Prep Time

Once more i am making lame apologies for my lack of posting. Whilst most students are finally finished, this has been my busiest time of the whole year (and thats saying something in a hectic 2008), marking exams, organising final marks for students and writing my PhD Statement of Intent and speech, in order to justify being able to continue studying next year.

So as a small peace offering, and as my first real academic contribution to this blog (as it is eventually intended to become) I offer the abstract to my PhD & Presentation.

‘Middle Power States as Norm Entrepreneurs’
Australian engagement with the Asia-Pacific region 1983-2007



Abstract
Australia has always looked to the Asia-Pacific region with a sense of both foreboding and opportunity. While Australia has recognised its immense opportunities, being culturally and historically remote from its nearest neighbours, it has sometimes felt it had to choose – in the words of a former Prime Minister - ‘between its history and its geography’. Routinely denied the obvious resort to military ‘hard’ power to achieve its foreign policy objectives in the region, Australia developed an ‘irrepressible activism’ [Wesley 2007:222] along ‘soft power’ lines. First, in ensuring the support of ‘great and powerful friends' prepared to defend Australia and later branching out to establish bilateral, regional and multi-lateral relationships in service of its national interests. Although significant scholarship has already been expended on Australia’s efforts towards securing deliverable security or trade deals and institution creation, there exists a gap concerning Australia’s Foreign Policy cultivation and use of norms (i.e. ideas and values) to secure its foreign policy objectives. As a ‘Norm Entrepreneur’, Australia presents an ideal case study for how Middle Power countries may seek to generate and spread norms both bilaterally and multilaterally in service of foreign policy and national goals. This paper will outline the proposed course of further study, in identifying the approaches undertaken by Australia’s foreign policy towards the Asia-Pacific region, and explore the literature on norms, especially with regard to policy and identity issues, including related methodology. This will enable an analysis of both the Labor (1983-1996) and the Liberal Government’s (1996-2007) approach to spreading norms within the Asia-Pacific region in bilateral and multilateral forums, and the potential for a middle power country to act as a norm entrepreneur.

The big song and dance show starts 9am Monday Morning. Wish me luck!

The Jung in the Machine

Typealyzer is a new site which scans blogs and details the authors pyschological type (using the Jung & Myers-Brigg's model). Punching in this address for this blog comes up with:

INTP [The architect] The logical and analytical type. They are especialy attuned to difficult creative and intellectual challenges and always look for something more complex to dig into. They are great at finding subtle connections between things and imagine far-reaching implications.

They enjoy working with complex things using a lot of concepts and imaginative models of reality. Since they are not very good at seeing and understanding the needs of other people, they might come across as arrogant, impatient and insensitive to people that need some time to understand what they are talking about.

What's impressive is that it seems to work pretty well (and quickly) all without having any way of directing or testing my responses, simply analyzing presented material. When I did a formal Myers-Briggs test taking about an hour I ended up with INTJ - "The Mastermind", with the only real difference being it represents a more outcome orientated approach, rather than strictly structure building. Which makes sense in many ways as my posts on this blog largely involve me responding to and breaking apart whats going on, rather than urging and advocating changes. The medium shapes the message.

Now its all a bit meta to post this on my site, (though once again I'm responding), but you could have some fun shaping it (and perhaps even changing the way other people perceive your work and words based on appearing to represent an alternate type) or seeing how it reads your friends writings.

Then again I wonder if the blog will take into account the fact I've just written this whole post to try and avoid the last painful bits of marking I have left. Hardly the act of a worldly analyst is it ?

Eh, forget marking, I'm going back to playing Left 4 Dead. I wonder what effect my desire to kill zombies in mass quantities has on my personality type?

Censoring the internet.

From an IT consultant I talk about online/IT issues with regularly, but posted here as a rather easy but useful strawman.

The controlling public opinion comment wasn't meant to be taken as hyperbole and I probably should've worded it better. Although I don't expect an outright attempt to control public opinion (ala China) there will be a control of information that comes into Australia should this go into full swing. They even state themselves that it could have up to an 8% false positive rate. That's huge! I can also guarntee that there will be some representatives who get stuff blocked because they don't agree with it (right-wing christian party blocking pro-abortion sites springs to mind) and it will probably never get removed.

Despite the well justified anger online in a lot of quarters about the Rudd Governments efforts to introduce a mandatory internet filtering scheme isn't china and fundi christians usually dont know enough about computers to be the tech guys who could possibly distort the list. Certainly the idea the government will be from PM Rudd/Minister Conroy sending directives for specific websites or topic areas to be censored is ludicrious.

That said, Australia already has laws against discussing suicide techniques, or promoting euthanasia online, (passed in 2004 with both major parties shameful support, the media ignored it, I only found out because I was working in the chamber as they discussed it), so that area of material is sure to be included in the scope of the filtering.

Western Governments have no need to censor the views of people online. If they are saying it online, they are likely either A) entirely ignored and so no threat or B) too close to being a journalist/somebody to risk censoring. Theres no advantage for the govt trying to censor topics or people online. This is just about appeasing the fundies over pictures and slash fiction. And a half hearted attempt at that.

Not that I'm defending the idiotic move (its bad politics and bad policy), but lets not fall into hysteria here. The net's goldern era of unregulated free flow was always going to come to an end (radio had a similar pirate phase & tens of thousands of amateur talk shows the predecessors to bloggers), the question then is how do you design a good system that falls under some basic legal system (The net is a perfect place for International Law to assert its dominance over states law. It should be the UN not Australia making these laws), without too much damage to the system or its potentials.

Nothing goes unregulated forever, Rudd & Conroy's attempt is just a particularly ham fisted way of doing so, as every single western government in the world is thinking about/ due to in the next 5 years. Better for the online community (Whilst making a strident stand for free speech as integral to our system of government and way of life) to propose an acceptable system for both completely stopping access to material such as child porn, whilst still allowing adults their late night entertainment, and dope smokers to compare recipies for brownies. I'd much much more prefer to see no internet censorship at all, but its not going to happen and politically speaking want to the opposition to the bill focused on constructive efforts to preserve speech, not this all or nothing + hyperbole about police states that seems to invade the Australian internet communities efforts thus far in opposition to the bill.

Perhaps worst is the fact that after 11 years of a genuinely luddite government, we have one in place which knows and acknowledges the value of the internet and computers and yet caved instantly to distort and disrupt it. Weak as piss Rudd.

History Wars

As a blogger we have the option of simply not posting when we dont have any material, columnists however are not so lucky, but they get paid and we dont, they're apparently professionals and we're not. So they're going to rise to the occasion right ?

Well perhaps not: Gerard Henderson take a bow

Infamous Victory: Ben Chifley's Battle For Coal is co-written by the leftist Bob Ellis, and the film's historical consultants include left-of-centre historians Phillip Deery and Ross McMullin.

The documentary is favourable to Chifley - even to the extent of exaggerating his opposition to communism. So much so that no one talks about the fact that, in his final speech, Chifley actually warned against anti-communism. Still, it's a harmless product.

Right, life long opposition to the communists is made irrelevant by having a go at the ugly and intrusive tactics of the anti-communists. No mention made that Chifley died during the great debate over the attempt to ban the Communist Party in 1951, one of the most civil liberty destroying and according to the High Court grossly illegal power grabs in Australian history. No mention even of the doco's story (its quite watchable and up on iview for Australian readers/those behind a good proxy) which pits the former train driver, life long union man, and famously declared in 1931 on the side of the strikers and against using troops against them. But a line in a speech is enough to doubt his bona-fides it seems...

Not so Menzies And Churchill At War. Here the script is written by the producer John Moore, and there are no conservative historical consultants. The two main interviewees are the left-wing academics Judith Brett and David Day, who run the standard left-wing line that Menzies wanted to quit Australia in 1941 and hoped to become prime minister of Britain. Of course there is no evidence for this assertion, as Menzies's biographer Allan Martin demonstrated. Moore excluded any dissenting opinion on this issue.
Moore's introduction carries the left-wing line that in 1939 Menzies committed Australian troops "in support of the Mother Country". In fact, Menzies committed the Australian Imperial Force to war in 1939 because he, with most Australians, believed that it was a good idea to fight Nazism. Moore also excluded any contrary opinion on this issue.

Henderson seems distrustful of historians, even in this case two of the most distinguished and respected ones in Australia, Judith Brett who is perhaps the pre-eminent scholar on the Liberals in current times, and David Day who (having written books on Curtin and Chifley, and Churchill's relationship with Australia during WW2 is one of the best historians around for such a topic). So lets go see what Menzies said, as politicians speeches apparently lay bare their soul and true sentiments:

Fellow Australians, it is my melancholy duty to inform you officially, that in consequence of a persistence by Germany in her invasion of Poland, Great Britain has declared war upon her and that, as a result, Australia is also at war.

In fact go to the site above and you can even hear Menzies say these defining words, so though I am a left wing academic, I seem to have stumbled onto the truth.

While Bishop dances on GNW, the Liberals make it possible for their political opponents to frame their history. It all seems pretty stupid to me.

Henderson began the piece with some ABC bashing and a cheap shot at Bishop which I mercifully spared you. But he returns to it here to reiterate a consistent theme: that it is only left wing historians telling this story. Well that's true (though doesnt prove anything about their honesty or capability to do so, and some like Brett are very strongly centrist if not clear conservatives). Yet the reason for this is not some nefarious plot, but the simple fact that there are very few conservative historians in this country. I remember a chat with Wayne Errington (of the excellent Howard Biography fame) who got quite excited at the idea of my proposed PhD on the history of Liberalism in Australia from a Liberal perspective. The history of the Labor movement in this country is very well filled, yet left wing historians like Errington and Van Olsen (along with Brett) are doing their level best to fill in the other side of the scale. Its not some plot that means few conservative historians are working on big projects, it's simply that there are very few conservative historians.

Blainy and Windschuttle are the only two who leap to mind, though both are very well known, often well in advance of their talent.

Instead of calling everyone else stupid, whilst putting out plainly dumb columns like this, perhaps the self proclaimed "executive director of The Sydney Institute" could step out of the punishing once a week 700 word demand as a columnist and contribute to the documentaries or book on Australian political history but from a Conservative party. Sounds like a smart idea to me.

There's something stirring...

"The right to marry whoever one wishes is an elementary human right compared to which ‘the right to attend an integrated school, the right to sit where one pleases on a bus, the right to go into any hotel or recreation area or place of amusement, regardless of one’s skin or color or race’ are minor indeed. Even political rights, like the right to vote, and nearly all other rights enumerated in the Constitution, are secondary to the inalienable human rights to 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness' proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence; and to this category the right to home and marriage unquestionably belongs," - Hannah Arendt, Dissent, 1959.

I meant to post this yesterday, but today's a better choice. Right across the USA, if not the world are significant protests against the passage of Proposition 8 in California and openly for Homosexual marriage. Not just in the usual places of New York and San Francisco, but Alaska, Iowa City, Philadelphia (Alright that one isnt too suprising), but how about Wisconsin or Salt Lake City ?

Whilst the acceptance of Homosexuality is only somewhat higher amongst Gen-Y and below, what is significant is that it is real acceptance, not just a lack of hate or discrimination, or even just tolerance, for those who dont have a problem with Homosexuals, the idea that any form of discrimination or second class status is valid is completely unacceptable.

This comes up as a policy break on the left between the old and new generations in the issue of Gay Marriage. Whilst older left wing politicians like the Prime Minister Kevin Rudd or even our own Jon Stanhope (ACT Chief Minister) tolerate and want to end discrimination against Homosexuals, for neither is full marriage the right answer. But for the youth there is no question, just as Hannah Arendt wrote in 1959 that Marriage is not only the only option it is an inviolable right for any and all adults in this world.

I'm not saying the youth will rise and overturn the discrimination against Homosexuals, sadly too many of my generation still bear that prejudice and even wear it openly at times, despite the prevelance and normality of homosexuals in our culture and social lives. But if and when action is taken by this generation, it wont be for half measures like Civil unions. Only full marriage, of term and form will be seen as acceptable.

Really how could anything else be?

Night thoughts of writer

This blog will continue its political bent. But for the moment it feels appropriate to draw out to dicuss some of the other great threads of life in culture and society. However first, glass of wine in hand, its worth reconsidering the mere act of writing itself.

To be honest, I havn't thought of myself as a writer for many a year. It was at best an early dream to overcome my crippling failure as a student in normal society. Year 12 and its strictures simply did not suit me. Fittingly it has taken a documentary on Hunter S. Thompson to revive those long lost thoughts. Ironically, it was an interaction with another HST junkie several years ago that led me off that path. The boy was some non-descript fool who thought drugs were the path to enlightenment and great writing (I'm yet to see his name on a book spine, though havn't bothered to look).

When I read Hunter S. Thompson, -though only at his best- I can almost feel the heartbeat of the writer behind the symbols, the calculating but impulsive drive to find not just some words, but the right word for each circumstance. In reading Hunter you feel taken into the writers confidence. Like Kerouac, or in touches Hemmingway and Faulkner, Hunter gave you a sense of having read the first draft straight off his typewriter. In that way he was the original blogger, though he would abuse us all for the term, and decry the slovern nature of bloggers who think their unprepared, unpolished thoughts worthy of mass consumption. Hunter was never unpolished, never unprepared, never quite the raw immediate edge which his writing seemed to imply.

Hunter was never in a word, unprofessional.


If anything is my objection to this odious tag blogger, (and I guess now to my fellow colleagues) it is the asserted but never evidenced claim that the authentic mouth rattling out his thoughts is more worthy of consideration than a dozen professionals, with their carefully edited and crafted thoughts. Much like the Republican parties objectification of Sarah Palin as a leader of the American people because of her connection to the American people, these bloggers assert that their rejection of the mainstream media somehow represents their qualification for being real commentators on the american dream.

I've always thought there is something intoxicating in this whole writing process. Its long held and celebrated connection to booze only adds to this mythos. Writing at its purist asserts the direct translation of thoughts to physical symbols. In some ways the illusiory character of the letters doesn't matter, what counts is the process that connect mind to reality. To push from consciousness to practice.

Philosophy has spent 2000 years failing to guarantee us this link. Physics has to institute a dozen never seen, felt or smelt particles to somehow connect the noumenal to the phenomenal. Chemistry, Maths, Religion are no help here at all other than vainly wishing 'what you see is what you get'. As always doubts linger..

But with writing we know instinctively that the link is never in doubt. The entire endeavour has no purpose other than forging that link. Where we, the audience, pull away, where we come to doubt the authors honesty or effort, it is because he has broken the connection between his mind and word. And that is the writers bond.

I cant quite credibly claim to the title of writer these days. The headline of this post is a lie. But the churning beast still lies within me. And it has taken a reconnoiter with Hunter S. Thompson to bring it out. A man, who in life and death never betrayed that demand. We met his mind in his writing. He was a writer.

I miss Hunter.

I miss reading what he would have thought about Barack Obama. He would have liked Tuesday night. He wouldn't have been agreeable. He couldn't have been disagreed with. But he would always have held that connection. We should all be so lucky.

What happens now

I'd always lived in a fairly political household. My dad certainly had strong views, and my mum always liked to keep up with the news. Combined I got a lot of exposure to the sport of politics over the years.
I remember distinctly watching a small tv closely as Paul Keating concede government. The thought, which seemed significant at the time in a way I could never explain was that I had lived my entire conscious life under a Labor government. (I was born 2 months into Bob Hawkes first term)
I remember asking my parents on my 18th for Don Watson's Recollection of a Bleeding Heart an insiders account of the life of a speechwriter in the Prime Ministers office. The talk of intrigue, intimate access, and the challenge to articulate and shape the message to attract the public was intoxicating. I dont remember why I asked for the book, I've never read anything remotely like it before, didnt know a hell of a lot about Keating beyond his news appearances, yet the book changed my life.
I remember the anger and betrayal I felt watching the 2001 Election. My political interest had been steadily growing, but the 9/11 attacks and debates about afghani refugees seeking sanctuary on our vast, peaceful continent drove me to seek other I could express my views to. I quickly decided I would only bore my immediate friends, and so sought out new common political junkies online to argue with, not finding a good place to make camp until reaching the ABC's 2001 election site: Political Animal.

For 7 years I've been writing and talking and thinking about politics online. There were some very bitter blows. The inevitable Iraq war in 03; Lathams defeat and Bush's victory in 04. The hopelessness as Bush tore up the constitution, Howard squandered opportunities and targeted unions and students. The outrage drove my keyboard bound fingers on. I must have poured a hundred thousand words down the internet tubes every single year.

Slowly the victory's began to come, the changes. Dems winning the congress in 06, the departure of Rumsfeld, and of course the triumph of Kevin 07. And now, Barack Obama, a man I first began telling my friends and co-conspirators to watch in late 2006, has been elected President of the United States of America. The countries that matter most are now in the hands of people I support and tend to believe will do the right things. There are some outrages, but nothing so significant as the stain Howard and Bush will be seen to have left on their respective countries ideals.

What do I do now then. Now that the anger has dissipated, the outrage softened, the daily cycle of unacceptable policies and comments turned off.

This is going to take some time to figure out... I may be gone some time.

The case for Obama

I've been spruking the name of Barack Obama to my friends for almost 2 years now. Their responses are either of the sympathetic but slightly pity driven form, finding funny gifs or images, or else quietly taking me aside to suggest he might not be "the one" the messiah bound in human flesh. They wonder if his talk of 'hope' and 'change' isn't just false advertising, designed to take in the young and the foolish who have spent 8 years cursing the name Bush.

Yet however strong his ability to use his rhetoric to move our hearts (especially when set to music), he is even better at using it to position himself and control the landscape and to me this is his real appeal. Not change in itself, but competence as a change.

When G.W.Bush ran in 2004 seeking to gain his precious 50.1% by appealing to his core base and only them, and Kerry muddled around with angry, tired democrats, Obama spoke to the idea that elections and the public arena could be about a united country, not a red or blue one. Such eloquence was less designed to make us want to join hands together, and more about asserting that all could and should get behind him, that as Americans their first duty was to back the unifying candidate. Their citizenship required them to vote for the democrat. The pitch failed, but few failed to be impressed by this young man on the rise. In 2007 we saw the same clever use of rhetoric as Obama clearly expressed not only what the public wanted "change", but an engine to achieve it "hope" and then dared his opponents to contradict him. Whilst he maintained the same themes throughout, first Clinton and then McCain laughed at the idea. Experience was the key they claimed, what’s this young kid going to do at 3am they mocked. But Obama repeated his mantra. Then grudgingly it became it was experience as a requirement for change. You have to be a proven Maverick if you want change. A reformer. But Obama stood his ground, repeating his themes, all the while focusing down below the air waves and TV campaign on building an organisation of millions to get people voting, to get people talking, under the mantra "Include. Respect. Empower" whilst Clinton and McCain focused on TV add buys, Obama quietly requited an army to talk to their neighbors. But not just in the old model of calling to harass. He asked them to get involved themselves. To become team leaders. His paid operatives would be somewhere in the background, but mainly it would be volunteers running the campaign. Their ability to requite new members was their path to ascension in the office and organisation. Of course Clinton and McCain were still unaware of this, as they battled to control the nightly news cycle, clocking up points after points they were sure as they dominated the talking heads and got everyone to run their campaign adds for free. But somewhere these two proven politicians both knew it wasnt working. Experience wasn’t trumping change. Change was what the people wanted. And so reluctantly, but with great flourish they both embraced it. For Clinton it came too late, the race was over she just hadn’t quite realized it. For McCain however, it led him to his single greatest political mistake: Picking Sarah Palin. What could be more a sign of change than to choose a woman from Alaska as VP.
With the choice of Palin Obama’s victory was complete. Not because of the way her flaws would drive many from the GOP, not in the way it showed how blatantly political and identity politics driven McCain’s choice was, but because it ended McCain’s genuine claim to experience, and forced him to become an agent of change. Obama had set the field for the year it was about “change” and with the pick of Palin, McCain had finally, reluctantly, grudgingly agreed.
For the public from that moment on it became pretty easy. The early interest in Palin died away, and Obama went on doing the things that were necessary. A strong, calm, measured showing in the debates, and not over-reacting to the economic crisis as McCain immediately did with his campaign suspension. Neither of these was significant in themselves, but they showed that Obama could be trusted to be a steady hand all the while he pushed for change.

It was change the public wanted after 8 years of cronyism, corruption, torture, abuse of the constitution, arrogance, woowserism, and incompetence. They wanted change, and Obama all along was going to hold himself out there as the real deal. His opponents final desperate claim to also be change agents was always going to fail because the people will reliably enough always go with the original instead of copies (which is a lesson the left never really learnt trying to outmuscle -on defence- or out bastardise -on immigration- the right over the last 20 years) .

I first began to admire Obama back in 2006 because here was someone who had obvious and clear political skills, and was on our side. I’ve never been entirely sure what kind of a democrat he is. Or how our views mesh, there is a somewhat elusive, lack of hard stance approach to his views (other than when he spots an opening ie no gas tax holiday, or a middle class tax cut). In foreign policy he offers a mix of realism in his response to the Iraq War, whilst also being a solid endorser of the idea of America’s unique ability and role to spread democracy around the world. Likewise in domestic policy he wants to create some kind of universal health care and green high tech industries, but made neither a focus of his campaign or justification for his candidacy.

In this his real appeal, is not just change (and never underestimate the impact of America erasing the original sin of slavery by electing a black man) but competency. Something we take for granted in most parliamentary democracies, that even the bastards know what they are doing, but far from the case in lone man presidential systems. Obama to me represents someone who I know will get things done. He might not be as smart as Bill Clinton, but his rhetorical political skills are far greater. He might not be as dedicated to domestic reform for Health Care as Hillary Clinton, but his likelihood of achieving something is greater. He might not be as committed to helping the poor rise up out of poverty as John Edwards, but he will be able to guarantee policy changes from the very beginning. He might not be as used to the whims of foreign policy as Joe Biden or John McCain, but his ability to outwitted the best political minds in the USA suggests he will do the same against the rest of the world, particularly when not just his career (as during the election) but now his country’s fate is riding on his choices.
Why Obama ? Because he has the best political skills I’ve ever seen. He promises not a future vision that I desire, but as strong and capable a vehicle to ride towards improving America’s standing in the world, making good on its promises to its citizens and promoting liberalism as a honorable and worthy path for the betterment of mankind. I’ve never been that interested in Obama’s vague references to the end goal, what matters is his clearly demonstrated ability to lead his party towards those goals.

That is why he will win on Tuesday, that is why he is so inspiring. Not the hope, but the underlying talent. From there anything truly is possible. Barack Obamas real appeal is competence. Sadly after the Bush years that will be a real change.