This piece of doggerel describes some of the good times and happiness at an important family event in April 2006. It was a holiday in Kalbarrri, at the mouth of the Murchison river in Western Australia, to celebrate the wedding of Megan, one of my nieces, and Steve Noa. They lived at the time in Melbourne but have since ‘defaulted’ to the Perth hills where they are bringing up their two delightful and accomplished daughters.
April 11 is World Parkinson’s Day. Its main purpose is to raise awareness and advance research for better therapies and, potentially, a cure for Parkinson’s. But we might also use the stimulus of the international Parkinson’s Month, Week and Day to check on what’s happening with advocacy and organisation around Parkinson’s on the home front.
Parkinson’s 101
The condition affects about 10 million individuals worldwide, and 200,000 in Australia. In Australia thirty-eight cases are diagnosed every day. Twenty per cent of ‘persons-with-Parkinson’s’ are under 50 years old and 10 per cent are diagnosed before the age of 40.
In Canada it affects 1 in 500, with over 100,000 Canadians living with the condition and approximately 6,600 new cases being diagnosed each year
Parkinson’s is a progressive, degenerative neurological condition that affects a person’s control of their body movements. As is well-known, the symptoms and their progression vary wildly among those affected. Parkinson’s UK reports that there are over 40 symptoms, with The Big Three being tremor (shaking), slowness of movement, and rigidity (muscle stiffness).
There are also numerous non-motor symptoms such as sleep disturbance, constipation, voice and speech malfunction, and loss of sense of smell. Because of a compromised autonomic nervous system, people with the condition can have poor control over body temperature.
Some of these non-motor symptoms can pre-date motor symptoms by as much as a decade.
The strongest domestic organisation dealing with Parkinson’s has been Shake It Up Australia. It was founded by Clyde Campbell in 2011 and he is still at the helm.
There are six State-based bodies, and a national body, Parkinson’s Australia.1 All six are independent from each other and from Parkinson’s Australia. So the latter has been overshadowed (some would say neutered) by the former.
This is the archetypal challenge for national bodies in a federal political system. For a national representative body to be successful the state bodies need enthusiastically to cede a certain amount of power, authority and resources to it.
The struggle for Parkinson’s Australia1
There has been a Parkinson’s Australia for a long time, but it has never had the support and close engagement of the populous states. It has therefore been poorly funded and unable to build a strong national presence.
In 2012 the CEO of Parkinson’s Australia was Daryl Smeaton. As a senior public servant Daryl had been an integral part of Prime Minister John Howard’s successful gun buyback scheme in 1996-97.
In 2012 Daryl took the national conference of Parkinson’s Australia to Brisbane. It was opened by Australia’s first female Governor-General, now Dame Quentin Bryce. (She was kind enough to stay for the opening address I had been invited to present.)
More recently the head of Parkinson’s Australia was Steve Sant, after his time with the Rural Doctors Association of Australia.
For much of the time Parkinson’s Australia has been a body without representation from Victoria and New South Wales. Other jurisdictions have battled valiantly to have the organisation become a real umbrella group. But it has been holey and not entirely successful.
Its website advises people who are seeking information, resources or advice to visit the independent Parkinson’s organisation in their home state. In the case of the ACT (where I live) the running is being taken by a South Australian entity: the Parkinson’s section of the Hospital Research Foundation Group.
The larger state bodies tend to be abut service provision rather than political advocacy and lobbying. Parkinson’s NSW, for instance, provides counselling sessions, information and education sessions, and help-line calls. And it was in NSW – a long time ago – in which specialist Parkinson’s nurses were first road-tested with great success.
A new Alliance
The Parkinson Alliance was active from 2004. It closed its doors on April 30, 2023. It completed over 35 patient-centered research reports covering motor and non-motor symptoms. It supported over one hundred research projects, including many on exercise. It put its money where its legs were by managing the Parkinson’s Unity Walk from 2001 to 2021.
Even when shaken, Nature apparently abhors a vacuum. The space vacated by that Alliance last year has been filled this.
On 26 March 2024 Shake It Up Australia launched the National Parkinson’s Alliance. Itaims to build a network of groups to lead nationwide advocacy efforts. It has urged the Federal Government to allocate an initial $400,000 for the development of a National Parkinson’s Action Plan.
Curiously, the members of the new Alliance, as listed, are ten individuals affiliated with universities and research institutions. Just one state Parkinson’s organisation is mentioned: Parkinson’s NSW.
This new organisation is described as “a collaborative initiative bringing together the stakeholders living with Parkinson’s and leaders from those backgrounds to work towards aligned outcomes for the Parkinson’s community”. CEO of the Alliance is Vicki Miller.
On 26 March 2024 it organised the Australian Summit to End Parkinson’s.
About thirty people living with Parkinson’s from across Australia attended alongside members of the Alliance and the research community.
Both Parkinson’s Australia and the new Alliance made pre-budget submissions to the federal government.
Enough of this melancholia! Why not read the piece on my blogg (aggravations.org) entitled Parkinson’s brings out the best – in other people.
It tells of some of the human spirit and kindness that no mere chronic condition can put down.
Go to: www.aggravations.org [August 2022]
1 to try to avoid confusion, the name of the organisation is italicised.
I could not conceive of letting it go to the tip or even to the recycling shed.
On Beardy Street in Armidale, NSW.
Our children have a special relationship with The Family Bed.
Alpha feeding someone in Armidale.Before –
Our French polisher friend agreed that it was very good piece – English oak, probably over a hundred years old – with elegant carving at the centre of head- and tail-board.
Tasteful carving.
But there is little demand for such items. It was too big for the modern market and style; the springs sagging helplessly (the mattress stiffened with large sheets of plywood underneath). And it was too high for many, especially young ‘uns.
I thought I’d lost it. But thanks to our friend Bill, it was repurposed in time for Christmas 2023.
My special thanks to Bill for the vision, ingenuity and industry – and to anyone else at the men’s shed in Hughes who helped him. For it certainly makes a lekker [lek-uh] two-person seat.
One of my brothers is on the U3A committee in his home town in the UK. Recently he was leading a discussion on poetry. He asked me about Australian poets and poetry: who were the best? which pieces would I recommend for study by an English U3A discussion group?
My immediate response was something like panic. I could name very few contemporary Australian poets (Judith Wright, Les Murray) and none of their works. The near-panic was the result of a sense of shame and disappointment. Given the time I have on my hands and the extraordinary accessibility these days of ‘information’, how could I not know about and follow certain poets?
How could I think of myself as a responsible citizen of Australia if there is no poetry in my life? Poetry is an important segment of a nation’s culture. It is a field where emotions are not just permissible but essential. There is beauty in poetry. It consists of bunches of words in particular sequences, and I have always found this fascinating.
A bit later I reflected on how my own ignorance is perhaps symptomatic of the status of the arts in Australia. (This was before I had discovered Jacket, the splendid on-line journal founded by John Tranter, recently deceased. It is now published as Jacket2.) The arts sector in Australia is underfunded and under celebrated. Whereas, as a nation, Australia punches above its weight in such things as Olympic sports and certain scientific inventions, it does not in the fine arts.
The two best-known Australian poets are still, I suppose, Henry Lawson and Banjo Paterson. They are often paired together because of the similarity of their works. Both wrote what are called ballads, with regular rhythm, scansion and rhyming patterns. (My own doggerel uses similar rhythmic and rhyming patterns.)
Both of them wrote about ‘characters’ living in the bush. Many people are unable to distinguish their works, the one from the other. As an example, ask an Australian whether Waltzing Matilda was written by Lawson or Paterson.
The best known works of Lawson and Paterson include: Waltzing Matilda; The man from Snowy River; Andy’s gone with cattle; Faces in the street (a favourite of mine), Mulga Bill’s Bicycle; The drover’s wife; Clancy of the Overflow; and The Geebung Polo Club .
When it comes to the most famous (and over-used) piece of Australian poetry of all, Lawson and Paterson must give way to Dorothea Mackellar (1885-1968). Core of My Heart was first published in the London Spectator on 5 September 1908. It reappeared several times in Australia before being included as My Country in The Closed Door and Other Verses (Melbourne, 1911). The second verse reads:
I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains
Of ragged mountain ranges
Of droughts and flooding rains.
My brother and I discussed the meaning of ‘doggerel’ and whether it is distinct from poetry. We won’t go there again now. Suffice it to say that it would be brave of someone to suggest that Core of my Heart is doggerel.
Scholars would, I think, agree that Judith Wright (1915-2000)and Kenneth Slessor (1901-1971) are true Australian poets of substance.
Judith Wright was from Armidale. (There is a Wright College at the University of New England.) She is best known for The Generations of Men, the story of her family’s early days as land settlers in New South Wales and Queensland. This was published in 1959.
In the years that followed there was a huge shift in the understanding of the white settlers’ impact on the Aboriginal people and the original landscape. Armed with what she described as “a sense of horror at what had happened”, Judith Wright wrote A Cry for the Dead, published in 1981. In that book Wright recognised the real story and the Indigenous voices of the traditional owners of the land her ancestors had settled.
This is right now a very divisive and emotive issue, centred around the Referendum on Indigenous recognition in the Constitution. Wright’s personal learning and reconciliation can be regarded as an elite example of the re-learning, or truth-telling, that is needed for all Australians.
Perhaps the fact that Judith Wright is regarded as one of Australia’s best poets but is arguably better known for her novels than her poetry says something about the standing of poetry in Australia.
One of Kenneth Slessor’s highly regarded pieces is Five Bells. I find it hard to see clear, immediate meaning in the poem, but the collection and juxtaposition of images is telling. So perhaps it would be a good piece to study?!
Les Murray, who died in 2019, was considered the leading poet of his generation. In An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow Murray portrays a crying man as representing the ability to deeply feel and openly express emotion—something that has been stifled by the busy modern world.
The orgy of self-flagellation relating to the result of the Referendum on The Voice is surely not necessary. Neither is it productive.
Little of importance in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander affairs has changed because of the resultof the Referendum. But itsexistence has resulted in change which, on balance, is positive in terms of the most important outcome: improvement and catch-up of the health and wellbeing of First Nations Peoples.
The one exception – the saddest thing about the result – is the effect it has had on the reputation and morale of the many Indigenous leaders who put heart and soul into the Yes campaign.
Anyone who cares about the health and wellbeing of Australia’s First Peoples knows what the most important issues are. Put simply they add up to one thing: to challenge the status quo and close the gap in wellbeing between them and non-Indigenous Australians.
In working on this there are many important matters to be considered. They are complex – which is one of the reasons why we have so far failed as a nation in the challenge.
For instance, it has been agreed over and over again that closing the gap requires local participation and local ownership of some of the measures to be put in place. But what is the best way for local action by local people to be coupled with transparency and accountability for the use of national public funds?
Nothing frustrates local leaders and professionals more than a plethora of standardised questionnaires and forms to be filled out in the name of accountability and ‘program evaluation’.
It is agreed that the so-called ‘social determinants of health’ are critical: this includes good housing, accessible fresh food and water, early childhood education, and access to meaningful employment. If services in areas of such fundamental importance were woefully inadequate in Melbourne or Sydney there would be notice and action in five minutes.
But given the tangled web of governmental responsibility for such issues, which agency, which Minister and which funding stream should take the lead on these determinants for Indigenous people and communities?
Can Indigenous leaders and activists set aside differences, such as about the order in which the three elements of the Statement from the Heart (Voice, Treaty, Truth) are prosecuted? Can they agree that closing the gap is the most urgent challenge, and work together on it?
A number of things have happened as a result of the Referendum, by accident or design, to enhance the prospects of finding answers to these questions. We need to maintain the momentum generated by the existence of the referendum, rather than being distracted by its result.
This momentum is one of the best things that investment in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander wellbeing currently has going for it. But for the momentum to last it needs to be fostered, rehearsed and regularly aired.
Every time we hear the Treasurer talk of fiscal challenges we are reminded of the congested queue of demands for government support.
It is said that one of the reasons for the lack of support for the Yes case was that many non-Indigenous people do not appreciate the extent of the disadvantage.
The majority of Australians do not live and work among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Many have no Indigenous friends or contacts. This means they lack personal or lived experience of the disadvantages experienced by Indigenous people.
As a result of the Referendum having taken place, there must now be greater awareness of the reality of the situation.
This will reduce the political risks of investing resources in programs differentially targeted at lifestyle deficits experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
As a result of the Referendum, leadership of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community has become better known. New leaders have joined the group. There will be some generational change.
Hopefully the current excitement about analyses of the yes and no campaigns will soon pass, once it is accepted that comparing activities in a Referendum with those of an election campaign is like taste-testing chalk and cheese.
It must be said, however, that the Referendum has provided more grist for the mill of political scientists and the like to use in their work to analyse, understand and make use of the stark differences between wealthy electorates and those that are less well-off, and between rural and metropolitan areas.
Now, with greater focus and legitimacy, it’s back to the drawing board to work on an issue that still bedevils Australia and its international reputation.
In 1987, in a fascinating and most useful talk on ABC radio, John Tranter said: “From the 1960s, for a mixture of reasons, Aborigines have been more publicly visible than in earlier times. They have been subjects of greater controversy, and they have been participants in controversy as never before.”
Tranter did us all a great service by analysing in considerable detail the background for these developments. His piece is more relevant now than ever before and, potentially, more useful than the current agonies surrounding the fate of the proposal for a Voice
John Tranter and his work were unknown to me until I came across a transcript of the episode of Helicon, ABC radio’s national arts program, broadcast on 26 January 1987.
Tranter died on 21 April 2023. I only wish I had had the chance to thank him for a wonderful piece dealing so clearly with many aspects of policies in Australia relating to its Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Over thirty six years ago Tranter was able to provide a most readable summary and analysis, with numerous historical facts and opinions, of issues that still trouble us greatly today.
John Tranter produced Helicon in 1987-1988. Later in his work for the ABC, and with others, he devised the radio program Books and Writing. He was also the founding editor and publisher of Jacket, an award-winning internet literary magazine.
A long-term view
The subject piece is entitled From 1788 to 1988: Visions of Australian History. I came across it in a hard copy that does not credit an author. It is dated January 1987. Given the dates of his tenure at Helicon, what I have already discovered of the breadth of his study and the style of his writing, I have assumed that John Tranter was its sole or main author.
If this assumption is false I sincerely hope that the other people involved will forgive me. My purpose is to give greater publicity and notice to the clearest of expositions of matters even more contested today, in 2023, than they were in 1987.
The piece is marvelous in the breadth of its coverage, in many senses prescient, and so clearly written. It is erudite but still accessible.
It pleases me to know that it is (back?) in the public domain, albeit on a very modest platform. My hope is that John Tranter would find my motives and intentions to be entirely worthy.
I beg you to read the article full. If it means to you a fraction of what it already means to me, it will be well worth your time.
My fondness for cowslips was documented in this blogg on 24 July 2016. My fondness for the world’s Great and Thoughtful Givers was described in On the nature of giving – and the giving of Nature (October 15, 2020).
For my birthday in 2020 one of those Givers presented me with a small parcel. Inside was a damp, colourless morsel of plant life. It was Primula veris. A cowslip.
On Tuesday 6 October 2020, in a small ceramic pot in my garden, there occurred a miracle of Nature. That delicate single cowslip, despite finding itself in an unfamiliar location, proved that it was not going merely to cling to life. It was blossoming, growing and preparing for the next stage in the cycle of its existence. It was going to give perennial pleasure to verisophiles for years to come.
The first colour
Pain relieving
After six weeks of colour, in 2020 – like so much on Planet Earth – it lay low. I moved it from the ceramic pot to a prime spot in the garden. It bloomed again with increased vigour in the Springs of 2021 and 2022.
A small white tag attested not only to its name but also to some of its qualities. The tag reads: ‘Small attractive English wildflower. Tea from the whole plant, particularly the flowers, is sedative and pain relieving. Cool position, protected and partly shaded. Perennial.’
In March 2023 I took courage and spade in hand and cut it into two. One half of the rootstock stayed in the flower border where it had shown itself to be viable. The other was potted up and went off to a different zone in the garden.
The surgery was successful – so much so that right now (September 2023) the potted half is strong and luxurious, with multiple blooms of luscious yellow.
Luscious yellow
Now is a good time to pay back. The Giver has received an unwanted gift. Visits to second hand bookshops and antique galleries will be subdued for a while.
But the spirit of thoughtfulness and care will not cease. The cycle of life will continue, despite short-term perturbation. Friends will unite. Special friends will be specially united. The seasons will roll round.
Confronted with local frosts or global pandemic, the cowslip and other sure signs of repetition, resilience and renewal will not stand by – but flourish.
At the beginning of the Second World War, Ted and his family lived in a small house near the Fremantle docks.
The dock area was resumed for military and security purposes. This affected so many families that the education system could only cope by switching to half-day schooling. You went to school from 9.00 to 12.00 or from 12.00 to 3.00.
After a number of false starts Ted’s family moved to Spearwood, a market gardening and fruit growing area on the outskirts of Fremantle. In 1940, when Ted was 11, the family moved to Safety Bay, then a small fishing village some 20 miles south of Fremantle. Ted soon realised that for an adventurous teenager Safety Bay was about as good as it gets.
There was just a two-teacher school and Ted can still recall how happy he was there. The Headmaster was a great teacher, as was the second staff member. Both of them looked after three school years. Ted remembers the inspiration they provided. They used to bring all six classes together on Friday afternoons for a reading. Ted still remembers King Solomon’s Mines from this experience.
When not at school Ted and his friends were fishing, paddle boating, swimming and exploring their home areas and the small islands nearby. This included Penguin Island with its colony of Little Penguins, and Seal Island. One of Ted’s friends suggested they climb to the top of a nearby island – just a large rock used by birds as a nesting area. One day they climbed all the way up the steep sides to discover that the rock was cluttered with thousands of birds and covered all over with years and years of their droppings.
The two potential young entrepreneurs considered returning to bag up some of the droppings for sale to local gardeners. However when faced with its weighty logistical challenges this venture proved too challenging.
Ted would occasionally work on board one or other of the local fishing boats. These were 18 to 20 foot vessels, “little more than oversized dinghies”. They had a flat area aft for storing and handling the rope and the net.
Ted’s job was to help to retrieve the rope and net prior to its re-deployment. This involved getting very wet! To have a ‘lad’ for this work meant that at least one of the adult crew members could stay dry for the duration of the trip.
Net fishing at Safety Bay was a team pursuit, with two team members being on the beach and working towards each other, pulling the net to a close. This created an open channel for the entrapped fish to move into, at the end of which was the ‘pocket’, being a reinforced holding net.
It was to be hoped that there were not too many crabs in the catch because of the frenzied damage they would do to the fish in the pocket.
Ted was rewarded for this work with a feed of fish to take home to his mother.
Following his brief career as a deck hand, Ted started an apprenticeship in
patisserie. He stayed with his Aunty Thelma,trying to sleep during the day ready to be at work at 2-00am. He had to walk for about 40 minutes to sign on – there being no night-time public transport. After work Ted walked into town to catch a tram to his aunty’s house.
One night as he was waiting for the other workers and the boss there was a fight nearby which resulted in the death of one of the men involved. Together with the transport difficulties and a lack of sleep, this alarming experience proved too much. Ted left after about three months.
Ted’s big break: unpacking crockery
His big break came with a job in Fremantle in 1944.
Given that the world was at war, he was surprised to find that GJ Coles was still importing pottery, china and kitchenware from England. In Fremantle there was a team responsible for unpacking the large cane baskets of crockery and homeware recently arrived from the UK.
The Manageress was Miss C.
.. Her team comprised ‘Mister Mac’, Miss M. and Ted. Mr Mac and Ted handled the actual unpacking. Frequently the packaging was wet straw, which meant that cleaning was needed before Miss C. could finalise orders to be filled for distribution to various Coles stores in Western Australia.
Ted was a tall 15 year old, whose dress was always short pants. Miss C. insisted he be fixed up with long pants and it has always been Ted’s suspicion that Miss C. paid for the first pair herself.
On his first day in the new job, Mr Mac told Ted that Miss C. wanted to see him at lunchtime. Ted went ‘upstairs’ to find that his three colleagues had made up a plate of lunch for him from their own provisions.
Maureen was ‘upstairs’ and did the stock-taking. Ted enjoyed stocktaking because of the opportunity to have the company of another young person.
It was Mr Mac who explained to Ted that having been to the toilet it was essential to wash one’s hands. And it was Mr Mac who explained to Ted about the importance of brushing one’s teeth. In 1944 Ted and many others like him had no toothbrush and little conception of oral hygiene.
During his time at GJ Coles Ted took the bus to and from Safety Bay each day for work. The bus fare was ten shillings a week, leaving nine shillings a week for his mother.
One day Ted was absent from work, having heard at lunchtime that the war was ended. He made his way to the docks – already re-opened – and helped the crew of a vessel there obtain fresh oranges from town.
Not long after this Ted saw an advertisement encouraging 16-year-olds to join the Navy as cadets. He resigned from Coles and made application but was unsuccessful. He was therefore out of work.
However, Ted was soon on his feet again. One of his friends at Safety Bay was the daughter of the owner of the Savoy Hotel in Perth. Ted became the hotel’s Junior Hall Porter. His main responsibility was running messages between various hotels in Perth. He had no bicycle – just shanks’ pony.
When he recalls his upbringing in Western Australia and his transition from knockabout kid to member of a workforce team, Ted reflects gratefully on the welcome he had and the help he was given by the likes of Miss C., Maureen and Mr Mac. One of Mr Mac’s specific instructions to Ted was to read Dale Carnegie’s book on self-improvement. Which he did.
Eighty years on, let us reflect on and give thanks to the three of them for the decent, kind and caring workplace they provided for a young person just setting out on a working life.
Their generosity has never been forgotten by the young man who went on to have a distinguished career in the Royal Australian Air Force. How he got there is a story for another day.
And through that life he had an enormous impact on his family, his friends, and those who worked with him.
That classification is too simple.
For through his personality and behaviours, JK made his staffers feel like family. And many staffers became close friends.
As well as being family, June could justifiably claim to be JK’s intellectual friend and moderator. And when working with JK on his magnum opus, June was in the position of a good staffer.
As a Minister there was a fourth class of person whose life intersected with JK’s: those who were affected by the decisions he led. He never forgot them or took them for granted.
His political work was undertaken within two contexts. One was a search for the national interest. The other was the effect the work he was leading would have on the lives of people and communities.
In today’s parlance JK practised The Politics of Nice. The Politics of Common Sense. The Politics of Truth and Proven Fact.
Not for him the politics of ideology, faction, vested interest or personal gain.
Proven Fact was a Holy Grail for JK. He said that once he had read philosophy he began to doubt everything.
The very title of his great volume, The Way I Saw It; The Way It Was, betrays his modest acceptance that the way he saw it may not have reflected the way it actually was.
He never gave up the pleasure of reading, thinking and talking about what might and might not be true.
We should all read or re-read that great written achievement of his.[i]
Working with JK was a privilege. It was rewarding. It was often good fun.
His work as Minister for Primary Industries and the Bush made a significant contribution to the stability and success of the Hawke-Keating governments. Farmers, fishers and foresters, researchers and scientists, his Parliamentary colleagues and the interested public soon had faith in JK’s management of the industries and the people of rural areas.
More should be made of his legacy in this regard.
He was seen as a safe pair of hands – and what hands they were!
All of us here have been greatly affected by your work.
We will always be grateful for the unique contribution you made to our lives.
We are thankful for the inspiration and leadership you provided us and so many others.
And we will never forget you.
i The way I saw it; the way it was – the making of national agricultural and natural resource management policy, John C. Kerin, Analysis & Policy Observatory, 2017.
State Funeral for John Kerin, Friday 14 April 2023.
John Kerin’s contribution to the success of the Hawke-Keating government has been grievously understated and uncelebrated.
Given the economic, environmental, managerial and social change it successfully engineered, having someone who could neutralise the farm lobby was a boon to the ALP’s parliamentary machine. It contributed significantly to the material reforms of the Hawke/Keating era.
As Shadow Minister for Primary Industry from 1980 Kerin, like colleagues in a similar situation, had worked hard with a small number of advisers to devise and consult on a detailed plan for primary industry – against the chance that a Labor government should be elected.
Bob Hawke’s accession to the position of Prime Minister has been very well documented – although history is still to hear the view of the Drover’s Dog itself.
The need for a reformist Labor government to neutralise conservative rural forces was made more urgent and difficult by the fact that those right-leaning interests, after years of ineffective fumbling by the National Party, had been blessed with a competent and ambitious leadership group. It was the National Farmers Federation (NFF).
The NFF was formed in 1979 as a single national voice for Australian farmers. By 1983 the NFF was demonstrating its intention and capacity to be a strong conservative political force – at least in relation to larger scale producers and more significant agricultural industries, and at least in relation to farm policy narrowly defined.
John Kerin was appointed by Hawke as his Minister for Primary Industry. He was placed front and centre in the sometimes theatrical struggle between a lively and refurbished agricultural interest group and the ambitions of a newly-formed social democratic national administration.
In 1983 some of the natural support for ‘a fair go for farmers’ occasioned by widespread drought was waning. The dry which had affected much of Eastern Australia was weakening its grip. But there were still rude clubs available with which a rural interest group might bludgeon an incoming Labor government. For one thing interest rates were ‘complainably high’ – mostly above 10% until 1995. For another there were industrial relations.
For the NFF the field of industrial relations was an obvious setting for efforts to diminish the power and place of unions. Farm leaders had already been heavily involved in the live sheep export dispute in 1978 and the NFF announced itself unsheepishly through its battle with the Australian Workers Union over the use of a wide comb (1982-83).
It was therefore no surprise when the NFF committed to a dispute involving the Australian Meat Industry Employees Union (AMIEU) at the Mudginberri abattoir in the Northern Territory. The dispute ground on from 1983 to 1986 and only ended after picket lines, 27 court cases and two years of litigation before the Arbitration Commission.
The union was fined and eventually lost face. Mudginberri was seen by the New Right as a win in the campaign to break the power of the unions and introduce contract employment. The NFF is on the public record as claiming that “the win over the Labor Government and over the unions in a bitter IR dispute just months before, galvanised the impact the bush could have when it stood united in demand of a fair go”. It seemed to be bracing itself for the role of standard bearer for those interests wanting to break the power of unions.
This could have become the main agenda in agriculture under a new Labor Government: testy battles between farmers (as employers and business managers) and unions which were of significance in the sector. The unions might have been given support for naive ideological reasons by a new Labor Minister for Agriculture.
But part of the magic of John Kerin – now sadly passed from view – was that he was not an ideologue and he was not naïve.
Kerin was trained as an economist but was by nature a scientist. He sought evidence of what was true and without that, doubted everything. Sadly he sometimes doubted himself.
He had an insatiable appetite for facts at all levels, from the cellular to the philosophical. He read widely. He was driven by what he saw as the opportunity for a Labor Government to make Australia a more modern, productive and fairer contributor to a peaceful world. (He had lofty ambitions.)
The political situation Kerin faced was one in which:
” Labor for the most part had no profile and no following in the bush. We were up against a profound agricultural fundamentalism, constrained by a federal structure which allowed the parties to play off one set of interests against another – and there was indifference at best to this set of issues in the Labor Party itself .”
At the beginning of Kerin’s long term as Minister the NFF continued to circle, armed with higher expectations from its more militaristic members and growing confidence in its own power. It set about fomenting the 1980s version of ‘A Rural Crisis’.
On 1 July 1985 an estimated 40,000- 45,000 farmers and their friends rallied at Parliament House “to protest about the effect of taxes and charges on the farming community and lack of government concern about their welfare”. In December of the same year 25 tonnes of Frank Daniel’s wheat was dumped at the door of Parliament House.
But Kerin was not for turning. Given his natural instincts, his fascination with the industries in his protection, and a real belief in the rectitude of the task given him, Kerin was building bridges, not moats. He opened the path between agricultural people (not just their leaders) and the evil of ‘Canberra’.
From the beginning Kerin demonstrated a technical understanding of agriculture and other resource industries but he always wanted to know more. He was consistent and approachable. And it was difficult not to like him, despite his jokes. He had what he called “a tough farming background” so his empathy with farmers and their families was deeply rooted.
As Minister he developed a vast network of contacts. He built an encyclopaedic knowledge of individuals in agriculture, fisheries and forestry and their resource, processing and financial off-shoots.
A meeting with Minister Kerin, home or away, could be charming, memorable and touching, even if one wanted to complain about reduced fishing quotas or the price of superphosphate. It certainly would never be a meeting characterised by arrogance, disinterest or interpersonal rudeness on the Minister’s part. He wanted to learn, so he listened.
“JK was a good listener.”
The farming public, as well as agricultural scientists, researchers and public servants, grew quickly to trust Kerin and soon thereafter to like working with him. More rabid right wing commentators could agree that he was a good man in the wrong political party.
Meanwhile, over at the NFF, Ian McLachlan was playing a straight bat as President (1984-1988) as a warm-up to becoming Minister for Defence in a Howard Ministry (1996). He was followed in the Chair by John Allwright (1988-1991) and Graham Blight (1991-1994). The relationship between Presidents and Minister were cordial, respectful and businesslike.
For political effectiveness the NFF looked to the drive and leadership of Executive Directors, Andrew Robb (1985-1988) and the tragically parted Rick Farley (1988-1995). The organisation was well cashed-up for action: farmers had contributed millions of dollars to establish the Australian Farmers Fighting Fund.
Even with these assets at their disposal, nothing could prevent the NFF from respecting the Minister.
There was to be no refusing Kerin’s personality and working style. In his own policy memoir (of 720 pages) he listed the reform issues he took on:
“- they were about structural adjustment; gaining commodity production efficiencies; productivity increases; gaining some stability in essential research funding; establishing more relevant infrastructure and institutions; ensuring essential awareness of environmental issues; the elimination of self-defeating subsidies and protection; defining and implementing rural policies, not just agricultural; and about the government’s work to achieve international agricultural trade reforms.”
In July 1987 Kerin was appointed Minister for Primary Industries and Energy. This covered agriculture, fisheries, forests, and minerals. It was an enormous load of subject matter, much of it extremely complex and requiring detailed consideration. The industries in this mega-department earned about 60 per cent of Australia’s total export income.
Kerin’s success was not due just to his personality. He worked extremely hard. He often started shortly after 5.00am and worked until midnight. And most Monday evenings would see him travelling to ALP Branch meetings in his electorate in South-West Sydney.
He had the active support of the Prime Minister on many matters. The Prime Minister’s considerations were guided by the economic importance of primary industries and energy, and by the fact that he and his Minister both had the perspective of rural, regional and remote areas as home to many families and commercial activities apart from agriculture.
John Kerin’s professional journey took him from what he was delighted to describe as ‘Chook Farmer to Treasurer’. On the way he passed through philosophy and economics degrees at the University of New England and the ANU, and through the Bureau of Agricultural Economics (BAE). En route he made lifelong friendships with other economists of weight and significance, including Bob Whan, Stuart Harris and Geoff Miller. He had the constant support of his partner, June.
John Kerin’s track record in policy relating to primary industries and resource management has not been matched by any other Minister – and may never be.
His professional style, hard work and personal decency resulted, without doubt, in a positive ‘gross operating surplus’ for agriculture and other resource-based industries.
For more on this topic, see:
The way I saw it; the way it was; the making of national agricultural and natural resource management policy, John C Kerin, published by the Analysis and Policy Observatory, 2017.
