Newcastle revitalisation

One of these days, I have to find the time to spend a weekend in Newcastle with camera and map, just walking the streets. I make this point because the collapse of the GPT deal that would, in theory at least, have revitalised the Newcastle CBD  has led to some very conflicting comments.

The impact of change and especially the continued growth of large shopping centres on central town areas within New England has been quite profound, from the Newcastle CBD to the Armidale mall to Lismore. At a personal level, I find the shopping malls quite useful, but I really don't like them. They transform variety into a standardised pap that is the same wherever you go.

I suppose that I have become something of a passionate supporter of Newcastle revitalisation. I have never lived in the city, just visited over a long period. Yet it has been important enough to me during that time to want to see it emerge from the shadows that have so often surrounded it as a distinct entity in its own right.

Now someone from Newcastle might say, rightly, that of course it's a distinct entity. I would fully accept that criticism. My point is that nobody outside Newcastle really knows that it is!

When I look at the comments on the Newcastle CBD revitalisation, I am struck by just how inward looking they are. To be fair, I have applied the same criticism to other New England centres such as Maitland or Armidale. We all suffer from border myopia.

Accepting that I do not have the detailed knowledge of Newcastle that I should and that I am writing as a sympathetic outsider, I would make just three points about Newcastle CBD revitalisation.  

First, Newcastle is, or is not, a a centre in its own right. To my mind it is, a place with a distinct history and culture. I know this because I research and write about it. If it is, then there needs to be an overall Newcastle strategy that builds upon Newcastle's special features. This then provides a context for CBD revitalisation.

Secondly, if people won't immediately come as visitors to the CBD, then you need to bring them as residents. My feeling is that central Newcastle potentially provides a rather wonderful urban living environment. If I'm right, you don't necessarily need a grand plan for urban revitalisation, simply a planning environment that encourages inner city living. Get people, and vibrancy follows.

Thirdly, while there is nothing necessarily wrong with grand plans such as that put forward by GPT, a lot of the best development comes from organic, incremental, growth. Start small, and let the flowers bloom.

Here I noticed the way in which light vs heavy rail became a show stopper. Now my personal view is that Newcastle should be cautious about getting rid of heavy rail because once it's gone, you can't get it back. I am also influenced by what I see as a fact, that once people from Sydney or other places have to change trains, you lose people.

In my vision of Newcastle CBD, I see loaded trains unloading people in the city centre so that they can enjoy the essential city. I don't see people doing this when they have to drag their luggage from one station to another, then try to fit their luggage into light rail designed for city computers.

Maybe I'm wrong. I am an outsider. What do you think?    

A new state for New England

Now that the combination of the independents with a resurgence of North Queensland new state interest has put new states back on the agenda, I have watched with a degree of bemusement as the same old arguments against are re-cycled.

It is now 150 years since the first attempt to create a new state in Northern New South Wales. From 1915, there were waves of sustained agitation for New England self-government. The name New England itself was adopted at a convention in Maitland in 1932. This agitation forced, among other things, two Royal Commissions in NSW, a Commonwealth Royal Commission into the constitution and the formation of an all-party Commonwealth Parliamentary inquiry into the constitution. The agitation also led, among other things, to the creation first of the Armidale Teachers College and then the New England University College to provide tertiary education for the North. 

In 1967, a plebiscite on self-government for Northern New South Wales was just defeated following fierce opposition by the then Labor Party in NSW. The Party was concerned that it would become the permanent opposition in Northern New South Wales.

The graphic shows the back of a New England New State Movement envelope. These are the boundaries as recommended in 1935 by the Nicholas Royal Commission.

The New England New State Movement collapsed in the bitter infighting that followed the 1967 plebiscite defeat. There have been a number of attempts since then to revive the cause, but these failed to grab. However, over the last six months, we have seen the slow emergence of a more structured campaign, with the drive coming from the Hunter.

Some years ago, I said to Jack Arnold (a fellow supporter of self-government for New England) that our biggest problem in reviving the New England New State Movement lay in the almost complete loss of folk memory over the years since 1967. In essence, we had lost our history. That was part of the reason that I began this blog in April 2006. I wanted to preserve and re-present the New England story, to provide a vehicle for the re-articulation of common concerns. Since then I have blogged away with a combination of current events, Northern history, new state stories and straight Northern promotion.

For those who know nothing of the New England Movement, History of the New England New State Movement 2 - defining New England, provides something of a short introduction.

This flier sets out some of the arguments used by the Movement to justify its cause. They remain valid today.

One of the problems now, and this applies in North Queensland as well, is that, in forgetting our past, the arguments now begin again from scratch. Listening to the media commentary, I felt a strong sense of deja vu. Our opponents are using just the same arguments! Just as bad, supporters are also reinventing the wheel. I have heard very little from North Queensland that references current activities back to the past.

Certain things have changed in the 43 years since the plebiscite defeat. New England's relative structural decline has continued, despite population growth along the coastal strip. The area has become more fragmented. Commonwealth-state financial relations have changed.

Perhaps the most important change since 1967 is that we now know that most of the arguments used to support the No case have been invalidated by time.

Labor would not have been in a permanent minority. Fear of loss of the preferential access to the Sydney milk market that swung the vote in the dairy areas of the lower Hunter and around is no longer relevant. Those farmers lost that access anyway and quite quickly. The arguments that our needs could be met by the Sydney Government have been invalidated by time. They haven't been.

Another thing that has changed is that we now have a far better understanding of the way existing systems work against us. I explored this a little in my Why I Remain a New England New Stater series. It is no coincidence that some of us like me or Paul Barratt remain new staters. It's not just our emotional ties to the North, it's also the fact that as former senior public servants we know how the system works. In addition, my own work on the history of New England threw a clear lime-light on the gains

As new state support began to increase in New England, old arguments began to emerge. There was also a strong interest among new Hunter supporters in the Movement's past. It quickly became clear that there was a simple need to document and explain past arguments, leading to my still to be completed New State Arguments series. Even at this point, I hope that you can see that the arguments now suddenly put forward against are both old and in some ways simply crass.  

The next photo shows a new state float from Newcastle in the lead up to the 1967 plebiscite. The Young Northerners Club was a youth group that began in Newcastle and then spread north.

Even at this level of detail, I hope that I have demonstrated that the New England self-government cause is not new; that the arguments for and against have been well thrashed out in the past; and, most importantly, that the desire to create new states is not a strange idiosyncratic phenomenon, but reflects deeply long held views that reflect both a sense of regional identity and a desire to reform the Governmental systems in this country to better meet the needs of the people.

The next photo looks like just a lunch group, and indeed it was. However, it was not without significance.

This is the first formal meeting of the re-emerging Northern or New England New State Movement. The people present come from different parts of the Lower Hunter, Armidale and Sydney.

Local Government has been driving the move in North Queensland. In New England, we are working bottom up, a much slower process. Not one member of this little gathering had in fact met prior to the lunch. Our links were formed by the internet.

The sense of enthusiasm was palpable. Indeed, we all had cameras because we wanted to record the event!

The outcome of the meeting was the formalisation of a steering committee with members across Northern NSW to guide the overall reformation of the Movement, along with the creation of a Hunter Valley Branch. Small stuff I know, but when you have lost your past you have to start small!

From our collective viewpoints, just having people to talk to who shared the concern for Northern self-government and for Northern development was quite wonderful.

So far, we have been keeping the discussions somewhat below the radar.  From my viewpoint as the group historian, it has been wonderful having people who want to learn about our past to provide a base for our future. We have to educate ourselves and re-create agreement on common issues before we can launch in a hugely public way.This is actually not easy, because so much has been lost.

The next graphic shows part of the original anthem of the New England New State Movement.

I suppose like most anthems, it has a rah-rah element. yet I remember  how moved I was as a sixteen year old when I first heard it.

I was an usher at the Armidale convention that launched Operation Seventh State, the large campaign that culminated in the lost 1967 plebiscite. The lights dimmed, the spotlight shone on the New England flag, while an operatic singer sang the anthem.

Today we are building from a much smaller base. Yet the idea of working for New England, fighting for New England, fighting for our liberty still resonates. We want freedom within the Federation, freedom to do our own thing and to make our own mistakes.

None of us are naive. We know how hard it is to get real change. But if you don't try, nothing happens. In trying to reform the movement, our present objectives are two-fold:

• By networking people across New England, we hope to create a common focus that will force Governments to take New England needs into account. Here we are trying to overcome the factional pottage based marginal seats approach that simply fragments.
• We also hope to make the achievement of another plebiscite a major issue at the next NSW State elections.        

If you would like to join us in discussing New England's future, there are several things that you can do:

• you can email us at newstate@deldaimax.com
• you can write to us at New State Movement, PO Box 195, Islington 2296
• you can join our Facebook page.

Short break in transmission

Because of other pressures, it will be Monday before I can post again.

In the meantime, a reminder that Wednesday Forum: New England's greatest needs is still open. I see that Greg has already commented. What I would like to do with this, is to take the comments in one Forum and then use them as a basis for the next. It would be nice to think that that way we might generate an evolving discussion thread.

Preserving New England's past

One of the best things to come from New England's sense of regional identity and all the movements it spawned was the establishment of the New England University College, later the University of New England. Without this, our sense of our own past would have been greatly impoverished.

The photo shows then University Archivist Alan Wilkes in 1964 in search of records.  

In 1947, the Warden of the New England University College (NEUC), Dr Madgwick wrote to the Under Secretary of Justice of NSW stating ‘This was all very silly.’ He was referring to a decision that records located in the Armidale Court House could only be researched by NEUC staff and students at the State Library in Sydney  over 500 kilometres away). Local access to historic records was forbidden.

That decision was overturned.

In 1960, University Librarian Frank Rogers briefed the first full time UNE archivist R J McDonald in these terms:

‘Collect all research material likely to be of value in throwing light on the historical, economic and social development of Northern New South Wales from the earliest European settlement until recent times.’

Note the reference to European settlement. In fact, 1960 was the year of appointment of Isabel McBryde as the first lecturer in prehistory. Fourteen years later, New England was the best documented region in Australia in regard to Aboriginal pre-history.

Today when New England is so much diminished that even the name has shrunk in popular recognition, our history survives only because of this past work.  

Note on sources

This post is drawn especially from “This is all very silly” : An interesting start to a regional archives.

Wednesday Forum: New England's greatest needs

You are advising the New England independents. What are the three most things that you would like them to argue for?

I ask this question because I have just completed a post on my personal blog, New media, independents and change, looking at the new climate created by Australia's hung parliament. We have a chance to do new things, but we have to give them guidance.

So what are the three things you consider most important?    

Time for a New England manifesto

Yesterday in Elections a chance for New England? I mused about the possibilities that the current political imbroglio offered to gain a greater focus on New England needs. I extended this a little this morning in  Northern Daily Leader: Second-term support a must.

Just to provide a context for the discussion, this photo shows then New England New State Movement campaign director Ulrich Ellis raising the New England flag.

Since my first post, there has been email traffic on the best way of getting the independents to support the new state cause, including constitutional change to make the creation of new states easier.

We know that Bob Katter is a new stater, we think that Tony Windsor is, but we are not sure about Rob  Oakeshott.

There has also been discussion about the best way of using the current opportunity to get a focus on New England issues over and beyond new states. The difficulty we face here is that the independents need more than generalities if they are to work beyond, indeed within, their electorates. A further difficulty is that the erosion that has taken place in the idea of New England since the Movement went down in 1967 means that thinking has fragmented to the very local.

We need to put forward something to the independents something that will help them articulate a broader view. I have written a fair bit on this, but I wondered what you think.

What would you like to see included in a broader New England manifesto? We need a campaign document that will not just guide the independents, but also provide a platform across the broader North.  

Elections a chance for New England?

In a post on my personal blog,Three Amigos and the future Australian Government, I discussed the outcomes of the federal election as we know them to this point.

If, and it's still uncertain, Messrs Katter, Windsor and Oakeshott actually do end up with the balance of power, then we may have a chance to push New England causes. Two of the three come from New England, while Mr Katter both supports self-government for North Queensland and is also sympathetic to regional development. There is also a cross-bench National from WA who, so far, has been largely ignored by the media.

I often complain that New England needs are ignored. I also suggest that this is due in part to the way that existing structures work, fragmenting thinking and making it difficult to see common needs. Part of the answer to this problem lies in constitutional change. However, part also lies in our own capacity to articulate common needs and possible solutions.

The current more fluid political climate provides an opportunity to mount a push on broader New England issues. We need to take advantage of this. To do this, we need more debate about needs and possibilities.     

Elections, Aborigines & the need for change

Bear with me if I express a purely personal view that is nothing but opinions, no evidence or real argument.

I have just finished a post on my personal blog, End of the Nats? This followed an earlier post on this blog, Coalition wipe-out in the North? 

Now I know that many readers are not National Party supporters. I am not saying that you should be. However, I hope that you will bear with me when I say that the Nats decline makes me sad.

As an historian but also someone who campaigns for Northern development, I find the old Country Party a good thing. They had a focus and they delivered. So I find the Nats decline sad.

I also find the betrayal of Northern interests by the ALP sad.

Now my Country Party background means that I spent a fair bit of time fighting against the ALP, but I never doubted the Party's support for the working man, however much I might have complained about their approach. Nor, as I studied history, did I doubt the validity of the things that they fought for. You only have to look at the history of coal mining in the lower Hunter to see what I mean.

When the ALP fought against a yes vote in our new state referendum, I thought that the Party was betraying the interests of the people it claimed to serve in the interests of power, but I could still understand their position because I saw it in a historical context. I had no real idea that those who voted no at the Party's request would fail to gain any of the promised return, that once the referendum had been lost the need to meet local needs could be put aside in the interests of holding power elsewhere.

I have a lot of sympathy for the New England independents. Their rhetoric captures many of the things that I believe in at a purely personal level. Yet they have failed, at least as I see it, to develop any coherent view outside a very narrow range of issues. Certainly, they have failed to develop any coherent view of the North as a whole.

The same thing applies to the Greens. There I read with interest from Chris Parker's Facebook page that the Green's had released an NSW indigenous policy. When I looked, this contained the following elements:              

• Amending the Constitution to formally recognise Indigenous Australians
• Ending the Northern Territory intervention and put in place measures that genuinely help people to overcome disadvantage
• Ensuring that Indigenous Australians are partners in the development and implementation of public policies to advance their rights and aspirations.

Do you know, even if every one of these bullet points was delivered, it would not do a damn thing to address the core needs of New England's indigenous peoples.

This is an area that I am quite passionate about. If you look at  Reflections on the end of the Housing NSW/AHO Aboriginal mentoring program you will get a little bit of the feeling as to why.

In Sydney outside certain narrow localities, Aboriginal development is an abstract issue because the proportion of the Aboriginal people is so small. This is not true of New England. It's not just that the overall proportion of the Aboriginal population is growing, but that in some areas it is so high (Moree Plains is an example) that local development is inextricably dependant upon Aboriginal development. You cannot have one without the other.

This is a very different world. It all comes back to jobs, education, development and support. But no-one sees it.

This photo is of an Aboriginal family of an island in the Bellinger near Urunga. I could give many such photos.

Maybe saying that no-one sees it is unfair. Many do. But no-one comes up with solutions because they cannot recognise that solutions must be geographic specific.

My interests are definitely geographically specific. While I agree that we must have advancement for Aborigines in the Kimberly's, I want to know what is happening to the Aborigines in Moree or Kempsey. That is my country.

Did you know, I think that it's true from a simple analysis, that Aborigines in inner Sydney have access to far more services than those in Moree or Tamworth or Kempsey? Why? They are simply closer to the current levers of power. A riot in Redfern creates a Minister for Redfern, while far larger numbers elsewhere are ignored.

There are no easy answers in current structures. Those of us who care have no choice but to dig away, trying to bring change.                   

Bryan Pape runs for Senate (NSW)

This morning youngest came in to tell me that one of our friends had decided to run for the senate for NSW. This led us to check all the candidate lists. I then discovered that Bryan Pape was running.

No doubt I should have known this, but it had escaped my attention.

Bryan doesn't have a snow flakes chance in hell of getting up. He is running as a single person, so to vote for him you have to vote below the line. Then, clearly, he does not have a lot of organisational backing. All this said, he is worth considering for a first preference vote.

Bryan is a strong new New England new stater and lawyer who has been campaigning for constitutional reform for some time. Central to his argument is that our constitution has become distorted by the imbalance in financial powers.  As Professor Geoffrey Sawer once said: “those who spend, don’t have to justify the taxation and those who tax don’t have to justify the spending”. Bryan wants this clarified.

In recent times, Bryan is best known for bringing a case to the High Court challenging the Rudd Government's stimulus payments. He was not opposed to the stimulus payments as such, rather to the way in which it was being done. He lost the case, but the High Court did put something of a warning shot across the bows of the Commonwealth on the assumption that it could spend money however it liked.

As I said, Bryan can't win. Further, voting below the line is a pain for many because it involves numbering all the squares. Still, a vote for him remains worth considering.

Belshaw's World - Drummond's uphill election battle

Drummond may have gained Progressive Party pre-selection, but he still faced a hard battle to gain election for Northern Tablelands.

Under the new electoral system, three members were to be elected. Drummond considered, accurately, that the Labor vote would be disciplined and that their number one candidate, Australian Workers' Union organiser Alfred McClelland, would certainly be elected first. He also considered, again accurately, that Colonel M.F. Bruxner, the Progressives' star candidate, would be elected next. This left Drummond contending for third place against a galaxy of candidates, including two sitting members, F.J. Thomas and H.W. Lane.

If that were not difficult enough, each Progressive candidate had to organise his own campaign committee and pay for his own personal expenses including publicity, printing, advertising and travel. This was no problem for the wealthy and popular Bruxner, but it was quite another matter for the still poor and struggling Drummond.

During the campaign, a local stock inspector described the Drummond campaign organisation as 'one newspaper and a handful of cockies'. They may only have been 'a handful of cockies', but their loyalty and work were vital.

The support given by Drummond's old friends from Mt. Russell, the Coshs, was particularly important. Supported by brother Arthur, Leonard Cosh appointed himself Drummond's advance agent and political secretary. Their uncle, Stephen Cosh, provided transport.

Stephen Cosh had recently lost his wife. He offered to drive Drummond around the electorate free of charge 'except for petrol and a tyre or two', subject to the condition that he would not stay in hotels because of his nervous condition.

This offer was a Godsend to Drummond, who had a store of inexhaustible energy and a powerful voice, but little money.

Their normal practice was to move from meeting to meeting, up to ten in a single day. Drummond would usually speak in the open air, then adjourn to a room with his local committee to sign scrutineer and other forms and lay out the plan of organisation. After the meetings were finished, he and Stephen would retire, often as late as 1 am, to a quiet place in the countryside to spend the night.

They had always to be ready for the unexpected. Arriving in Ashford one night, they found the whole village in darkness, for the circus was in town and the whole countryside was at it. With no chance of coming back, Drummond asked the manager if he could speak at half-time. The manager responded dubiously, “that if I could stand it he supposed he could.”

At interval, Drummond bounded into the ring with a small wooden box. "Ladies and Gentlemen”, he said. “My name is David Drummond Progressive Candidate at the forthcoming State Election. Take a good look at me and make up your mind what you think of me. Vote Drummond No. 1". He then grabbed the box and made a fast exit before the bottles etc. began to fly!

Drummond’s political message was simple. His theme was always 'Decentralization, Development and Decent Government'. He usually finished by saying that “'Parties, Platforms and Policies' existed for only one reason, 'the good government of the people.' When they ceased 'to serve this end they should cease.'”

The Northern press with its new state emphasis played an important role in the Progressive's campaign. Progressive candidates such as Drummond were generally already separatists, and could therefore both identify with and be identified with the Thompson led newspaper campaign for statehood for the North.

Press support was particularly important for the lesser known Drummond.

Drummond's old friend, Ernest Sommerlad, supported him strongly through his paper the Glen Innes Examiner. In addition, Sommerlad persuaded the supporters of F.J. Thomas, the sitting member for Gough (Inverell and Glen Innes), to exchange preferences with Drummond.

This preference deal proved critical, for on 20 March 1920, Thomas’s preferences put Drummond into Parliament.

The result was a surprise to many. As The Land put it some years later:

“Mr Drummond was a young farmer of Inverell. He had ideas, and had been active in the Farmers and Settlers' Association. No one knew much about him, but that was of no consequence. He proceeded to tell them. There were no widely signed requisitions for him to contest Northern Tablelands. They were not required. He had made up his mind. He informed the electors he knew about politics, and would be able to run the country as it ought to be run. At first he was not taken seriously, but he was quite confident the people would elect him to Parliament, and they did.”

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on Wednesday 11 August 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