Op-ed: Alice Springs and alcohol policy

My first printed opinion piece was published in the NT News as a follow up to my commitment to quit alcohol for one year.  I was grateful for the opportunity.  The piece suggests three policy ideas concerning alcohol in Alice Springs.

Over the fold is a pdf version of my original submission and a scan of the News piece.

The following is my original submission:

As the first from the Generation Y (those born 1980-1995) to be elected to a municipal Council in the Territory I was honoured in March this year to be elected Deputy Mayor of Alice Springs. My generation lives within a specific set of circumstances and I am obliged to advocate reform with this in mind. In my new role my first decision was to quit alcohol for one year.

My main motivation is to set an example. If the National Health and Medical Research Council recommends no more than 4 standard drinks on any single occasion then excessive alcohol consumption in the Territory is commonplace. Too often we leave the task of finding solutions to policy makers without realising that it is also us who can build a social and cultural intolerance of alcohol misuse.

(continued over the fold)

Pluralism as a policy paradigm

In social policy there are no absolutes.  Broad labels such as self-determination, mutual responsibility, etc. describe broad policies subject to an integrated and complex web of forces, powers and circumstances.  Certain labels might be ideal in theory but in practice fall short.  Some may describe in a broad sense a set of policies but in fact lack the substance for an accurate description.  An unfortunate aspect of the political market is that such circumstances lead to a postering for position rather than an articulation of policies and how they can be improved.  By its very nature politics is continually at risk of becoming an equation between different interpretations and positions rather than a collective articulation of ways forward.

An example of a convuluted term is ’self-determination’.  The opposite is seen as ‘mainstreaming’.  Both describe the tension between the way Aboriginal identity is integrated into the broader and more dominant parts of society and the way it is protected as a distinct and seperate position.  One train of thought, put to me recently by an Aboriginal person strong in traditional culture, is that Aboriginal people exercise self-determination through retaining their identity: language, relationships, etc, and nothing else.  I am told that ‘this is self-determination’, meaning not some formal policy construct.  Contrast this with the policy label of ’self-determination’ which was, in effect, the creation of thousands of corporate structures providing services exclusively accessed by Aboriginal people.  The two interpretations of ’self-determination’ are quite stark. 

Elected to Deputy Mayor position

Last night I was elected to Deputy Mayor of Alice Springs Town Council.  (Recently it’s been difficult to find the time to post).  Media release from Council attached.

astc-media-release_welcome_to_deputy_mayor_john_rawnsley

Screen culture and Prof Greenfield

Someone once said that there was once a time where a person could acquire all the knowledge of the world.  That is because the world at that stage was limited, confined to a certain number of relationships, views, interactions, known precedence.  At this stage of globalisation and human development there is an abundance of information. 

This interview on the 7:30 report about screen culture offers intriguing insight into the way technology is changing our behaviour and interactions.  As someone from the Generation Y I feel I can identify with this subject.  During my teenage years I played video games and on occasions for lengthy periods of time.  Even today sometimes when I dream the sensations of playing games occurs.  In dreams, though, I can usually understand the fact that I am dreaming of a role that is not a reality in the dream itself, as if whilst I sleep I understand that it is just a dream but that a further unreal experience adapted from a game is super-imposed.  Such experiences in my lifetime and the experiences shared by so many others conjures reasons why films such as the first Matrix was so popular.

Returning to the subject, when I consider the changes between generations and the vast differences in how we interact, how we analyse and absorb information, how we exchange ideas, knowledge and experiences and how we identify and relate to role models I find how different each generation is.  In some ways technology has simply replaced the old mediums that existed.  The blogging community might work collectively the same way as previous generations did, at least in terms of mobilising and shaping political and intellectual thought.

An Important Story

Excerpt from Alice Springs News…

By ERWIN CHLANDA

Mark Lockyer says he began drinking at age 12.
At 17 he moved out of Hidden Valley, where he had grown up, so that he wouldn’t remain an alcoholic.
“I didn’t want to die from drinking,” he says.
But his aunty, to whom he was very close, did.
His mother, now an invalid, remained in the squalid town camp, and so he maintained a connection with this source of much anti-social behaviour in Alice Springs.
As a kid he himself was an occasional player, roaming the town in gangs of six to a dozen kids, “from the camps, the bush and urban kids” – stealing hard liquor, “bottles of grog, rum, vodka” – and food from bottle shops and supermarkets.
Mark’s mother lives in an exceptionally neat house amongst the Hidden Valley mayhem.
It’s 3.30pm on Friday.
Most able-bodied adults in Alice are still at work, but across the road, in a freshly renovated house, painted in garish blue colours, the daily drinking party is getting into full swing.
There are about two dozen young men and women, many already under the weather.
The scene outside leaves little to the imagination about what the interior would look like, recently refurbished at taxpayers’ expense.
Says Mark: “There are already graffiti, smashed doors and windows.
“It’s almost back where it started, trashed.
“There are 15 to 20 people, beds, mattresses, beer cans all over the yard, 12 year old girls drinking and smoking dope.”

(continued here.)

Deliberate Practice

Reading the Weekend Australian I recently stumbled across this fascinating article about ‘deliberate practice’, a concept exploring the acquisition of expert performance.  This Freakonomics blog post summarises:

This means that, your level of natural talent notwithstanding, excellence is accomplished mainly through the tenets of deliberate practice, which are roughly:

1. Focus on technique as opposed to outcome.
2. Set specific goals.
3. Get good, prompt feedback, and use it.

Dr K Anders Ericsson is the authorative figure for this work.  An extract here:

For appropriate challenging problems experts don’t just automatically extract patterns and retrieve their response directly from memory. Instead they select the relevant information and encode it in special representations in working memory that allow planning, evaluation and reasoning about alternative courses of action (Ericsson & Lehmann, 1996). Hence, the difference between experts and less skilled subjects is not merely a matter of the amount and complexity of the accumulated knowledge; it also reflects qualitative differences in the organization of knowledge and its representation (Chi, Glaser & Rees, 1982).  Experts’ knowledge is encoded around key domain-related concepts and solution procedures that allow rapid and reliable retrieval whenever stored information is relevant.  

Alice Springs, new media and the internet

If google’s blog search engine and wordpress.com tags are any indication there are only two other active blogs in Alice Springs – Jane Clark’s and Desert Mandala.  This is suprising considering the importance of regional policy reform in the national context (and of interest throughout the nation), although crikey.com.au and other forums carry irregular and unanimous contributions from this region.  However, there appears to be a number of blogs from Aboriginal communities in the north of the Territory.

Recently the local ABC significantly enhanced its content including blogs, photos, features and a range of functions, found here.  These local photos are excellent.

The Alice Springs News continues to display content online and there is limited coverage online with the Centralian Advocate. 

If there are any new Alice Springs (or Central Australian) blogs please let me know.

Alice Springs Innovative ideas forum

Recently the Alice Springs Town Council hosted an innovative ideas forum facilitated by Ted Egan.  I submitted the following ideas (the final one was in the top 4).  Surprisingly, the idea in relation to Slamball received more support than I expected and was spoken to by one participant (only a small number of participants were aware of what it is!).  Other ideas submitted to the forum included extreme sports generally and this idea can be linked into the Slamball proposal.

ideas-for-innovation-workshop_nov-081

Chess

Chess is a fascinating game.  Its a game of risk, calculation and battle.  The game has developed to a perfect form and it did so a very long time ago.  There are no tricks, no easy paths.  No shortcuts.

The concept of chess is often used to explain how the brain functions.  After many games certain patterns imprint in the mind.  Experts look at a board and can see instantly the options presented as if the sub-conscious mind recognises certain patterns without going through a conscious thought process.  Because these conscious thought processes take time the advantage of immediately recognising patterns leads in almost all cases to the correct move option.  As humans have weaknesses errors arise but errors are fewer in-between when memory and sub-conscious activity expands.  The rest comes down to innovation and it is this skill that attracts so many players.

The Todd River flowing

Last week the Todd River was at its brink.  This photo was taken at about 6pm when the Todd was at its strength.  I was on the footbridge at the side closest to East side.

A strong memory I have is walking across the footbridge at around 9pm, the sound of water running, the street lights dim with light reflecting across the water and the cool dry air.  The Flickr bar to the right has more photos.

an Obama election win

Barack Obama is at the cusp of an historic election win.

I first came across him at the Democratic Convention leading up to the previous election but didn’t take much notice.  Last year I visited the book store and found his Audacity of Hope.  It was an intriguing read and I posted here a piece about his approach to race politics.  This was a new and fresh direction and is, in my view, a topic seldom discussed yet entirely relevant to contemporary politics.  It presents a radical centre approach absent from any equivalent analysis from an Australian political perspective.

Shortly after reading Audacity I purchased Dreams from my Father.  Again I thought it was a fascinating account of his life and the detail and work of his Kenyan trip an important story. 

Later, I posted my observations of Noel Pearsons analysis of Obamas path. 

Whilst the work of a transformational President is yet to be seen the conditions for it are present.  I hope that the political and media environment in America will generate discussion in our own country on related issues, namely, identity politics and the integration of minority groups in national political decision-making processes.

Embedding regionalisation in the Statehood constitution

At the Full Council meeting on 28th October the following motion was passed unanimously:

That Council prepare a discussion paper for Statehood.

That the discussion paper examine, amongst other possibilities, recognition of Local Government including its powers and responsibilities and an equitable formula for the distribution of funds to be embedded in the constitution that evokes Statehood.

That this paper, if necessary, utilise funding allocated in this years budget for further analysis of population figures and mobility with a view of ascertaining an accurate formula.

That this paper consider the unique position of regions within the Territory.

That Council give impetus to the Mayor to consult with Local Government across the Territory,
particularly the regions, with a view of seeking support for the principles embodied in the paper.

Moved: John Rawnsley
Seconded: Jane Clark

This motion calls on Council to actively contribute to the direction of Statehood by promoting the
principle of regionalisation. The aim is to embed this interest in the document that evokes
Statehood.

Regionalisation holds two aspects.

More over the fold.

A flat out special purpose vehicle

As a person with a general interest in economics but not a detailed understanding of its complexity and depth I was interested to observe the Tony Jones interview of economist WIll Hutton, located here.

An excerpt:

TONY JONES: Yes, well, you’ve written the most complete account that I’ve seen of how it went bust in the first place; how this credit derivative market developed and why so many financial managers put their trust in us. Tell us how it all started.

WILL HUTTON: Well, how long have you got? I think everyone watching will probably understand the idea of a bond, you know, you issue a bond, a company or Government issues a bond and you make 1,000 pounds in profits and you’ll pay a small fraction of those profits to servicing the bond.

Fine, we all understand that. It’s a very established principle. Securitisation did something different.

It said okay, let’s take part of your profit stream, it could be interest from payments on a port facility you own, it could be a football stadium, it could be some mortgage payments you’re receiving from some tenants.

Let’s take all those and let’s hypothecate them, to what was called in the jargon a special purpose vehicle, and then let’s flog it to investors all around the world.

And to give them some guarantee that this very risky piece of paper is worth the paper it’s written on, let’s take out an insurance contract called a credit default.

But it was more than a credit default, it was called a credit default swap because you would swap the insurance policy to another buyer if you chose.

Now what makes this so interesting is that if for any reason any of those mortgage payments don’t come in like you’re expecting; if the traffic in the port facility goes down a bit, if the revenues from that football stadium just contract a bit, suddenly, wow, there’s less money coming in to pay the interest on that bond.

And you start to … and the value of it starts to fall, and then you want to collect on the insurance policy but you’ve swapped the insurance policy to somebody else and they may in turn have swapped it to somebody else and somebody else and somebody else.

So nobody in the system knows what the value of these securities actually are really, where the losses are going to pop up and suddenly, over the last two, three, four weeks, the entire world system has just frozen in fear.

And people only … and banks will lend to each other just for the night or they’ll borrow from a Central Bank.

And you can’t lend working capital to a business or a 25-year mortgage if you, the bank, are just borrowing off the Central Bank or borrowing off another bank overnight you just can’t do it.
So credit has just stopped in its tracks and if something hadn’t happened, we would have confronted a worldwide meltdown, a worldwide depression.

An overview of media reports of economists suggests somewhere between a mild recession to a deep recession in the United States with permeating effects throughout the world.  Australia appears much safer to cope with this than many other countries.  Consistency across media does not always produce an accurate result.  The complexity of the issue, the lack of information and the lack of oversight and regulation is concerning.

The Kumon method

My son has been attending the local Kumon centre for some months now.  It costs us $200Aus per month, money worth its value.  With our children we’ve always considered additional teaching materials over and above schooling and Kumon provides that opening. 

The Kumon method is proven.  Key facets are repetition and consistency.  Each day he receives a booklet, maths and english.  He is challenged to finish each within ten minutes and with near 100% accuracy.  At five years old, and with many months of daily practice, he is at a level where he can complete each booklet by himself.  Each page is at a level that he is comfortable with – kumon aims to provide material at an individual level free from the competitive edge of peers.  The challenge is gradual, a new word or number sequence here and there.  Most of the time he is repeating answers he has already learned and by doing so builds confidence. 

The best part for me is that it is structured.  Goals are set daily.  If I consider a learning method where I demand results and if I over-impose this method without positive engagement then the ultimate result is failure, because ultimately he disengages.  Because Kumon is repetitious and within the scope of my childs capabilities it automatically attracts his will to achieve.  The Kumon method allows my son to take ownership not only in the results, but also progress.

The IK economy, trust, and integrating institutions designed for community safety

The 7:30 report conveyed a story (found here) about incorporating traditional methods of dispute resolution for the purpose of mediating a dispute between residents of a community and Police.  I participated in a similiar program some years back (designed for leadership/youth purposes) and was struck by its potential.  It led me to consider the importance of the IK economy and the nature of social capital.

It appears that the program reported in the story has been successful in building the stocks of trust between residents and the Police force.  More research/analysis would be needed to prove this point, but there is little doubt that this particular program was an option leading to this aim in circumstances where alternative options are limited.

More over the fold.

Re-instating permits in the NT

On Monday Alice Springs Town Council Committee unanimously passed the following motion:

That Council call on the Aust Gvt to reconsider re-instating the permit system on Aboriginal land on the proviso that it adopts a regional information and consultative mechanism to ascertain those communities that have a desire to remove permits.

The Centralian Advocate printed my letter on Friday:

To an urban Aboriginal person the most concerning aspect of the permit debate is the display of the race card.  A supporter of total reinstatement of permits said publicly ‘it is only non-Aboriginal people’ who favour removal.  Several Aboriginal people from communities have told me the direct opposite. 

One person told me it is not monitured so, on balance, it is unworkable.  Another said their community has significant potential in terms of eco-tourism ventures but that permits serve as a strong disincentive for tourists.  Expanding regional economies creates work opportunity.  Work opportunity is an essential pillar of effective welfare reform. 

Too often the alternative is substance misuse.  Some argue that it is substance misuse that undermines the survival of culture (a core argument in favour of retaining permits). 

We know there is opportunity to expand regional economies because of the tourist dollar, particularly the ’spirited traveller’ and grey nomads.  We also know this because of the economic opportunities available to communities without permits (e.g. ntaria).  Town Council debated the issue because we felt it was important to give people choice rather than the single path of urban drift.

The removal of permits should not be imposed as an ideological measure across all Aboriginal communities.  Nor should total re-instatement. 

We need to move beyond the left-right ideological divide and develop new policy ideas. 

One idea is to establish a mechanism for CLC to enable Traditional Owners the right to prohibit access by individuals with a certain criminal history, or to require those dealing in art to register (with a subsequent right to issue injunctions).  Another idea is to remove permits in a community where the conditions favour removal and ensure that work (and enterprise) opportunities build wealth at the community level.  Different policy ideas need to be debated and the decision needs to come from the communities concerned. 

Playing the race card and adopting ideology ultimately does our people a disservice.

On October 15 The Australian reported the following comments of Deputy Chief Minister Marion Scrymgour:

In the Australian today:

“I know there were a number of communities in the Northern Territory that were wanting to have the permit system lifted, and wanted (Indigenous Affairs Minister) Jenny Macklin to provide a clear process in which those communities could nominate to have an open town,” Ms Scrymgour said.

“I’ve been told that communities like Papunya and Hermannsburg want their communities to be open towns. I think the federal Government needs to provide a mechanism.”

Rain on Uluru

When I was young I lived at the Ranger station behind Uluru.  One of my strongest memories was pulling over on the side of the road to get out and see the rain on the rock.  My parents were fascinated by it for reasons that (I then) did not understand. 

Recently I visited Uluru and took the following picture (more can be viewed on the flickr site to your right):

Rage

While I’ve seen Germaine Greer’s work a number of times I’m not familiar with the contributions that led to her prominence.  One reason is that I’m from the generation Y.  Another is that I’ve dismissed her work because of the outlandish and deliberately provocative statements which appear from time to time.

Greer offers this contribution on Lateline (another source of reference is the video of ABCs Q&A, located here):

PROFESSOR GERMAINE GREER, ACADEMIC AND AUTHOR: [the book] is not about the Federal intervention. It is about rage, it’s an essay on rage itself. It begins with a white example of somebody who feels his people have been unfairly discriminated against by government policy. I am talking about Bob Katter trying to deal with what’s happened to his people in the Northern Territory and in Queensland in particular who have been disenfranchised and driven to the wall in fact by government policy. The farmers who are killing themselves. What it tries to do is look at the spectrum of hunter gatherer violence*, not just Aboriginal violence but hunter gatherer violence which has a particular shape. It involves self-destruction, high levels of suicide but also high levels of extraordinary violence against the people closest to the perpetrator, the perpetrator’s own children and the women folk in his own family.

LEIGH SALES: And this is what you think is happening in indigenous Australian communities?

PROFESSOR GERMAINE GREER: I don’t think there is any doubt about it. If you read the women’s task force report on violence, they talk about these extraordinary levels. This is not the same as free floating violence in a football crowd, for example. This is different and it’s, we’ve had, you know, clever essays about do we need a new sue Sinology to understand what is happening in black communities and I say no. If we begin to understand that suicide is caused not by grief, you can live with grief forever but you can’t live with rage because rage involves body chemicals that literally rip you to piece pieces. And everything you do will be made part of that self-destructive scenario. So you will abuse alcohol or petrol or your car or anything. So I am trying to talk about why these levels are there. I am not actually, most of what is extrapolated is wrong. I think the intervention will fail, unless the problem of rage is addressed. And then you have to ask how do you address it. I would say first of people all people have to find a way to express it because it’s never been said that it’s so particularly noxious and poisonous. So what we need is a political structure. What I’ve argued for is a treaty. What is so tough about that idea?

…LEIGH SALES: OK, but surely isn’t the first step that the violence has to be controlled and some sort of intervention is the only way to do that in the short term so you can look at the bigger, long-term issue?

PROFESSOR GERMAINE GREER: Look, if what you’re talking about mainly self-destruction and we have to take into account para suicide, the extraordinarily high number of accidental deaths that afflict Aboriginal communities, we’re not even going to deal with them because there is no criminal profile there.

…

All I’m saying is that unless we deal with the pathology that underlies it we won’t get anywhere. We won’t actually stop the violence. we may even cause it to escalate. But it’s not a viable proceeding unless you look at the pathology. It’s, I don’t think it’s a simple situation at all. I also in my worse moments I think we might be way too late.

[and after the interviewer pushes the point that many people will criticise the work for concentrating on the victims rather than the perpetrators...]

PROFESSOR GERMAINE GREER: Because if you think about it when an 11-year-old boy hangs himself he is part of the same picture, the rage has already poisoned him…

Interestingly, the two Aboriginal people interviewed by Lateline for the purpose of establishing critics of Dr Greer’s work do not sit within the same social networks and experiences that are the subject of her work.  In itself the media piece re-affirms the very arguments that Dr Greer puts – that rage is a result of a multitude of forces imposed from the outside (with little structural capacity to respond from within).  The media piece offers Aboriginal critics to legitimise what is considered the norm of conducting such a story yet it re-affirms the fact that there are Aboriginal critics who compound the challenges that lead to a sense of disillusionment (or, in the extreme, what Greer refers to as ‘rage’).  This is not the fault of the critics.  Nor is it the fault of the media commentators.  Rather, it is part of a larger picture where, if viewed together, represents the deep and widespread paucity that exists in the context of recognising the plurality, diversity and fragmentation of minority politics.  In Australia this pluralism is incredibly rich, and moreso than other minority-dominant populations.    

On a similar topic (yet one that does not go into such depths of sensitivity as Dr Greer), the NY Times reports observations from former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich:

Mr. Gingrich, who often scolds his own party (Democrats), offered a few annotations along the way and also, as is his way, gave a few tips of advice to Mr. Obama:

I do think there’s an authenticity and legitimacy to anger by many groups in America. Senator Obama said in his speech, quote: “That anger may not get expressed in public in front of white co-workers or white friends, but it does find voice in the barber shop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician’s own failings. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition.”

I think that that’s right. And I think it’s important to recognize that anger can be a source of energy to create a better future, in which case it’s a good thing. But if anger is a self-inflicted wound that limits us, it is a very bad and a very dangerous thing. And we have to be very careful about the role that anger plays in our culture.

But then Mr. Gingrich took a sharp right turn from Mr. Obama’s train of thought.

“Tragically what has happened is that cultural and political leaders have used anger as an excuse to avoid reality, as an excuse to avoid change, as an excuse to avoid accountability. Because everything that is wrong is somehow somebody else’s fault,” Mr. Gingrich said.

Mr. Obama needs to embrace solutions that are usually scorned by the left wing, Mr. Gingrich said. To balance out ethnic gaps, educational bureaucracy needs to be eliminated. Inner city high school students should be offered the chance to graduate in fewer than four years to avoid being bored. Teachers should push the “drum beat for entrepreneurship,” because historically, ethnic groups have risen by starting their own businesses.

Memorable moments #7

Nathanael and Aaliyah have this habit of asking their parents if they can have something.  If we’re walking in the shop or see something they want they ask ‘dad, can I have this…later?’.  Knowing that they will get a ‘no’ response they emphasise the ‘later’ part – ‘I said llaaaatteer’.  ‘Of course’ is my reply.  On occasions a walk through the shop will end with several items that they have decided to get later (which means indefinitely). 

Nathanael accidently hit his head walking against a glass wall (thinking it was a door) at the video shop.  I knelt down to his level and tried to comfort him as a bruise emerged.  Aaliyah was watching on.  When we finally walked through the door she was first and said to us ’see, I didn’t hit my head’ as if we should be impressed.

Aaliyah to dad, ‘look…I saw a star’.  Dad replies ‘yeah Aali, do you know where stars come from?’.  ‘Yes…aahh…stars…stars…planes can fly high and wind down their window and get the stars’.  ‘Trrueee’, dad says.  ‘Yeah’ (with a really excited voice).

Going for a swim at the town pool, chest-high in water, I lift the kids high in the air so they come down by themselves and splash.  I asked Aaliyah if she wants me to do that, she responds ‘NNNOOOO, I don’t want to be superhero to the rescue’.

Alison Anderson elected unopposed

Alison Anderson has won the seat of Macdonnell unopposed at the 2008 Territory election.  There is no voting in this seat as she was the only nominating candidate. 

Malcolm Mackerras writes in crikey.com:

At the November 1963 House of Representatives only general election John Norman Nelson (Labor) was returned unopposed for the Northern Territory. It then went entirely out of fashion for any member of the House of Representatives to be returned unopposed.

However, unopposed returns continued at state elections. In South Australia in March 1965 there were unopposed returns in Albert, Angas and Light. In Queensland in May 1966 there were unopposed returns in Mackenzie and Warrego. In New South Wales in September 1981 there was an unopposed return in South Coast. In Western Australia in February 1983 there was an unopposed return in Narrogin.