The Lucky Country

by Donald Horne

  It would take too long to summarize the Aborigines’ present position, because they come under different jurisdictions – in the States of Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia, Victoria, and New South Wales they are the responsibility of the State governments, and in the Northern Territory of the Commonwealth Government. (There are no Aborigines in Tasmania because they were all killed.) Summary is also difficult because in all these areas there are now varying degrees of liberalization. At the time of writing Queensland is the State most backward in revising the laws that concern Aborigines. However in general terms, while there are still some Aborigines leading tribal lives the possibility of preserving their civilization – either as a museum piece or in respect to their wishes – seems small. As Peter Coleman put it in the Observer: ‘Despite official claims our policy towards the Aborigines has in one fundamental respect never changed. Once the idea was to kill them off; then the more humane programme was to let them die out peacefully and meanwhile to smooth their dying pillow; now the policy is to assimilate them. But as far as the Aborigines themselves are concerned the result in each case is the same. Assimilation ultimately means absorption and that means extinction. As a “nation” with its own way of life and even as a race the Aborigines are still destined to disappear … It is one of the ironies of our history that the only recompense we seem to be able to give this race for what we have done to it is to help it disappear.’

  All the governments concerned with Aborigines are now committed to assimilation. At a conference in 1951 of representatives from State and Federal Governments the principles of assimilation were accepted. It was restated at a similar conference in 1961 and after that there was quick liberalization in some areas. Aborigines are expected to ‘attain the same manner of living as other Australians and to live as members of a single Australian community’. This should be understood by those people throughout the world who confuse treatment of Aborigines with the ‘White Australia’ immigration policy and claim that there is an apartheid policy within Australia. The position is very unsatisfactory and there is underprivilege and in some areas there is still de facto segregation, but the official policy is assimilation, not apartheid, and the policy is being fulfilled – although too slowly.

  Most Australians (who may never see an Aborigine from one year to the next) now seem to wish them well and to agree that they should simply be considered as Australians. There is now a vogue for bark paintings and other Aboriginal artifacts and concern for the future of Aborigines has become an article of faith among younger educated Australians. Their actual position lies in a spectrum stretching from the few who are commercially successful and are simply Australians, to those who are trying to become so in the cities or the country towns, to those who live half-Australian, half-Aboriginal lives in official ‘stations’ or unofficial river camps outside the country towns, to those who live in protected Aboriginal communities, to those who are still nomads and desert dwellers. Although legal discriminations are disappearing – and it is a policy that this should be so – many of them have been second-class citizens (although they now all have the Federal vote), and the necessary accompaniment of paternalism, lavish expenditure on welfare and imaginative planning was not present – although over the 1950s there was improvement and there has been very considerable improvement in the 1960s.

  In some areas there are a lot of petty prejudices against Aborigines; in others there are not. It would be hard to legislate these out of existence. Where Australian society might be condemned as a whole is that it was slow to move in granting full rights and in spending more money. This may have come partly from theories of race, but it has come mainly from blindness of conscience and a sheer lack of imagination that did not understand that a lack of policy is itself a policy.

  Attitudes to Oceania

  The refusal of Australians to recognize their environment is perhaps most startlingly shown in their almost complete oblivion to the world of Oceania: New Guinea, New Zealand; and 800 to 1000 miles out to sea, smaller islands – the Solomons, the New Hebrides, New Caledonia; further out, Fiji; and then a string of islands right across the South Pacific, the western part mainly under New Zealand influence, the eastern part mainly French. In this part of the world Australia is a big nation. There has been considerable Australian initiative shown here, mainly by individuals; and a lot of money made by business firms. But as an Australian concept the area does not exist. Australians know more about Europe than they do about Asia, more about Asia than they do about Oceania. A country whose imagination was influenced by that of British history seems unable to acknowledge the existence of such detail.

  In 1958 when the Observer tried to interest people in New Guinea it was accused of being obsessed. It was said to be hysterical to write: ‘Here is our test of policy: New Guinea is one of the disputed territories of the world; it is one of those places where a war could break out tomorrow, and we control half of it. It could be the Alsace-Lorraine of the South Pacific: it is the possible testing point of all our policies: who – apart from ourselves – really gives a damn about it? If we took some kind of a stand on New Guinea would anyone at all support us?’ The answer quickly proved to be ‘No’. By 1961 the Indonesia ‘confrontation’ of the Dutch over the future of West New Guinea destroyed Australian policy. The Australian government had long privately opposed Indonesian acquisition of West New Guinea. But after having pursued for ten years a policy that was based on nothing but wishes and diplomacy, Australia gave in. The people of West New Guinea were given no chance to determine their own future; they were handed over to Indonesia and Soekarno moved on to the ‘confrontation’ of Malaysia.

  Now that a House of Assembly (with a majority of indigenous people) has been elected in the two Australian-controlled territories that make up East New Guinea it is inevitable that – whatever the Australian Government says – a strong independence movement will form, and secure independence. The 20 000 Europeans (mostly Australians) who live in New Guinea are at the end of their period of dominance. There will be a Republic of New Guinea. As a result of a lack of imagination in Australia, this New Guinea Republic will be economically dependent on Australia or on whatever support it can get from any other country. It will not possess a trained elite of sufficient numbers. There has, even at a late stage, been a typically Australian assumption that New Guinea is different from other colonies. On this question of New Guinea there are almost endless permutations of discord likely to fall on Australia’s head.

  Relations with New Zealand have been marked by that same graduated blindness that so often afflicts Australians: the closer a place to Australia, the less Australians know about it. Sometimes one learns more about New Zealand from the London Times than from Australian newspapers. New Zealanders have attitudes towards Australians,* Australians have no attitudes towards New Zealanders. They can be surprised – and hurt – when New Zealanders express their attitudes, which include expressions of superiority. Who would expect this from New Zealand?

  New Zealand’s population is only a quarter that of Australia’s; her imports are proportionately double Australia’s: her exports are dangerously confined to wool, meat, and dairy products; and far too much of her trade is bound up with Britain. British entry into the European Economic Community would probably wreck New Zealand. Australia, with a smaller reliance on imports, more diversified exports and greater industrial sophistication, could survive the strain. New Zealand needs – indeed, must have – a larger country to attach herself to. In theory, as part of the ANZUS alliance of Australia, New Zealand, and the United States, she has America as an ally. Economically she is bound to Britain. But it could be to her advantage to attach herself strategically and economically to Australia. Strategically, there could be an integration of defence forces; economically, access to Australia’s overseas balances and the combined marketing of products both countries export could assist New Zealand out of its chronic state of international bankruptcy. Full economic union would
be contested by Australian dairy farmers, some of whom might go down to New Zealand competition, and by New Zealand manufacturers who might be pushed out of their own markets by stronger Australian-based firms. These are the kind of problems that seem insuperable in Australia because they involve change; but elsewhere in the world greater changes than these are happening. For most of last century New Zealand was considered to be part of the complex of colonies that made up Australasia and at the beginning of this century she opened discussions about joining the new Australian Federation (and was unsuccessful). These discussions could be resumed. In 1965 (largely on New Zealand initiative) the two countries finally signed a very conservative free trade agreement (covering the non-controversial 60 per cent of trade).

  It would be tedious to run through the smaller islands of the South Pacific separately. But the position of many – and this will be the inevitable trend in all – is that they must move toward some form of independence. They are all tiny communities needing some special arrangement. Some of them have extraordinary problems. Australia is often their principal economic exploiter. Some administrations have turned to Australia for assistance – and have been refused.

  Here is a strange island world where imagination in Australia, with New Zealand cooperation, could create new political forms, leading to the greater happiness of the people who live there – and some assurance in this of security for Australia and New Zealand. Of Australia’s many blindnesses, its blindness to Oceania is the most difficult to forgive. It is possible to ask the world to extend a charitable view towards Australia when faced with the perplexities of Asia. But the world might ask why Australians have not taken a more practical interest in Oceania, where they are a large nation, and capable of initiative. Before paying attention to our own calls for sympathy the world might ask what we have done for these others who need our interest and help.

  6. MEN AT WORK

  Men of business

  In some parts of New Guinea there are people who believe that Heaven is to be found somewhere in the clouds just above Sydney and is connected with Sydney by a ladder. Here, while the Spirits of the Dead loll in their cane chairs and gorge themselves on the canned meat and whisky that is served to them by the angels, God spends his time creating consumer goods, which go down the ladder from Heaven to Sydney and then, as ship’s cargo, on to lucky people in New Guinea.

  Australians do not have this look-no-hands attitude. They manufacture most of their own consumer goods. But a look-no-brains attitude is endemic among some Australian attitudes to manufacturing. The processes of invention and innovation that are such an essential part of the Western Mind play a less domestic part in Australia than in any other prosperous country, apart from Canada. No matter what miracles Australians achieved in the earlier settlement of the continent and however spectacularly successful they can be at improvising when they are pushed to it, Australian businessmen have not proved to be very good at getting people to think up new things to make. Instructions about how to make new things usually come from the heavens that lie across the USA, Britain and Europe. Unlike Sweden and Switzerland, Australia has not developed any significant world specialities of its own in manufacture. Not only do Australians not think things up: in their behaviour they often show a remarkable distrust for another essential part of the Western Mind: a practising belief in the efficacy of competition.

  Australia is a rich prize in international investment, full of loot. Recently discovered bauxite fields show the largest known resources in the world. Reserves of iron ore are estimated at as much as eight billion tons. Oil is being discovered in commercial quantities; reserves of coal are huge; production of lead is the largest in the world; production of zinc is the third largest; wool production is a third of the world total. Most of the manufacturing in what could accurately be described in the cliche term as a ‘land rich in resources’ is now under foreign control.

  The only major manufacturing industry groups that are not dominated by overseas firms are steel, cement, glass, sugar and paper. Of the top 100 Australian firms at least two-thirds are overseas controlled. When it is remembered how these firms then dominate their suppliers and clients it would be safe to say that most Australian manufacturing is ultimately dependent on overseas enterprise and decision. Even firms that are wholly Australian-owned usually depend on overseas patents for their ideas. The ideas behind the so-called ‘industrial revolution’ of the 1950s and 1960s came mainly from overseas. Nor is this the whole story. Most of the innovations in managerial and marketing styles also come from overseas and there is now a tendency for overseas firms to move direct into Australian accounting, management consulting and advertising. The success of Australian industry in most significant sectors has been that of an advanced colonial society, with overseas capital and enterprise employing intelligent native labour. Or as Neil McInnes put it in Quadrant: ‘It is as though a part of Europe’s population were being brought here so that US business could supply them, more conveniently than in Europe, with cars, soap and coco-pops.’

  There seems little possibility that this trend will not continue. As McInnes says: ‘The degree of economic independence we have enjoyed will last only as long as coal, steel and sugar (all three mostly owned locally) remain our biggest non-rural industries. As we enter further into the new technological era, the percentage of major economic decisions taken outside Australia will approach nearer 100. Within a few years most of the upper middle class in this country will be working for organizations having head office and the boss in New York or elsewhere outside Australia or in Australian companies that are totally dependent on such organizations.’ The dependence on foreigners is not limited to internal decisions. Australia’s ‘export drive’ in manufactured goods is largely controlled by overseas decision. Overseas firms who have companies in Australia decide whether it is more profitable or more expedient to export to certain markets from Australia or from a plant somewhere else in the world. Overseas firms that license the manufacture of goods in Australia decide whether they should extend the franchise of their patents to other parts of the world. And, as in Canada, overseas companies are now tending to stifle such native research and development as occurs; if they find a good man they bring him back to headquarters.

  Not that Australia has ever spent much on research and development anyway. The Australian proportion of GNP spent on research is the smallest of the whole group of prosperous countries (although it is almost three times that of Ghana). This indifference to research and development goes beyond the question of foreign ownership. Australian-owned firms often just do not understand the use of research and development. Australian research findings are sometimes touted overseas because no Australian firm can be found that understands that research can be used to make money. There are many Australians who know how to conduct research; many of the best go overseas. The very idea of clever, expert men thinking up new things to do is one that is repulsive to many Australian businessmen: to accept the importance of research might seem to imperil their self-importance. And in such matters Australian businessmen often treat their own countrymen with the scorn that the colonialists used to treat those they exploited: you can’t expect the natives to have ideas.

  There is still talk of ‘free enterprise’ in Australia but to many Australian manufacturers this is just a lesson they have learned off by heart without understanding: the particular meaning they give it is eccentric. Often what it means is that the businessman demands from the government a special protection that will help him continue to survive.

  In this latter process the Tariff Board plays an essential part. It sees that those who want to make money get a ‘fair go’. This Board was established in 1921 as an independent body empowered to conduct inquiries into claims by local industries to be protected by tariff from overseas competition. It was originally intended to protect young and inexperienced businesses but now everyone hops in for his cut. Once protection is dished out it usually stays. In the absence of any
government plan for sustaining unemployed men over a retraining period or in assisting diversification, the political risks in allowing an inefficient industry to collapse are too great. The use of tariff protection by the textile industry, for example, has become notorious. Although there is some excellent textile production in Australia the inefficient manufacturers set the pace in pushing up the tariff to as much as 100 per cent. The average tariff is about 30 per cent.

  Overall, the Tariff Board may have been a good idea. The diversification of manufacturing in Australia may have proceeded much more slowly – in parts, not at all – without the Tariff Board. The Australian domestic market is too small for really efficient long production runs (and the proliferation of models increases this problem). Total annual production in Australia of some of the big overseas-owned companies can be equal to as little as only one day’s production in the parent country. In this sense, Australian manufacturers have done well. However, one should not forget something that many of them would deny: most of the labour force is educated, adaptable and responsible (although not deferential), perhaps – as Galbraith suggested when he was in Australia – more adaptable at the bottom to the problems of an automated age than America’s, because of its degree of education and lack of social or racial stratification.

  However, while in balance it is possible to argue that the Tariff Board, despite its abuses, has acted to Australia’s advantage, its existence has encouraged the gambling in business decision that has often been a feature of Australia. To many Australian businessmen the way to make money has been to grab some ideas from overseas, rush them into operation, however inefficiently, and then rely on the Tariff Board for protection. The central preoccupation of Australian manufacturing is often to kill overseas competition with high tariffs. (Many of the industries that were built in this way were later being picked off in profitable overseas takeovers. Some of the overseas investment in Australia does not start new enterprise; it just buys up a safe bet.) Under Australian conditions there was no particular need to be efficient or to worry about world standards. Many Australian manufacturers have not been concerned with building up their competitive output in a relatively open market, but with making profits by putting pressure on the Tariff Board or by collusive practices with their competitors. Often the Australian businessman was mainly a ‘fixer’.