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Traveller's Tales
• THE champion of the farmers, "Black Jack" John McEwen, deputy premier, minister for trade and industry and leader of the Country Party, is on his way out of Australian politics. At the end of January he will resign the seat he has held for 36 years, for the last 20 of which he has held the balance of power in the Australian House of Re- presentatives.
"Black Jack" has handled many port- folios with skill, but it is in trade that he has done most to encourage and protect Australia's farmers. At least three times he was invited to switch to the Liberals to become prime minister but each time he refused, preferring to stay in the small country party and operate the leaders of power in coalition leaders he pulled with all the grace of a bull in a china shop. It is likely that the British now negotiating for entry into the European Common Market will breathe a sigh of relief at the retirement of this tough negotiator. So will his political opponents; a veteran Labour Party member said in the house: "As a man, we are sorry to see you go. As a poli- tician, we are a bloody sight happier."
OF late, "Black Jack" had tried to widen his party's power base by appeal- ing to the protectionist interests of in- dustry. This was on a par with his short- sighted adherence to protectionism all around the tariffs he was prepared to give Australian industrialists could only result in prices going up, and particular ly prices of fertilisers and machinery needed by his own supporters, the farm- ers. But now it's back to the farm for McEwen himself.
a church. Small as it is, the town pro- duces effluents and other waste which seep into
a nearby reservoir and thus pollutes Adelaide's main water sup- ply. The cost of installing a sewage system would have been A$244,000 and the government of South Australia apparently considered this too expen- sive. Instead, it has taken the incredible decision to spend more (A$300,000) on purchasing the town. The houses will then be razed to the ground.
SINCE the white man arrived in Australia, the aborigine has been treated shamefully kicked off his land, infect- ed with diseases to which he has no re- sistance, despised as a lazy "boong”, decultured, exploited or patronised. In his fight for equality, the aborigine gets more knockbacks than encouragement. Only in recent years have aboriginal stockmen whose broad backs carried the beef cattle industry in Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern ter- ritory - been paid a wage set by govern- ment. Before that they worked for a pittance.
• NOW a 43-page report prepared for the department of labour and national service declares that, despite the award, the conditions of the stockmen are "sordid, squalid and dreadful". It ap- pears that cattlemen are ignoring ac- commodation standards established by the award of evading them by claiming to employ aboriginals only for short periods during round-ups. The owner of one central Australian cattle station, according to the report, said he regarded aborigines as a "sort of utility” - like a car, a bulldozer or something equally expendable. With such a mentality, it is hardly surprising that life is getting hard for some Australian farmers; nor do
AUSTRALIANS are proud of their capacity for improvisation, but most will admit that a capacity for innovation is not high on the list of national charac-their problems evoke much sympathy. teristics. Much is copied, or imported. The latest import from the US this time is a national controversy over pollution (although in view of the scars on the landscape being carved out by mineral developers, the controversy、 should be upgraded to include the whole Australian environment). When action is taken, it is often drastic. Twen- ty miles from Adelaide, up in the beau- tiful hills that ring the city, is a town called Chain of Ponds, comprising 36 houses, a hotel, two service stations and
FAR EASTERN ECONOMIC REVIEW
• LIFE in Hongkong has its moments of high comedy, some of the best of which occur when the government rounds on its critics and defends itself against their barbs. No one can live in Hongkong without giving the govern- ment its due for the part it has played in the colony's success story and for a range of astonishing achievements in such fields as public works, resettlement and low-cost housing, international trade negotiations ... but then the list begins to tail off until it enters the
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murky depths of minimal achievements in medical and health services, labour legislation, education and social welfare. But even its greatest admirers, one would have thought, would not have called it "democratic" or responsive in any meaningful sense to public opinion. But recently, we have had the spectacle of a Hongkong bureaucrat, Denis Bray, claiming with a straight face that Hong- kong people "have one of the best governments in Asia... liberal, farsight- ed and efficient . . . Social progress has been as striking as material progress”. (One wonders just how wide open are Bray's eyes whenever he as he surely must occasionally moves off the beat- en track between the secretariat for home affairs and his residence). Bray went on to give a fascinating descrip- tion of the government keeping its ear to the ground. One method was to send out lots of little junior bureaucrats to listen to teahouse gossip. He did have the grace to admit that there was some lack of contact with Hongkong's most vital community, the industrial work force.
Public opinion, for the Hongkong government, largely consists of the self- interested views of allegedly representa- tive organisations such as the kaifongs and even the VIPs appointed to the top councils. I suppose when Bray describes the government as being responsive to public opinion he means that occasion- ally it will cave in before pressures from such groups
as it has just done over the bribery bill. Thus the banquets often given to "soften-up" an official will no longer be defined as bribery "even if this is both offered and accept- ed for corrupt reasons". This incredible step was avowedly taken in response to pressure from the kaifongs and the Heung Yee Kuk who thought to make the acceptance of entertainment a crimi- nal offence would be to "interfere unreasonably with the normal conduct of business life". Positively Gilbertian; but better was to come: "It has also been argued, and with some justifica- tion, that such a prohibition would tend to cut down social contacts between government servants and members of the public, and to encourage an undesir- able degree of separation between them."
DECEMBER 26/1970
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Te. R+p.6.