Substantial numbers of people are leaving Sydney for the bush. Probably because of a combination of high but falling housing prices and inept governance.
The thirty year rule sees the release of Cabinet documents, and there is an insight into what the government was struggling with in the wake of Whitlam. Sadly, Fraser did not make the necessary decisions which laid the groundwork for Hawke. Interesting information was released about the mystery of the Hilton bombing and Ananda Marga.
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Update:
The trouble with Australia in 2008, to paraphrase Hawke, is that it is being led by an army of unionists who are like sheep. (see in comments)
City slickers leave Sydney for the bush
ReplyDeleteBy Lauren Wilson
REGIONAL Australia has experienced a renaissance in the past five years that has not just been confined to booming mining towns.
Regional NSW, Victoria and Tasmania are no longer losing people to the big cities, an analysis of Census data shows.
People are selling expensive city residences and moving to rural hubs such as Dubbo, Horsham and Queenstown.
In the past five years, 6000 people migrated to regional and rural NSW. Victoria's regional towns and cities gained 3000 people - a stark contrast to the five years from 1996-2001 when regional Victoria had a population decline of 4000.
Tasmania's rural and regional towns have seen an even greater turnaround. After 10,500 people left regional Tasmania between 1996 and 2001, the state, excluding Hobart, had an influx of 1900 over the past five years.
South Australia's regional areas have also experienced a turnaround, with the loss of people to the big cities falling from 6800 between 1996 and 2001 to just 700 in the five years to 2006.
Queensland remains the engine of regional growth, with 70,500 people moving to areas outside Brisbane over the past five years, twice as many as did between 1996 and 2001.
The areas often soaking up this population influx are larger regional towns, which KPMG demographer Bernard Salt calls "sponge cities".
"These cities are located in areas where broadly the population is declining, mostly from people leaving the land, but those cities are performing very strongly and soaking up the surrounding bush," Mr Salt said.
"It's accelerated over the last five years and you also see people downshifting and tree-changing -- moving out of cities like Sydney to buy cheaper properties and invest the rest."
University of Queensland Professor of Geographical Sciences and Planning Bob Stimson agrees that heartland and wheat-belt regional towns are experiencing strong growth but said this came from the "cannibalisation" of outlying areas.
"Take the Dubbo region (in central NSW): you look at the small towns around the area and they are in decline but the city itself is experiencing good growth, and that is likely tocontinue," Professor Stimson said.
Major rural towns become "de facto capital cities". Mr Salt said if the trend of regional city growth continued, "you'll find a bit of city-chic popping up, where downshifters take their cultural acquirement and predispositions with them".
When Brigette Leece left Sydney's exclusive lower north shore suburb of Mosman for Dubbo to open the city's new Western Plains Cultural Centre, she expected to stay for two years and return qualified to take a "hot-shot" job in Sydney's art world.
After 3 1/2 years, at age 30, Ms Leece has no plans to return to the big smoke. She said yesterday the high-powered city job did not appeal to her any more.
"There's not going to be another job better than this where you can make such an impact on the community -- and that's what will keep me there in the end, the community."
Another reason Ms Leece has no desire to pack up and move back to the city is her husband Angus Uren, a Dubbo-based newsagent, whom she married in October last year. "Part of the reason I fell in love with the city is because I fell in love with someone here," she said.
The couple enjoy a lifestyle many would be hard-pressed to finance in the city.
"It's very financially satisfying," she said.
Ms Leece said many people who came to Dubbo on a "short stint" stayed when they found it possible to own a quarter-acre block with a tennis court and swimming pool, "something you'd be struggling to do in Sydney".
Ms Leece has also been pleasantly surprised at the burgeoning cultural scene she has found in Dubbo.
"If you're staying in Sydney because you don't think the bush will give you that cultural experience, I don't know what cave you're living in," she said.
"We've got good pubs, good restaurants, good coffee and good shopping."
The only thing Ms Leece said she truly missed about Sydney life? "The luxury of going over to Mum and Dad's on a Sunday morning."
Terror attacks remain a mystery 30 years on
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ON September 15, 1977 the military attache at the Indian Embassy Colonel Singh and his wife were attacked in Canberra. Just over a month later an Air India employee in Melbourne was stabbed.
In both cases, the perpetrator was a member of the Ananda Marga - literally path of bliss - a Hindu spiritual sect whose founder Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar had been locked away in an Indian jail since 1971 on what were regarded as trumped up charges.
The group had been banned in India in 1975, but the worldwide network of adherents had taken up the cause of pressing India for Sarkar's release.
It seemed Australia of 1977 had a security problem wholly different to the more familiar terrorist activities of the Palestinians and Croatians.
Cabinet documents for 1977 - released by the national Archives of Australia under the 30-year rule - contain one remarkably prescient observation.
A submission by administrative services minister Reg Withers canvassed measures which could be used to curb Ananda Marga activities.
"This has been done in the light of the knowledge that the Indian prime minister is expected to visit in February next 1978," he said.
In fact Indian Prime Minister Moraji Desai did visit Australia for the Commonwealth Head of Government regional meeting.
In the early hours of February 13, 1978, a bomb exploded outside the Sydney Hilton Hotel where he was staying, killing two garbagemen and a police officer. This remains the worst terrorist offence committed on Australian soil.
Ananda Marga was immediately suspected. But it was not until 1989 that former Ananda Marga adherent Evan Pederick came forward, confessing to the bombing, accusing fellow Margi Tim Anderson of putting him up to it.
Anderson was cleared on appeal with Pederick's evidence discredited. So officially this has never been solved.
For Mr Withers, the options were pretty limited. The government had increased security around Indian officials and even the visiting Indian cricket team.
"This has been an essential protective action by the government and needs to be continued, but does not in itself halt the continuing threat of the violent element within Ananda Marga to attack Indian establishments within Australia," he said.
The government felt it could not ban the organisation but it could exert some limited pressure.
It transpired the Commonwealth was helping fund three Ananda Marga schools. As well, the government could revoke approval for Ananda Marga celebrants to perform marriages. And it could restrict entry to Australia or grant of citizenship of sect adherents.
MR Withers recommended all this be done. He also proposed meetings with Ananda Marga leaders to urge them to end the consistent pattern of violence by followers.
He was also unimpressed with the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) for taking six weeks to produce an urgent threat assessment on the group.
But that was not all Mr Withers had to worry about.
Some time on October 17-18, someone broke into an army base at Mangalore, Victoria, and walked out with 11 landmines. Subsequently, someone telephoned a threat to use them against police or politicians.
Police and ASIO launched an intensive investigation. There was concern that the mines had been deliberately targeted since nothing else was taken from a very big base.
"A matter for grave concern is that because of their nature, the mines constitute a major danger to public safety as long as they remain unrecovered," Mr Withers said.
This concern was justified for the mines appear to have been the US-made M16, widely used during the Vietnam War. Known as a bounding fragmentation type, the M16 hurls a soup tin sized charge to waist height where it explodes, projecting lethal fragments for 25m.
Mr Withers proposed a series of steps. One was an immediate review of security of defence munitions stores.
Another was a review of the resources available to the Protective Services Coordination Centre, the body which coordinates response to any terrorist incident.
Finally, he recommended the creation of a central repository of bomb information like those in the US and UK. That exists now as the Australian Bomb Data Centre, a division of the Australian Federal Police.
Australia, according to Bob Hawke
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THE trouble with Australia was that it was being run by five farmers and a sheep, Bob Hawke famously wrote in the Bulletin magazine in May 1977.
Mr Hawke, then ACTU president, was referring to the government of Malcolm Fraser (a farmer) whose cabinet included deputy prime minister Doug Anthony (another farmer), employment and industrial relations minister Tony Street (also a farmer), primary industries minister Ian Sinclair (yet another farmer) and transport minister Peter Nixon (unsurprisingly, also a farmer).
Historian Jim Stokes, speaking at the launch of the 1977 cabinet documents - released by the National Archives of Australia under the 30-year rule - said the sheep was apparently an unkind reference to treasurer Phil Lynch.
The year 1977 was consumed by punk rock music and Australia's worst ever rail disaster when a train derailed at Granville in Sydney's west on January 18, bringing down a bridge and killing 83 people.
It was the year when two young politicians, John Howard and Paul Keating took their place on the national stage - Howard as a minister in the Fraser government and Keating as an aspirant for the Labor deputy leadership.
The year also saw the rise of the Australian Democrats, the creature of former Fraser government minister Don Chipp.
Like many such attempts at creating a new force in politics, the Democrats were tipped as likely to enjoy a brief life at best. But Chipp had correctly read the public mood for a middle force and both he and fellow Democrat Colin Mason were elected as senators at the 1977 poll.
Thirty years on, the November 24, 2007 election, which made Kevin Rudd into a prime minister, reduced Democrat representation at federal level back to zero.
Back in 1977, it was the year the goodwill and humour departed from politics, according to Peter Manning, then editor of the long-gone satirical newspaper Nation Review. Gone were the great wits of parliament Labor MP Fred Daley and his sparring partner Liberal Jim Killen.
Mr Manning recalled flying from Canberra when Mr Daley's voice boomed out from several seats ahead.
"Excuse me miss," he asked the hostess. "You wouldn't by any chance have a copy of Penthouse magazine would you?"
When sniffily told that particular publication was not available, Mr Daley replied: "Well what about the Catholic Weekly?"
Fraser had been elected at the poll of December 13, 1975 following the dismissal of the Whitlam government on November 11, 1975. That was a true landslide with Labor losing 30 seats in the blink of an eye.
Under the electoral timetable Fraser faced a half Senate election by May 1978 and an election for the House of Representatives in late 1978.
Going to the polls wasn't especially appealing for the government. Many voters maintained the rage against Fraser and a Morgan poll in August 1977 gave Labor a four per cent lead.
As well, the economy wasn't exactly powering, with widespread industrial unrest, interest rates around 9-11 per cent, inflation at 9.5 per cent and a worryingly high budget deficit.
On the plus side for the government, Labor had opted to hang onto its old guard with Whitlam defeating Bill Hayden for the ALP leadership and Tom Uren defeating Paul Keating as deputy.
As well, there were deep divisions within Labor and the union movement on such issues as uranium, East Timor and industrial relations.
Fraser announced on October 27 that the poll would be held on December 10, 1977.
This was described in the Sydney Morning Herald as a lacklustre campaign with the government offering wavering punters the usual fistful of dollars in the form of tax cuts.
The coalition was returned with its majority slightly reduced and Labor only two seats better off.
For much of 1977, the government was preoccupied with economic matters.
Dr Stokes said the 1976-77 budget deficit came close to the estimate of $2.7 billion but 1977-78 was shaping up as a shocker. Lynch advised cabinet that the estimated deficit was heading for a totally untenable $4.5 billion.
That sparked a frenzy of government cost cutting which eventually reduced the deficit to $3.3 billion.
One enduring innovation was the decision to price Australian crude oil on parity with world market prices.
Previously Bass Strait oil, which met 65 per cent of Australia's needs, was a third the price of world oil. The government was concerned this created little incentive for exploration.
Dr Stokes said health costs had increased from $1.9 billion in 1971 to $5.2 billion in 1976 with the government moving to contain costs by confining bulk billing to pensioners.
But the government drew the line at a finance department suggestion that amputees be charged for the supply of their prosthetics.
"Ministers (were) perhaps reflecting on the public relations aspects of recovering limbs from defaulting purchasers," Dr Stokes said.