The Lucky Country 50 Years On

THE LUCKY COUNTRY 50 YEARS ON 2014 CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS INDEPENDENT SCHOLARS ASSOCIATION OF AUSTRALIA INC The Lucky Country 50 Years On 2014 Conference Proceedings Independent Scholars Association of Australia Inc ISBN 978-0-9807641-7-8 ISSN 1444-0881 Published by the Independent Scholars Association of Australia Inc in 2015 Copyright © 2015 Independent Scholars Association of Australia Inc Copyright of each paper reverts to the author on publication. Reproduction and communication for other purposes: Except as permitted under the Act, no part of this volume may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or communicated in any form or by any means without prior written permission. All requests for reproduction or communication should be made to ISAA: PO Box 268, Canberra City ACT 2601, Australia www.isaa.org.au info@isaa.org.au Editor: Gretchen Poiner Design: Catherine Rogers Cover design: Catherine Rogers Production: Julie Bozza Cover photograph: Cover image reproduced with kind permission of Penguin Books Pty Ltd, Ringwood, Australia from the 1964 reprint of the first edition (1964) of The Lucky Country by Donald Horne. It features Albert Tucker's painting, the early Penguin logo and the price of eight shillings and sixpence. Printed in Australia on Envi 50% Recycled Carbon Neutral paper by Create + Print Views expressed in these papers are those of the authors and are not necessarily shared by the editor or by ISAA. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 1 Gretchen Poiner THE LUCKY COUNTRY 50 YEARS ON 9 A SUMMARY Nick Horne DONALD HORNE AND THE LUCKY COUNTRY 15 Julia Horne CAN WE RE-INVENT ‘THE LUCKY COUNTRY’? 23 Ian Lowe THE RISE AND FALL OF AUSTRALIAN 33 HIGHER EDUCATION Stephen Darwin SCHOOLING TODAY 49 THE GOOD NEWS AND BAD Ian Keese OUT OF LUCK 67 WOMEN , INDIGENES AND IMMIGRANTS Diane Bell FIFTY YEARS ON THE ROAD TO HEALTH 83 AND JUSTICE FOR ABORIGINAL AND TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER PEOPLE Pat Anderson UP THE DARLING IN 1912 93 CHANGE AND CONTINUITY IN AUSTRALIA ’S NATIONAL CHARACTER Susan Priestley LUCKY FOR SOME 103 MAINTAINING A SENSE OF SEPARATE CELTIC ORIGINS AND BELIEFS IN A PERIOD OF MULTICULTURALISM IN AUSTRALIA Sybil Jack IN SEARCH OF POETRY IN 123 THE LUCKY COUNTRY THE ARTS IN DONALD HORNE ’S VISION OF ‘A USTRALIA IN THE SIXTIES ’ VERSIONS OF THE ‘A USTRALIAN MIND ’ Joy Wallace and John O’Carroll THE EVICTION AT NEWTOWN 141 19 JUNE 1931 John Hood MY HISTORY IS NOT YOUR HISTORY 155 OR , HOW AN ‘E THNIC ’ AUSTRALIAN VIEWS OUR NATIONAL PAST John A. Moses ‘NATION WITHOUT A MIND’ 165 DONALD HORNE ’S LUCKY COUNTRY THEN AND NOW David Headon ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS 175 GRETCHEN POINER INTRODUCTION ‘When Donald wrote The Lucky Country it fairly flowed out of him.’ This is the sentence Nick Horne chose to open his essay on his father and the book he wrote in the early 1960s—a compendium of observations and critiques of Australia as a ‘derived society whose prosperity came mainly from the luck of its historical origins.’ That Donald Horne was able to write this book in a very short period of time tells us much about the person he was: Nick writes that his varied life experiences, his insights as a journalist and his hunger for reading were formative in directing his themes and sharpening his critiques. But the times also lent themselves to serious social and political criticism. Horne observed that post-war relief and prosperity generated a complacency that quite dampened imagination deflecting contemplation of future challenges and promoting provincialism. The title of the book is heavy with irony (ironically enough not always recognised) although Nick Horne does point out that his father freely acknowledged that Australia was a happy country. This, of course, is not quite the same as lucky that inevitably reads as derived. On publication the book was an immediate success. According to Julia Horne her father suspected that the critical focus of the work was the very reason why it was so enthusiastically received—it articulated the disappointments and frustrations of so many people. It identified the need for social, cultural, economic and political change and in doing so offered possibilities to effect it. Julia Horne refers to the ‘historical specificity’ of the work and observes that while some of the problems no longer beset the society we continue to struggle with many of the dilemmas we have inherited—no doubt one reason why the book, as a product of the ’60s, 1 INTRODUCTION continues to sell well. Certainly the importance Donald Horne invested in imagination ‘as a political and civic concept’ registers no less insistently today. Julia Horne’s account of her relationship with The Lucky Country comes with personal reflections that bring its author to life as a relatively young, critical and often scornful, man. Her narrative also reveals that her father was not cemented into the views he had expounded but, as a public intellectual recognising the import of social process, was able to shift in his thinking as he and the times changed. Well aware of the irony in the epithet ‘lucky’ Ian Lowe refers to three warnings from Horne’s 1964 text that, clamant as they were at the time, loom even more ominously 50 years later. We cannot, for example, continue to deny or downplay where we are geo-graphically, geo-politically, geo- economically and geo-culturally. There is another dimension to Julia Horne’s reference to the historical specificity of the book that is imbricated in so many of our present problems, it is the too often unconsidered (or is it over- considered) weight of our history limiting and reconfiguring our present worldviews. Turning to a second of Horne’s warnings, Lowe is cutting on the question of economic priorities that privilege short-term thinking at the expense of a bigger picture. It chimes with a general point that David Suzuki made some 30 years ago about advanced economies that were headed for fourth world status as their manufacturing industries became run down and reliance on unprocessed products increased. Misplacing economic priorities has also had a crippling impact as public investment in our tertiary education systems and a reduction in research generally bleeds the bank of knowledge on which economic calls are made. To fail the future is irresponsible indeed. Then, there is the need to rethink what ‘the whole place adds up to now’. There is a sense in which this caution is especially problematic since, even more that the other two, it carries the burden of will. The notion of public good is all too often over-shadowed by materialism and insouciance on matters of social justice and sustainable development—attitudes manifest in both individuals and in government. It seems that especially lacking is that quality that Julia Horne reports as so important in her father’s analysis— 2 THE LUCKY COUNTRY 50 YEARS ON GRETCHEN POINER political and civic imagination. But while Lowe sees the outlook as grim he spells out the advantages that Australia has in facing the future and points out that the future is of our making. The three sets of warnings are not discrete, they interleave and reinforce the challenges they carry. Education is one of the elements that courses through both limitations and possibilities. Stephen Darwin notes that in 1964 higher education was really only attractive and possible for the already privileged and funding it was not a high priority for governments—state or national. Notwithstanding post-war economic growth there were only eleven universities in Australia. But that prosperity brought about greater awareness of correlations between economic development and education and alerted increased expectations of tertiary education across a broader sector of the community. Darwin traces the vicissitudes of the higher education system over the decades with their social consequences. While the establishment of colleges of advanced education—creating another tier in the tertiary education sector—opened opportunities it also introduced ambiguities. What were seen as the problems with the binary divide were ultimately dissolved a decade and a half later when the halcyon days of the early Whitlam government were overtaken by the forces of market liberalism that dictated policies underlying the direction of universities and consequently the types and levels of funding. Darwin is clear on the damaging impact for research and education with crippling consequences for both students and staff. The notion of education as a public good thus stands in danger of being hijacked by the ‘largely unchallenged orthodoxies’ of the market. There are obvious implications that flow through these three warnings. Subscription to market forces also profoundly influenced policies determining funding for systems of primary and secondary education. Like Darwin, Ian Keese reviews changes that have been instituted over the last half century. While Horne’s summary of schooling was bleak—unacceptably large classes, teachers ‘shunted’ around unpredictably—improvements were taking place; the retention rates of students improved, teachers were required to be educationally qualified and there was an increase in the number of women entering the teaching workforce, and they gained equal pay. The 3 INTRODUCTION sticking point here, however, is that, as a feminised field, it is not well paid. There are also, as Keese points out, low entry requirements for university teacher education courses that run the danger of having inadequately educated teachers. These features do not serve this vital system well. Among positive changes that Keese is able to point to is the development of a national curriculum and the potential for change in the Review led by David Gonski. The problem lies relentlessly in the funding model for the system which, like the tertiary education sector, has become increasingly subject to neo-liberal marketplace evaluation.

Load more