Round the New England blogging traps 16 - Hunter Valley sojourn

One of the things that I have always liked about Newcastle, apart from its very difference to the world in which I grew up, is the accessibility, the feeling of closeness,  to the Harbour.

This photo from Newcastle Au Photos City & Hunter draws this out very clearly. Isn't it a great photo?

I was going to leave this blog here, and then I thought of something that happened during the week.

David Roberts from UNE's Heritage Futures Research Centre sent me an article that he and Erik Eklund from Monash University were preparing on the treatment of Newcastle's Coal River Heritage Project.  Now before going on, I want to insert another photo from Newcastle Au, one that has absolutely nothing to do with convicts, but is still linked.

The following photo shows a group of terraces from Newcastle East. The photo could have come from North England, and indeed many of those who came to Newcastle were from this area.

But how does this industrial shot link to convicts? Well, for a number of complicated reasons, Newcastle has in some ways been written out of Australian history.

The core of the draft article on the Coal River Heritage Project is the difficulty in gaining recognition that Newcastle was a major convict centre in fact worthy of recognition.

In similar vein, Australia's industrial past and Newcastle's role within it is rarely dealt with today. I stand to be corrected, but I see very little on it. With the exception of the occasional passing reference or footnote, Newcastle really does not exist in historical terms.   

Concluding, this really is a great photo blog. Just take a bit of time and browse the various tags.

I continue to enjoy Sharyn Munro's The woman on the mountain. Sharyn has a real love affair with wallabies! She has also just been visiting south east Victoria. As I read Magical Mallacoota, I thought of my last visit there all those years ago.

I was reading Wollombi Valley On-Line when an odd thought occurred to me.  The trigger was a story:  Womens Spirituality Workshop.

This, by the way, is a shot of Wollombi.

Living in Sydney as I am just at present, it's easy to forget that the desire to discover spirituality is one of the themes that appears across New England's alternative life style settlements.

The University of Newcastle's Cultural Collections blog continues to provide a range of fascinating material. As just one example, the story Henri Rochefort – Noumea to Newcastle is not just a fascinating yarn, but also provides both a slice of French history and a visitor's snapshot of Newcastle in 1874.

Staying in the Hunter, it has been a little while since I visited Gaye's Snippets and sentiments. Gaye's blog is a gentle, personal, blog with a nature focus; it is always a pleasure to read. Re-visiting, I discover that they have bought a house further north in Baradine, a small community near the Pilliga Scrub, an area that Gaye has always enjoyed. While they will be staying in the Hunter for the present, the aim is to retire to Baradine.    

All for now.

New England's vanished towns - Kookaburra

In some ways, the New England landscape is littered with the remains of past settlements. 

Gordon Smith has been exploring the Carrai Plateau, a huge granite area surrounded by steep escarpments that drop to Kunderang Brook and the Macleay River.

The little settlement of Kookaburra was a tiny saw milling centre. This photo shows the Kookaburra Fire Station. Gordon wondered just what might have been stored inside!

Around New England's Universities July 2010

I suddenly realised that I haven't done a news round-up on New England's universities since February. It seems an opportune time to do so now, for as I wrote in Are the wheels starting to come off in Australian higher education?, all Australia's universities face a period of fundamental change.

Starting with Newcastle, on 25 June the University released details of 901 mid year offers of places broken up as follows:

• Callaghan campus: 663
• Central Coast campus (Ourimbah): 165
• Port Macquarie campus: 7
• Distance education: 66

I haven't been able to find equivalent numbers for UNE or SCU.

On 1 July, more than 2,000 students from high schools across the Hunter, Central Coast, mid-north Coast and Tablelands-North West regions visited the University of Newcastle's Callaghan campus for the annual Schools Visit Day. This type of visit is a major activity for all our universities as they seek to attract students.

On 10 July, Newcastle released details of a $100 million program including new on-campus accommodation of 750 beds, refurbishing and upgrading existing on-campus accommodation (960 beds), and 400 extra car parking spaces. The new accommodation facility will be located adjacent to the existing on-campus accommodation precinct.

One of the drivers here has been the high cost of rented accommodation for students within Newcastle. Sydney universities face similar if more intense problems; both the University of New South Wales and Sydney University are expanding student accommodation, increasing their competitive threat for New England students. 

One of the University of Newcastle's strengths lies in the engineering and technical arena. In this context, the University has appointed engineering heavy-weight Dr Alan Broadfoot as the director of the Newcastle Institute for Energy and Resources (NIER).

NIER will comprise laboratories, workshops, offices and five industrial-scale pilot plant workshops. The facility will encompass University Priority Research Centres and research groups that will explore energy production, distribution and efficiency. Research will also be carried out in the areas of mining, minerals and minerals processing. The $40 million NIER project is funded through $30 million from the Australian Government Education Investment Fund and $10 million from the University.

In another move, the University has announced that Researchers from the University of Newcastle will lead a new multi-million dollar Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence to pioneer new scientific approaches to geotechnical engineering design. With Australian Government funding of $14.4 million, the Centre of Excellence in Geotechnical Science and Engineering will focus on creating science-based tools for predicting the safety of offshore and onshore geostructures, including oil and gas platforms, roads, railways, tunnels, dams and port facilities.

Finally on Newcastle, congratulations to The University of Newcastle Chamber Choir for winning gold in two categories at the Sixth World Choir Games in Shaoxing China. Around 420 choirs with over 10,000 performers from some 80 countries participated in the Games.

Both Southern Cross and the University of New England featured NAIDOC (National Aboriginal and Islander Day Observance Committee) week activities. NAIDOC takes place across Australia during the first full week of July  and is a celebration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and an opportunity to recognise the contributions of Indigenous Australians in various fields.

At SCU, there were a variety of activities at the Lismore and Gold Coast campuses (and here), while at UNE the Oorala Aboriginal Centre organises a flag-raising ceremony every year as part of Armidale’s NAIDOC Week celebration.

This year’s NAIDOC Week theme focuses on “unsung heroes”. 

Speaking at the ceremony, student Kerrie-Anne Maunder celebrated the achievements of her grandmother, Vilma Ryan, as a political activist, community worker, lecturer, and campaigner on a wide range of Aboriginal issues including land rights, social equity, and the education and welfare of children.

Ms Lyn Walford, representing the local Aboriginal community, spoke about the highly successful, community-based Aboriginal Rugby League team based in Armidale - the Narwan Eels - as “unsung heroes”. She invited those at the ceremony to view an exhibition of photographs and memorabilia of the “Eels” on   display in the Oorala Aboriginal Centre while continuing their NAIDOC Week celebration over morning tea.

The photo shows from left the Acting Director of the Oorala Aboriginal Centre, Michael Brogan, Kerrie-Anne Maunder, Professor Jim Barber, and Lyn Walford.

New England has a very big Aboriginal community and especially in the North Coast and North West regions.

While I have always been interested in Aboriginal history, working with Aboriginal people over 2009 while also researching Aboriginal history as part of my broader history of New England has given me a much greater awareness of Aboriginal issues; see Return to country as an example.

Staying with Southern Cross, one feature of the University's press releases is an emphasis on the sea, not surprising given its location. Examples include:

• Southern Cross University to study Gold Coast and Tweed dolphins
• Capturing whale images is no fluke
• Art and science meet under the sea: art exhibition
• Innis Foundation scholarships presented to top surfing students

University press releases also feature outreach activities such as public lectures at main centres.

Finally with SCU, lobbying by the University has paid off with Coffs Harbour to be included in the 19 centres for the National Broadband second stage roll-out. The area including and around the University of New England was included in the first NBN pilot studies.

I sometimes not sure just how many New Englanders understand the importance of their universities to development across New England.

Turning to to UNE, the press releases again have a different feel. Monitoring the releases as I do, by the way, UNE actually has the best PR approach of all three.

If Newcastle is technical and industrial, Southern Cross sea, then UNE is agriculture. Of course, all three are more than this, but the rural side continues to come through strongly at UNE as it has from the University's early days. If we look at the media releases over July, we find:

• UNE experts develop model of disease spread in livestock
• Spotlight on new technology for monitoring livestock
• Students share summer scholarship experiences - a gathering of school students interested in agricultural science
• International perspectives on resprouting in plants
• Livestock researchers focus on a future full of change

However, looking at the pattern of press releases over time, UNE also has four distinctive features as compared to both Newcastle and SCU: the releases are more varied, while there is a greater emphasis on campus life, on international reach and on the humanities.

This partially reflects the University's history, but also its strategic positioning, for in some ways UNE is caught between a rock and a hard place.

Australian university students are far more stay at home than, say, their US equivalents. Lacking the bigger immediate local catchment areas available to Newcastle (Newcastle, Lower Hunter and Central Coast) or Southern Cross (Gold Coast, Northern Rivers, Coffs Harbour), UNE has to attract students and especially on-campus students from other places in the face of fierce competition. While UNE does compete with SCU and NU for New England students, it actually has to attract students from other places who would otherwise go to their local university or universities. This affects every element of the University's competitive strategy.

Why we need a New England research institute

Today's post on my personal blog was Issues with spin.

My last two Belshaw World columns - Belshaw's World - true wisdom rarely the sum of bland numbers and Belshaw's World - round holes, square pegs and a region cruelled - discussed the way policy is developed with a special focus on the reasons why policy so often disadvantaged country Australia. I concluded the second post:

To my mind, the single most important short term solution to current ignorance about and neglect of Northern NSW and its needs lies in the creation of a properly funded research institute to generate the ideas and the information required to force changes in current policy approaches.

One of the reasons why spin sometimes works is that those involved in the spin actually control both information and the policy levers. There are no alternative views to challenge.

Those who read this blog will know that I consider that self-government for New England is critical to getting a proper focus on New England needs. In the meantime, we do need a way of generating alternative views.

In suggesting that we need a New England research institute, I am not proposing an alternative to existing vehicles such as the Hunter Valley Research Institute. Rather, I am suggesting the creation of a broader vehicle that will work in tandem with them and compliment their activities.

For my proposed research institute to work, it must be properly funded. I have not attempted to work out numbers at this point, but my guess is that we need an annual income stream of over a million dollars per annum.

I would be interested in comments as to the best way of achieving this.  

Formation of the Armidale Newspaper Company

On 22 July, Gordon Smith carried this post on his Old News from Armidale and New England blog.

"Armidale Newspaper Company Limited

Friday 12 April 1929, The Sydney Morning Herald

COMPANY NEWS.

The following companies have been registered, shares (except where otherwise stated) being of the value of £1 each:

The Armidale Newspaper Company, Limited, capital £30,000; to purchase, acquire, take over and amalgamate, or carry on the business of the Armidale Express Newspaper at present carried on at Armidale by P. C. G. Hipgrave and J. B. McKenzie, and the business of the Armidale Chronicle Newspaper at present carried on at Armidale by A. Purkiss. First directors: R. B. Austin, E. C. Sommerlad, H. F. White. Registered office, Armidale, N.S.W."

Now as it happens, I can provide a little more information on this story. I quote from Drummond's life 5 - The Minister: 1927-1929. The footnotes will be found in the original post. 

"In those pre-radio and television days, the local press was the main source of community information.[65] Originally even the smallest towns had their own independent newspaper to press the interests of town and district. However, from the first decade of this century rising wages, the development of new and costlier technology, and growing competition from the metropolitan dailies began to threaten the financial survival of the country press. Papers started to close or merge, while a number became daily publications. These new country dailies were aggressive. In the North the Grafton Daily Examiner and Northern Daily Leader combined with the Lismore Northern Star and the Murwillumbah Tweed Daily to form the Associated Northern Dailies. An office was opened in Sydney to sell advertising space and a joint rate was offered to advertisers willing to advertise in all four papers. In 1931 the Maitland Daily Mercury joined the group.

Competition from the Northern Dailies combined with that from the Sydney press to increase the pressure on the other newspapers still being published on a tri-, bi- or weekly basis. This competition was not all one-sided. In September 1926, for example, Sommerlad wrote to Drummond with glee that the Glen Innes Examiner had

.. got a good one on Tamworth yesterday, in connection with the rail smash. Armidale passed the word on that Tamworth were sending a special edition up, to arrive about 7pm. I got busy & made a fine display of stuff in the short time available. Then hired a motor-bike and sent 350 copies to Inverell, having rung Knapton to get a dodger out in the meantime. The street was blocked with people waiting for copies & we made a great sale - & a great scoop.[66]

Despite such successes, the pressure on the smaller papers grew. Again the response was merger, associated with the closure of the smaller papers. In 1923 Sommerlad merged the Glen Innes Guardian into the Glen Innes Examiner, following this in 1926 with the merger of the Inverell Times and Inverell Argus. A new company, Northern Newspapers Limited, was formed to take over both the Inverell papers and the Glen Innes Examiner. Sommerlad became Chairman and Managing Director, while the other directors included Harold Knapton (former proprietor of the Inverell Times) and Drummond.

Drummond had probably not been actively involved in Sommerlad's business activities before accepting the appointment to the Northern Newspapers' Board. However, he played an active role in the next stage of the consolidation process, the merger of the two rival Armidale papers, the Armidale Express and the Armidale Chronicle.

In 1928, a financial adventurer, William John Beckett, formed a new company to launch a chain of newspapers around Australia. Armidale was apparently mentioned as one of the key centres in the Beckett proposals. Beckett's notoriety created immediate concern: realising 'that at all costs Beckett must be prevented from getting a foothold in the North',[67] Sommerlad and Albert Joseph (the founder of the Northern Daily Leader) agreed that the Tamworth Newspaper Company and Northern Newspapers should jointly sponsor the merger of the two papers. In Sommerlad's view, this outside intervention was necessary 'since the two Armidale proprietors were so mutually jealous there was no possibility of the amalgamation being brought about except by an outsider.'[68] Drummond's newspaper experience had already suggested to him that merger would be desirable,[69] and he fully supported Sommerlad's plan.

In February 1929 the Tamworth Newspaper Company Board refused to participate in the agreement, probably because of tensions between Tamworth and the other parties involved.[70] With Tamworth's withdrawal, Harold Knapton wrote to Sommerlad saying Northern should now pull out unless they owned the 'whole show' since he doubted the capacity of the Armidale promoters to succeed in a larger newspaper.[71] Drummond disagreed,[72] and the parties decided to proceed. On 10 April 1929, The Armidale Newspaper Company Limited was formed with Dr. R.B. Austin (Chairman), E.C. Sommerlad (Managing Director) and Colonel H.F. White as initial directors.[73] W.S. Forsyth, the main Armidale promoter, wrote happily to Sommerlad that he was 'pleased with the entire outlook.'[74] Drummond and three others were appointed to the Board at the first directors' meeting,[75] and then, on 2 September 1929, the first edition of the merged paper appeared.[76]"

New State arguments 12 - the importance of history

One of the difficulties those of us who want self-government for New England face in getting our message across is the loss of our own history. The reasons for this are complex, but link to the combination of demographic change with changing research and publishing fashions.

Normally, historical memory is preserved through a combination of folk memory, schooling, books and coverage in media, film and television. Demographic change and especially the rise of coastal populations means that there are a large number of people in New England who have limited historical connection to our past. The folk memory has diminished.

New England history is not covered in schools, while publishing, media, film and television coverage links to what is popular at the time. New England stories are not.

On the research side, academic interest in local and regional history within New England peaked around 1980. From that point, the number of theses at all levels dealing with aspects of New England history tailed away sharply. Since theses are the key raw material for later writing, the number of books and articles declined.

The loss of history was greatest at the broad regional level. Local and family history groups continued their work, although increasingly distribution of the results was limited. Coverage of local work in bookshops declined.

One side-effect of this loss of history is that the self-government cause came to be seen as a quaint anachronism from the past, rather than as a central element in New England history that had had national ramifications. A second side-effect is that many of the arguments and ideas developed over time were lost and had to be re-discovered by those becoming interested in the self-government cause.

The loss here was not just local. There is something rather sad, for example, about the way in which every renewed interest in population distribution and decentralisation over the last thirty years has effectively started from scratch. It is as though the detailed arguments put forward not just by the New State Movement, but by all those concerned with country or regional development, have been effectively locked into a sealed vault concealed from the present.

I make this point now because in reproducing my biography of the New England leader David Drummond, I have reached the point where I have just published the detailed story of the Nicholas Royal Commission. This now means that I have covered a large slab of New England history and politics from early settlement by the Europeans through to the mid thirties. This includes the history and impact of the Northern/New England separation movement.

Those interested can find the entry point for the series here: Decentralisation, Development and Decent Government: the life and times of David Henry Drummond, 1890-1941 - introduction.   

Belshaw's World - round holes, square pegs and a region cruelled

My last column began a discussion on some of the reasons why Government so often failed the needs of people in general and country people in particular.

In that column I discussed the way in which priorities are set at state level. I suggested that current institutional structures worked against effective country development.

To illustrate my point, I focused on the way priorities are set on a state-wide basis, on problems of data and the way in which inter-acting decisions had compounding effects at local level. One example I used was the way in which reductions in local hospital facilities could result in reduced age care facilities because they meant the centre no longer met the service criteria required for the funding of those aged care facilities.

I also pointed to the way in which mechanistic projections based on past trends could entrench, bring about, those projections.

Problems are compounded by the use and misuse of performance indicators. The difficulty is that, by their nature, these are based on statistical measures that are in fact averages across broad geographic areas, a state or the nation. They ignore regional variation. Further, the indicators are often interdependent in ways that may be unclear.

Once you set an indicator, you are bound to try to achieve it. The practical effect is that resources will be devoted to activities likely to have the greatest impact on the indicator, and that generally means the bigger population centres.

The growing role of the Federal Government complicates matters further. It, too, centres its approach on indicators, those things that can be measured. However, it uses national indicators that then get broken down at state level. These can cross state-priorities.

Perhaps the greatest misuse of indicators at Commonwealth level lies in the blind application of ARIA, a statistical measure of remoteness. It has no validity beyond this. Yet the Commonwealth uses it to determine certain funding allocations and to measure progress.

Say you want to improve health services to rural people or provide certain types of housing or increase the proportion attending university.

The current Commonwealth approach is to target funding to some combination of ARIA classifications, remote plus very remote for example, or these two plus outer-regional. This creates arbitrary on-ground boundaries for service delivery and benefits that cut through regions. You may be eligible, an equivalent person 20k away, not.

But wait, it gets worse.

All Government agencies need boundaries for planning and service delivery purposes. Those boundaries are determined by particular service delivery and planning needs and vary from each other and over time.

Of itself, there is nothing wrong with this. However, it adds to an increasingly crazy patchwork on-ground quilt of policies, programs and structures, a quilt that lacks both vertical and especially horizontal integration.

Vertical integration means the way in which policies, programs and structures link from top to bottom. Horizontal integration refers to the way in which policies, programs and structures link across service areas and geography.

Present arrangements are increasingly bitsy and ad-hoc. There are no real mechanisms for achieving coordination within regions or between regions on matters of common interest.

I am very aware of these problems because of the work I have done at community and official levels and as a consultant. I see them all the time.

I began my last column by wondering how many Armidale people knew just how important the University of New England had been in providing the intellectual firepower that allowed us to challenge conventional wisdom on country and regional issues.

Knowledge is power. If we want effective regional development, then we have to be able to challenge conventional thinking through evidence.

Given the lack of horizontal integration, this has to be done at a broader regional level. So long as responses are locality, electorate or even narrow regional based they will fail.

They will also fail if they are just “country” or “regional” in the broad sense, for then they are likely to get caught in the same general geographic traps as current approaches. They have to be geographically specific.

The original strength of the University of New England from a Northern perspective lay in the commitment of its staff and its broader regional perspective. One of the tragedies of the failure of the networked university, but also one of its causes, lay in the loss of that broader perspective.

To my mind, the single most important short term solution to current ignorance about and neglect of Northern NSW and its needs lies in the creation of a properly funded research institute to generate the ideas and the information required to force changes in current policy approaches.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on Wednesday 21 July 2010. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the Express columns are not on line. You can see all the columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010

Why our history is important to New England

Just back from Armidale to deliver a paper. I recorded some of my reactions in Return to country. This dealt in part with the role of the University of New England in recording the history and culture of the area. I concluded my post with these words:

I think that one of the best things that we can do for Aboriginal kids is to give them back their history. Not the generalised history you often see, but the actual specific local, regional and language group history.

The first New State manifesto said in 1920:

In Northern New South Wales, a few high schools, no technical schools, no universities exist to retain the intelligence and culture of the area.

When people say to me that the idea of New England statehood either makes no sense or is dumb because it cannot be achieved, I say don't be silly. Of course constitutional reform is hard. But if it hadn't been for the New State Movement, we wouldn't have had the University of New England. And if we hadn't had the University of New England, then Aboriginal kids in Northern New South Wales would have had no access to their own history.

I think that this is kind of important. We may not have a new state now, but we also have lots of positive results from previous agitation.

In the two papers I have delivered in Armidale this year, the listening audience has been quite old, old enough to remember some of the things that were done in the past. The younger demographic has no memory of past struggles. Their history has been truncated, cut off. 

To my mind, this is a very real problem. If we cannot explain our past, then New England will vanish, squeezed between Sydney and the national.

I think that this would be a tragedy.

Belshaw's World - true wisdom rarely the sum of bland numbers

This is the first of a two part series.

I wonder how many Armidale people know just how important the University of New England was in providing the past intellectual firepower that allowed us to challenge conventional wisdom on country and regional issues?

I mention this because an email exchange with John Pigrim on UNE work triggered the need to explain why Government as presently structured so often fails the needs of people in general and country people in particular.

As a teenager, I believed that there was something of a plot against country people, that things were weighted against us.

The majority was in Sydney. So long as Sydney controlled things, we must be disadvantaged.

There was and is some truth in this. However, it wasn’t until I started working inside the system that I realised that the institutional structures themselves worked against the type of results I wanted.

This is best illustrated by examples. I have disguised them to avoid identifying specific agencies. Aged care should not necessarily be read as aged care.

Cash is short. All Government agencies have to set priorities.

Say you are dealing with aged care. You look at data and set priorities for the State as a whole. This means focussing on areas of greatest need. However, this can create local problems.

Take a small country town that has raised money for an age care facility. It wants a small grant to complete the project, a grant that offers a very high rate of return measured by contribution to aged care. The government gets $10 for every $1 of state funds, far higher than most equivalent projects. The application is rejected on priority grounds, even though the need is there.

In setting priorities, is not just the relative need that is important, but also the cost of delivering services and the standard of care.

Like aged care, the health service is short of funds. Further, it faces rapidly rising costs, along with growing demand for increasingly complex services. To manage this, it centralises services, withdrawing services from certain country towns.

We now have a double whammy.

Assume that the community we talked about actually meets the state wide priorities for aged care. However, those facilities cannot be provided because withdrawal of services from the local hospital means that the application cannot meet the criteria required for Government funding for aged care facilities.

Now I want to look at a broader question. How are state wide priorities set?

Priorities begin with data. While data can be drawn from many sources, the census is the most readily available source. So agencies begin with census data and then crunch it in various ways.

To understand aged care needs, you begin with the population structures as revealed by the census. You then compare this with the existing distribution of aged care facilities. This gives a rough measure of relative needs, including relative gaps between needs and facilities.

You also need to know what is likely to happen in the future.

To do this, you generate projections based upon existing population structures and trends. You use these projections to create estimates of future needs. Comparing these to the current position helps you can decide where funding should go.

I am sure that all this sounds very reasonable, and at one level it is. However, there are problems.

To begin with, all taxpayers are entitled to get a return for their money. But what happens if you are in a low priority area such that the services you pay for are not in fact provided?

Nobody can ensure exact equivalence, nor is this necessarily sensible. However, some form of balance is equitable.

Then, too, the statistics themselves are uncertain. The aggregate numbers conceal considerable differences. A population pyramid may provide some guidance as to the numbers likely to enter the aged care system, but actually tell you very little about the exact pattern of services those people may require.

Finally, the approach adopted is mechanistic. It assumes that what was will be, the past determines the future.

Things change. If you base planning on the past and on projections based on that past, you are going to be wrong.

In my next column, I will extend my argument and then look at things that need to be done if we are to bring about change.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on Wednesday 14 July 2010. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the Express columns are not on line. You can see all the columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010

Pause in posting

I am running behind in finalising a paper I have to give in Armidale Tuesday next week. For that reason, and taking travel time into account, I will not be posting here until next Thursday.