James Barber appointed as UNE's new VC

The University of New England has announced the appointment of Professor James Barber as its new VC.

  You can find the details here.

Media Hunter - a great blog

Media Hunter is, I think, a very good blog for all those interested in the world of social media, as well as its reporting on more local events.

At a purely local level, the blog provides sometimes tantalising hints of the differences in the media including viewing habits outside the dominant metro reporting.

At a broader level social media level, the blog's Newcastle/New England location has nothing to do with its content.

I have been thinking how best to handle this.

I generally write on this blog about New England linked issues, leaving my broader reporting to other blogs. To a degree, Media Hunter suffers as a consequence. I deal with it as a New England blog.

I am going to change focus a little. I need to think through how best to do this. So more later.

Belshaw's world: Savings, aging and the challenge of the future

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on Wednesday 21 October 2009. 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.

Last week I accompanied my wife to the second Sydney University Faculty of Economics and Business alumni dinner. The speaker was Chris Richardson from Access Economics, the topic “Has Australia dodged the bullet?”

The dinner itself was pleasant if a little long, with drinks on the lawns and then dinner in the Great Hall. Part gathering, part sales-pitch, it is the type of thing that Sydney does quite well. However, my real interest lay in hearing what Chris had to say.

As I said in this column at the time, I was quite angry with Chris and Access back in February for what I saw as quite alarmist head-line grabbing commentary. My own assessment was far more positive, and had been so from the beginning of the crisis.

By August, Chris’s assessment had changed. Australia had indeed dodged the bullet, although he expressed reservations that I agreed with and discussed in another column at the time. Now I wanted to see if his views had changed again.

They had not. However, he had some interesting things to say that I thought I might comment on.

The first thing that he drew out with some very interesting slides was the sheer size in the increase in net wealth that occurred across countries during the long boom. To put a simple number on it, net wealth grew from four times income to a peak in late 2007 of seven and a half times income.

This increase was associated with a twenty five year fall in interest rates. Both the cost of capital and risk margins fell, fuelling increases in asset prices. This went just too far.

The difficulty now is that the imbalances created within the global economy during the long boom have still to unwind. Question marks will remain over growth until they do.

The main imbalance presently concerning economists can be summarised as spenders vs savers. This is often expressed in terms of the US on one side, China on the other.

The long boom in asset prices allowed certain countries to spend more than they earned. This was funded by borrowings from countries that saved.

Many commentators, me included, have suggested that this could not continue. Back in 2001, I argued that the economy must turn down because such low savings rates were unsustainable. I was right, but had no idea at all as to just how long the process would take.

It is going to take time for these imbalances to be resolved.

In the meantime, as the threat of recession eases, other issues are coming to the fore. Here I want to mention just two cited by Chris Richardson.

The first is the practical implications of the Government’s commitment to cap increases in real spend in the post recession period to just two per cent.

This probably sounds okay, but it is going to force some hard spending choices given that spend in so many areas, health for example, is rising naturally by more than two per cent.

My personal view is that the two per cent cap is unsustainable. I am also concerned that some of the arguments being presented here in general discussion are, to my mind, misleading.

Issues here are beyond the scope of this article. For the present, we just need to be aware that there is a problem coming.

The second issue cited by Chris that I want to mention briefly is that of population aging and the inter-generational issues that it raises.

The baby boom after the Second World War, in combination with the later falls in birth rates, created a demographic dividend.

We had more workers relative to dependent groups, both the young who had to be educated and the old who had to be supported. This helped support rising living standards.

This process is now going into reverse. Australia will not be as badly affected as some countries such as Japan, Russia or the Ukraine, but the effects will be profound.

We do need to be planning for this now.

We face particular challenges at a purely regional level.

The North and North West are aging far faster than the Australian average. Down on the coast, population growth in some areas has been retirement driven. The Mid North Coast is one of the oldest areas in Australia.

Blind Freddy could see that New England faces very particular problems. However, this will have to be the subject of another column.

Paul Barratt on Booloominbah and the early history of UNE

Paul Barratt's post Booloominbah provides a rather good overview of the history of this mansion and of the subsequent founding of the New England University College.

Paul's post brings out clearly not just the generosity of the White family, but also the incredible rush at the end in the face of the need to raise £10,000 to get the necessary Government approval. It's quite a remarkable story and Paul tells it well.

Belshaw's world: keep the past alive as part of the present

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on Wednesday 14 October 2009. 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.

I want to start this column with a simple statistic.

At the last census, 43.5% of the Armidale-Dumaresq population lived at a different address from five years before.

This includes people who simply moved within the LGA. However, many of them are in fact new arrivals. At a rough guess, I would say that around 30% of the people currently living in Armidale-Dumaresq were not there when we moved to Sydney in 1996.

Keep this number in mind.

Friday of last week I went as handbag to Sydney University’s International House International Night. My wife is chair of the IH council. It was a good evening, but it left a bitter sweet taste.

Over the last five years I have been to many IH functions, perhaps six a year. I grew up in an academic environment, so I enjoy this. But it’s sometimes hard.

In case you haven’t already worked it out, I am a fairly one-eyed UNE supporter.

How could it be otherwise?

My grandfather helped found the place, my father was the first staff member to arrive in Armidale at the newly founded New England University College. I was a student at UNE. UNE has been part pf my life since my earliest memories. I care about the place with a passion that is total emotion.

As my wife’s handbag, I go to many Sydney University functions. I chat with its senior people who talk to me as something of an insider simply because of my wife. I am good, and preserve discretion.

A little while back, my wife suggested that I should apply for a senior planning position at Sydney University.

I do not think that I would have got it. My personal decisions over the last ten years have taken me too far outside the loop to make me a good conventional candidate. However, I couldn’t even consider it. Part of my role would have been to keep UNE in its place as a competitor. I couldn’t come at it.

In the Express of Wednesday 30 September, Prof Stanton had am obituary on the death of Frank Rickwood. I was very pleased to see it. I had, in fact, been meaning to write a story on it.

Frank Rickwood was part of a quite remarkable group, the early students of the New England University College. They came from all over New England, from the lower Hunter north. Most were the first generation to go to university.

That group of students achieved success that, in terms of their numbers, no other Australian university has arguably ever achieved. They with the then staff set the real UNE tradition.

I will write a story on this in due course. For the moment, I simply note that the little Armidale, little UNE approach that I have sometimes seen in recent years makes me very sad.

In the early nineties, the university was planning the opening of the T C Lamble building. Jackie Lamble was quite insistent that some of the old guard should be invited. We were, but only after a lot of pressure.

After the opening we gathered in the morning sunshine for a cup of tea. Still in my early fifties, I was the youngest there by a substantial margin. Most of those drinking tea are now dead.

As people talked about the way that the then UNE had abandoned its past, I suddenly felt terribly old, a relic of a past age.

Link this back to my opening point, the way in which perhaps a third of the current Armidale population were not there in 1966.

From time to time I have worried about some of the content in this column, my focus on the past. Surely it is better to talk of current events?

Then I think about the turnover of people in Armidale. They cannot be expected to remember a past, a time of hope and achievement as well as worries, if it is not presented to them.

I think that this is where Prof Stanton, I and others like us come in.

It is our job to make the past live as part of the evolving present.

Tingha Community Regeneration Project update

In February this year in Tingha - a case study in community regeneration, I reported on the efforts of Bob Neville and the local community to rebuild Tingha from the bottom up. I followed this in March with an Armidale Express column, Belshaw’s World: Overcoming the curse of local self-interest that dealt in part with the Tingha project. Then I gave another progress report, Tingha Community Regeneration Continues, at the end of March.

So how has the project gone since then? Pretty well, I think, if the latest newsletter is any guide. You will find all the newsletters here.

Any project of this type has to work along two dimensions.

Dimension one is improvement of the town's social and physical infrastructure. This type of work is part visual (cleaning up and beautifying), part social (building community links), part service (building local facilities). On the surface, the project appears to be tracking fairly well here.

Dimension two is economic,  you have to attract extra income if you are to create sustainable improvement. Here Bob Neville took the view that action was required on dimension one first before much could be done on two. Now the project is moving on the second. The project took over the local caravan park, and has now moved to establish a community nursery and worm farm based around the growing of feijoa fruit.

All this action takes time and persistence to build skills and get things in place. Both have been there in spades.

If I have a criticism, and its an intuitive feel only, the project needs to look more outside Tingha. Sometimes on these things you have to start selling the sizzle while the steak is still cooking.

Just as a matter of interest, I did a search on Tingha in the surrounding newspapers. Now here I was quite disappointed. Apart from sport, I had no idea just how strong Tingha was here, Tingha doesn't feature, nor does the project itself, nor do Tingha's attractions. Now not all stuff is on line, my own Express column is not, but even so I was left with the feeling that Tingha was not marketing itself very well.          

Hunter Valley Development collapses

 

Sydney Government planning minister Kristina Keneally has been forced to announce the collapse of the 7200-home Huntlee New Town project, the biggest town development project in NSW.

I am probably not alone in finding all the complexities of this and other Hunter Valley developments quite confusing.

The bottom line in this case appears to be that the planning minister acted outside power and that, consequently, the development cannot proceed. This conclusion has implications for other already approved developments.

In all, a bit of a mess.

The Hunter does need more housing and this will always be difficult. But this particular project was fraught with problems from the beginning.

To Port Macquarie the interesting way

You know, I do love the strange by-ways that my interest in blogging takes me. Like this story from Paul Barratt: To Port Macquarie the interesting way.

I really do love driving around the back tracks.

The Armidale School (TAS) changes its organisational structure

I see from the Armidale Express (14 October 2009) that the Armidale School, one of NSW's nine GPS schools, has changed its structure.

The school was founded in 1894 as a private company by a number of shareholders who invested capital to provide buildings and operating funds. This company structure was common at the time. Totally dependant on fees and contributions from parents and old boys, the school struggled at several points in its history to meet student needs  and sometimes just to survive. meet  In 1950 the ownership of TAS passed from the private shareholders to the Anglican Diocese of Armidale as a way of giving the school a more secure future.

Over the last fifty years the school has faced many challenges. Changing educational demands due in part to changes in parent and student expectations as well as Government requirements meant that the school had to offer wider ranges of courses and different services. This meant that it needed to get bigger just to survive. At the same time, its traditional boarding base was being eroded not just by social change, the general move away from boarding schools, but also by changed Government policies and especially the Queensland Government's decision to subsidise boarding for country parents, but only if the kids went to Queensland schools. The flow of Queensland borders to Armidale schools effectively stopped.

Of all the Armidale schools, TAS responded in an especially effective fashion. The development activities that began under Gordon Fisher and were then carried forward under Alan Cash and later heads including current head Murray Guest have given the school a remarkably good base. These activities have been strongly supported by old boys and parents.  

To better reflect the different interests within the school community, TAS has now been restructured as a company limited by guarantee. This means that responsibility for governing the school will now be shared by the church, parents, former students and benefactors.

The Anglican Diocese of Armidale’s decision was made at the annual Synod held in Tamworth, voting to approve the diocese sharing responsibility for governing the School with the TAS Foundation, the TAS Old Boys Union and the Parents and Friends Association.

The changes are expected to come into effect in 2010.

The photo shows headmaster Alan Guest with Armidale Anglican Bishop welcoming the decision.   

The Virtual Coquun - Hunter River Project: a digital repository of early accounts and descriptions of the Hunter Region.

Almost by accident, I came across the University of Newcastle's Virtual Coquun - Hunter River Project, a digital repository of early accounts and descriptions of the Hunter Region. This strikes me as a very good resource for all those interested in the early history of Newcastle and the Hunter.

You can access the project here.