The Liberal Party’s electoral support is at rock bottom. Its members agree on at least one thing: that the situation poses an existential threat.

The broad review of the Party, being led by Senator James McGrath, is not yet completed. To be meaningful, a review of the electoral performance of the conservative side of politics has to be across the two Parties, Liberal and National. And its recommendations must comprehend the possibility of their amalgamation into a single entity.

There has probably never been a time when the benefits of an amalgamation were more obvious and more necessary. Nevertheless, no one is openly canvassing the option.

Meanwhile, Sussan Ley’s leadership is under great strain. This is despite the fact, that as a Liberal MP with a country electorate, she is uniquely placed to understand the potential benefit to the conservative side of politics of a single merged party.

With nine MPs to the Liberals’ 34 (including those of the Liberal National Party or LNP) the National Party is still very much the junior in the Coalition.

The National Party is reviewing its policy positions separately, like a standalone party. But in what is essentially a two-party system, it is impossible for single-issue parties to form government. Their role is to be a ginger group on particular issues. It is impossible for the policy proposals of the Nationals to become Coalition policy without the support of the Liberals.

The National Party is clinging to the myth that it represents the interests of rural Australia. In truth, it has been more of a farmers’ party. But it has no special assets or processes that enable it to better represent farmers or the broad interests of the people who live in country areas than the two major parties.

In any case, the well-being of people in country areas is just as bound up with the key national issues, including the cost of living, childcare, care of the elderly, education, housing and cultural norms, as it is for those who live in the cities.

The National Party is to right-wing politics what the Greens Party is to the left.

A merger is not a wild and outlandish idea. There has been weak, but patchy, support for it over many years, including from senior MPs such as Doug Anthony, Peter Nixon, Fred Chaney and Christopher (“Icanfixit”) Pyne.

The parties have already merged in Queensland and the Northern Territory. The question is on the agenda in Western Australia and was discussed recently at the National Party state conference.

It is hard to understand why separation of the two parties matters when there is such great flexibility for some when it comes to decisions on which party room to join.

Where policy development is concerned, one whole level of complexity would be obviated if the two parties came together in an amalgamated conservative party. It would still be necessary for members and Senators to negotiate positions on policy, but the activity would be free of the confounding issues of party membership. The debate would be a contest of ideas untrammelled by the aspirations and reservations caused by party politics.

The current system requires compromises to be made to be reached through shadow Cabinet. The workings of the Coalition’s Cabinets illustrate one of the unnecessary structural rigidities it faces. Positions are rationed and allocated by an agreement between the two party leaders. In a situation where it may not be possible to select the best individual from the conservative side of politics for every position, the quality of the body will be suboptimal.

Now is the time for radical changes to the way the Coalition operates, not marginal tinkering. A more clearly defined and streamlined process for the development of policy positions would help. If the Liberals and Nationals remain apart, the current cumbersome process will be required for every policy issue. If it is not net zero, it will be nuclear energy, or a carbon tax, or superannuation allowances, or environmental law and business investment.

Recent increases in the electoral success of Independents show that the quality and reputation of candidates outweighs party membership when fewer than two-thirds of voters in a particular electorate are “rusted on” to the two major parties.

It is extremely unlikely that there would be any loss to the conservatives at the ballot box from having a single party. Given the choice between a new conservative entity, the ALP and the Greens/Independent, almost all of those who would otherwise have voted for the National Party would choose the new conservative entity.

The silence of the two parties on this matter suggests that, despite the situation in which they find themselves, there is timidity in relation to structural change. This does not bode well for recovery of their electoral fortunes..

Note: this article was originally published on 22 September 2025 in Pearls and Irritations. Because it is still relevant - and has not yet been overtaken by developments on the matter - I have chosen to reproduce it here in my blogg.

The National Party is once again holding back the conservative side of politics. The rump is wagging the dog. This time it’s over the Opposition’s involvement in legislation about hate speech.

It was always thus. In the Federal election of 1922 the Nationalist Party, the main middle-class non-Labor party of the time, lost the absolute majority it had held since its formation in 1917. It could only stay in office with the support of the two-year-old Country Party.

In1982, with Doug Anthony as Leader, that two-year-old became the National Party. Every day since then it has been torn between two roles. One as a special interest group representing the interests of ‘agriculture’, variously defined. The other as a party trying to broaden its membership and its advocacy sufficiently to justify its continued existence.

The Nationals have always depended on the Liberal Party to give them a share in the responsibilities and rewards of government. Historically the loyalty of the Liberals to their junior partner cannot be faulted. On a number of occasions when the Liberal party has won a Parliamentary majority in its own right it has kept the Coalition arrangements in place.

Some of the key decisions about the Nationals’ role in the Coalition, such as the distribution of Cabinet and Shadow Cabinet posts, have been made in secret by the two leaders. There has never been a National Party MP as Prime Minister. Some of its leaders have been anonymous, others infamous for the wrong reasons.

When Ben Chifley’s Cabinet sat around the table in 1948 planning the development of a new nation, it was no doubt useful to have some there only because they had a rural address. Without them the critical role of agriculture might have been submerged in considerations relating to the main population centres.

But this time has passed. Location alone is a sufficient criterion for a special interest group but not for a political party. And the very existence of two conservative parties creates unnecessary and avoidable confusion.

The failure of the National Party to differentiate itself from the Liberals means that it has in effect been a rump.

The relationship between the two parties has never been more sternly tested than it is now. It reflects the position of a friend of mine who is pleased to say that he is dating his ex-wife. And now the relationship of the two parties is being further compromised by the arrival on the scene of a slightly tipsy and disoriented uncle.

There may be a silver lining to these machinations. At last one of the doyens of conservative politics is stating publicly that the current arrangements of conservative parties are untenable:

“It is chaotic – I watch it and I think it’s a bit like your local high school P&C. - - It’s all very awkward - - and you think ‘This is chaotic and obviously we‘ve got to move on’.

“I do believe One Nation are a safer set of hands at the moment– they have clarity, they have purpose, they have strength, they have unity and they have a proper political [leaning]. You need conservative side to balance up the more socialist view. If you don’t have that you don’t have that polity that brings about a temperance in legislation.

“I find it all very confusing - how this would work. Remember, the leader of the Nationals, Mr Littleproud, is actually a member of the Queensland division of the Liberal Party.

“-it’s all insane, it’s untenable – it just can’t work.”

[Extracts from Joyce interview with Sally Sara, ABC Radio National, 22 January 2026.]

So as the Coalition rots from inside, Australia’s contribution to political populism has a free ride.

Submissions to the review of the Liberal Party’s 2025 federal election campaign were due last week. Pru Goward and Nick Minchin have their work cut out to try to ensure the party’s trek through the wilderness ends in a happy place.

At the same time, Senator James McGrath is undertaking a root-and-branch review of the party itself to determine how it can increase its relevance and public support.

Sussan Ley has characterised these reviews as existential issues and has insisted that her party needs to consider all possible options in order “to meet Australians where they are”. Where rural people clearly are not is where they have locked themselves into a blind adherence to a particular party.

Ley’s own electoral situation should not be lost on her. For many years, the seat of Farrer was held by the leader of the National Party. Ley now has it as a safe Liberal seat. This is a model of how to deal with the party political issue. It demonstrates pragmatism and flexibility.

In the 2025 election, the Liberals were hammered, while the Nationals lost just one seat, that to an ex-National Party member running as an independent.

The lesson from these electoral results is clear: what carries individuals to victory is perceived competence and local reputation, not party membership and the labelling of individuals which results. The challenge is to field the best candidate for conservative voters, not simply one who is a member of one party or another.

If Ley, McGrath, Goward and Minchin were locked away together in a secret room for five minutes, they would surely own up to the fact that their reviews are hamstrung by a fundamental systemic problem: the National Party.

The smartest thing they could recommend is that the Liberal Party should not undertake this trek alone but, instead, as part of a single, unified conservative political entity. They should go beyond their terms of reference and propose that wise heads and brave souls take action to have the two parties amalgamate.

And Joyce could play a key role.

History shows that rural people, in general, recognise good government and national leadership, irrespective of party politics. Under Bob Hawke’s leadership and with John Kerin’s shrewd approach to the national interest, from 1987-1990 the ALP held 20 rural and regional seats.

Amalgamation of the Liberal and National Parties would have enormous, immediate and long-lasting benefits.

There would be greater clarity and certainty around the stance of the new entity. The choice throughout Australia would be (new) Liberal, ALP or Independent/Green/Other. This could only improve conservative electoral performance.

No longer would there be curious arrangements about three-cornered contests.

There would be beneficial financial effects from less duplication of services and activities. Scarce human resources could be more productively used.

In Queensland, the Liberal and National parties are already formally combined as one joint organisation, the Liberal National Party. Under the LNP agreement in the state, federal electorates are divided up between the two existing conservative parties. Whoever holds the seat of Groom, for instance, has to date taken their seat in the Liberal party room.

This is a dead-giveaway about the lack of need for two distinct conservative entities.

In the Northern Territory, the centre-right conservative grouping is the Country Liberal Party, commonly known as the Country Liberals_._

Over the years, many successful MPs for rural electorates have been Liberals. A fine recent example is Russell Broadbent who served the electorate of McMillan/Corinella/Monash devotedly (Moe, Wonthaggi, Fish Creek) for more than 25 years.

An amalgamated conservative party would help clear the decks and provide a firm base for sorting out the grassroots and organisational chaos in some of the state and territory divisions of the Liberal Party. Not for nothing are they called “divisions”. The current situation in Victoria, for example, has been characterised by a prominent alumnus as one in which members of different factions have been “eating their own”.

For amalgamation to succeed, leadership by conservatives located in rural areas would be required. This is where Joyce could come in. He is almost a caricature of the National Party: whimsical, colourful, inconsistent, outspoken, irreverent and good copy for the media.

If he stayed true to form, Joyce could be the catalyst for moderate and more progressive conservative forces to be bold enough to insist on the amalgamation of Liberal and National Parties into a single entity. With his eventual support, amalgamation could be achieved in five years and within two full electoral cycles.

The existence of two conservative parties creates unnecessary difficulties on policy issues. The situation relating to a 2050 target for net zero greenhouse gas emissions is currently the standout example. The necessary steps for the coalition are for Liberal MPs and Senators to agree a position in the Liberal party room, for Nationals Members and Senators to agree a position in their party room, and then for shadow cabinet to determine a position for the coalition.

To this end, the National Party has an internal review being led by a prominent opponent of the net-zero target, while the Liberal Party has Shadow Minister for Energy and Emissions Dan Tehan reviewing its stance. This is almost a tailor-made situation for a spoiler to create further confusion and uncertainty. Joyce’s proposed private member’s bill does that very nicely.

He could be more gainfully engaged in party politics than this.

Progress on amalgamation would require active promotion and support from members of the National Party. Traditional rusted-on National voters would need to be cajoled, informed and encouraged to appreciate the benefits of the proposed new arrangements. Extensive community consultations would be needed.

Amalgamation would be strongly resisted by elements of the National Party, who would be identified and defined by such opposition. In these circumstances and in the interim, Joyce could emerge as the lightning rod for a Save the National Party push and the obvious leader of such a rump.

But soon enough this could present him with the opportunity to help remake conservative politics by leading the resisters — the SNP people — to a new happy place.

There must already be many National Party members and supporters who see the enormous benefits to the conservative side of politics that would immediately accrue if they were all to fall on their ploughshares.

The question is, who is brave enough and selfless enough to cut the first furrow?

Calare, Hunter, Eden-Monaro, Page and Richmond in New South Wales; Capricornia, Dawson, Herbert, Leichhardt, Hinkler and Rankin in Queensland; Ballarat, Bendigo, McEwen, McMillan and Burke in Victoria; Brand and Kalgoorlie in Western Australia; Grey in South Australia; and the Northern Territory.

Many thanks to those who recently sent me birthday greetings by one means or another. Special thanks to those who were able to come to our Poetical Party on the Saturday, especially those who travelled some distance to do so. They included Sabina, Bruce and Helen, Julienne and David, Sue, Susan and Philip, and Andrew and Tess.

The entry criterion determined by Pella for the Party was 'to write and deliver something poetical'. A number of people who were unable to attend in person sent a piece anyway, and we received fifty or sixty in all. They varied from haikus to extensive ballads; and from reflections on eighty years, to brief descriptions of single moments. At the party some of the offerings were posted on the wall of the community centre in which we gathered, for all to see.

They made an interesting collection. The poem from Julie, my 'Sister-in-Law' in the UK, made me laugh out loud. It included a reminder of how we totally lost our car in a Melbourne shopping precinct; and of a Sunday morning with the mass said in Vietnamese.

Some people wrote not one but two pieces - occasionally with assistance from Artificial Intelligence. As someone who knows nothing about AI and has never used it, I might be quite mistaken. But I wonder if employing it might have the useful discipline of requiring a person to identify their own preferences in poetry, in order to provide the AI system with instructions which will result in a product of their preferred kind.

Applying this discipline to my own collection, I think the important characteristics are:

· the piece will have a plain narrative - a story told from beginning to end; 'more history than mystery';

· a fixed rhyming scheme (per piece, however fabricated!);

· the inclusion of word play (puns, jokes) as the chance arises; and, most crucial,

· a strong and continuous rhythm or meter.

These quite subjective preferences provide me with a framework for the insidious task of specifically mentioning some of my favourites in the set of pieces received for the birthday party. Insidious or not, let me proceed.

David, my oldest brother, used his unique relationship with me to tell the whole story of my life to date, with the inclusion of a number of references to its key turning points. On my birth: "Unknown to us, your arrival planned"; and of once falling out of the car:

"Door part-way open and no seat-belt:

By exiting the car in motion

Beginning to make one's presence felt -

Which must have caused quite a commotion."

The pieces from Tony and Chris, radically different in length and form, tell of my best two lifetime friendships. My cricketing and hockey adventures are mentioned by several, with no exaggeration of their importance and value to me, and only some exaggeration of their success. Winning is not everything.

Irene told - as only Irene could - of the foundational role of The Trip to Jerusalem in the second and third thirds of my life in which Alpha was the focus. The irony of that should not be lost on Irene: The Trip has no normal foundation; it's built into a solid limestone rock.

Many submissions received knew me as a colleague at work. Frank's piece is perhaps the rawest - the most direct and natural statement of a relationship that's fully rounded and consistently respectful. Many other close workmates were not present at the party. The pieces by Leanne, Susan, Catherine, Sue, Lesley, John, Helen, Viv and two Bruces tell the story best. Accurate historical records came from Tony, Jenny and The Princess. Julienne and David, as well as John, took the opportunity to promote the fact that economies are more than numbers and that health is the truest kind of wealth.

My best friend included some cricket, in the time-honoured fashion of W.E. Henley:

"But more than runs or wickets won

You taught us how the game is done.

With sportsmanship and quiet pride

You always had your team beside."

Hockey was beautifully dealt with by Keith, without whom that element would have been so much less. The most intriguing and imaginative poem received was Craig's. (How good to discover that some friends have similar poetical pretensions.)

Canadian relatives and friends kept their end up, with Crisanda apparently leading the creative team for the Knoxes, with a piece entitled Australian Rhapsody. (There was no need for creativity on the part of another branch of the Canadian family to let on that I am never seen in the kitchen at home.) Shirley and Greg were impressively detailed and comprehensive - but late! (Their inclusion of 'scrunching' reminds one of the closeness and care exercised in our relationship.)

Quite the cleverest piece overall, and AI-assisted, was from Ken, with several verbal jests. For instance, the interface between music and politics results in corruption of the dance to become The Waves of Tory. Fiona's had the tastiest references to cheeses - picking up the matter raised in Pella's global invitation.

Lyn B made the craftiest use of pre-existing greeting card material. Special mention has to go to Sara for three suggestions for a rhyme for 'Gordon Gregory': 'Cordon Plenary', 'Maudlin Reverie' and 'Warden Chancery'. Lovely! And Elisabeth, another Sophisticated Swinger, was so kind and understanding in what she said to me on the day.

The best puns were from Kapil and Ken. And Peter is to be congratulated for finding a rhyme for heteroskedasticity¹. Benedict's - with AI - was a surprise treat. And Anne: I imagine yours got lost in the post?

Three excellent pieces received were unattributed. The first is neat, pleasing and delightful. The second is an expanded version of That's Life, the song usually associated with Frank Sinatra. Some of the augmentation of the words seems designed to lead to an increased emphasis on light, which makes it particularly poignant for me.

The third is entitled See What Tomorrow Brings and is signed off by Zimon Dadali, a name unknown to me and Google search. It is a well-written put-down of how charlatans try to be popular enough to be elected to parliament. Can you help??

Let me return to where I started. Thank you to those who took the trouble, sometimes large, often small, to stay in touch through Facebook, text, email and old-fashioned mail. Sitting out the back in my cold shack it is gratifying and, I think, vital to feel part of an ongoing community. Judging from my transactions on today's trip to a post office, that last-named means of communication is not for long. Two very small, very light parcels, one to Canada, the other to New Zealand, cost $34.

Big thanks to my family for organising everything.

^1. In regression analysis heteroskedasticity refers to the scatter of the data points around the regression line; it varies as you move along the regression line. This can affect the validity of statistical inferences and predictions derived from the regression model. BTW: Peter went with 'accuracy'.

Twenty American naval vessels, including eight battleships, and over 300 aeroplanes, were damaged or destroyed. 2,400 Americans were killed, about half of whom were on the battleship USS Arizona which sank within minutes. Its remains are preserved as a national cemetery and as a reminder of what then President Franklin D Roosevelt dubbed "a day which will live in infamy".

The significance of the decision made by the Imperial Japanese leadership lay not in the damage done to the US Pacific Fleet. It was that it drew the United States instantly and unequivocally into the world war.

At the time of the attack Britain stood virtually alone against Hitler. France had fallen in 1940. From July to October that year Britain's resistance had been sorely tested: the RAF had famously preserved the Allies' air superiority in what came to be known as the Battle of Britain.

The fortunes of the combatants in another key engagement tilted one way and the other. The Battle of the Atlantic saw German U-boats interrupting and frequently devastating the merchant shipping which was providing Britain with essential supplies of food and armaments. The worst month for the Allies was still to come, with the loss of 830,000 tons of merchant shipping in June 1942. In total, around 5000 merchant ships were sunk, totalling some 15 million tonnes; 782 U-boats were lost.

The United States had been providing some support for transatlantic shipments but President Roosevelt had been unable to commit the United States wholeheartedly to the war because of a recent history of Acts passed by Congress underpinning America's neutrality.

During the 1930s the political agenda in the United States included the belief of some that its entry to the First World War had been orchestrated by bankers and the arms industry.

Between 1935 and 1939 Congress had passed a series of Neutrality Acts, in response mainly to the political instability in Europe. These Acts drew no distinction between aggressor and victim, treating both as equal belligerents, limiting the US's ability to assist Britain and other Allies against Nazi Germany.

The attack on Pearl Harbor effected in 24 hours what Winston Churchill and President Roosevelt had been trying to implement for more than 24 months. It united the American people and led to a massive mobilization for war.

And it marked the moment when circumstances conspired to see the United States don the mantle as leader of the free world and protector of democracy.

----------

Let Chat-GPT guide you at work and at home.

If MAGAs don't get you the money bags will.

So follow your leader and 'Drill Baby drill'.

Let drones do their eavesdropping far overhead

Scribbling on the sky the message Truth Is Dead.

Put a label round the neck of each public swan

And worry about microparticles much later on.

Trump is transforming a stable world order

In breach of the law and set sovereign borders.

His motive, like Mammon's, is clear as a bell:

More riches for him and the rest go to hell.

The facts are not wanted: we're all in the lurch,

Pack up all intellect, dismantle research.

Get under the bedclothes, remember the past.

Fly all your old flags - but only half-mast.

-

1.To all MPs in their Ivory Towers

- by Iris G Barton of Katunga, South Australia; 22 February 1986. Begins:

We serfs out in the country, Who through our sweat and tears,

Have carried all Australia On our backs throughout the years,

Now stand and raise our voices At the injustices we see,

And hope the Government will hear Our strong and desperate plea.

The response from Kerin begins:

Your poem caused us much delight, A change from heartfelt cheerless letter;

Although your facts are not all right, Some heartfelt verse – so much the better.

Some deep in strife – make no mistake – And sympathy I really feel.

But a balanced view is what I take: For lots, the 'crisis' isn't real.

2. Owed to Kerin was written for his 60th birthday. The fourth stanza is:

Like Collossus he strode the rural stage and petty men did peep out

From underneath his mighty legs that bushwalked him about.

He conquered the woolgrowers’ natural reserve - said the timing perhaps was the flaw

That staple industry owes JK a debt for ever more.

3. John Kerin – a personal reflection

(extract) For John Kerin the national interest was something real – almost tangible – albeit complex in terms of the factors determining what it looked like. When faced with hard decisions the national interest was in the room, openly discussed, which meant seeing through the self-interest of powerful people and vested interests. He did not trust privatisation, deregulation and the outsourcing of public services. He was always opposed to the trickle-down thesis, including the notion of the trickle-down benefits of tax cuts.

4. John Kerin: Obituary from a staffer “The best policies are the best politics”, in Pearls and Irritations, 9 April 2023.

(extract) John Kerin’s contribution to the success of the Hawke-Keating government has been grievously understated and uncelebrated.

Note: John Kerin's legacy includes his massive work: The way I saw it; the way it was; the making of national agricultural and natural resource management policy, published by the Analysis and Policy Observatory, 2017.

According to reports of the trial, in his sentencing the judge said that the penalty handed down was extreme because of the number of families affected by the tragedy. In addition to the ten fatalities, 19 were injured.

This seems odd.

In New South Wales there are four bases of liability for a charge of murder. They are an intent to kill; an intent to inflict grievous bodily harm; reckless indifference to human life; or the commission of a crime punishable by life imprisonment or imprisonment for 25 years. On the first, second and fourth of these, the coach driver is totally innocent. The degree of his contrition and his words of hopeless regret speak loudly of this.

Murder is punishable by life in prison, with a typical non-parole sentence of 20 years. A person convicted of murder in the middle of the severity scale will typically serve 20 years in jail.

The bus driver in the Hunter Valley case is deemed to have committed murder of higher than average severity.

Murder is a crime not mitigated by personal conditions in the life of the guilty party or the circumstances which led to the event. It would seem to be reasonable for a sentence to be related to the number of times it is committed; but proportionality with the number of victims less so.

The driver may well be – may well have been – the model of a good husband/father/brother, perhaps a member of a local community group, someone with an unblemished driving record for 30 years. Or perhaps he spent too much time in the pub.

Whichever, he made one ongoing miscalculation and one at a moment in time. His chronic mistake was, as reported in media coverage, to become dependent on opioids despite being warned about addiction. His acute error was to take the shift that fateful day when he was under the influence.

Before the law this constituted the risk of “reckless indifference to human life”.

People who become addicted may be seen as needing support for their mental health. As for the acute error, he may have needed a stimulant to help keep awake on his shift. He may have been unwell but in need of the work to provide for his family.

The veracity of these possibilities – ‘good man’, ‘bad man’, – is immaterial. What matters is the extent to which character and motive are considered in determining the length of sentence.

Consider three hypothetical circumstances. In the first a train driver makes a medically-determined decision which leads to a crash killing 100. In the second a lone cyclist crashes into and kills a pedestrian on the cycle path. And in the third a bus driver takes a stimulant and kills 10. Which of these three guilty parties is more culpable, which less?

The law is an ass but not so much for the length of sentence to be determined by the number of fatalities. More germane are the characteristics of the guilty party and the particular circumstances which led to the outcome.

One of those key characteristics is the extent to which the individual was aware of the risk posed to others by their behaviour. In some workplaces the risks managed by one individual are imposed on large numbers of others.

The Hunter Valley case should shock anyone who on some occasion has breached rules and regulations relating to safety and civic responsibility.

Some of the families affected by this tragic event in the Hunter have turned their attention to education and other work to prevent such accidents occurring in future. In the circumstances this is most welcome and admirable. Ultimately it comes down to individuals recognising public risk and their role in managing it.

The story so far: George Gregory (1879-1940) left behind a typed record of much of his personal, family and community history. It is not known how many pages in all were written, but just over 100 came to light among the papers of one of his seven grandchildren. Sadly, even this collection is incomplete, with some missing from the beginning of the story and the set ending abruptly halfway through the description of a tragic matter concerning his third son.

The manuscript is more than George’s autobiography. It is a memoir of his own life plus reflections and recollections of the lives of those who came before him and were around him. He tells what he knew of his father and mother and the life they had. So, although George himself lived from 1879 to 1940, he gives insights into the period from 1850 to 1919.

Sadly there is nothing in the found document for the period after 1919. It is impossible to know whether tales from 1919 to 1940 were yet to be written by George or whether they have been lost.

In the pages found it is George’s voice telling the story of George’s immediate family as he remembered it. It is not clear who was doing the typing. Did George’s household have a typewriter? Was he a capable typist? Or did he dictate it to Ilott, his wife, or to Richard, his eldest son? Richard certainly had literary and poetic capability and interest, having had one or more of his short stories broadcast on the BBC.

It is may be fanciful to think that after dinner each evening for a period Ilott and George would settle down to another page or two of the story. Ilott might remind him of things yet to be covered. His wife’s first name is sometimes spelt ‘Illott’ and there are just a few typographical errors caused by homophones, such as ‘Brightleigh’ for ‘Brightley’, all of which suggest that a copy typist was working from an audio source – a tape recorder. But in 1934?

Accompanying the manuscript is a single page that might be described as an aide memoire for George’s book. It is a list of the events, anecdotes and characters that someone thought could or should be mentioned.

George and Ilott’s third son, Kenneth, was born in 1912. At one point the narrative reads: “Looking back these 15 years, I realise that if he had lived life would have been different. He would have been twenty two now.” This places the creation of the manuscript in 1934.

The narrative does not follow a strict chronological line but the main stages of George’s life are revealed in due order. First he describes the situation of his father and uncle and the process by which the former, the younger of the two, came to have his own small farm and flour mill. There are short sections dealing with George’s teenage years, during which his brother Arch was his chief companion and playmate, and then his experience on the rugby field and in the Boer War.

There follow major sections on his working life with his father at the mill and, most richly, his courting of Ilott, his wife-to-be. It is in this section that George’s writing reaches a glorious descriptive pitch – in places more poetry than prose. The events are set in the Exmoor region, on the border between Somerset and Devon – an area that is new to George and which he comes to love very dearly.

The descriptive authority and confidence of much of George’s writing in these necessarily ‘romantic’ episodes is what captures the imagination and interest. How is it that a full-time farmer in an isolated part of the UK’s West Country came to possess the style, the observational acuity, vocabulary and literary tricks (metaphor, simile) to produce such material? What was the process through which George developed the confidence to produce written work that is consciously designed as art rather than mere reportage?

Whatever its provenance, West Country Tales is a true delight and an authentic and valuable record of rural social history in the south-west of England from 1870 to the end of the First World War.

In the envelope was a manuscript. It has become the focus of my time in the study and the main reason for being unblogged.

It is about 120 pages of typed material on onion skin paper. It is George Gregory, Tauri’s great-grandfather, speaking from the grave which is my study.

That is even more telling now that social media records everything, with none of it being entirely lost to the public record.

A quick glance at the manuscript revealed the treasure that it is. It is essentially George’s autobiography, from 1879 to 1940. Much of the material is about the characters in his family and those with whom they lived, worked and socialised. He describes the experience of going to the Boer War and witnessing Queen Victoria’s funeral in London. On one of several occasions when the author reflects on the cruelty of Nature relative to that of children, he describes his horror on finding fly-blown sheep and with the use of a certain kind of rabbit trap.

The narrative is a treasuretrove of insights into the way isolated rural communities were made up and maintained in the hundred years from 1850 to 1950. He describes in great detail the countryside of Exmoor and North Somerset (around Lynton and Minehead) and the deep respect and love he has for it. His descriptions of the combes, the sea and the built infrastructure of roads and farms are both informative and richly poetic. They are the context within which he courts his wife and gets to know her family.

Then the reader finds him espousing progressive views on (to mention just two) sex education in schools and the way poor people are treated in the workhouses. He – a farmer, not a lawyer – writes of the need for families to share deer meat ‘under the rose’.

It was hard to reconcile the contents and style of the document (described at one place by its author as “a book”) with my father’s father. Of grandfather George I could bring to mind just a single image and nothing more of fact than that he was a farmer near Exmoor, on the border between Somerset and Devon.

The find is exciting and it is reprehensible to have kept it from the family and other public gaze for so long. I feel a responsibility to honour the piece and the man who wrote it.

Beyond that, nothing is yet clear about what can or should be done with it. But it’s taking up a lot of time.

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.

When Moggs met Steve, and Steve met Moggs

They thought that they would marry

They could go down to Melbourne town

But their friends were in Kalbarri.

They hired a bus with little fuss

Steve’s driving all did charm;

But the Melbourne crew were overdue –

Alert but not alarmed.

This meant the lunch at Geraldton

Became a trifle late:

Not twenty-three at half past two

But three at ten to eight!

Lady played some major Rolls

For Moggs (her owner’s daughter);

But at Dongara she showed her age

And damaged her hind quarter.

The bus was stopped, the tyres were changed

She soon felt wheely better;

With all at sea Greg – patiently –

Made Geraldton to get her.

We put to sea in an easterly breeze

To do a spot of fishing;

Megan’s catch: a lifelong match

To ward off constant wishing.

The men toiled hard, the women starred

And Kirsten caught a few fish;

The gender save was made by Dave

Who caught a lovely dhufish.

The cricket game was sadly off

It rained in little splashes;

Too bad then for the Aussie lot –

The Poms retained the Gashes.

In Albany in years gone by

They did a little whaling;

To see Moggs hitched, two thousand six

Saw several guests abseiling.

Viv went up and Dave went up

And Alpha tried to top ’em;

She reached the face, came down with grace

And landed on her bottom.

Moggs and Steve I do believe

Don’t need a rope to bind ’em;

A ring will do for these fine two

And in Melbourne you can find ’em.

Finlay’s was the scene one night

Of a feast of food and song

Dan and Chris sang up a storm;

Then Megan came along:

She crooned to Steve her favourite tune

(We feel her music still):

“Love me tender, love me true

And I always will”.

Prue came by to see Steve off

Was pleased to travel northward;

She hopes they both will be like her

And put their best foot forward.

All their friends turned out in force

As witnesses and aiders;

But the only Force that worried Dan

Were those against Crusaders.

You’d have got good odds from Centrebet

On The Force not standing tall.

Who’d have thought it! What a contest!

Twenty-three points all

Some stayed at Lola Rosa’s place

The breakfasts there are heaven;

For all of us a busy time

Just once we slept ’til seven.

So here’s to Moggs and here’s to Steve

For a loving, healthy marriage.

For rhyming’s sake let’s re-gazette

And call the town ‘Kalbarriage’.

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.

adapt for use in a different purpose.

I could not conceive of letting it go to the tip or even to the recycling shed.

Our children have a special relationship with The Family Bed.

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.

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.

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.

Little of importance in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander affairs has changed because of the result of the Referendum. But its existence 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.

The big picture

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.

The complete transcript is here as a PDF.

https://tinyurl.com/y67s9upn

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

JK was a Big Man.

He had a Big Life.

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.

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.