by Israel Kipen
The author with the Victorian Minister of Education Mr. Bloomfield at the opening of the United Jewish Education Board appeal in 1963.
That same era of the ‘sixties was marked, however, by two developments that could not be ignored.
First, the market for the first time in twenty years showed signs of over-supply. The war-time shortages had by then been filled, continuous public buying had abated and the market was satiated. Had it not been for the immense post-war migration, the boom would have slowed down much earlier.
More threatening still to the knitting industry was the sudden appearance in Australia of Asian knitted goods at absurdly low prices. By the mid-’sixties, the knitting industry at home recognised it faced a major challenge to its existence and saw that unless organised action was undertaken at a national level, its future would be grim.
The knitting industry in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea and other Asian cities was making enormous strides. It concentrated on a range of new products with a view to challenging the industry worldwide by penetrating markets in North America, Europe and Australia through the low cost of its products and establishment of international fashion trends, this in turn creating a demand for the imported goods in preference to the local ones. What was clear was that the situation was not one of fair competition. Australia, where the cost of labour at the time was $2.00 per hour, could in no way compete with countries paying a meagre $0.20 per hour. The only way to protect the industry was to regulate the volume of imports and thus prevent a flooding of the market. Meanwhile, there were businessmen and manufacturers who sensed new opportunities, obtained import licences and, suddenly, knitwear poured in. The Knitting Council of Australia through the Chambers of Manufacturers in Melbourne and Sydney undertook urgent and sustained action to bring the matter to government attention. In response, a quota system was introduced and bounties and other measures were applied, but the tide of imports was unstoppable. Import figures climbed alarmingly. A national debate about the merits of the local industry began. An Industry Assistance Commission inquiry was set up to analyse the situation, directed by the Department of Customs which, historically, was influenced by the traditionally anti-manufacturing Country Party. Submissions were sought, individual manufacturers were interviewed and proper protocol was adhered to, but the net result was at best unhelpful.
Textiles, footwear and motor cars were the most vulnerable products challenged by cheap imports. To exacerbate matters, a debate among economists bracketed these industries together and branded them as “inefficient”. This was a reckless and cruel generalisation. Admittedly, Australia’s car industry, in the wake of its limited market and short production runs, could not compete with Japan’s mass production methods which challenged even the mighty motor manufacturers of the United States. To bracket labour-intensive industries such as those of clothing and footwear together with such highly automated industries as motor-car production, and then pronounce them uniformly as inefficient was patently wrong, unfair and mischievous. One scarcely needed to be an economist to understand that labour costing $2.00 per hour could not compete with labour costing a mere twenty cents. That automated machinery imported from England or Germany worked at the same speeds whether installed in Melbourne or Hong Kong was obvious. But one could not measure with the same yardstick two industries in which one paid its workforce in aggregate holiday pay almost as much as the other paid its worker for a whole year’s labour. Yet some economists writing for the media added insult to injury and denigrated an entire industry over circumstances beyond its control.
I became involved in the work of the Victorian Knitting Council as a member of its management committee. We were under no illusions regarding the future of the industry in the face of the challenges before it. The Liberal-Country Party of the day seemed unmoved by its plight, although one exception was the Federal Leader of the Country Party and Minister for Commerce and Industry, Mr John McEwen. Despite the Country Party’s long-entrenched stand against secondary industry, he showed insight into the ramifications of the gathering disaster and went out of his way to assist industry, fight its detractors and counter the negativism of the Industries Assistance Commission.
I appeared twice before the commission of enquiry of the Industries Assistance Commission. The first coincided with an historic day – that of the American landing on the moon. The event was of such universal interest that, at the expected time of the landing, the Commission hearing was interrupted, a television set was installed in the room and all watched astronaut Armstrong set foot upon the moon. That simple interruption cast a new light upon the hearing. For, after witnessing the achievements of modern technology, the issues we were dealing with seemed to be trivial and in universal terms insignificant. Nonetheless, for the knitting industry, survival seemed as difficult a feat as the spectacle we had just witnessed. The Melbourne Knitting Industries Council was headed by Jack Brady, the Chairman of Crestknit. He was a determined leader and fighter for the industry. His connections were good, his standing vis-a-vis the authorities as head of Australia’s largest knitwear manufacturing firm commanded attention. All leading firms joined a concerted action undertaken at federal and state levels. The Director of the Victorian Chamber of Commerce was then Ian McPhee, later to become a member of the Liberal Party’s shadow cabinet under John Howard. Brian Powell took over from McPhee on the latter’s entry into parliament. The Associated Chambers of Manufacturers offices in Canberra under Mr Henderson worked hard to present the knitting industry’s case to the government. The Textile Workers Union, too, with its membership of 130,000 joined the fight. Country communities where a knitting factory was a major source for employment, particularly for women, stood to lose a significant part of their already shaky economic base. But even this did not help. The economists, through the media, continued to assail the industry with charges of inefficiency; they persuaded public opinion to think of it likewise. The Liberal Party, then in government, became increasingly immune to the industry’s appeals. The upshot of all this was that imports continued to grow, commercial activity, retail and service industries entered into an ascendancy, while manufacturing became a dirty word and looked upon as a relic of a bygone age.
In 1970, Jack Brady stood down from the chairmanship of the Victorian Knitting Industries Council and pressure was put upon me to take over. On looking back, it is clear that Brady had judged the situation hopeless. The fact that I commanded neither his prestige nor connections seemed no longer to matter. I regret having accepted the chairmanship. What my period in office amounted to were four years of frustration. I had continually to fight a rearguard action with little chance of success. We continued to call meetings of members which were well-attended. People let off steam and sought eleventh-hour solutions. But the writing was on the wall. Overseas reports told of a decimated knitting industry in the United States. Television programs screened pictures of idle knitting plants in North America, these reinforcing in the public mind the inevitability of the accelerated decline of an industry which, a mere decade earlier, had been justly proud of its role in Australia’s economic life. By the turn of the ‘seventies, my firm had successfully exported a particular line to Canada; it had received high praise from the Australian commercial attaché on the West Coast of North America; it had drawn laudatory letters from consumers abroad. But nothing helped.
In 1972, Australia had a change of government. For a brief period, industry believed that a Whitlam Labor government would take a different view on an issue that meant the preservation of tens of thousands of jobs in Australia. But the ensuing revaluation of the dollar combined with a major liberalisation of imports dissipated any such hope. Changes of ministers holding the industry portfolio made it even more difficult to establish dialogue at ministerial level. Lionel Bowen was distraught when, on assuming the portfolio of Commerce and Industry, he learnt what had happened to the knitting industry. When James McLelland took it over, however, he found it necessary to advise that knitting man
ufacturers would be wise not to invest in new machinery.
In 1974, I resigned as Chairman of the Victorian Knitting Industries Council. By then, I had been led to think seriously and critically about my very future in the industry. There was little objective reason for me to persist and, the following year, I took the actual decision to disengage. It subsequently took two years to wind up the business, culminating in the auction of the machinery in November 1977.
Our daughter, Aviva, who became a teacher, had married by then. From 1978, she lived abroad, both in Belgium and the United States. She is currently in London studying at the Leo Baeck Institute.
The major problem with which I had to grapple then was a purely personal one; namely, what did a man of 57 do after thirty years of business and of more than normal exertion. The notion of retirement was both psychologically and existentially unacceptable to me. I knew that I wanted one thing more in my life. That was to make good the lost opportunities of the past and resume tertiary studies. My wife Laura encouraged me in this. But doubts then rose to the fore. Would a university accept me at my age? Would I be capable of studying in a formal and sustained manner? Would my knowledge of English, never formally studied, be adequate to meet tertiary requirements? In the hope that some way might be found to overcome these obstacles, I obtained translations of all documents I still possessed from the University of Warsaw and applied for admission to Melbourne and Monash Universities. Each rejected my application. A late application, made in desperation, to LaTrobe University met with the same fate. I decided, however, not to give up. Figuring that LaTrobe may be the most amenable, I sought personal interviews, repeatedly failing until a Dr Hewish from the Department of History agreed to talk to me. I presented my case and handed my documents to him. His initial response was that while he accepted the fact that I had matriculated and been accepted into Warsaw University, he could not be sure that after an interval of almost forty years I would be capable of studying. At that moment, I knew that unless I could offer a satisfactory answer to this most basic reservation, my chances were nil. So I searched my mind and referred to a number of academics at both Melbourne and Monash Universities whom I knew personally and who could vouch for me. I named other professors, too, as potential referees, but it was only when I mentioned one more who was then teaching at LaTrobe that Dr Hewish looked at me, said, “You are accepted”, and handed me a note addressed to the university secretariat with instructions to enrol me. On passing me the note, Dr Hewish asked why I had not used such personal contacts when I had been rejected by the other universities. I replied that it had simply not occurred to me to do so.
I enrolled in the Department of Arts and took Politics, Philosophy and American History as my first-year subjects. I left La Trobe University a very happy and contented man that morning, secure in the knowledge of what I would be doing for the ensuing three years. At the same time, I also enrolled at Melbourne University in Year 1 Hebrew for the study of Hebrew language and literature as a non-accredited student in a course of continuing education, this being an alternative to matriculation.
So, in March 1977, at the age of 58, I started my university career from scratch. I was very fortunate with my lecturers. First-year Politics was conducted by Hugo Wolfsohn, who, in a course popular with all, developed a most comprehensive foundation to political theory. I enjoyed every minute of it. American History was taught by Dr Schulz, who conducted his own tutorials, while Philosophy was split between three lecturers, each teaching for a term.
In that same year, 1977, Professor Moshe Peli came from New York and presented a series of lectures in Hebrew Literature in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at Melbourne University. He took an interest in me and probed me about my presence in a first year course. Shortly after, the late Dudley Hallam, who was then Head of the Department, came up to me at one of his lectures. He was concerned, he said, about maintaining my interest in the faculty curriculum and was forthwith promoting me to second year. The promotion was apparently a consequence of Moshe Peli’s intervention. I completed my first year at LaTrobe University with excellent results, gaining an A+ in History which was the second such grade that Dr Schulz had ever awarded. As a consequence of my performance, I received letters from each of my subject departments inviting me to enrol for an Honours degree in their respective disciplines. Armed with these results, I decided instead to try again to gain entry into Melbourne. This time, I had no difficulties and was eagerly accepted into the Faculty of Arts. That year proved one of the happiest in my life, and I could not have hoped for an easier transition from one lifestyle to another. I had worked hard, but for the first time in many years I was doing something which I truly enjoyed. At the same time, I served as Bialik College President, but to me there was no dichotomy in being a student on the one hand and the lay head of a school on the other.
My second academic year was an easy and interesting one. I was required to take three subjects, but as I had already completed the equivalent of two years of Hebrew in the preceding year, I concentrated on Politics towards an Honours degree. I was attracted to International Relations taught by Dr Philip Darby and also took two units in American and European politics. The International Relations course dealt mainly with post-colonial developments in Africa and Asia and opened to me some new vistas of historical and political backgrounds in the developing world. In the light of the momentum of events taking place in the Third World at the time and its increasing political role in the wider world, I found the subject both instructive and fascinating. I was fortunate in having an excellent lecturer who negotiated an emotive minefield of a subject scarcely betraying any inkling of his own sympathies and leanings. On the rare occasions when some degree of subjectivity was unavoidable, it came through so delicately that, with few exceptions, his audience barely noticed. For my part, I detected early his orientation in historical and current events. I happened to agree with him; hence, I found the subject all the more intellectually attractive and stimulating.
American and European politics were, by and large, well known to me, and while they required the customary research and writing of essays as did other subjects, to the extent that they did cover familiar ground, they were less challenging than International Relations. I completed the year very satisfactorily and looked forward to the long summer vacation break.
November 24, 1978, was a warm beautiful spring day. I had left the house in the morning to go to my office which I had continued to maintain in South Yarra. No sooner did I arrive there than Laura phoned to say she had just received a call from our family doctor asking that she be at his surgery at 4 p.m. when he would also be seeing our son Doron. Doron had not been looking well for several months, but doctors could not determine any reason, other than to attribute his appearance and cough to being generally run down. As he did not improve, Laura insisted that he return for a thorough examination and X-rays. Those X-rays he had had the day before, and when we entered the doctor’s surgery, his tense manner and the way he displayed the X-rays confirmed the forebodings with which we had passed the day. Subsequent biopsy was followed by therapy which had clearly devastating effects on our son, but, though he left home and moved to Sydney midway through the treatment, in the end it had the desired effect. He remains completely cured, has married and works as a sound production engineer.
The immediate effect of learning of our son’s illness had a devastating effect on both Laura and myself. We felt that our lives had caved in. As the illness coincided with my vacation, I had three months in which to learn to adapt to the reality of the situation. When the time came to return to the university, I had to force myself to do so. On the other hand, I recognised that the diversion offered by study could well help me in my distress. My third year of study thus proceeded under the pall of Doron’s illness and differed starkly from the joy and satisfaction of the preceding ones. I persisted nonetheless, at times forcing myself to concentrate and work and finished the year well. Whereupon I embarked upon my H
onours year, still labouring under the need to force myself, though with each passing months our hopes had cause to rise. My Honours work in Politics was supervised by Katherine West, while in Hebrew, my essay was to be assessed by Ziva Shavitsky. Its topic was “The relative relevance of Herzl and Ahad Ha’Am to Jewry in our time”. When completed, the work exceeded the requirements of an Honours degree.
The subsequent graduation ceremony took place on August 1, 1981. Prior to it, I received a note from the University administration asking whether I had any story of special human interest to tell. I replied that I did, and was then invited to submit my story. I obliged and thought no more about it. But after the ceremony, I was asked to pose for a photograph and later discovered a half-page devoted to me in the University of Melbourne Gazette. I was also contacted by “The Age” for an interview, to which I was asked to bring my documents from the University of Warsaw. The fruit of that interview appeared in the “Sunday Press” of August 2, 1981, headed “Uni Studies Span 43 Years” and sub-headed “Worthy of Full Marks!” The Australian Jewish News also received material for publication from the University’s public relations office. While readers of the paper were only too familiar with my photograph, the article headed “Degree – 44 Years Later” was an angle until then not associated with my public life.
“Sunday Press” of August 2nd, 1981.