employed. The network seems to be now severed a little bit between some of those groups”. The significance of Hudson’s presentation at the summit was that it introduced local elites to a range of new languages through which they could think about the challenges of ameliorating disadvantage and addressing its tertiary consequences, specifically the lack of social inclusion and social cohesion that according to Alford prevented people from taking up the opportunities created by regional development.

49 “Bonding” social capital refers to a reciprocating benefit that accrues and is available in a closed network of people of similar circumstances, for example within a family. “Bridging” social capital refers to a reciprocating benefit that accrues between networks of people of similar circumstances, for example between families in the same neighbourhood. “Linking” social capital, refers to a reciprocating benefit that accrues between networks of people of dissimilar circumstances, for example between a family on The Boulevard and another on Glory Way in Shepparton.

114 Whilst Hudson’s use of Putnam’s notion of social capital may have resonated with the local elites, its heuristic value in addressing socio-economic inequality is questionable, particularly as Putnam made no claim that building ‘social capital’ addressed inequality. For Putnam, ‘social capital’ refers to the aspects of trust, norms and networks within a community that enable society to operate efficiently, not necessarily equitably, concluding that there was a causal relationship between ‘social capital’ and democracy (1993). By claiming this relationship, Putnam’s notion of ‘social capital’ aligns to Nikolas Rose’s previously cited observation that in advanced neoliberal economies the state puts distance between the decisions of political institutions and other social actors and relies on civil society to self-regulate. Using Putnam’s rationality, the tools civil society uses to self-regulate in these circumstances are trust, norms of reciprocity and civic engagement. Consequently, by grounding his study of ‘social capital’ in Shepparton on Putnam’s work, Hudson may have inadvertently introduced an understanding of the utility of ‘social capital’ that not only exceeded the author’s claim but may also be flawed. For example, according to John Harriss, Putnam’s selective historiography leads to an incorrect causal relationship between civic engagement and good government, claiming that it is good government that gives rise to civic engagement rather than causal relationship being the reverse, as claimed by Putnam (1997). For Harriss, the consequence of Putnam failing to acknowledge the powerful positive influence political institutions have on establishing and reinforcing community norms of reciprocity, trust and civic engagement, is that interventions inspired by Putnam to build ‘social capital’ as a public good could be miss-directed and could be over relied upon in addressing complex social issues. That Hudson’s work continues to resonate with local elites is evident in a February 2020 evaluation of the Lighthouse project, one of the five foundational activities profiled in chapter three50. Commenting on the positive influence the project has had on volunteers and the community, the authors noted that: “Volunteers reported increased personal satisfaction and increased understanding of local issues through their engagement in volunteering. This is important insofar as Lighthouse aims to bridge the gap between those with high and low social capital. An interesting aspect of the Lighthouse model is that, in order to see benefits for young people and children, Lighthouse focuses its efforts on working with volunteers to change mindsets, rather than expecting young people or children to change” (Siegmann et al. 2020, 47). Jan Carter, the Executive Officer of the Fairley Foundation gave the final presentation in the trilogy. Building on Andrew’s opening address, Carter briefed the audience on ‘collective impact’, proposing the adoption of this new governance model for philanthropic initiatives aimed at reducing social problems in Shepparton. Carter argued that complex social problems faced by communities and their funders are far more than technical and resourcing problems and cannot be owned by any one organisation or institution.

50 My claim that this work is evidence of local elites continuing to be aligned to Hudson’s perspective on social capital, is based on the disclaimer contained in this report which notes that the document has been produced with information supplied by Lighthouse including company documents, interviews, anecdotes and research previously conducted by Lighthouse.

115 At this point, I will digress momentarily to introduce ‘collective impact’ and briefly discuss the characteristics of the model that Andrew saw as being relevant to achieving a greater return on his philanthropic spend. ‘Collective impact’ is the proprietary name of a practice of governmentality associated with neoliberal philanthropy. It is the product of a collaboration between two business consultants, Fay Hanleybrown and John Kania, and the chair of the Centre for Effective Philanthropy at Harvard University, Mark Kramer, whose co-authored article ‘Creating Shared Value’ (Porter and Kramer 2011) I previously cited in this chapter for praising neoliberal philanthropy. ‘Collective impact’ has been promoted to the philanthropic community as an alternative to ‘isolated impact’, where funders are faced with the task of choosing a few grantees from many applicants and where grantees compete to be chosen by emphasising how their activities produce the greatest good (Kania and Kramer 2011). It is claimed that by removing the competitive element associated with funding ‘isolated impact’ initiatives, promotors of ‘collective impact’ aim to mitigate the risk to projects from resistance or rejection as it encounters Foucault’s ‘witches brew’. According to Kania and Kramer, ‘isolated impact’ results in organisations being judged on their own potential, independent of other institutions that may impact the outcome (2011, 38). ‘Collective impact’, on the other hand, is promoted as being characterised by high levels of collaboration and trust, having a centralised ‘backbone’ infrastructure with dedicated staff, structured processes that drive a common agenda, shared measurements, open communication and mutually reinforcing activities among all participants (Kania and Kramer 2011, 38). ‘Collective impact’ is a practice of neoliberal philanthropy that reorients the way funding is governed, mainly through only generating grant proposals for issues that have been conceived by philanthropic organisations. Carter concluded her presentation by briefing the audience on an NGO in Cincinnati called ‘Strive Together’ that had used ‘collective impact’ to “bring together communities with local leaders to tackle the lack of student achievement” (2011, 14). According to Carter, ‘Strive Together’ was a suitable template for addressing the poor educational outcomes and the lack of social cohesiveness in Shepparton. As previously mentioned, the three “game changing” initiatives proposed by Andrew were workshopped in the afternoon and ratified by the summit’s attendees. Also ratified was the proposal to use ‘collective impact’ as the governance framework for each project to, in Andrew’s words, “ensure the community buy-in and unconditional support, seemingly lacking in previous endeavours”. I will now show that Andrew’s seeking of a more open and collaborative approach to funding, Alford’s litany of ‘matters of interest for philanthropists’ to consider before funding local initiatives, Hudson’s observation that Shepparton’s linking and bridging social capital was in decline, and Carter’s project to address poor educational outcomes, threatened to disrupt the balance of power in Shepparton’s ‘witches brew’ of people and practices providing local social support services. The opening of the 2011 summit was like touchpaper to the anger and resentment felt by many of the attendees. For other philanthropists and NGOs whose practices orbited around individual organisations and causes, Andrew’s proposal to concentrate philanthropic funding around three ‘game changing’ initiatives threatened their bilateral funding arrangements. One of the philanthropists was observed to have

116 just shaken their head and declared “this is not right, we should be focusing on employment and jobs”. Another philanthropist reassured the NGO receiving their funds that their arrangement was not at risk. The CEO of a locally headquartered NGO took Andrew’s comments as a collective critique of NGOs. When I asked for their recollection of the 2011 summit, they told me: “He [Andrew] stood up and said all this philanthropic money coming in here, and it’s all being wasted and these organisations, casting his hand across me and other bleeding hearts, we’re going to do this Lighthouse project and we’re going to change all that waste because we, the business community, know how to manage money, these fellows, the NGOs don’t. If it was easy, we would have solved the problem a long time ago. Talking about social disadvantage, talking about intergenerational welfare dependence, intergenerational trauma and they thought they had an economic solution for it”. Local government bureaucrats and the local elites in my study were threatened by their commitment and competence in identifying what the community needed and delivering against their claims being called into question. When I asked a City of Greater Shepparton bureaucrat who had attended all three philanthropic summits, how they differed, they said: “I found the first summit [2011] probably the most confronting because there was a lot of academic people there that didn’t live in Shepparton and during the workshop process I sat at a table as a representative of the City of Greater Shepparton I felt judged by a lot of the academics … oh my goodness Shepparton has all this disadvantage, the people working here must not be doing a good enough job”. The clique of local elites was angered by two issues. Firstly, the narrative of outside experts was undermining their efforts to attract investment by publicly airing the extent of poverty and disadvantage in their community, and secondly, by outsiders claiming that they and other local elites had failed to deliver any meaningful results in addressing disadvantage despite the significant philanthropic funding that had been entrusted to them. One of my participants, the CEO and founder of an NGO providing training and employment programs for young indigenous people, recounted a story I had heard from others who attended the summit: “They got a report done and the person [Alford] presented that report on how disadvantaged Shepparton was. I remember a senior leader in the community stood up and actually shot the report to pieces and shot that person doing the research to pieces and it was all based on not wanting people to hear how bad it is here or otherwise they won’t invest”. Andrew was berated by one of the local elites at morning tea and told “how dare you bring all these people to Shepparton and diminish our city in the way you do, you don’t live here, you have absolutely no right to do that”. Then, in an effort to dissuade him from being overly influenced by the reports presented by Alford, Hudson and Carter, Andrew was encouraged by this member of the clique to “tap into this vibrant business community to help”.

117 Whilst Andrew’s objective in bringing these differently situated elites together was to reorient the way philanthropy engaged with the Goulburn Valley, in doing so, he introduced neoliberal philanthropic practices that aimed to reconfigure governance practices in the ‘witches brew’ providing social support services. The two practices of neo-liberal philanthropy that were the most troubling for the clique of local elites central to my study were firstly, the use of a narrative that portrayed Shepparton as uniquely disadvantaged and secondly, that ‘outsiders’ would determine what the community needed. 3 Overlapping and intersecting practices On the corner of Welford and Marungi Streets in Shepparton is a small monument recognising the visit to the region of Queen Elizabeth II on the 5th of March 1954. A few hundred metres away is the start of the Mooroopna Aboriginal Historic Walk, a walking track on ‘the Flats’51 along the banks of the Goulburn River. Both monuments are culturally significant, and both have a connected history. ‘The Flats’ were settled by local Indigenous people who had walked-off the Cummeragunja Mission Station in February 1939 following the arrest of Jack Patten, an Australian Aboriginal civil rights activist and journalist. As the first indigenous mass strike in Australia, the ‘walk-off’ is significant in our colonial history. When Queen Elizabeth II visited Shepparton in 1954, three hundred Indigenous families linked to the ‘walk-off’, people who were yet to be counted in the census, represented electorally and recognised in the Constitution of Australia, were living on ‘the Flats’ in a shanty town that has been described by one of its residents as “wrought from tin and ingenuity” (Chandler 2008). To obscure the Royal party’s view of ‘the Flats’ during the Queen’s forty-five-minute visit, hessian bags were installed on the miles of fencing along the causeway over the Goulburn river. The reason I tell this story is to show that curtaining disadvantage from the critical gaze of ‘outsiders’ has a long history in Shepparton and one that endures in the community today. When I asked one of the local leaders of a small not-for-profit working with homeless people in Shepparton how it was that people in the audience seemed to be taken by surprise with the data on disadvantage that Alford presented at the philanthropic summit, they told me: “One thing that Shepparton did, I believe quite strategically and deliberately, was that they isolated poverty. If you go into the north end you’ve got your very poor community in a very poor part of North Shepparton, exactly the same in South Shepparton. I could take you for a drive around there and show you exactly where these communities are. But all around those communities and into the main CBD you don’t see it”. When I sought to clarify the purposefulness of this clustering, I was told: “I couldn’t tell you if it was a local government initiative to do that deliberately, but that’s certainly how it’s evolved, and I think they’ve quite happily maintained that. I think it’s only been in quite recent times that they have

51 ‘The Flats’ is a significant cultural area located on the floodplain both sides of the Goulburn between Shepparton and Mooroopna.

118 actually started, through the office of housing, to dot social housing in some of the more ‘normal’ parts of the community.” By quantifying for “the people in town” and the “troops from Melbourne” the extent of the gap between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’, Alford showed that rising inequality was too big, too obvious and too palpable to be denied or for any metaphorical ‘hessian bags’ to curtain it from the gaze of ‘outsiders’. In what Cris Shore and Susan Wright (2015, 426) refer to as the governance effects of audit cultures, the benchmarking of Shepparton’s performance against other regions conscripted the local elites in my study to the notion that ameliorating socio-economic inequality in the region was important. This audit effect is evident in the response given by one of my participants when I asked them for their reaction to Alford’s presentation. I was told: “It was a bit in the face for the community. What had we been doing? How had we not noticed? Everyone I know in business would have been the same as me and some of them are probably still that way, you just drive past this stuff. You drive to work and the sun still comes up and there’s people running round doing stuff and yet school attendances are abysmal and the performances [educational outcomes]52 are no good and not as many people are going on to finish year 10. Everywhere you look, disaster. If that was just normal and the same as the State average you might just think well, don’t we live in a little bubble, but to see that it was not, it was leading the pack and not what Shepparton was about”. It may well be that people were unaware of the comparative socio-economic inequality relative to peer regions, however that people were experiencing persistent disadvantage and young people were leaving school with poor educational outcomes were generally well known. As I mentioned in chapter four, one of the motivating factors in establishing the Clever Food Committee in 1993 was that the disadvantage in Shepparton today was just as evident then. Members of the clique had also been briefed on the Shepparton’s poor educational outcomes by the Fairley Foundation in 2002. Furthermore, in 2004 the need to improve the region’s educational performance had been pitched as an idea by one member of the clique to a steering group formed to examine infrastructure opportunities that could be funded under the FoodBowl Unlimited program, one of the five foundational activities profiled in chapter three. When I asked them if they were surprised by the number of attendees at the summit who claimed a lack of awareness of the poor educational outcomes in the region, I was told: “I mentioned at one of the FoodBowl Unlimited53 meetings [in 2004] that a bunch of things were going on that I’m sure they didn’t realise, how we were performing in education and had to do something about it. It’s probably fair to say that then nothing was done about it”. A more plausible explanation of local elites feigning ignorance to the extent of disadvantage in the region is that until their performance was openly benchmarked

52 The Department of Education divides Victoria into 17 zones and measures educational outcomes in those zones. I was advised by department staff that across all categories, Shepparton ranks either 16th or 17th. 53 Refer to the Glossary for a brief description of FoodBowl Unlimited

119 against peer regions, there was no basis upon which a conversation could start that brought into question the efficacy of their promotion of the region thriving under business-led regional development. That this may be the case is evident in the observations of one of the CEOs of a not-for-profit, who is not part of the clique. When asked what they thought the role of local government was in addressing disadvantage. I was told: “I think the biggest thing for local government is to create awareness of the issue. The problem with that is that when you start to create awareness around poverty and disadvantage in a community that you are trying to promote as an attractive place for people to come, it’s not a good draw card. We [community leaders] promote a healthy conversation around immigration and participation and all that, but you probably don’t hear much of a conversation around those with long term poverty living in the very poor parts of Shepparton. You can talk up immigration, you can talk up multiculturalism, you can talk up the lovely stuff … this [disadvantage] is a hard thing to talk up … it is counter to promoting brand”. When I then asked how this affected the attracting of funds to address socio-economic inequality, I was told: “There are two streams of information. There’s the information we want the public to hear which is happy stories about immigration, integration and education and participation, and then there’s the other stuff which is our real data which anybody can look up which then goes to government which promotes resources and that certainly seems to be how it works. So, in my field [social assistance] I would be tapping into that data that tells us that Shepparton per capita is probably one of the worst small cities in the country for social disadvantage. I tap into that and that’s why Shepparton does receive a disproportionate amount of money for addressing this issue”. That Shepparton receives a disproportionate amount of funding because of data that shows the city to be one of the worst in the country for social disadvantage, is an example of what Shore and Wright describe as the classificatory effects of audit cultures (2015, 426). As I discussed in the previous chapter, classifying Shepparton as disadvantaged has attracted to the region organisations from the social assistance sector who then use a narrative of disadvantage to compete for funding and to focus the community on issues made more prominent by their rankings and benchmarks against regional peers. It may be that there are more pressing social issues needing to be addressed but because they are not measured or Shepparton is not seen as an outlier in a comparative sense, they risk going unattended. The same can be said about the use of data by the City of Greater Shepparton. Their narrative of immigration, integration, education and participation is in ‘lock-step’ with the local elites’ narrative of Shepparton as a ‘thriving’ place to do business. The intent behind this narrative is to attract business investment and skilled labour to the region. In ways not dissimilar to the example I provided in chapter three of a flex net in Iceland promoting the virtues of neoliberalism, local elites secure this narrative of a prosperous food producing region using positive information they then publish in the media. When I spoke with a former journalist from Shepparton News about their

120 involvement in the Clever Food initiative, they told me that they had not been directly involved but had reported on it: “I wasn’t there, Ross really drove those things and our role was mainly reporting on them. Ross attempted to give a regional focus on us as a food bowl, and to reinforce and cement that claim”. This narrative of promoting Shepparton as a thriving place for business intersects with the narrative of those engaged in a competition to attract funds from philanthropy and governments, who seek evidence through data to justify their ‘social investments’ in addressing disadvantage. I argue that for local elites who claim a commitment and sensibility to know what the community needs, seeing this second stream of information promoting persistent disadvantage being presented to ‘outsiders’ not only challenged their narrative, but also recast them as mediators who were out of touch and had failed to deliver on their promise of the benefits of regional development flowing down. This perceived threat is evident in the following reaction to Alford’s presentation from one of my participants who would feature prominently in the development of the Lighthouse project. When I asked how people reacted to Alford’s presentation, they told me: “People were really shocked. There was a sense that something had to be done and that there hadn’t been a clear vision. We’d had a recognition that we’d take it by the horns …. there was a sense that Council hadn’t and that this had happened on our watch. So, there was a bit of a shock around the extent of the people here on some variety of pension, disability and single parent and in welfare housing and the amount of welfare housing provided through private rental. So, it was a bit of a wake-up call and there was a general goodwill in the room that things had to be done”. That local elites who claim not to have been heavily engaged in addressing the consequences of increasing socio-economic inequality community, now saw its amelioration as their role is evident in the comments that “this had happened on our watch” and “we’d take it by the horns”. Assuming responsibility to get things done where others had failed can be understood as this clique of local elites staking a claim in containing a competing narrative of Shepparton that not only undermined their ability to attract business investment and talent to the region but also challenged their legitimacy as mediators. That it was seen by others as a threat to legitimacy of local elites as mediators is evident in the previously cited comment from one of the attendees at the 2011 philanthropic summit who observed that the reason Alford’s report was challenged was that it revealed how “bad it is here” and that as a consequence, business “won’t invest”. As I mentioned in the introduction to this thesis, there is a corporate sensibility in Shepparton in which people’s actions are justified in corporate terms. Accordingly, it is unsurprising that this strategy of assuming responsibility is analogous to the crisis management response of corporates when the threat posed is financially and socially too great for them to manage (Benson and Kirsch 2010). According to Peter Benson and Stuart Kirsch, by actively engaging with their critics, corporates can participate in the shaping of politics that lead to the way the problem is managed (2010, 466).

121 Claiming that they would “take it by the horns” is a response consistent with Benson and Kirsch’s description of corporations appropriating the discourse and strategies of oppositional movements that represent a threat. According to Benson and Kirsch, at the core of this response is the achievement of a new kind of legitimacy that comes through participation. In other words, by partnering with neoliberal philanthropy to improve the educational outcomes and social connectedness of young people in the community, local elites not only acquired expert status in relation to ‘collective impact’ but, as I will show later, also positioned themselves to appropriate from neoliberal philanthropy the discourse and strategy concerning increasing socio-economic inequality in Shepparton . I suggest that interpreting the initial responses of local elites to be indicators of an epiphany moment also misconstrues their significance. These recollections can be better understood as my participants justifying the timing of their engagement in an area of community development which they had previously considered in 200254 and again in 2004/5 but had rejected. What should be remembered is that the motivation behind the summit was not to convince local elites that there was a problem with increasing socio-economic inequality, Andrew’s concern was that philanthropic funding had been squandered, and that philanthropy had not been sufficiently engaged in the ‘witches brew’ to reconfigure the way funding would be governed. To address this, Andrew sought to promulgate a more collaborative and open funding model that engaged philanthropy more directly in setting and controlling the agenda, changing the balance of power in determining which issues would be supported. The vehicle Andrew chose to showcase ‘collective impact’ was the previously profiled Greater Shepparton Lighthouse project which is now arguably the most prominent community initiative exclusively focused on young people in Shepparton. In 2018, the Executive Officer of Lighthouse described the project to that year’s Fairley philanthropic summit as “a place-based community organisation driving improved wellbeing and educational outcomes for children and young people, from conception to career”. Lighthouse engages with the community in a number of ways. The project provides volunteers to support literacy, numeracy and career programs in pre-school, primary and secondary schools, and runs a drop-in centre known as the Youth Haven. Lighthouse claims to use data and to listen deeply to determine what the community needs (“Greater Shepparton Lighthouse Project Strategic Plan on a Page 2019-2023” 2019). The principal ways the broader community are engaged in setting the agenda for the Lighthouse project are through a forum of fifty local volunteers who sit on what the Lighthouse project term as their ‘community tables’, and through community focus groups, one in 2015 and another in 2018, the results of which are published in a report titled ‘a 1000 conversations’. The Lighthouse of today is materially different from the concept presented at the 2011 philanthropic summit and ratified at the 2012 CEOs forum. Describing how this came to be is not a story about ameliorating socio-economic inequality, it is a story about a power struggle between over whose narrative represents Shepparton and who gets to mediate resources for the community.

54 Sourced from an internal briefing memo prepared for the 2012 Fairley Foundation CEO’s forum which was convened to advance the strategies endorsed at the 2011 philanthropic summit.

122 Jan Carter is credited as the architect of the Lighthouse project. Despite living in the area for ten years and working in Shepparton for thirteen, Jan is not considered a local by those central to my study. Jan’s background is in the social work practices of children’s health and social development. Before assuming her role with the Fairley Foundation in 2008, Jan had held senior academic positions at both Deakin University and the University of Melbourne and had been the Director of Social Policy and Research at the Brotherhood of St. Laurence. Whilst Jan brought to the 2011 summit a ready-made project aimed at addressing poor educational outcomes and had proposed ‘collective impact’ as the governance model for this and other initiatives aimed at addressing social problems in Shepparton, it is important to distinguish Jan’s conception of Lighthouse to that which exists today. To make this distinction, I am drawing on two sources -- personal archival material from some of my participants and the recollections of those involved in the steering committee who launched the Lighthouse project in 2014. One of the outcomes of the 2011 philanthropic summit was to assign the responsibility to evaluate Lighthouse to four members of the steering group, one each from the Community Fund, the Goulburn Murray Learning and Employment Network, Latrobe University and the Sir Andrew and Lady Fairley Foundation. In March 2012, a follow up meeting was convened to review the group’s findings. This meeting, known as the Shepparton CEOs’ forum, involved 101 invitees from the education, philanthropy, community services and local government sectors. Whilst the forum was ostensibly to review the core group’s evaluation of Lighthouse, it was what Michel Callon (1984, 196) refers to as a ‘moment of translation’, designed to gain broad local community support for the project, enrol local leaders from outside the community services system to the cause, and mobilise what had up until then been a concept. Subsequent to the 2012 CEO’s forum, a further nine senior business, civic and community leaders joined Lighthouse as ‘Champions’ who, alongside the six steering committee members, actively promoted and advocated for the project. The CEOs forum concluded that the steering committee should develop Lighthouse to the stage where the Fairley Foundation’s seed funding could be replaced with ongoing philanthropic funding. It is the conclusion of this phase in 2014 that local elites identify as marking the beginning of the Lighthouse project. Accordingly, I have taken the project as described in 2014 as the reference point for Lighthouse’s development, not Jan’s 2011 philanthropic summit presentation. As described in the application for philanthropic funding in February 2014, what would become the Lighthouse project was a ‘collective impact’ initiative that involved four pillars. The first pillar, ‘Strive Together’, was a program based on the aforementioned Cincinnati model in which the community is drawn into driving an agenda “to help every child from cradle to grave”. The second, ‘Collective Action’, is described in the application as the least developed but most important pillar. The aim of this stream is to identify organisations and individuals across the Shepparton community who are crucial to Lighthouse succeeding and co-opt them to the project. The third pillar, the ‘Champions Program’, involves key Shepparton leaders as volunteers for Lighthouse’s initiatives and using their connections to promote the program. The fourth pillar involves the development of a ‘Clearing House’ of data and papers that will enable an exchange of knowledge, data and information between

123 philanthropists, NGOs and other interested parties. In the application for funding, reference is made to the fact that this last pillar is a “specific request from the 2011 philanthropic summit” confirming that Fairley Foundation seed funding was contingent upon a commitment to creating an open and free data source that could be used widely as the basis for philanthropic funding decisions. To demonstrate the authenticity of Lighthouse as a ‘collective impact’ project, the application included mapping its four pillars to the ‘collective impact’ governance model described at the 2011 Fairley Philanthropic Summit. I argue that in the form described in the application, Lighthouse represented both an opportunity and a threat to local elites. It was an opportunity in so far as the project was seed funded and aimed to address a need that had already been recognised, had not been advanced and was amenable to business-led regional development in that its success would see young people being ‘job ready’. This is evident in a comment made to me when I asked one of the local elites how influential the 2011 summit had been in engaging them in the Lighthouse project. They told me: “I remember at the end of the day saying how do we best progress things here and I suppose it stuck in my head that the best way we deal with the many ills is to work with young people. We needed a concerted plan to do that and Jan had already done the work, it was already her intention [to do Lighthouse] and so we joined in” That Lighthouse represented a threat can be understood from this participant’s comment that it was always Jan’s intention to do the project, implying that she would do so with or without them. There are two elements to ‘collective impact’ that threaten this clique. Firstly, the ‘clearing house’ upon which Fairley Foundation funding was contingent, promised community wide access to data and papers to support future funding applications and reduced the dependence on those with insider knowledge to mediate funding. As one member of the clique who was involved in negotiating government funding for the Lighthouse project told me; “data is about power and control -- he [their gendering] who holds the data holds the power”. Secondly, co-opting multiple organisations into determining what needed to be done in the community, preferences the importance of expert knowledge over place-based knowledge. To put the threat to the legitimacy of local elites into context, it is worth reflecting again on Andrew Fairley’s objective in convening the summit. Andrew’s aim was to initiate three programs that were not only “game- changing” because of their beneficial impact on the community but also because of changes to the way philanthropic funding would be governed. Andrew intended for these projects to be replicable models. In our discussions about the 2014 philanthropic summit, Andrew told me: “The reason we called the 2014 philanthropic summit was to report on where we got to with Lighthouse to try engage more Foundations because we were getting more publicity and people were asking me about it and also to talk up the replication of this model --- this model is a perfectly replicable model. I am a great believer that philanthropy is there to be leveraged --- philanthropy one on one is only ever going to solve one problem.”

124 Andrew went on to explain that his inspiration in naming Lighthouse was not in the context of it being a beacon for improving the educational outcomes and social connectedness of young people, as important as that was to him, but that it was the “light on the hill” that would show the way ‘collective impact’ projects could be implemented and how philanthropic funding could be better governed. In this context, Lighthouse may not have been a significant threat in its own right, but it posed a threat as the precursor for what might be. However, wide acceptance of this governance model could result in the status of local elites as mediators being undermined. As one member of the clique who attended the 2011 summit told me; “what threatened some of our local leaders [at the 2011 summit] was the prospect of outsiders coming in and claiming to know what is best for our community”. In the remaining section I will show how through partnering, corporate- identified local elites were able to resist the practices of neoliberal philanthropy that I argue threatened their narrative of a thriving region and their competency as local mediators. Due to the aforementioned paucity of documented history and the absence of publicly accessible archival material for the Lighthouse project, I have relied heavily on the records and first-hand accounts of events of fourteen of the nineteen people I have identified as being most closely associated with its development. My reflection on the Lighthouse project from their recollections is that for a project that endeavours to engage with those who work closely with young people, it is widely known to have had a troubled and divisive history. The comments from all of these participants come with some baggage and it adds no heuristic value to my research to associate any one quote with an individual participant. Accordingly, unless otherwise stated, the comments that are more supportive of what Lighthouse has become are comments from members of the clique of local elites who are central to my study. The comments that are critical of Lighthouse come from the second group of elites identified in my fieldwork and introduced in chapter three -- the loosely formed network of neoliberal philanthropists, social assistance providers, academics and educators who initially partnered with the clique of local elites to address increasing socio-economic inequality in the region. 4 Retaining power and losing disadvantage In early 2014, an in-house review was written on the Lighthouse project. When I was asked if I had seen the review and replied that I had not, my participant who was involved in the early days of the project but is not part of the clique was unsurprised, suggesting that it had been supressed and changed and that every record relating to the development of Lighthouse seem to have been expunged. That the pre 2014 history of Lighthouse is mainly anecdotal was confirmed to when one of my participants who is part of the clique told me that our discussions had been a valuable opportunity to “record our history”. As a reference point to show how Lighthouse has evolved, I have used the aforementioned application for philanthropic funding submitted by the steering committee in February 2014. It is important to restate that when approved, this funding would replace the Fairley foundation’s seed funding of the project, reducing its role to that of a subject matter expert in relation to the project’s governance model. The reason I have chosen this document is that it represents the project at a

125 particularly relevant milestone, at the conclusion of its feasibility phase (2012-2014) and before its operating phase had started. The application sought $150k per annum for five years to “enable the project to become established and begin to demonstrate results”55. Explicitly excluded from the first two years of funding was the setting up of a ‘backbone organisation’ which, in ‘collective impact’ parlance, provides a framework and support for the multi-organisational collaborations. The reason given for excluding a backbone organisation was that it would be premature as all potential stakeholders had not yet been engaged. In the interim, governance of Lighthouse was to remain with the six members of the steering committee, four of whom were local elites. Philanthropic funding was approved in early 2014 and shortly thereafter Lighthouse was incorporated as a not-for-profit company limited by guarantee. That this change of governance occurred two years earlier than planned is particularly noteworthy as it resulted in control of the Lighthouse project being ceded completely to members of this clique of local elites. All of my participants reflect on this phase as a difficult period; however, their perspectives on what drove the change of governance differ. Those who remain close to Lighthouse describe bringing forward the change of governance as necessary, claiming that the project had become “very theoretical” and how it was imperative to do something to “keep everybody interested”. In an example of the resistance from others in the ‘witches brew’, another member of the clique told me that the interim board had “played hard-ball” so that they could “start doing what they could do because it was all getting a bit too hard to try and involve everybody”. This comment is referencing the difficulties the project team encountered with the education department and social support providers particularly in relation to accessing proprietary data from both. Those unaffiliated with this clique of local elites speak of the environment being highly political, of “being gotten rid of” and being told “we have to take this project back from you outsiders”. Some expressed a general feeling of resignation. For example, I was told by one of my participants that: “Lighthouse could have been a lot different than what it is, but I think the way in which its going is still good. I think it will take a lot longer to morph into what we dreamed it to be but I’m hopeful that, because it’s got legs now and it’s got money it will elevate to the next stage” That a corporate structure was put around Lighthouse, and that outsiders were expunged from the project, is consistent with one of the practices Janine Wedel (2017) associates with ‘influence elites’ organised and operating as a flex net. According to Wedel, unlike other elites, those who work in a clique reorganise governance and bureaucracies to suit the purposes of the clique, sometimes creating their own structures to circumvent and marginalise officials outside their group and to personalise practices for the clique’s own ends (2017, 165). I argue that there were two purposes served by this group of local elites incorporating the Lighthouse project and then taking full control of its governance when they did. Firstly, to reorient the project away from a governance structure that positioned Lighthouse as a support organisation that relied on others in the community who were resistant to the project, supplying them with data. The second reason to take control was to change the

55 From conversations I have calculated that project is funded with grants from the state government and philanthropy that amount to circa $1.6m per annum

126 project’s scope so that its narrative was more aligned to that of business-led regional development. To make this argument, I will firstly return to Sarah Green’s work, ‘Eating Money and Clogging Things Up’ (2008) to contextualise the risk to local elites of being seen as non-essential. Green observed that elites who are involved in community development, particularly those whose status is accorded by their ability to mediate, struggle with difficulties caused by a particularised form of social relations. In Green’s study, all parties were assumed to have their particular interests, all of which could not be served at the same time. The local bureaucrats who mediated with EU bureaucrats were seen by most as directing funding to projects from which they would personally benefit. These particularised social relations involve making a strong distinction between people with whom mediators for community development have a close relationship and share a self-interest and those with whom they have no relationship whose self-interest they see as different to their own (Green 2008, 261). In the case of Green’s ethnography, some aspects of the local bureaucrats and lawyers’ self-interest is exclusive to them, for example maintaining their status as mediators. To preserve their status, these local bureaucrats and lawyers rely on EU bureaucrats whose self- interest is in distributing development funding is reliant on mediators to convert this funding into regionally specific projects. The significance of this struggle in which the achievement of mutually exclusive self-interests is mutually dependent is that each group’s particular interests inevitably become entangled in everything done, said or represented (Green 2008, 261). The resultant assumption of partiality, according to Green, makes it virtually impossible for the reputation of locals as mediators to escape unscathed. Consequently, mediators who are taken to be self-interested, depend on the overriding assumption that despite their partiality, their mediation is essential. The challenge facing the local elites in my study is that under the governance framework of ‘collective impact’, they were no longer the essential mediators who decided which issues would be given priority. Firstly, under ‘collective impact’ the role of determining the priorities in addressing increasing socio-economic inequality in Shepparton was ceded to philanthropists, educators and social support organisations, all of whom were regarded as self-interested outsiders by local elites who, as evidenced in the cited responses to Alford’s presentantion, “have absolutely no right” to represent Shepparton. Secondly, as the previously cited reactions from some of the CEOs of the local service providers makes clear, even within this group of outsiders there were bilateral arrangements between social support organisations, state and federal governments and philanthropic groups including the Fairley Foundation, that did not rely on this clique of local elites to mediate. That local elites were not seen as essential mediators in the context of the ‘collective impact’ governance model is clear from the comments made to me by those of my participants engaged in education and providing social services. Rather than seeing Lighthouse as a forum in which the activities of multiple organisations could be coordinated and supported, and data shared to drive a common agenda, representatives of these organisations saw it as an ineffective forum in which people who knew little about the issues criticised their performance. When I suggested to one who had ceased to be involved in Lighthouse in 2014 that one of the purposes of

127 Lighthouse was to improve the organisation and support of the initiatives that educators and welfare service providers had identified collectively, they told me: “Well, that was the aim. It actually never got terribly far I mean, one of the things that I noticed was that a lot of things didn’t get terribly far because they got caught up on bagging the schools. There was a lot of school bashing that goes on in some of those meetings” When I asked a welfare services provider what they thought the role of Lighthouse was they told me: “I’ve got queries about the way they work across the community. It’s good to be a community agitant when you need to start to create momentum for change but there comes a time when you need to partner with people and they haven’t taken that on board. They’ve actually disenfranchised a number of the other community service organisations across the area” Evidence that local elites in the context were not regarded as essential mediators is also in responses to my questioning the role of Lighthouse as a backbone organisation. When I asked what Lighthouse could do to positively support these organisations I was told: “They can be advocates but it’s important to recognize where your knowledge base is strong enough to make you a quality advocate and if you lack in areas, draw in that expertise. Lighthouse lacks that expertise”. From the perspective of local elites, the service providers and educators were just as self-interested. When I asked the steering committee member responsible for ‘significantly improving the social capital of Shepparton’, how the welfare service providers viewed the arrival of Lighthouse, I was told: “Our presence was seen as an affront and I think that they’ve fought hard building up of networks and knowledge and for us to swan in with very high social capital and some transformational sort of work if you like, over the top or to the left, come around the left wing of it has been an affront” Having incorporated Lighthouse in 2014 and taken control of its governance, local elites were then able to reframe the discourse relating to ‘collective impact’ in a way that closed to criticism their claim to be essential mediators. To understand how local elites put their role in the governance model beyond question I will come back to Nikolas Rose. Using Foucauldian logic, Rose(1999b, 192) argues that when used in political discourse, oppositional terms such as productive/unproductive, social/antisocial, natural/unnatural, closes off debate and contestation by appealing to the authority of those who are experts in these fields. This, according to Rose, deprives citizens of the opportunity to think of other possibilities. In this sense, by focusing its discourse onto the opposition of collective/isolated impact, neoliberal philanthropy directed attention regarding the efficacy of its programs onto governance thereby closing off debate as to the ethico-political considerations of neoliberal philanthropy being embedded in determining what constitutes disadvantage and how it should be addressed. Focusing the discourse onto ‘collective impact’ also enables what Rose refers to as ‘switch

128 points’, where “the vocabulary is used to impose a different but no less motivated and directive politics of conduct” (1999b, 192). As previously argued, ‘collective impact’ was a threat to local elites and others in the ‘witches brew’ involved in providing social support services to the community. By taking control of the Lighthouse project, local elites became the authoritative voice on ‘collective impact’, a governance model that was not only contrary to the way they had organised and operated for more than twenty-five years but also made their role as essential mediators redundant. Their reframing of collective impact as a ‘community originated’ form of governance reinstated the role of local elites through their claim to understand what the community needs. Evidence of this ‘switch point’ which resulted in local elites removing the threat posed by ‘collective impact’ is in the promotion of the Lighthouse project as an alternative ‘collective impact’ approach to the one promoted by the Victorian state government. In 2018, Lighthouse was represented to the Victorian state government as an approach that could benefit other parts of Victoria, especially those communities tackling disadvantage in the early years of children’s development. In making the argument, what were said to be two related collective impact models were compared, one designated ‘community originated’ (Lighthouse) and the other as ‘government prescribed’. While both approaches were said to be tackling deeply ingrained social problems including unemployment, poor early years outcomes and entrenched disadvantage and were claimed to be consistent with what constitutes ‘collective impact’, it was asserted that the ‘community originated’ model provided the flexibility and nuance needed to tackle problems at a local level whereas the ‘government prescribed’ model driven by remote experts, was limited by the sense in local communities that these programs were being ‘done to a community’. At the crux of the distinction between approaches is the risk presented by ‘collective impact’ to the status of local elites as mediators. In the ‘government prescribed’ model, specific community volunteers, government officials and service delivery professionals are said to define the problem and then, working across agencies such as the education department, develop shared solutions. In the ‘community originated’ model, community leaders conduct research through focus groups and develop networks of volunteers to ‘drive and own change’. In the ‘government initiated’ model the essential mediators are government officials and service delivery professionals who conform to Mill’s description of power elites. In the ‘community originated’ model the essential mediators are those who claim to have a unique sensibility and commitment to know what the community needs. That reframing ‘collective impact’ enabled local elites to reinstate their power and influence as essential mediators is evident in a surprisingly frank answer to a question in a recent evaluation of Lighthouse. When asked, is the data gathering approach utilized by Lighthouse relevant for addressing the identified needs of young people in Shepparton, one of the executives of the project said: “We were often told it is dangerous [and that] we’re the experts and you shouldn’t be asking the people [reference to 1000 conversations focus groups] - we know what they need. This is about shifting power, the whole model is about shifting power over. It’s actually about me and others using our social capital in our position to challenge status quo authority and failing systems”.

129 In 2014, ‘collective impact’ was central to the narrative on Lighthouse. Over the ensuing years, the discourse has changed. In the previously mentioned 2020 evaluation of Lighthouse, produced as part of the project’s funding agreement with the Victorian Government’s Department of Education and Training, ‘collective impact’ is mentioned twenty-one times in two contexts, as the basis upon which the project is required to report to government to justify receiving ongoing taxpayer support, and as a prefix to a group of models said to be ‘collective impact inspired’. Furthermore, on the Lighthouse website, no mention is made of ‘collective impact’, either as a governance tool or model that inspired others. Through changing the discourse, essential mediator status has been reclaimed from people who hold positions in philanthropy, education and the service support sector to those in Lighthouse who claim to have a unique local knowledge Over the same four years, the emphasis placed by the Lighthouse on addressing disadvantage has also changed. Early in my research, I sourced from the Lighthouse project website a 2015 publication titled ‘A framework for change’. In the ‘forward’ the Chair of Lighthouse, Adam Furphy, claimed that: “By working closely with the community, Greater Shepparton Lighthouse is developing a model of partnership, to address educational, social and economic disadvantage”. Furphy went on to make the “case for change”, citing a root cause of disadvantage being poor educational outcomes resulting in high unemployment: “Our region is experiencing widespread growth and opportunity, particularly in the horticulture and dairy sectors, but employers say they often cannot find suitable people to employ. If Greater Shepparton is to realise its potential and capture the opportunities knocking at the door it needs all of its young people to be ready for school, engaged and healthy in their teens and successfully transitioning to work and study”. The purpose of this report was as a briefing document, in part to recruit business partners for funding, supplying volunteers for the program and providing resources. Furphy was echoing Alford’s view that focusing on early childhood development and education provided a workforce for the future and improved social inclusion which strengthened the community. By the middle of 2018, the report from which I took Furphy’s quote, had been removed from the Lighthouse web site, along with any mention of lifting educational outcomes from below to above the state average, and any reference of the purpose of the Lighthouse project being to address disadvantage. In response to being asked by the Lighthouse Executive Officer if I thought they were targeting disadvantage, I said that I had originally but was starting to doubt that given the absence of any reference to disadvantage on the website and the content that had been removed. The explanation I was given was: “My mind hasn’t really changed. I’ve said this a thousand times. We want every child in our community to thrive. Now our kids in the middle aren’t doing as well as they should, and our top kids aren’t doing as well as they should. Overall, our university percentages are very low, our school readiness is very low. We certainly do have a long tail that we’re dragging in terms of disadvantage. We

130 have a very high performing school in the Grammar school, but I would say in every other school we are generally underperforming and in every part of our community I think we can do better. Some of the hardest to shift are the most disadvantaged, and it’s almost an injustice just to focus on one part so we’ve always thought we should focus on all of it. It is hard to ignore the great need amongst our disadvantaged kids -- the extent of their hunger, social isolation, marginalisation and so it’s very hard to ignore, it’s very compelling. But we are not a service and we’ve got no intention of competing with clinical responses, but we feel that as a community there is a big response around kindness, connection, engagement, meeting basic needs and putting people in a position where they can participate. Disadvantage is so compelling here that we need to focus on it, but we are fully cognisant of the fact that everyone needs shifting virtually”. Since our discussion, the Lighthouse project’s home page has reverted to acknowledging that the project was created in response to community concerns about poor educational outcomes and persistent disadvantage. 5 Summary In this chapter I have explored what motivated local elites to become actively engaged in addressing the problem of socio-economic inequality when in the past, given the opportunity to do so, they elected not to. In examining the event that energised this group of local elites, I have also revealed that the way they allocate roles and responsibilities amongst themselves and between themselves and others is consistent with the way they have claimed and been accorded the status as mediators. I have detailed through my research a number of instances in which the problem of socio-economic inequality in the community has been raised. As far back as Queen Elizabeth’s visit in 1954 when the council installed a hessian screen to obscure from view the indigenous shanty town on ‘the Flats’, inequality has been a feature in Shepparton. In 1993 when local elites positioned themselves through the Clever Food Conference as the ones to lead regional development, inequality in was significant enough to commit to the vision of a community that “willingly shares the spoils of success”. In 1999, LaTrobe university study linked regional development with increased social polarisation, more precarious jobs, and the depletion of social networks. In 2002, the Fairley Foundation briefed local elites on the problem of increasing socio-economic inequality in the community. In 2004 the FoodBowl Unlimited steering committee gave preference to rejuvenating the district’s irrigation system over improving the educational outcomes of young people. The point of chronicling the history of concerns over socio-economic inequality in Shepparton is to show that claims by local elites to being motivated in 2011 by an epiphany moment in which increasing socio-economic inequality became apparent, are problematic. I have no doubt that this group have genuine and deeply felt concerns in relation to increasing socio-economic inequality in their community and that their sense of being abandoned by government along with their history of “doing things for ourselves” were factors in prompting action. Furthermore, it is also clear that they were drawn to improving the outcomes for young people by their belief that children are the blameless victims of the personal attributes and behavioural choices of their

131 parents as well as an education system that has failed them. However, I contend that the primary reason local elites engaged in addressing socio-economic inequality in 2011 when previously they had chosen not to, was that their role as essential mediators for what the community needed was being publicly challenged. The essence of this challenge is in two competing partial narratives. As the architects and promotors of business-led regional development local elites are deeply invested in the notion that the benefits of business-led regional development flow down through participation. Their narrative is of the region as a thriving centre of corporate food production, ripe for investment and keen to welcome skilled labour. Alford’s presentation in 2011 challenged this perspective, claiming that the local economy was driven by welfare and that much of the business investment and skills attracted to Shepparton were involved in providing social support. To warrant their investment these businesses promote a narrative of Shepparton as profoundly disadvantaged. For local elites this narrative threatened in three ways -- it muted their efforts to attract investment and skilled workers, it cast doubts on the efficacy of business-led regional development creating benefits for the broader community, and it challenged the notion that local elites were essential mediators with a unique understanding of what was best for the community. That a narrative of Shepparton being disadvantaged would mute efforts to attract business investment and ‘human capital’ to the region is not disputed. Most of my participants talk about the difficulty of recruiting and how people commute to Shepparton rather than relocate. Similarly, that the efficacy of business-led regional development was being questioned was the catalyst in 2014 for the C4GS to commissioning a report to explore the repositioning of Shepparton from disadvantaged back to thriving. The third threat to the status of local elites was the ‘collective impact’ governance model proposed at the 2011 philanthropic summit. ‘Collective impact’ is a model of governance developed for neoliberal philanthropy. Its aim is to improve the return on philanthropic funding by overcoming the resistance to their initiatives as they encounter the existing practices and relationships of those in the ‘witches brew’. Key to ‘collective impact’ is the sharing of proprietary data and the reverting to subject matter experts to determine what actions need to be taken. For local elites ‘collective impact’ threatened their relevance as mediators by preferencing expert knowledge over local knowledge. The nature of this threat is clearly evident in the neologisms they use to distinguish their version of ‘collective impact’ from that which was promoted in 2011. In representing to government their model, local elites use the term ‘community originated collective impact’. Whereas when they refer to the model used to govern the Children and Youth Partnership which similarly aims to improve the educational outcomes and social connectedness of young people and has been adopted in each of Victoria’s regions other than Shepparton, local elites use the term ‘government prescribed collective impact’. As is evident in these neologisms, the distinction between the two centres on who decides what is best for the community. In this chapter I have also shown how local elites allocate roles and responsibilities amongst themselves and between themselves and others. Within their region, local elites are the social actors that Nikolas Rose claims have replaced local councils as intermediaries in advanced liberal democracies enabling the state to create

132 a distance between the decisions of formal political institutions and civil society such that they self-govern. Local elites have claimed and were accorded this status in 1993 through the first of five ‘foundational activities’ which Michel Callon identifies as marking “moments of translation” which include the assignment of roles. As such, local elites see their role as leading an agenda that delivers a strong, business-led regional economy supported by an educated and socially cohesive community. Their commitment to their vision is such that they see everyone else relating to it in a functional sense. That is to say, the community will normalise to it, the government will provide the necessary infrastructure to enable it, educators will prepare graduates who are ‘job ready’, the local council’s strategy will align to it, and parents will encourage their children to aspire to participating in it.

133

Chapter 6 Discussion

“We flew to Canberra the other day on a small aircraft and flew back again. When we left Canberra, it was grey and dark, and it was starting to rain. When we flew over this area the clouds opened up. Below us were the Strathboggie Ranges and there was green and yellow everywhere and I said wow I am so glad I live where I live, it is absolutely beautiful and whilst I do acknowledge that we have issues with disadvantage and inequality, we are working on these, but we need trains, we need hospitals, we need better schooling and we’ve been forgotten by government”. In addition to the privilege evident in this account of one member of the clique returning to Shepparton, there are four recurring themes that help inform how the local elites in my study understand, rationalise and look to address the kinds of socio- economic inequalities that appear to have divided their community whilst transitioning to a corporate mode of food production. These four themes are -- the positive correlation between Shepparton’s appearance and people’s sense of community wellbeing, that addressing disadvantage and inequality in the community is within the bailiwick of locals, that focusing on business-led regional development creates jobs and jobholders, and that Shepparton has been forgotten by government. The importance of developing a nuanced understanding of how local elites engage with socio-economic inequality in their communities is that in advanced neoliberal economies such as Australia, it is often these actors who claim a unique perspective on what their communities’ need and who mediate, on behalf of their communities, economic, cultural and social resources earmarked by governments to address disadvantage. In doing so, these actors firstly influence how both disadvantage and people experiencing disadvantage are viewed, and secondly determine which forms of disadvantage receive their attention and therefore which ones are left largely neglected. In this chapter I firstly summarise my findings in relation to questions posed in the introduction of this thesis. Specifically, how do local elites understand socio- economic inequality, attribute causality to its increased prevalence, privilege for attention some forms of inequality over others, and describe and attribute responsibility for its amelioration. I then discuss the contribution my work has made to two streams of anthropological scholarship -- the anthropology of elites and governmentality studies. In the first stream, I have applied the scholarship of Janine Wedel and have responded to her call for a new theoretical framework by melding Actor Network Theory and existing elite theory to identify and provide a thick description of the modus operandi of elites that Wedel describes as ‘influence elites’ operating as a flex net. Where Wedel links this formation operating at a national and transnational level to a crisis in democracy, with elites often working in parallel with governments, the elites in my study who employ the same modus operandi to both champion the cause of their community and to retain their status as mediators are crucial in advanced neoliberal economies for governments whose objective it is to have communities self-govern. In the second stream of scholarship, I have responded to Tania Li’s call for ‘analytics of governmentality’ that include real concrete examples of governmental power being exercised. My research adds to governmental studies by

134 providing a thick description of the implementation of an intervention, specifically examining ethnographically the resistance and rejection these interventions are exposed to when they encounter what Foucault describes as the ‘witches brew’, the existing assemblages of people, locations and practices that resist being reconfigured. My study shows that in addition to resistance and rejection, these initiatives are also prone to being appropriated and modified, sometimes resulting in contradictory and perverse consequences. I conclude this chapter with a brief discussion of future directions for research. Having shown how endeavouring to address socio-economic inequality through governmental interventions introduces complex conflicts of interest within communities that ultimately render these interventions only partially effective, I discuss complexity as an additional limit to governmentality and suggest fields in which efforts to govern at a distance are fraught. 1. Findings As I have shown in chapter four, in the context of regional development socio- economic inequality has been understood by academics to be a form of disadvantage that flows down through discriminatory practices that preclude some people from having the same access as others to housing, health-care education and employment. In Shepparton, one manifestation of this understanding of the discriminatory nature of socio-economic inequality is that parts of the community who previously were able to access low-skilled and seasonal employment or were attracted to the region with this prospect in mind, have been blocked from participating by structural changes in the local economy. An example of this phenomena is the contracting out of ‘picking and packing’ jobs, previously recruited directly by individual growers, to labour hire firms who preference employing backpackers and foreign farmworkers rather than locals. Another example of how discriminatory practices flow down from structural changes is that reskilling to meet the new needs of large-scale horticulture and dairying involves incurring additional costs and fees that are beyond the means of many who have been displaced by restructuring and are receiving welfare. Whilst the local elites central to my research acknowledge that the nature of work has changed as a consequence of transitioning to corporate food production, they do not see the increasing socio-economic inequality in their community as a discriminatory outcome of the practices of corporate food production. Instead, most see socio-economic inequality as a self-inflicted form of disadvantage brought on by people’s behavioural choices and personal attributes, mainly their lack of a work ethic. This perspective of socio-economic inequality is not uncommon and, in Australia, tends to be reinforced by two governmental interventions -- the provision of welfare and Australia’s ‘progressive’ tax system 56. As I have discussed, Australia’s welfare system is based on a practice known as ‘mutual obligation’. Simply put, to receive social welfare payments people are required to undertake tasks and engage in certain activities. For those receiving unemployment benefits (Newstart) or for a parent caring for young children (Parenting Payments)

56 A progressive tax is a tax in which the tax rate increases as the taxable amount increases.

135 these tasks and activities involve actively looking for work or undergoing vocational training, both of which incur costs, such as study fees, transport and childcare. This embedded conditionality in Australia’s welfare system is predicated on the belief that were it not for some punitive incentive people would choose to remain on welfare rather than seek work. However, as Tania Li observed in her essay ‘Governmentality’ (2007), when the practices of governmental interventions intersect and overlap, unintended consequences can arise. An example of this phenomena in Shepparton is the intersecting of the welfare and tax systems. Both Newstart and Parenting Payments are income tested. As a consequence, when income from other sources exceeds a predetermined threshold, welfare payments are reduced. For single welfare recipients the threshold at present is $162 per fortnight and once breached, welfare payments are reduced by 50 cents for every dollar. Whilst Australia’s tax rates are ‘progressive’, the tax liability accrued from casual and seasonal work is calculated at the highest marginal tax rate, currently 47%. Accordingly, welfare recipients engaging in seasonal work, or any other casual or part-time work, are taxed at the highest marginal tax rate for the additional income earned, whilst losing 50 cents of welfare payments for every dollar earned over $162. This often leaves welfare recipients worse-off than had they not worked at all. As a consequence, welfare recipients can find themselves in a position in which they need to carefully balance their engagement in work activities such as seasonal work to comply with the mutual obligation requirements of the welfare system without incurring an absolute loss of income through the tax effect of being engaged in any work other than full-time employment. Hence, welfare recipients are disincentivised by intersecting governmental practices of the welfare and tax systems to undertake seasonal work. This calculus of the costs and benefits of paid work is often seen by the local elites in my study as evidence that people receiving welfare lack a work ethic or see welfare as a viable alternative source of income to be exploited, evoking the comment that welfare recipients “find themselves in a welfare system and are trying to find the best way to extract what they can from it”. It also reinforces the false notion that the welfare system is overly generous, a point that I will return to shortly. As such, the local elites in my study tend to treat those on welfare as non-functioning members of the community who they regard as making choices that are contrary to a rationality that presumes people will reskill themselves on their own volition to the requirements of the market. As Dreyfus and Rabinow point out, seeing people in this way creates anomalies in the minds of those who determine what is normal, causing them to claim a legitimacy in being the people best placed to administer and supervise them. This, according to Dreyfus and Rabinow, is a powerful and insidious form of domination. As discussed in chapters two and four, a clear example of people on welfare being administered and supervised in this way are the place-based welfare trials that ran from 2011 to 2015 in Shepparton. Included in these trials was an income management initiative where people’s welfare payments were quarantined for specific purposes and only made accessible at certain retail outlets via ‘basics card’. Whilst intended to ensure welfare funds were not expended on alcohol, gambling and pornography, this approach has been associated with creating a secondary market for card-accessed welfare and has denied access to less expensive food and essentials items from non- aligned sources.

136 Whilst the view that socio-economic inequality relates to poor choices and personal attributes is not novel, the local elites in my study nuance this understanding by seeing inequality as a form of disadvantage which is harmful to their vision for the region. In this sense, rather than flowing down discriminatively as a consequence of the changed demands of capital, they see its effects percolate up by recasting the region as one of profound disadvantage, making it more difficult for them to attract both the business investment and skilled labour force needed to advance regional development. That local elites have come to regard socio-economic inequality in this way is evident in them seeing the need to change their mantra. Where they once legitimized their focus on business-led regional development with the mantra “what is good for business is good for Shepparton”, local elites recruiting support from the business community for initiatives aimed at addressing increasing socio-economic inequality use the mantra “what is good for Shepparton is ultimately good for business”. I have argued in chapter four that key to understanding how local elites problematise socio-economic inequality as a self-inflicted form of disadvantage that percolates through the community in ways that are harmful to business, is understanding business-led regional development as an expression of biocapitalism. In this context, local elites as the promotors of regional development use vision statements to set aspirational norms to which people are expected to normalize if they are to be considered as functioning members of the community. Ever since the formation of the Clever Food Committee in 1993, local elites have mounted an argument that there is a symbiotic relationship between a strong thriving local economy and a strong community. This nexus is evident in the vision for the region developed by the Clever Food Committee that stated: “By 2001, the Goulburn Valley will be recognised as the world’s finest quality source of clean, wholesome food and clever food people. It will have achieved the environmental balance, the educational excellence and social cohesion to achieve this goal” (Carr and Ryan 1997). This relationship between business and the community is also clear in the vision of the Committee for Greater Shepparton, a present-day reincarnation of the Clever Food Committee founded in 2014 by this clique of local elites when they sensed broad commitment to their vision was floundering. This committee’s vision is that the region is: "the Australian centre for dairy and horticulture, exporting reliable premium quality fresh and value-added produce via innovative practices and world class irrigation systems. As a major business centre, we will be connected to the world through modern infrastructure and supported by a thriving and educated community that celebrates its rich culture and diversity" (C4GS Annual Report 2015-2016). Whilst the relationship between the local economy and the community articulated in these vision statements is symbiotic, what is envisaged in both is not representative of a mutualism where both business and the community benefit. In both cases, business- led regional development is contingent upon the support of a labour reserve that is ‘job ready’. That my participants claim to have more jobs than people who are ‘job- ready’, and that they express concern that the reputation of Shepparton is detracting

137 from their efforts to attract the skills they need, is indicative of their belief that people on welfare are not only seen to have failed to normalise and grasp the opportunities presented by regional development but also in not doing so are seen as holding back the region’s transition by sullying its reputation as a place to live and work. This finding that local elites problematise socio-economic inequality as a self-inflicted form of disadvantage caused by people failing to normalise to their vision and producing harmful effects that stifle regional development is evident in the way they describe the drivers of increasing socio-economic inequality in the region. Furthermore, by seeing young people as the blameless victims of the unwillingness of their parents and grandparents to normalise, local elites see no moral dilemma in “giving up on anyone over twenty-four” and preferencing for their attention improving the educational outcomes and social connectedness of young people in order that they become ‘job- ready’. When I asked my participants why socio-economic inequality was increasing at a faster rate in Shepparton compared to other regional cities in Victoria, I was told that there were four connected factors. The first is the changing demographics brought about by the migration from metropolitan Melbourne of people receiving welfare payments, principally Newstart and Parenting Payments. Some of my participants refer to this phenomenon as ‘welfaring the bush’ which they assert is a deliberate intervention of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) aimed at reducing the pressure on social housing in Melbourne. Others believe Shepparton has been made more vulnerable to “importing other people’s problems” by its lower cost of living, its proximity to Melbourne, and an over-supply of social housing resulting from the council rezoning agricultural land for residential use. I have been unable to validate whether or not this approach has been taken by DHHS but those of my participants who work with disadvantaged groups in Shepparton and are outside this clique tend to think not. Whether or not internal migration was a significant factor driving socio-economic inequality is unclear. However, by characterizing those who come to Shepparton as “very dislocated, single mums with no social structures, who are likely to have bigger families, earlier”, some local elites perpetuate a narrative of welfare recipients as people who have made poor life choices and are undeserving. Compounding the problem of what this group sees as an influx into the community of people who are unlikely to participate economically, the local elites I spoke with expressed deep concerns about their children leaving to study and work, and not returning, believing that the region offers fewer opportunities The second factor said to be driving the increasing level of socio-economic inequality in Shepparton is the belief that welfare begets welfare. Census data over the last three decades has shown a structural shift in the region’s economy that was not envisaged by the Clever Food Committee in 1993. It is argued that because of the number of people in the community receiving welfare, Shepparton has become a prime site for those engaged in providing social support services. People who have come to Shepparton in recent years to do business include a large number of national not-for-profits who compete for government funding with home-grown not-for-profits in providing social assistance. Since 2010 the economic value produced by this sector has grown by 60%. The welfare reform trials alone accounted for an estimated $20m of additional welfare related funding flowing into the city over the space of four years.

138 Local elites recognise these not-for-profits as being no different to any other business. Rather than looking to ameliorate disadvantage, local elites claim the sector has every incentive to look for new ways of categorising disadvantage in order to attract government funding. This view is widely held and is even acknowledged as having some foundation by those of my participants working in the social services sector. This is problematic for local elites who find themselves conflicted and whilst they are at pains to emphasise that they do not compete in this sector many hold governance roles on the local boards of service providers. Furthermore, having taken control of the Lighthouse project with the expressed aim to address socio-economic inequality, local elites have established a not-for-profit, employ more than a dozen people and have developed long-term strategic plans not unlike those of the institutions they criticise. This perspective of not-for-profits being conflicted, aligns with a large body of literature, particularly from the US where welfare reforms have similarly recast the role of not-for-profits in responding to community needs. The third factor cited for the increasing rate of socio-economic inequality in Shepparton is that the welfare system is overly generous and is a disincentive to people becoming economically productive. This understanding aligns to a neoliberal argument that welfare is a bad thing and should not be used to redistribute wealth. It is a commonly held perspective and, as I have shown, features in the Australian government’s inquiry into intergenerational welfare dependency conducted in 2018. Newstart and Parenting Payments are the principal welfare payments made in Shepparton. For singles with no dependants, Newstart is $559 per fortnight and for partnered recipients the allowance is $504 each per fortnight. To put the adequacy of these payments into perspective, in their submission to the South Australian government’s select committee on intergenerational dependence, the South Australian Council of Social Services claimed that those on Newstart receive $134.98 below the poverty line per fortnight and, over the past twenty years Newstart has declined in real terms from 24% of the average wage in South Australia to 19%. Not only do local elites consider that the level of payment is too high they interpret the behaviours of those on welfare working to preserve their benefits as an indicator of the conditionality in the system encouraging people to only do what is necessary to continue to receive the benefit. The fourth factor in explaining increasing socio-economic disadvantage in the region is intergenerational welfare dependency. According to DHHS, young people aged between twenty-two and twenty-four are 2.9 times more likely to be on income support if for over eighty-percent of their childhood, their parents or guardians were receiving welfare payments. Despite the fact that most vulnerable people in Shepparton move in and out of the welfare system, there is a persistent and widely held view amongst local elites that links parents’ and grandparents’ behavioural choices and personal attributes deterministically with a lack of aspiration in their children to seek work. It is generally held that growing up in welfare dependency limits the opportunities of children to participate in society, making them more likely to similarly be persistently on welfare. In speaking with those involved in providing support services, their view is that whilst intergenerational welfare dependency is a factor, the numbers are low and that the anecdotes of a few have been woven into the fabric of fact that over emphasises the size of this group.

139 In relation to ameliorating socio-economic inequality I have shown in chapters four and five that local elites prioritise improving the educational outcomes and social connectedness of young people. I have argued that their focus on improving the access of young people to education and making them ‘job-ready’ can be reconciled with their commitment to the notion that the benefits of business-led regional development flow through to the community via participation. Local elites see the increase of socio-economic inequality as an indicator that people are not grasping the opportunities being presented by business-led regional development. Nikolas Rose argues (1999a, 192) that in defending interventions [such as business-led regional development] the promotors are more likely to see any shortcomings between what was anticipated and what was delivered, as an implementation issue that is best addressed by experts, specifically the promotors of the intervention. In this case, the benefits of business-led regional development not flowing equitably through the provision of enough suitable jobs is switched by local elites to being a failure of parents and educators to adequately prepare people for the jobs on offer. This argument aligns with the view local elites have of socio-economic inequality percolating up and stifling business-led regional development by denying business of a job-ready source of labour. There is a parallel logic that some of my participants proffer when justifying their preferencing of education and social connectedness. Given that they believe one of the factors driving the increase in socio-economic inequality is intergenerational welfare dependency and that focusing on young people enables them to envisage a positive future that is unable to be envisaged under the negative influence of their home environment, this preferencing by local elites is seen as breaking this nexus between dysfunctional parents and grandparents, and their blameless children. Central to the way local elites propose and describe solutions for the amelioration of socio-economic inequality is their understanding of ‘social capital’. As discussed in chapter five, local elites were exposed to Putnam’s thinking on social capital during a presentation at the 2011 Sir Andrew and Lady Fairley Foundation philanthropic summit. Of particular resonance for local elites is Putnam’s focus on building trust, norms and networks within a community. Whilst only a few local elites use the term ‘social capital’, they do describe their involvement and the involvement of their broader network of like-minded people who are not in the clique, in ways that are consistent with the previously cited paper from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (Edwards 2004) titled ‘Measuring Social Capital’. In this paper, the government promotes the benefits of those with means in communities building linking and bridging social capital in order that people experiencing disadvantage can pull themselves out of their circumstances. Accordingly, much of the approach to addressing socio-economic inequality in Shepparton relies heavily on local elites calling on their broader networks to volunteer and work with young people, specifically through providing classroom support in schools, mentoring young people and providing work experience. In what appears to be an ironic twist, in claiming, being accorded and preserving their elite status, local elites acting as a flex net also use their social capital in ways that are more consistent with Bourdieu’s perspective. Bourdieu describes social capital as actual or potential resources that accrue to individuals from them belonging to durable networks (Bourdieu 1986). Bourdieu used social capital as a tool

140 in critiquing capitalism -- proposing that dominant classes reproduce their status by investing in and using social networks to their advantage. Whilst none of the concept’s foundational theorists claim social capital to be efficacious in addressing inequality, Bourdieu is explicit in associating the use of social capital by ‘upper-class people’ with increasing socio-economic inequality (Ferragina 2010, 78). In discussing how this group understand and look to ameliorate socio-economic inequality, I am not suggesting that their perspectives differ from the broader community in Shepparton. As I have highlighted on a number of occasions, the views of my participants are commonly held amongst political conservatives. However, as mediators for economic, cultural and social resources their perspectives are important as they influence the efficacy of initiatives aimed at addressing socio-economic inequality in the community if only by preferencing some and neglecting others. It is in this context that I will now discuss the contribution my research has made to both the anthropology of elites and governmentality studies. 2. Contribution Janine Wedel, whose work on elites is well cited within and beyond anthropology, has advanced an argument that contemporary elites organise and operate in ways that undermine democracy, warranting scholars to rethink how they study elite power. Wedel’s 2017 work in particular adds to a body of scholarship concerning a new set of formations of elite power that emerged in the last two decades of the twentieth century. The catalyst for this new formation of what Wedel calls ‘influence elites’ was a confluence of disruptors. Particularly relevant to my study was the convergence of the increasing globalisation of food systems, the corporatisation of local government, and the desire for governments in advanced liberal democracies to have civil society self-regulate. According to Wedel, as a consequence of these disruptors, positions of power previously thought to be stable have become unsettled, creating a power vacuums at the top of government and non-government institutions that are filled by a formation of elites who are no longer identifiable by their positions in networks and hierarchies, but by the way they organise and operate as connectors within networks. In her paper discussing this phenomenon, Wedel examines three formations of ‘influence elites’-- think tanks, consulting firms and flex nets. According to Wedel, flex nets are a formation of influence elites that fuse official and private power most completely and represent the greatest threat to democratic accountability. Wedel’s three case studies are drawn from mainly publicly available documents, reports, insider accounts and reviewed articles. Wedel concludes from her study that each case exposed gaps in existing elite theory sufficient enough to justify the need for a new theoretical framework concerning elite studies. Of particular concern to Wedel are two gaps in understanding influence elites -- how these actors mesh different sectors and domains in order to achieve their aims, and shifts in the balance of power between diverse elites who are far more fragmented than existing theoretical frameworks presume. To achieve this, Wedel calls for further empirical studies of how influence elites organize themselves in, outside, and across government, corporate and private entities, with an urgent focus on the finance and technology sectors. Wedel’s specific interest is in how these national and transnational non-government organisations

141 achieve their aims, particularly through being incorporated into policy making even though they hold no electorally accountable position. I have taken Wedel’s call for further empirical work and applied her scholarship using a theoretical framework that melds Actor Network Theory (ANT) and existing elite theory. Instead of examining elites at a national or international level, I have applied this framework to the more bounded context of business-led regional development as a governmental intervention. As I explained in the introduction to this thesis, one of the reasons I chose a place-focused approach was that it enabled me to better observe how differently situated elites relate to each other over time. By using a melded theoretical framework, I was able to reveal a group of elites who, using conventional elite theory, would be difficult to identify. Furthermore, by examining an historical trace of the interconnected ‘foundational activities’ involving this clique, I was able to show how they claimed, were accorded and preserved their status, how they organise and operate, and how their shared values are informed and perpetuated, despite individual membership of this clique changing. Reflective of Wedel’s observation of elites being far more diverse than existing theoretical frameworks accommodate, at the centre of my study is a small group of everyday people leading ordinary lives who, as a clique, wield significant power and influence over the fortunes of a community of sixty-six thousand people in regional Victoria. My study is a thick, emic description of how this powerful clique of local elites have organised and operated to achieve their shared vision of business-led regional development and to preserve their status as mediators. Like Wedel’s example of a flex net in Iceland who transitioned the economy from one based on fishing to one in which Iceland was a global financial power, the clique in my study were accorded their status through being seen as the architects in transitioning the Goulburn Valley’s economy away from grower-owned horticulture and dairy co-operatives to one in which the region was a centre of corporate food production fully integrated into a global food system. The catalyst for this clique claiming and being accorded this status was the destabilising of power in local councils following reforms to the public sector introduced by the Victorian state government between 1992 and 1994. These reforms saw elected councillors, a number of whom were the forebears of my participants, being replaced by commissioners appointed by the state government. By examining the ‘foundational activities’ involving local elites, I have been able to show how this clique recruited other elites with diverse interests, to the notion that only they have the sensibility and commitment to lead regional development. My research also shows the significant role this formation of ‘influence elites’ plays in circumstances where governments not only put distance between the decisions of political institutions and civil society but are also physically remote from sections of civil society. As I explained in chapter three, governments who lack a physical presence and choose to by-pass local councils to garner place-based perspectives, are likely to consult with local elites who, under the guise of providing insights, use the opportunity to influence how governments deploy economic, cultural and social resources in their community. The importance of understanding these engagements as manifestations of changes to political structures rather than ‘fire-side chats’ between the state and other social actors “shovel-ready for any dollars floating

142 past” is that they are prone to becoming alternative forms of government that are neither representative of the community nor accountable to it. By focusing on local elites engaged in foundational activities, my research also contributes to Wedel’s second concern regarding the need to understand the balance of power between elites and the circumstances under which they compete or co- operate. As I explained in the introduction, my study has orbited around two differently situated groups of elites who initially partnered and then locked-horns as they both endeavoured to address increasing socio-economic inequality in the region through improving the educational outcomes and social connectedness of young people. The first group is the clique of local elites central to my research whose narrative of Shepparton as a thriving economy has been used to drive business investment and attract skills. The second is a loosely affiliated group of philanthropists, educators, academics and social assistance providers who, in order to justify their involvement in addressing socio-economic inequality or to garner funding, promote a narrative of Shepparton as profoundly disadvantaged. The local elites regard the other group as ‘outsiders’ who have the requisite expertise to meaningfully address increasing socio-economic inequality but whose narrative of disadvantage is an overamplification that reflects poorly on their town and whose governance model challenges their claim to be uniquely placed to know what is best for the community. The other group need local elites as volunteers and to help build bridging and linking social capital in the community but feel that their expertise is disrespected and, in the case of neoliberal philanthropists, see business-led regional development as an ineffective approach to addressing increasing socio-economic inequality in the community. My research shows that whilst both groups shared the same vision of improving educational outcomes to better prepare young people for work and initially cooperated in this endeavour, they quickly clashed over control of the project which eventually shifted to the clique of local elites. The importance of this observation in responding to the second of Wedel’s concerns about gaps in our knowledge regarding ‘influence elites’ is that the circumstances that led to elites cooperating or competing are most likely contingent on whether they are endeavouring to reconfigure balances of power or resist efforts by others to do so. This leads me to the contribution my research has made to governmentality studies. Unlike Janine Wedel who called for a new theoretical framework to better understand this formation of elites who are characterised by the way they organise and operate, Tania Li has called for a reorientation of the analytics of governmentality -- one that combines the study of the rationality through which governmental interventions are conceived, with an ethnographic examination of real instances of governmental power being exercised. As I mentioned in chapter one, Li is not the only person to call for ethnographic studies of governmentality -- there is a larger body of work including that of James Ferguson, David Mosse and Akhil Gupta that similarly point to the need to understand governmentality in practice. In stressing the importance of governmentality being examined ethnographically, Li asserts that without doing so, the effects of how targets of governmental interventions respond, how they accommodate, resist and reject elements that aim to reconfigure their conduct are not accounted for in determining the overall effects of the intervention. Li’s argument is grounded in the assertion that

143 governmental power, which is concerned with people’s wellbeing, is not as homogeneous and totalising a concept that it has been taken to be and that whilst governmental interventions do have effects, they mostly fall short of expectations of the rationality through which they were conceived. The reason for this phenomenon, according to Li, is that governmental interventions are limited, mainly through being resisted and rejected by those whose conduct the interventions aim to reconfigure. To examine governmental power ethnographically, Li suggests scholars adopt a three tiered approach to their analysis -- by examining programs, the practices of governmentality that render programs technical and make them able to be implemented, and the effects on intervention when they intersect and overlap with other practices and processes that act upon it. For Li, there are four axes of inquiry that help focus an ethnography of governmentality that exposes the limits of this form of power. The first axis is developing an understanding of the responses, reactions and effects incited by those being targeted by governmental interventions. This axis raises questions regarding the actions provoked by the intervention, the circumstances and conditions that initiate these actions, and the effects of the actions. The second axis of inquiry is an examination of the existing relations and processes that governmental interventions endeavour to rearrange in order to reconfigure people’s behaviour. Examining how the practices of governmentality intersect and overlap with other practices and processes show that some simply resist being configured, limiting the effect of the intervention. The third axis is particularly pertinent to the local elites central to my study. This axis examines how those targeted by governmental interventions and those whose practices intersect and overlap with the practices of the interventions, reflect upon them and consider the inherent risks and rewards. Through this axis, the unintended consequences and contradictory actions that limit governmental interventions are revealed. The fourth axis of inquiry, suggested by Li, is an examination of how the promotors respond to their governmental interventions being challenged and critiqued. Li identifies the co-existence of other programs, the expectations generated from the program, and the gap between what is expected and what is delivered as possible sources of critical challenge. In examining this axis, Li alerts scholars to the possibility that governmental interventions can switch direction as their promotors recast them to close them off from critique. In responding to Li’s call for analytics of governmentality that combine the study of governmental rationality and a real example of governmental power being exercised, my research adds to governmentality studies by providing a thick description of the resistance encountered by their promotors. As previously mentioned, my research focused on the Lighthouse project in Shepparton, a program aimed at improving the educational outcomes and social connectedness of young people. It is important however to stress that my research is not a study of the Lighthouse project or a critique of its effectiveness. This study is an examination of the effect this philanthropically-led intervention had on what Foucault terms the ‘witches brew’ -- “the existing assemblages of people, locations and practices that resist being reconfigured”. My research focused specifically on two of the four axes of enquiry proposed by Li. Firstly, the responses, reactions and effects triggered by the prospect of neoliberal philanthropists rather than local elites being the ones who would determine

144 how best to address increasing socio-economic inequality in the community. Secondly, the reflections of local elites concerning the risks posed to their vision for the region by the practice of neoliberal philanthropy publicly airing the extent of socio-economic inequality in the region in order to justify their involvement in its amelioration. By examining the reflections of those who attended the 2011 Sir Andrew and Lady Fairley Foundation philanthropic summit at which the Lighthouse project was first proposed, my research provides an emic perspective on the reactions of those whose governance practices neoliberal philanthropy endeavoured to reconfigure. Where Andrew Fairley had aimed to achieve a more collaborative and engaged way of addressing community issues, the governance practices of his proposal polarised groups. Local leaders of the not-for-profits working with vulnerable people felt criticised for “not doing a good enough job” and for “wasting philanthropic money”. Council bureaucrats and educators saw themselves being conscripted to the strategies of neoliberal philanthropy rather than continuing to develop their own. Local elites saw themselves relegated to becoming supporters of the efforts of people whom they not only regarded as outsiders but also, in the case of the not-for-profit sector and educators, as having contributed to increasing socio-economic inequality in their community. Accordingly, the initial response from parts of the ‘witches brew’ in Shepparton, specifically the not-for-profit sector and educators, was to engage with neoliberal philanthropy, but to do so in ways that neither compromised existing relationships nor caused them to share their proprietary data openly. ‘Collective impact’, the governance model promoted by Andrew, required that shared data be used by subject-matter-experts to determine which community initiatives would be supported with philanthropic funding. Accordingly, by denying the project access to their proprietary data, not-for-profits and local and state government bureaucrats seriously compromised the project’s original objectives. Local elites in Shepparton, who had been aware of increasing socio-economic inequality in their community for some time but had determined to put their energies elsewhere, were provoked into partnering with neoliberal philanthropists in order to counter any sense that they lacked the competency or will to meaningfully address the socio-economic issues facing their community. Evident in each of these responses is the point made by Li that reflexivity can not only be investigated ethnographically, but by doing so, “contradictory and even perverse” effects produced by governmental interventions are revealed. As I have shown in chapter three, local elites describe their community as having been abandoned by governments and subjected to the consequences of decisions made in remote board rooms of corporations. They see philanthropy, the community support sector and governments as ‘outsiders’ prone to imposing their will on the community, jealously protecting their own interests and, in the case of not-for-profits and educators, as being part of the problem. Accordingly, having initially partnered with philanthropy, as I showed in chapter five, local elites took control of the Lighthouse project, excluded this group from its governance, and reconstituted the initiative such that it better fitted the way this clique has organised and operated for over twenty-five years. The contradictory and perverse effects that Li claims can be revealed by examining responses such as this, are manifestly evident in two areas. However,

145 before I discuss these, it is important to reiterate that my observations are not a critique of the Lighthouse project, nor have I intended to infer that the reconfiguration of the Lighthouse project is inferior to what its foundational promotors envisaged. My intent is just to show how examining the resistance to governmental interventions can reveal contradictory and perverse outcomes. In the case of the Lighthouse project, the first of these relates to how local elites understand the drivers of socio-economic inequality. As previously mentioned, local elites attribute increasing socio-economic inequality in the region to four factors, one of which is that not-for-profits providing social assistance are businesses with a vested interest in increasing numbers of people requiring welfare. Local elites argue that the funding model for these organisations results in them competing with each other for government tenders and holding client information tightly lest they lose some of their competitive advantage. This belief underpins one of the design elements of the Lighthouse project which in part diffuses this competitive environment by establishing a backbone organisation through which data is shared and initiatives that require multi-disciplinary co-ordination are supported. In taking control of the Lighthouse project, building their own proprietary datasets, and using these to construct and run their own programs, it could be argued that in resisting the threat posed by ‘collective impact’, local elites have created a not- for-profit, social assistance provider that competes with others for funding and that has a vested interest in increasing the number of people requiring their services. The second contradiction evident in the way local elites responded to neoliberal philanthropy’s original proposal relates to how socio-economic inequality is understood. As I have shown in chapter four, local elites acknowledge increasing socio- economic inequality but argue that Shepparton is no different to anywhere else, that the problem is systemic, complex and not of their making. When ‘collective impact’ was proposed at the 2011 philanthropic summit, it was promoted as an approach that dealt specifically which issues such as socio-economic inequality which were complex and ubiquitous. Having taken control of the Lighthouse project, local elites developed their own version of collective impact which they distinguish as ‘community originated’. In this model, a sensibility for place takes primacy over expert knowledge in an endeavour aimed at addressing an issue that local elites acknowledge is both complex and not unique to their community. 3. Future Directions I was initially attracted to Shepparton by what appeared to be a paradox. In a community that has successfully managed the transition from one mode of food production to another in order to remain relevant, how is it that despite best intentions, a general consensus between elites as to what needed to be done, and an understanding that increasing socio-economic inequality in their community produces damaging social and economic effects more broadly, efforts to meaningfully address the increasing gap between those who live on the Boulevard and those living on welfare in Glory Way have failed to change its trajectory? The conclusion I have drawn from this ethnography is that when governments create distance between the decisions of political institutions and other social actors through mechanisms such as privatisation and the corporatisation of local

146 governments, and seek to govern complex social issues through non-government agencies and unincorporated groups within civil society, they prime powerful self- interests that readily resist and reject governmental practices that overlap and intersect with theirs, particularly if the practice threatens their power and influence as mediators for resources. For me, this introduces a fifth axis for studying the limits of governmentality -- that is, to develop an understanding of the power dynamics within the Foucault’s ‘witches brew’. Such an approach would question how elites claim and are accorded their power and influence, how they have responded in the past to their status being challenged, what issues have provoked a response, what interests are served within the witches brew when governmental interventions are resisted or rejected, appropriated or assimilated. Given my findings confirmed ethnographically that much of what makes governmental interventions uncertain resides in the ‘witches brew’, I believe there is significant value in examining the perspectives of elites who are challenged or whose practices overlap with the practices of other governmental interventions aimed at addressing complex social issues through self-regulating practices. Two fields that appear both appropriate and particularly relevant at this historical juncture are interventions that look to address climate change and ones that aim to reconfigure our responses to health crises. However, before I move into these other fields, I plan to return to a regional context to explore a question I raised with many of my participants. I asked: “If Shepparton was not a town build on self-sufficient entrepreneurship, who would mediate on behalf of the community and, in addressing complex social issues, how would they determine what was best?” My interest in this question is to better understand how the way communities respond to governments encouraging them to self-govern is informed by their history of doing things for themselves. The importance of exploring this question further is that absent a fundamental change of direction in advanced liberal democracies, governance of complex and challenging social issues will continue to involve people who mediate between governments and their local communities. How the sediment laid down in the history of these communities might predispose them to be governed at a distance, inform the way they organise themselves to mediate on behalf of their communities and address competing interests within the “assemblages of people, locations and practices that resist being configured”, is worthy of further study.

147 Definitions and glossary

ABS The Australian Bureau of Statistics is Australia’s national statistical agency. ACTOR NETWORK THEORY (ANT) In this thesis, ANT is a methodological approach to studying associations (actor-networks) that extend beyond humans to include everything that might be associated together: non-humans, non-human entities, phenomena etc. The methodological focus is on how actors become interconnected, fall apart and connect again. BIOCAPITALISM Biocapitalism is the simultaneous capture of value related to the health of populations and the creation of value in terms of private capital. BIOPOLITICS Biopolitics is a distinct form of power that acts on both individuals and populations through the processes of normalisation (see normation). Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP) Bottom-of-the-Pyramid was an approach conceived by C.K. Prahalad, University of Michigan Professor of Corporate Strategy. Prahalad’s thesis was that companies facing saturated markets in industrialised nations could offset poor growth rates, earn profits and reduce poverty by marketing goods and services to communities largely excluded from the reach of global market. CCA Coca-Cola Amatil bought SPC/Ardmona for $490m in 2005 and sold the cannery for $40m in 2019 CLEVER FOOD COMMITTEE The Australian Bureau of Statistics is Australia’s national statistical agency. COMMITTEE FOR GREATER SHEPPARTON The Australian Bureau of Statistics is Australia’s national statistical agency. CORPORATE FOOD PRODUCTION Large-scale vertically integrated businesses with corporate structures and fully incorporated into the supply chains of global food systems. FAIRLEY FOUNDATION Philanthropic foundation for the benefit of communities in the Goulburn Valley. Established by a former managing director of SPC FLEX-NET Flex-net is a neologism used by Wedel to describe elites operating as a dense, self-propelling, informal, and often, long-time trust network that pursues common goals, co-ordinating their efforts inside and outside official strucures. FOODBOWL UNLIMITED As detailed in chapter 3 section 3.3, FoodBowl Unlimited (2004- 2007) was an organisation established by the clique of corporate- identified local elites to examine infrastructure opportunities which resulted in the group successfully partnering with the State Government in a $2billion scheme to rejuvenate the region’s irrigation system FOUNDATIONAL ACTIVITIES Defined as assemblages of people, things, places and ideas that are that form around real, historic and traceable activities. INFLUENCE ELITES Term coined by Janine Wedel to describe people who derive their power through the way they organise and operate, particularly the way that as connectors they intermesh elite hierarchies and networks . LIGHTHOUSE PROJECT The Lighthouse project is a community-initiated program that launched in 2014 for the sole purpose of improving the wellbeing and educational outcomes for young people in Shepparton NEOLIBERAL In my thesis, neoliberalism is an art of government that is not limited to the state. Accordingly, I have used ‘neoliberal’ and its derivatives when referring to practices that favour private enterprise, encourage individual responsibility, and advocate the freeing-up of markets including the deregulation of currencies, and market orient the provision of social welfare. NEOLIBERAL PHILANTHROPY Characterised by foundations pursuing their own agendas through initiatives of their making rather than being grantors for the initiatives of grantees.

148 NEWSTART Newstart Allowance is the main income support payment for people who are unemployed and looking for work. At the time of writing, the Newstart Allowance was $560 per fortnight. The much broader movement referred to by my participant relates to single parents who are unemployed and receiving a Parenting Payment of $780 per fortnight moving onto Newstart when their youngest child attains the age of 8 years old NORMATION Foucault argues that disciplinary normalisation consists first of all in positing an optimal model to which people are encouraged to move. In this context, normalisation is conforming to an optimal norm and being abnormal is being incapable of conforming to that norm. To acknowledge that there is an originally prescriptive character giving the norm primacy in determining what is normal, Foucault to uses the term ‘normation’ rather than normalisation PARENTING PAYMENT Parenting Payment of $780 per fortnight is means tested, with recipients moving onto Newstart when their youngest child attains the age of 8 years old. PLACE-BASED WELFARE REFORM TRIALS Australian government initiative which centred on trialling increased (2011 - 2015) conditionality being placed on welfare recipients in order to continue to receive welfare payments. POWER ELITES Term coined by Charles Wright Mills to describe people who derive their power through occupying positions at the top of institutions. PRACTICES OF GOVERNMENTALITY References in this thesis to ‘practices of governmentality’ are based on Michel Foucault’s understanding of the concept as an “ensemble formed by the institutions, procedures, analysis and reflections, the calculations and tactics that allow the exercise of this specific albeit complex form of power, which has as its target populations, as its principle form of knowledge political economy, and as its essential technical means apparatuses of security” (Foucault 1991a, 102) SPC/ARDMONA Shepparton Fruit Preserving Company is primarily a cannery. The co- operative was established in 1918 and became SPC/Ardmona following a merger with the Ardmona Fruit Co-operative in 2003/4 ‘WITCHES BREW’ Foucault uses this term to describe the existing assemblages of people, locations and practices that resist being reconfigured and account in part for the gap between what was planned and what is delivered through governmental interventions SUBJECTIFICATION By subjectification, I mean the discursive process through which a person’s subjectivity is constructed. As part of my research, I examine the use of discourse in creating local elites, undeserving welfare recipients, victims of intergenerational welfare dependency, and underperforming local, state and federal governments. . .

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Author/s: Rose, Bruce Thomas

Title: The uncertain relationship between social capital and inequality in the fields of corporate food production

Date: 2021

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